Unhealthy Democracy

BarandBench

Published on : 16 Jul, 2022, 8:34 pm

The Chief Justice was speaking at the inauguration of the Digital Museum in Jaipur and a seminar on 75 years of Parliamentary Democracy at the Rajasthan Legislative Assembly. He said during his speech,

“There used to be a lot of mutual respect between the government and the opposition. Unfortunately, the space for opposition is diminishing. We are witnessing laws being passed without detailed deliberation and scrutiny.”

Warning against the acrimony between the ruling dispensation and the opposition, he noted,

“Instead of engaging in meaningful debates for furthering democracy, politics has become acrimonious. The diversity of opinion enriches polity and society. Political opposition should not translate into hostility, which we are sadly witnessing these days. These are not signs of a healthy democracy.”

CJI Ramana emphasised that at the core of the idea of democracy lies at the concept of representation. Towards this, the representative democracy provided for in our Constitution is to preserve plurality, he explained.

“Dr Ambedkar cautioned that by Parliamentary democracy we can never form rule by majority. He stated that majority rule is untenable in theory and unjustifiable in practice.”

Calling for the need to move towards qualitative democracy, where institutions are more receptive to public demands, CJI Ramana pointed out that whenever governments have not met expectations, people have voted for a change.

Arguing that laws without any deficiency save the judiciary from avoidable litigation, CJI Ramana suggested each law-maker have quality assistance from legal professionals so they can debate on laws meaningfully. He bemoaned the decline in quality of legislative performance, pointing to the haste in which bills are introduced, debated and passed.

“The contemporary political commentary is generally critical of the fewer sittings of the legislature and under-utilisation of its potential.”

India was meant to be a parliamentary democracy and not a parliamentary government.

On a lighter note, the Chief Justice of India spoke of how he had once wished to be a lawmaker, but is happy to have fulfilled his dream of being in a legislative assembly today.

While issues like poverty, discrimination and illiteracy remain, the onus to eradicate them and fulfil constitutional aspirations falls on all three organs of the government, he added.

He thus called for strengthening of parliamentary democracy, which required strengthening of the opposition, accountability on the part of lawmakers, and for courts to stand as a counter-weight to legislative and executive excesses.

He concluded,

“History is a witness, whenever a government fails to stand up to the scrutiny or expectations of the people, they have expressed their will in the form of a change. It is the people who will ultimately set the course for the future of democracy in India.”