Essay on(Corruption a threat to democracy)
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Human history has so far witnessed three modes or forms of governance: (a) governance by a monarch king; (b) rule by a dictator; and (c) democratic governance. Through a process of trial and error, democracy with all its flaws has come to be accepted as the best form of governance. India with its great heritage of moral values, culture and civilization is undoubtedly the largest democratic country in the world.
After independence, India accepted the Parliamentary form of democracy in which all powers of the state were vested in the hands of elected representatives of the people. Parliament and State Legislatures are the most important pillars of Indian democracy. People elect their representatives periodically and elections form an integral part of our democratic system. The genuine aspirations and expectations of the people can be reflected only through fair elections. It was thus obligatory on the part of the Members of Parliament (MPs) and the Members of the Legislative Assemblies (MLAs) in the states to behave according to the norms laid down in our Constitution and to strive to protect our great heritage and moral values. But the proverbial dictum, 'Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely' has come to stay in our political system also.
In a moment of retrospection of the Indian politics, one realizes with alarm that the democratic system is increasingly being driven by money, muscle power, individual greed and unconcealed ambitions of political leaders. The system fails to serve the common man and as a People we have been forced to relinquish the ideals that inspired the founders of modern India to envision the country as a model of people-oriented politics and development for the rest of the world.
No one is above the law. No one is a privileged elite, who can get away with things that the ordinary citizen cannot get away with. For once you allow the creation of such an elite, then you have undermined democracy, and do you not see that you might call a society a democracy, you might have people go to the voting booth every four years, or however often and vote, but if there is an underlying system that has created an elite and if that elite can buy privileges from the elected government, well then you cannot say that this is a democratically elected government. For it is not a democratic government and it was elected by default, because the people had no real alternative to this corrupt government.
And that is precisely why the people – when they see this happen, over and over again and when they grow up in this system and this consciousness – they shrug their shoulders and say: “That's just the way things have to be,” and they believe that there is nothing that can be done to change the mindset. For they see that even though democracy may have been instituted in their society at some point, nothing has really changed, as many of the people in Russia see that nothing has really changed before communism and after communism. For it is still the same corrupt privileged elite that runs the country, and it does not really matter whether you vote for this presidential candidate or that presidential candidate, for there are those who consider themselves to be above the law and who will, for that matter, create laws so that they themselves can get back into office or stay in office longer, and therefore in essence become a dictator who is not truly elected, except through a mock democratic process.