State of democracy in India: Good or bad?

Recent happenings in the country have forced us Indians to think that is there any sort of democracy present in our country right now? People are being maimed and harmed because they raised their voices. Whereas we have the right to expression and freedom, we still are being punished because we put forth our views. Internet shutdowns, lathi-charge are some of the examples. And so people have come out together in protests to oppose what the government is doing in the country.

The basic feature of a democracy is that it should fundamentally protect the rights of the citizens be it any caste, creed or gender. Isn’t that the reason, we have the fundamental rights in the first place? But the current situation says that democracy is not being fully practiced in the country. What the government is doing is basically the dictatorship of the BJP. 

But to see on the brighter side, people are still protesting. They are going to their extremes but peacefully without harming anyone. This is what we call democracy. People in unison together opposing the government. If we go through history, in 1672, an angry mob of Dutchmen butchered and ate their prime minister, and this information has been quite popular on social media these days. If the government continues it’s deeds like this, who knows, this might happen too. More than half of India's population is the youth under the age of 25 and mind you, these youth are not illiterate, these are the literates and educated youth if the country and they are the future of the country and if these people come into agitation, they can pressurize the government to do anything. This is what democracy does. 

If we go back to the time when the concept of the state and government started, we have to go back to Greece, Athens. This was the place where democracy was first practiced. The place is called the Pnyx. Pnyx is a hill in central Athens, the capital of Greece. Beginning as early as 507 bc (fifth-century Athens), the Athenians gathered on the Pnyx to host their popular assemblies, thus making the hill one of the earliest and most important sites in the creation of democracy.

However, it is interesting and ironic to see that, Greece has been the birthplace of great political thinkers like Plato and Aristotle. Both of them didn’t like democracy much and Aristotle also regarded democracy as a “perverted form of government”. Plato advocated the idea of an ideal state and the rule of the philosopher ing where the philosopher-king would be a wise man who would do only good to the people. But the question is how? How do you find a person like that? And thus we have our prime minister Narendra Modi who showcases of wanting peoples’ welfare which is backed by his political interests. Aristotle had a different view. He said that a state should have a polity where the middle-class rule because they will not be corrupted as well as they would also not be greedy for power. 

Thus, democracy is a big question mark today on our faces, are we really practicing democracy and is it the best form of government? Still remains a thoughtful debate.