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People’s Movement, a
Quest for Inclusive Democracy?
India has made a
departure from ‘benefits of growth’ and ‘trickle down’ to ‘inclusive growth’.
Thanks to the Panchayati Raj, the country is also moving towards inclusive
governance
Churchill defined democracy as “the
worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried.”
Democracy, the least bad system, has been the flavour of the 21st century.
According to Amartya Sen, “democracy remains the only system of government that
commands global respect.” Ironically, democracy is in trouble in many places,
even as its triumph is proclaimed. There is a lot of backsliding in a number of
electoral democracies as well as setbacks in countries that experienced
democratic revolutions following the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Larry
Diamond, author of The Spirit of Democracy, calls it
“democracy recession.” There is also consolidation of dictatorships among
authoritarian rulers wary of democratic advance in their neighbourhoods. Even
though democracy is not yet ‘sell-by-date’, we may have progressed
democratically but democracy is regressing.
Pitfalls of Representative Democracy
The dominant oligarchic system of representative
democracy cannot be equated with democracy itself. Many democracies have simply
become Polyarchies. One of the major problems with representative
democracy is that the business of government has become the privilege of the
few. Representative democracy emerged in the 19th century in countries that had
experienced an industrial revolution. Given the context of unprecedented
production levels, representative democracy came to symbolise development and
progress. The experience suggests that instead of becoming a bridge between
state and society, representative democracy has practically become statist
which ends up excluding the vast majority of the population from political
power. Representative democracy is leading to oligarchisation of political
system.
