Parliamentary democracy in India has become a farce. For the proper working of parliamentary democracy many pre-requisites are needed ; till the leaders are responsible and conscious of their duties and responsive to the public opinion. Democracy itself will not be stable. But it is more so in the case of parliamentary democracy because the Council of Ministers should be responsible to the Parliament and should also take into consideration the voice of the people. If they start ignoring what the people want the Government will become dictatorial in its behavior.
Moreover, Parliamentary democracy also demands that there should be two-party system. If there are many political parties they can join hands and he in the majority to form their own Government, after sometime, there may be some new alignment and some other coalition Government may be formed. In other words, there are certain norms of Parliamentary democracy.
Unfortunately, in India Parliamentary democracy seems to be; just in name the Ruling Party has so much majority that it can get anything done so there is no check upon the Ruling Party. If the members of the opposition ask questions and try to embarrass the people in power by bringing some or the other facts to light they are ignored because their numerical strength is negligible. Moreover,, opposition parties have no prominent leader who may be acceptable as an alternative to the leader of the majority party. The recent alignment of the different opposition parties has started showing, some serious cracks in it. Such an Opposition makes Parliamentary democracy just a farce.
The party whip is used so effectively because the leader of the. majority party reduces other leaders to unimportant place. As a result of it they are dominated by one group of men. Such an organization is bound to become dictatorial and decision will be taken at the higher level. The virtual working of the ruling party becomes monolithic. This contrary to the spirit of parliamentary democracy, because the decisions should be broad based.
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One of the saving graces is that many a time the Prime Minister calls a meeting of the opposition parties in order to take some important decisions. This helps the ruling party to know the: different shades of opinions of the different classes of people and different regions. In fact important decisions in a democratic setup and particularly so when it is parliamentary democracy should be taken by taking all the parties into confidence.
Another point which makes our parliamentary democracy somewhat chaste is that the ruling party is not prepared to dictate its terms to the opposition and other sections of the people. The spirit of democracy demands that there should be ‘give and take’. The Assam problem has been solved through negotiations so is the case with Tripura problem. The Prime Minister has also withdrawn the Defamation Bill because only the public opinion was against it. Similarly he has recently revealed that he is going to call an all party meeting in order to resolve the Punjab problem. In parliamentary democacy it is more important because in the Presidential type many a time the President can have his own say by one or the other method. It is wrong to think that our Parliamentary democracy is a farce.
In fact the political consciousness among the people has not gone deep and so opposition party has not been able to become strong in the Parliament. We are heroworshippers by nature and so they respect the time-honored walls. This conservative nature has made them to elect the same political party to power. When the people become politically awake and organize themselves this will not happen. So we can say that at present parliamentary democracy has not acquired its true character. It wilt take some time more for it to become proper type of parliamentary, democracy.