Travails of Democracy Part I

We all cherish democracy and democratic processes in our life- be it in the matters of the state or in matters of the organizations where we work. And we all believe that we will be happy to live in a democratic environment. And at the heart of the democratic processes is the voting system. We choose or elect our leaders by exercising our franchise at definite intervals. We enable or assumed to enable a set of chosen  people to be our representatives for , say five years in India, and rule us by being part of  the machinery called government. And , they will rule us for five years uninterrupted(unless some specific grave issues arise),if the political party gets a mandate through the democratic process of majority. Sincerely, we expect that they will do things which will make our lives better or at least will not do things which will make our lives worse.

Before the election processes, the political parties  and the candidates make lots of promises through what they refer to as election manifesto or otherwise individually. With just the idea of winning the election process,  they promise to bring Ramarajya or a Utopia  in the state or the country as the case may be.

And once the majority party starts ruling us, very often the promises are forgotten. The moment they a party gets majority to rule  and assume power, power struggle within the party starts. Every heavy weight in the party, nurtures positions of power and a number of heavyweights may be left out after completing the portfolio allocation for ministers.  Now, these heavy weights outside the inner circle, need to be some how satisfied or taken care of; or else they will create problems for the party and the government from within the party. So the party creates special cabinet positions for such heavy weights: the positions may take different forms  Chairman of Administrative Reforms Committee, State’s Representative in  New Delhi  etc etc as has been happening in the state of Kerala. These special posts need to be given offices and office staff to operate. It results in substantial expenditure for the exchequer. Poor tax payers of the state bear the burden of all such “political accommodations”. All these whims and fancies of political leadership happen when the state is not financially self sufficient and  the government do not have funds to pay salaries to the employees and pensions to the retired employees of certain public undertakings engaged in essential services like public transport.

Can the voters do anything to curtail or curb such actions by the political party in power whenever they are dissatisfied or feel cheated? No way. The voters have to wait patiently for five long years and they  are likely to  forget even a criminal act that happened five years back and will vote either the old group of people or a new set of people without raising any questions about what happened in the past.

A democratic government is supposed to be ‘by the people, of the people and for the people’. Does any of the governments justify this canon of democracy? Or can we confidently say so?