Challenges Confronting Indian Democracy

The Indian Constitution, 1950 following the British model, created a system of parliamentary democracy. Upto 1947, when India became independent, it was still a largely feudal, agricultural country. The British policy was to keep us largely unindustrialized, since an industrial India, with its cheap labour, could become a powerful rival to British industry. The Indian Constitution was based on Western models. We borrowed parliamentary democracy and an independent judiciary from England, federalism and the fundamental rights from the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution, the Directive Principles of State Policy from the Irish Constitution, etc. Thus we borrowed a modern Constitution from Western models, and transplanted it from above on our largely backward, feudal society. Democracy is a feature of an industrial, not feudal, society. But the intention of our Founding Fathers was that democracy and other modern principles e.g. freedom of speech, freedom of religion, liberty, equality etc. and modern institutions e.g. Parliament, independent judiciary, etc would pull our backward, feudal society into the modern age. They set up a heavy industrial base (which the British had prohibited), and consequently India became partially industrialized and made some progress since 1947 e.g. we produced a large pool of engineers, technicians, scientists, doctors etc., women got education, etc. However, mid way after 1947 our democracy was hijacked by the feudals, and caste and religious vote banks, which could be craftily manipulated by many of our politicians to serve their selfish ends, emerged and became the normal feature in elections and other activities in most parts of India. Everyone knows that in most parts of India people vote on caste and religious lines, instead of seeing the merits of the candidate. It is for this reason that many persons with criminal background have often been elected. Democracy was never meant