Most of us, born and brought up in the Independent India, take the "democracy" as a part and parcel of living. In fact, there are some, I know of, who even crib that we have "too much of democracy"... (though, I am not sure what that exactly means, since democracy - the right to voice your choice - is either/or; it is not a matter of degree...)
But the fact that India remained a democratic country - the largest democracy, in fact - is something of a wonder/miracle. The only post-colonial country that could maintain this record in the world...
...Back then, there were many who always remained sceptical about India's will to remain a democratic country. In 1960s, Selig Harrison, an American scholor-journalist had predicted:
"The odds are wholly against suvival of freedom and ... the issue is, in fact, whether the Indian state can survive at all."
India did!
In 1967, The Time carried out a series of articles entitled "India's Disintegrating Democracy" authored by one Neville Maxwell. A quote:
"The great experiment of developing India within a democratic framework has failed."
And yet, the India, as a democratic country, almost 4 decades on, has trudged along... Perhaps not very efficiently. But in spite of all its complexities, failures (and successes), ups-and-downs. After all it was a democratic process in 1977, that ended a dictatorial era of the "Emergency", - and it was the same process that enabled a party, which got 2 seats in parliament in 1985, to form a government in mid-90s, and then get replaced by the "original incumbent" in 2004...
All these instance are a homage to the spirit of a people...
Often, what gets missed in the mind-space of the common man (and the educated intelligentia and the middle-class) is the logistical nightmare that goes into keeping the country "democratic".
The last national elections in 2004:
675mn eligible voters (er.. that was 10%+ of global population)
more than 5000 candidates
40+ political parties + more than 1000 "independent" candidates
(there were so many "Independent" candidates that the Election Commission ran out of the 128 symbols - those tiny line-drawings of everything from apples, to lanterns, to bangles, boats, pillows, combs, bananas, and computers... - in a country largely populated by people who can't read and write, the "election symbol" - a picture - is the only mode of making a choice)
around 850,000 polling booths
(that spread across more that 640,000 villages, including the 35 in Andaman-Nicobar Islands that spread across some 600 sq miles)
But this was also the 1st National Election, anywhere in the world, that was
at a scale that is staggering - effectively, it was the vote of 10% of global population exercing their enfanchise!!
directly representative (not though electoral votes), and
done on indeginously electronic voting machines (and without any controversy, unlike the Diebold)
In its typical modern-primitive ways, this is how the Electronic Voting Machines were transported to different polling booths across the sub-continent:
But perhaps, the greatest insight I ever got about why and how Indian Democracy survived (and will continue to do so) was this small news item that I picked up from a local newspaper... I scanned it, and cherish it:
We live in a critical time in history, when the "indigenous" democracy is getting usurped/arm-twisted by the "exported" one..
But nevertheless...
A Very Happy Independence Day to All!!!
