Democracy and well being in india

Abstract

"What let me ask at the outset is the relationship between democracy and wellbeing? Is the relationship an essential one? Or is it random and contingent? Is the institutionalisation of democracy a necessary prerequisite for ensuring the wellbeing of people? Will the enactment and implementation of social policy inevitably accompany the establishment of democracy? There are perhaps no clear answers to these questions and if there was ever a time when theorists assumed that democracy essentially exists for the wellbeing of the people; that time seems to have long passed. After all authoritarian regimes, which deny to their people civil and political rights, have managed to assure the same people social and economic wellbeing. This is a reality that theorists in the business of conceptualising democracy have had to confront with some degree of discomfort. It is even more discomforting to find that a fully functioning political democracy can co-exist quite easily with high levels of social and economic inequality and unfreedom. Take India; the country holds an enviable record in institutionalising democracy in the form of Constitutionalism, a competitive party system, regular elections, rule of law, codification of political and civil rights, and guarantees of free press and a vibrant civil society. But even as India satisfies conditions that permit it to claim the label of democracy with some justification; a majority of the people continue to suffer from unimagined hardship, with the most vulnerable among them-the poor among the scheduled castes and tribes, hill people, forest dwellers, tribals, and women particularly the girl child- at tremendous risk in matters of both lives and livelihoods."(pg 4)