by Rudresh Pandey
It is said we Indians lives on Cricket, Cinema, Religion and
Politics as we Indians are very passionate on these issues. Any casual living
room discussions or any intellectual discussions on copious news channels
emerging every day revolves around these topics. We are not the only democracy
in the world, we are also not the best democracy but for sure our democratic
system is very unique. We have evolved
our own system starting from an experiment of mixed economy of socialistic and
capitalistic views. We adopted a mix model of economy at the time of
independence from British rule on 15 August 1947; this was unique as the world
was divided in socialistic and capitalistic camps at that time. We could hold
this economic model even when the USSR collapsed with its socialistic model. We
did change by opening our economy in 1990s but these changes were smooth as
compared to other economies. These were more of economic changes than political
but yes it had its social effects as it resulted in growth in the GDP and average
income of the country.
India is a strong democracy. Strong in the sense that it is
robust and has survived many ups and downs. Various democracies could not
survive they were taken over by dictators or collapsed due to various reasons.
The major reason for India being a strong democracy has been the political
culture we Indians have. Politics has been a major engagement of an average
Indian. We are more involved with our political parties than just voting for
them. This has made the Indian
democratic set up robust as it prevented any attempts of dictatorship
etc.
Indian democracy needs changes and reforms, the reason for
the reforms in our democracy and political system is because we has evolved a
system of our own. The idea of democracy in India was taken from British system
after our independence but it evolved after that. This process of development
of democracy in India is more of social change than just a development of
political system. India had a very strong ruling class for centuries. Even
before British came and ruled this sub continent it had many strong ruling
clans. So adopting a system that involves every one and a common men has been
slow. We saw emergence of few political parties signifying a change in social
thought and political orientation. Emergence of Bahujan samaj Party or Mr Laalu
Yadav was due to uprising of a section of our society. The emergence of these political forces were because a section of the society was not
in the mainstream of the political system and other major political parties
could not match their expectations.
Recent phenomenon of emergence of Aam Admi Party signifies
change in political thought. It signifies the desire of people to have better
governance and better value of their tax money. Success of a political party
that too in such a short span of time signifies a change in peoples
orientation. It is not that the party has given a thought to people it is
rather change in political orientation that has resulted in emergence of Aam
admi party. This party has been the result of the change in the expectations of
people from the political parties. The existing Political parties have not been
able to meet these expectations which resulted in the gap and created a
niche. It will be interesting to see how
the things unfold and weather this new political party which is the result of
peoples expectations not fulfilled can really fulfill what people expect.
