The question mark next to the middle term in the caption for this column is intended to raise issues connected to the role of the land’s masses, specially the literati and intelligentsia, expected as well as required to be played by them (or not played by all who have a duty by their motherland) in realising the dream or goal of sustained progress to raise the nation’s global rating at the top. The action to be pursued and executed to completion of the task is marked by not only the provisions spelt out in the country’s Constitution following the norms of democracy but also a none-too-lengthy time frame.

The nation’s ruling junta (council at the helm of government at all the well-defined levels from Gram Panchayat to the nation’s Parliament, in the current dispensation, adorns the high seat in charge of governance through the process of adult franchise, drawn from the janata which the pundits describe as the fundamental pillar of democracy. Given the fact of the land’s eligible voters not turning up at the voting booths in full strength to elect people’s representatives, added to another fact of the actually elected representative garnering less than one-third of numbers in the voting mass, prompts one to sit up and think whether the country is a democracy in a real sense.

The hidden message behind virtually every representative of people occupying the victory stand by adopting means that don’t stand the scrutiny of fairness in elections, barring exceptions, is that invariably the ruling junta cannot claim to be truly representative of the land’s people, a big flaw that has not been set right in the seven decades since the time the country came under self-rule. Even the darker sides to the democratic set-up, namely a) money power and muscle power in bringing victory to the finally elected contestants, b) caste affiliations dominating the choice of candidates, c) overlooking the criminal records of the people’s representatives and so on have not witnessed any change in the vitiated democratic scenario.

The law-makers, barring exceptions, are a law-unto-themselves as it were, revelling in a) leading lavish life at public cost, b) pulling wool over the eyes of the masses, c) Granting to themselves enviable pay packets at will and d) Getting away with all their misdeeds while in office, exposing a yawning vacuum of cohesive citizenry in the country.