‘We, the People’: Pride, helplessness and the dharma of democracy

India continues to confound us, and too often these truths are confined to private conversations. Are we missing a fear-free public square for debate, without being ostracised?

We are both a warning and a promise, a broken system and an unbroken civilisation. After 75 years of independence, we can no longer hide behind the excuse that we are still “evolving our systems.”

Much of our sweeping generalisations and grand posturing collapse when confronted with our lived daily reality. A political system and a bureaucracy that cannot fix even the basics, still behaves that corruption no longer taints daily lives. We cannot manage pothole-free roads, or a corruption-free autorickshaw-taxi system free of political nexus, or cities that are truly liveable. The list is endless.

Sadly, citizens continue to vote for short-term doles or the comfort of identity politics, instead of demanding development, accountability, or vision. And “we, the people” have normalised corruption as a fee to oil the system as well as the absence of our own civic sense. Traffic rules, sanitation, and even public decency are treated as optional. Is this what we call development? Is this what decades of nationhood and centuries of civilisation have brought us to? Are we not ashamed of our behaviour? As Shri Mohan Bhagwat, the current Sarsanghchalak of RSS, had said: “नेताओं के भरोसे नहीं, समाज की शक्ति से राष्ट्र खड़ा होता है” - a nation stands not on leaders alone, but on the strength of society.

Democracy is not meant to be just the ritual of casting votes every five years, nor the tamasha of rallies, slogans, and freebies. Yet in practice, that is what it has become. By its very principles, democracy is supposed to be a covenant between citizens and the state, an ethic of accountability in governance and responsibility in citizenship.

For all the data we now collect across every sphere of daily life, what do we actually do with it? Where is it used for policy-making, and more importantly, for policy correction? Where is the systematic, independent measurement of outcomes that tells us what is working and what is failing? Political parties may rely on grassroots feedback and electoral instincts for a time, but that is not a substitute for rigorous citizen feedback built into governance itself. Waiting a full electoral cycle for feedback is far too costly for citizens, who pay in the currency of daily life.

The sense of fairness that sustains democracy needs urgent reworking. The poor survive on doles and political interventions. The wealthy insulate themselves from systemic failures. The middle class foots the bill for both and gets little in return. When taxation, law, and public services do not feel equitable, resentment festers. Democracy is about a lived experience of fairness.

This erosion of trust deepens because our institutions inspire less and less confidence. Parliament, the temple of debate, is too often reduced to quicker passing of bills without adequate discourse, or is filled with noise, disruption, and walkouts. Our courts, meant to be the refuge of the aggrieved, are clogged with decades of pending cases. Justice delayed is justice denied, yet the rich and the mighty can still get their cases resolved while the rest remain aggrieved for years.

The bureaucracy, once imagined as the steel frame of India, has smartly stayed away from reforming itself. And when the mighty among them retire, they change stripes with astonishing ease, reinventing themselves as champions of corporate India and voice of citizens, suddenly finding their voice to demand reforms they never dared to pursue in office.

If all is well, why does the middle class feel perpetually stuck in the middle? Too “privileged” to deserve subsidies. Too “ordinary” to access power. Too “tired” to fight for a better life. And still too “invisible” to be politically courted. This class pays for the system, fuels the economy, educates its children at private cost, and looks after its aged without state support. Yet it finds itself voiceless, without recourse, and without recognition. If democracy does not even speak to its middle, what kind of democracy are we building?

We must also look in the mirror. Instead of obsessing about proclaiming to the world that “India has arrived,” we should ask what we truly have to offer ourselves. Do we offer every Indian child an equal chance at quality education? Do we offer every citizen dignity? Just look at our broken insurance and healthcare systems. How much longer must we wait to reform them - starting with the regulator themselves?

Our Constitution guarantees the right of every Indian to move freely across this vast land in search of livelihood. Yet we have reduced our own brethren into “migrants” inside their own country, treating them with suspicion and bias because they come from another state or speak another tongue. This parochialism is not just petty. It is a betrayal of the very idea of India.

And yet, pride remains possible. The resilience of our democracy, the energy of our economy, the brilliance of our innovators, soldiers and care givers and unseen millions, and thinkers - all remind us that India is more than her failures.

Democracy is not an inheritance that survives on its own. It is a fragile discipline, to be practiced, renewed, and protected every single day. The choice before us is not about reverence but responsibility. Gandhi staked everything on the truth that citizenship was seva (service). The Sangh built itself on the belief that discipline and identity could forge collective strength.

The dharma of our times must go further. It must make democracy real - where citizens are not left helpless, where leaders are held to account, and where fairness is not a poster but a practice. Anything less is unworthy of Gandhi’s sacrifice, unworthy of a century of organised mobilisation, and unworthy of Bharat itself.