Question

Legal-constitutional changes by themselves cannot overcome challenges to democracy '. Justify the statement with the help of examples.

Answer 1

Democratic reforms are to be carried out mainly by political activists, parties, movements and politically conscious citizens.
Any legal change must produce positive effect on politics as sometimes the results may be counter-productive. For example, many states have banned people who have more than two children from contesting panchayat elections.
This has resulted in denial of democratic opportunity to many poor and women, which was not intended.
Generally, laws that seek to ban something are not very successful in politics.
Laws that give political actors incentives to do good things have more chances of working.
The best laws are which empower people to carry out democratic reforms for example:
The Right to Information Act is a law that empowers the people to find out what is happening in government and act as watchdogs of democracy.
Such a law helps to control corruption and supplements the existing laws that banned corruption and imposed strict penalties.

Answer 2

There are many challenges to democracy, like economic inequality, poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, regional imbalances, casteism, communalism, etc. The Parliament has time and again passed many laws to remove all such hindrances and challenges.

There is not a single held which has not been touched and reformed. But legal challenges alone cannot overcome challenges to democracy.

As there are strict laws against dowry, but still this evil persists and there is not a single day when we do not hear dowry deaths.

What is required is the cooperation of the citizens, i.e. the mindset of the citizens should be changed. They need to be reasonable, active, cooperative and willing to perform their duties. Legal constitutional changes and the cooperation of the citizens are the need of the hour.

Thus, legal constitutional changes by themselves cannot overcome challenges to democracy.