Democracy (Essay)

Democracy is a Greek word. It is combination of two words one is ‘Demos’ which means ‘the people’ and other is ‘Karate’ which means rule. Thus the word democracy means rule or government of the people. The great American President Abraham Lincoln defined democracy “Government of the people by the people and for the people”.

It is democratic system of government in which the people have great say in the functioning of the government through elected representatives. Election and right of franchise are the two fundamental principles of democracy according to country’s constitution people elect their representatives through adult franchise for the tenure of four or five years.

Most countries of the world have democratic form of government except a few kingdoms and communist countries. Infact democracy means different things for different people. Its meaning and compositions also changes with time. Now here we find ideal or perfect to democracy in the world to be real democracy it must be democratic in spirits and substance. What democracy is and what it should be can not be separated in ideal democracy.

Party system is the essence of democracy. The party that gets higher number of votes casted by people in the general elections wins and forms the government. This apparently democracy is counting of votes. But elections as experience has shown are seldom clean and fair power is used to perpetuate ate power. It is negation of democracy. Power and influence are two different things. Power appeals to brute force in man. Influence appeals reason. The voters must use free will and reason in electing their representatives. Otherwise democracy is fraud.

Without proper education there can not be true democracy. Infact education helps in implementation of real democracy. In our country eighty percent people are poor and illiterate. They can not chose correctly nor they exert any control on the elected representatives and ministers who do as they please. Those who call themselves the champions of democracy are the least democratic in words and actions. They simply want power and power always corrupts them.

Opposition is essential for sound working of democracy unless there is vigilant opposition constantly on the alert and ever watchful of the government policies and actions the ruling party would tend to get complacement and tardy. But when there are well informed critics ever ready to expose the wrong committed by the government and to bring to light it acts of omission and commission, the ruling party can hardly afford to be slack and negligent in the performance of its duty towards the people and country. Generally it is opposition parties that are supposed to play an effective role in a democracy. According to well known thinker Lindsay “the democratic problem is the control of organization of power by the common man”.

The citizens of a democratic country must be “thinking men and women” possessing independent opinion and capable of taking intelligent interest in public affairs. It has rightly been said that success of a democracy depends up on the ability, character and what is no less important the powers of discrimination which the people are expected to possess. In fact democracy is reduced to an empty show if the citizen being to behave like sheep and dumb cattle and develop crowd mentality of being driven which ever way the leader direct.

Active and intelligent participation of people in public affairs can be assured if they are adequately educated. Without education there can be no intelligent discussion and participation in the process of government education produces rational human beings and power of thinking develops the power to discriminate between good and bad. A citizen of democratic regime is not merely to obey, he has also to see if his obedience is rational and warranted. It is necessary for people to possess the power to judge right and wrong and also the ability to criticize. It is this ability to judge and discriminate that leads to responsible criticism and to healthy democracy.

Democracy provides an outlet and a safety valve for the peoples anger and frustration and this outlet is open criticism of the government whenever, wherever it does something wrong or fails to adopt right course as demanded by the public interest.

To sum up democracy is the only form of government which guarantees the participation of the people in running the country. People have say in the affairs of state.