‘Democracy‘ is a word with many different meanings. “A government of the people, by the people, and for the people” can help us understand this. Following and respecting this ideology instead of just writing it in the constitution because it was there would have made a big difference in the way politics were represented in India.
People elected to represent the people in the parliament are also accused of crimes like rape, murder, abduction, and other serious crimes against women, men, and other people, all of which are still being investigated by the law. This isn’t very pleasant. Association for Democratic Reforms says that the number of people with criminal records peaked in the 2021 assembly elections in Assam, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal. No less than 1,157 out of 6,318 candidates had criminal cases against them.
There has also been a rise in the number of candidates who have been elected as MLAs, MPs, and Lok Sabha members since 2009, the Association for Democratic Reforms said in a statement about the state of politics in the country. In 2009, 15% of candidates had been elected. In 2017, 17% of candidates had been elected.
When we talk about clean politics now, it sounds like an oxymoron. It was a word that our founding fathers used all the time. It says in the Representation of Peoples Act (RPA) 1951 that the law doesn’t keep people from running for office who haven’t been convicted of anything because they haven’t yet.
Only people who have been sentenced before can run. Over the years, some of the things that have led to criminals being elected as leaders are muscle-money power, a lack of interest in voting by voters, and a lack of law enforcement by the EC. This is all bad for the system’s integrity and goes against the principle of free and fair elections.
There is a way to stop the activity if people work together and don’t just stand by and do nothing like our former Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, did. Second, the RPA should keep anyone from running for office against whom a severe case is pending. People should also look into the candidates’ backgrounds, as required by section 33-A of the RPA, which asks a candidate to say if he has been accused of any crime. As the last word, be careful who you hire because termites can get into your home and eat away at your house’s very foundation.
A lot has changed in the last 75 years since we said we were free. India has made significant and ground-breaking discoveries in every field it has tried. It has a long way to go in the political area. Still, the end goal is a political system that isn’t based on crime and an institution that shows the most accurate and purest form of politics any country can offer its citizens.
What is democracy is all about?
Democracy is a type of government in which the people have the power to think about and decide on legislation (direct democracy), or they can choose who will do this for them (“representative democracy”). “The people” and how the people share or delegate power have changed over time and in different countries, but more and more people in a democratic government have been included. Freedom of assembly, speech, association, inclusiveness and equality are the cornerstones of democracy. Citizenship, voting rights, the right to life and liberty, and minority rights are also necessary.
The idea of democracy has changed a lot over time. Direct democracy was the first type of democracy around, and representative democracy is the most common type of democracy today. People choose government officials to run on their behalf, like in a parliament or presidential democracy, and these officials run the country for them.
The term came into use in the 5th century BC to describe the political systems that were in place in Greek city-states at the time. It meant “rule of the people,” as opposed to aristocracy, which meant “rule of an elite.”
It is thought that Western democracy came from city-states like Athens and the Roman Republic, where different schemes and levels of the enfranchisement of the free male population were seen before the form disappeared in the West at the beginning of late antiquity. Democracy mainly was a privilege for a small group of people in ancient and modern times. Until the suffrage movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, most modern democracies didn’t have full suffrage for all adult citizens.
Democracy is hard to measure.
Because democracy is a broad concept that includes the workings of many different institutions that are hard to measure, there are a lot of problems with trying to figure out how democracy might affect things like inequality, poverty, education, and so on. Because it’s hard to get reliable data about how democracy changes inside each country, academics have mostly looked at how democracy changes across countries. But there are a lot of differences between democratic institutions in different countries, which makes it hard to make meaningful comparisons with statistical methods.
There are many econometric restrictions when studying democracy because it’s usually measured as a macro variable with just one observation for each country and each year. This means that you can only look at basic correlations. Trying to compare democracy across countries may not always be a good idea for many different reasons. This is because democracy is a complex, broad, and subjective concept that can be hard to measure.
To measure the quality of democracy, Dieter Fuchs and Edeltraud Roller say that objective measurements need to be paired with “subjective measurements based on the perspective of citizens.” Quinton Mayne and Brigitte Geibel also say that the quality of democracy isn’t just about how healthy institutions work but also how citizens act and what they want.
Conclusion
More than 1,157 out of 6,318 candidates had criminal cases against them. Association for Democratic Reforms says that people with criminal records peaked in the 2021 assembly elections in Assam, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal. The RPA should keep anyone from running for office against whom a severe case is pending. People should also look into the candidates’ backgrounds, as required by section 33-A. The term came into use in the 5th century BC to describe the political systems that were in place in Greek city-states.
It is thought that Western democracy came from city-states like Athens and the Roman Republic. Democracy mainly was a privilege for a small group of people in ancient and modern times. Comparing democracy across countries may not always be a good idea for many different reasons.
edited and proofread by nikita sharma
