We are living in the largest democratic country, and we are about to be a part of another legislative assembly election, in Kerala. Do we have to know anything before we go to a polling booth, to make someone win? If yes, what are they? For that, we need to know why an election is important and thus the ideas that we should be aware of. May be for that we can’t avoid a small discussion on democracy. I believe a democratic nation will be a successful one, only when there exists a mutual monitoring system in between the govt. and the public. So, if we think, the nation is not developing as we expected, then we must examine both the govt. and the public.
Examining the Govt.:
Before examining the govt. we need to have a better idea about what do we mean by a democratic country. Do we mistake Majoritarianism for Democracy?
I used to feel we all are mistaken majoritarianism for democracy, we used to say ‘it’s the opinion of majority, and hence it should rule the system/society/world’… It ranges from choosing which chocolate we should buy for a birthday party, who should be our candidate for the college union election to which party should rule our country. Probably the seriousness of chocolate issue is different from the ruling party issue, based on the outcomes and after effects of our choice.
Majoritirianism: in which the opinion of the majority rule the society/nation. Or the majority class rule over minority class in a society. The majority decides laws, rules, regulations, policies, and so on… The minority would be unnoticed; their needs, rights, and other facilities. The majority can be classified based on religion, caste, economy, education, gender etc. The formation of majority can even cause due to false consciousness or due to the charisma of a leader!!!
In India, in our democratic system, we have majoritarian electoral system in which the majority would not exclude the active participation of minority, thus their rights and needs. As the winners are chosen by the majority, let us make an assumption that they are in favor of the majority. So in fact they can remain in power even if they ignore the needs of the minority. Thus by measuring the well-being of minority, one can infer how strong the democratic system a society/nation own (or sincerity of govt.). That’s all about reviewing a democratic authority or the govt. of a nation.
Examining the Public:
We have seen, by measuring the well-being of minority in a society we can review the sincerity of a govt. Now, how do we review the public? We used to say it’d be enough to evaluate the interests, hobbies, attitude, and response etc of an individual to study himer. So does the public; we don’t really have to go and ask their opinion on each and everything but it is enough to go through their choice, their responsibilities/attitude towards responsibility and hence to determine standard of the society. Election indeed is a crucial tool among them.
In an ideal world, where everyone is rational, their opinion/choices are independent of emotions. It’d not be that difficult to imagine how things would move in such a world. People would choose a/the leader who is capable of implementing policies/ ideas that would develop the society ‘as a whole’, or collectively every citizen would be uplifted to a better life. As they are rational, there won’t be any conflict among them on the idea of development that what is development or how a society has to be developed.
When we come into the real world, several factors influence us, such as emotion, a prior experience from the govt./ neighborhood, our status in the society and most importantly our ability (indirectly education-not degrees that one own!-) to perceive the world. Hence we are prone to make mistakes (thus to choose a bad govt.). It’d be enough to measure those mistakes, or to measure how much the real world citizen deviates from the ideal world citizen.
So, we’ve got objects to be measured and tools to measure, the deviation of real world from that of the ideal one, those are citizen and the mentioned real world influence.
In the beginning we saw the possibilities of forming a majority and those were ‘religion, caste, economy, education, gender, false consciousness, and charisma of a leader so on’. The last two are different from the rest. Let us categorize them into objective parameters (religion, caste, economy, education, and gender) and pseudo parameters (false consciousness, and charisma of a leader).
The Analysis:
Case I: We have a sincere govt. and we are influenced by objective parameters.
In the presence of a sincere govt. everyone will get justice. The nation will keep on developing, and the public will become more and more rational since they are being protected, served what they want/need and education which makes them rational!
Case II: we have less sincere govt.
Case A: Public under the influence of objective parameters
The govt. will be a racial accordingly, thus the minorities are not going to be protected, the nation will move forward with the majority. Again it varies depending on the subsection.
If religion/caste/ gender are the parameters, then regardless the degeneracy of economic policies of the govt. they will win. But if economy/ education are the parameters, public will move away from govt. if they do not implement policies that would uplift the public. Hence that govt. will be swept away next time, giving rise to a better govt. this will continue until they get a better govt. This in fact is a force for the govt to make fewer mistakes; otherwise they won’t be elected anymore! There will be a delay still we are moving in the right direction.
Case B: Public under the influence of pseudo parameters
Whatever be the intention of govt. they will get it done. They’d make the public to think that the govt. stands for them and they will do almost nothing for the public. I claim so because, if their intention was the well-being of the public, they would’ve chosen issues of the public over the charisma of a leader to gain votes. May be the most pathetic condition of a nation…
Case I is the ideal world which is never going to exist.
Case II(A) is again not good for a nation, in which apparently there is not one to monitor the govt.
Case II(B); the only hopeful condition for development of any nation, in which the parameters of influence are economy, education etc. As members of a govt. are from the society itself and not from any outside world, they will also be conditioned/ biased by the same parameters. The depth of influence will vary from one individual to another. Pprecisely, we can’t really differentiate govt. from public but an individual from another in terms of depth of influence.
Or rather… it’s the political culture of a society! So when we say anything about the standard of govt. it indeed reflects the standard of the society as a whole. In brief we can’t wait for a dawn to get an ideal govt. and thence to expect the development of a nation… rather we can only raise a nation by raising each individual’s standard. So when we make a party win this time, we should be aware of a factor too... that the party REALLY is a representative of our society. And, whatever we criticize about our govt. is indeed a criticism on ourselves.
