In a democracy, the citizens have the right to question the government, says OSWALD PEREIRA
Democracy is often reduced to a simple act: voting. Every few years, citizens line up at polling stations, enter a booth, press a button or mark a ballot, and choose the people who will govern them.
Votes are counted, winners are declared, governments are formed and the democratic process is considered complete. The ritual is repeated after another five years, and the country once again congratulates itself on having successfully conducted another election.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with this understanding of elections. Voting is one of the most important instruments of democracy. The right of citizens to choose their representatives and to remove them peacefully is among the greatest political achievements of the modern age.
An election gives ordinary citizens something that authoritarian systems deny them: the ability to decide who will exercise political power. It makes the ruler dependent, at least periodically, upon the consent of the governed.
But an election alone is not democracy. It is an essential part of democracy, but it is not the whole of democracy.
This distinction is fundamental to understanding both the strength and the vulnerability of democratic government. A country can hold regular elections and yet experience a gradual weakening of democratic institutions. It can have polling booths in every district, political parties on the ballot, long queues of enthusiastic voters and an orderly transfer of power, while the institutions that are supposed to restrain power become progressively weaker.
Elections may continue while dissent becomes less welcome, the press less independent, Parliament less effective and constitutional safeguards less capable of checking the executive.
The ballot box may remain intact while the democratic spirit begins to erode.
India’s Constitution does not define democracy merely as periodic elections. It establishes a constitutional order in which the country is a democratic republic, fundamental rights are protected, the judiciary has constitutional authority and elections are entrusted to an Election Commission.
The Supreme Court itself has described democracy, the rule of law and free and fair elections as among the basic features of the constitutional order.
The question, therefore, is not simply whether citizens can vote. The deeper question is what happens after they vote.
Who watches the government, questions it, and restrains it? Who protects the citizen when the citizen challenges the state? Who ensures that the next election is conducted fairly? Who protects the right of a journalist to investigate those in power? Who protects the right of an unpopular citizen to dissent? Who ensures that a majority cannot use its numerical strength to deprive a minority of its constitutional rights?
These questions take us to the heart of democracy.
A country does not become democratic merely because people are allowed to vote. It remains democratic only when those who receive the people’s power remain accountable to the people.
The ballot is only the beginning. The greatest achievement of an election is that it makes political power temporary.
A ruler who knows that the people can remove him or her is reminded that political authority is not personal property. A government that can be defeated at the next election cannot, at least in principle, regard its authority as permanent.
Elections impose a discipline upon power by reminding those who govern that their mandate comes from somewhere beyond themselves.
That is why the peaceful transfer of power is such a profound democratic achievement. The defeated government does not declare the election illegitimate merely because it lost. It does not refuse to leave office. It does not ask the army or bureaucracy to protect it. It hands over power to its successor, and the machinery of the state continues to function.
The Republic survives the change of government.
Yet the fact that elections make governments removable does not mean that governments become democratically accountable only at election time. A citizen does not surrender constitutional rights on the day after voting. Parliament does not lose its responsibility to scrutinise the executive because the government has won a majority.
The judiciary does not become subordinate to the government because the electorate has chosen a particular party. The press does not lose its right to question authority because the government has received a popular mandate.
The election is the beginning of the relationship between the citizen and the government, not the end of it.
This is why democracy must be understood as a continuous process rather than a periodic event. It is lived between elections as much as during elections. It is present when a journalist asks a difficult question, when an opposition member challenges a minister in Parliament, when a citizen approaches a court against the state, when a peaceful protester challenges government policy, when an independent institution refuses to comply with an improper demand and when a majority accepts that those who disagree with it have exactly the same constitutional citizenship.
Democracy is not merely the right to choose rulers. It is also the right to question them.
In a democracy, the citizens have the right to question the government.
Oswald Pereira, a senior journalist, has written ten books, including The Vijay Revolution: People Power & the Politics of Hope, Beyond Autobiography of a Yogi, The Newsroom Mafia, Chaddi Buddies, The Krishna-Christ Connexion, How to Create Miracles in Our Daily Life and Crime Patrol: The Most Thrilling Stories. Oswald is a disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda and practises Kriya Yoga.
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