Some Reforms Are Urgent, Cannot Wait Anymore

As an essential feature of a healthy democracy, general elections have been conducted in India at regular intervals since the first general election, which took place on 13 May 1952, after the adoption of the Constitution. Though political participation and various political processes are the ongoing activities in a polity, the elections are undoubtedly the most notable and visible exercises in a democracy. The process of colonization had exploited the Indianness inbuilt in the political-social conscience of the nation in a variety of ways, but this had also become a medium to witness the comprehensive phenomenon of development at several layers in Europe. Democracy, equality, liberty, rights, liberal notion of citizenship, voting rights, etc had become the buzzword of the time and all of these also marked their great impact on the intelligentsia of India, who were trying hard, along with daily activism, to respond to colonialism through the intellectual exercise of post-colonialism. This was extremely clear in the minds of the Indian liberals, amidst a raging freedom struggle, that the century is of rights, of equality and of democracy in general and India with its new beginning after independence…after 300 years of foreign oppression could not afford to lose these modern values from its political system. The constituent assembly formed to write the Indian constitution was very clear about this spirit and it was translated very well in the draft, too. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.362266