subject: How to save government in a democracy [print this page] How to save government in a democracy How to save government in a democracy
How to save government in a democracy?
Dalip Singh Wasan, Advocate.
The time is gone when we had a family rule. The people had been slaves for centuries and therefore, they tolerated family rule and people like Jawahar Lal Nehru ruled here without any question. They were having their own integrity and actually they were leaders and after his death we could not find a leader of national level. Then instead of individual, we had party dictatorship and people were electing one and only one party time and again. Out of this party dictatorship individual autocracy took its birth and that was the worst type of democracy in India in which we had to face emergency when all our fundamental rights were taken away from us. But we did not allow this individual autocracy and we shunted out this form of government with our vote power.
We introduced the present form of government which is not a family rule, not a party dictatorship nor it is individual autocracy and since this is alliance system, it has become difficult to form a government and then to continue with it. So many parties are coming together and forming governments and these are actually called alliance governments. Such type of governments are not having any discipline and even we are not in a position to give to ourselves competent ministers because people are collected here demand their own share as per terms and conditions laid down for joining the government. And even after collecting so many parties, if the strength is not reaching the prescribed count, they have to persuade others to join the government and sometime they fix their own price and they are purchased. Such situations often arise and the people who want to establish government and continue with it, they actually pay this money out of party fund or some people offer such help and they pay the amount. These are compelling situations and the people who are collected in this joint team are compelled to purchase people.
That is the reason the parties collected together may be having some minimum programmes, but actually they are not joint in discipline and that is the reason when our PM had to pronounce that in alliance there could be no discipline and that is the reason corruption cannot be written off. Therefore, this form of government is not suited to our country and next time, we shall have to go ahead and if there is a change, that would not be better. There are chances that we shall come back to family rule, party dictatorship and we pray that the old form of individual autocracy may not come back. We are voters only and we shall be tested in next general election. We may bring a change and till that time, we shall have to wait.
