Congratulations on an excellent article in Saturday’s Indian Express (‘Junta versus Janata’ by Shekhar Gupta). The title is a timely reminder for those who like to squander away the immense benefits of a participatory democracy. Under our Constitution every elected member of Parliament or state assembly is answerable, every high official of state is accountable — the fact that we do little to call them to account does not detract from the excellence of our document of governance.

We may go around saying that the politicians are the pits, that lawyers go on too long and contribute much to the law’s delays, that sometimes even judges miss the wood for the trees: but all this, we can loudly proclaim, in a liberal, although slightly anarchic, democracy.

To support the theme, Junta versus Janata, and to emphasise the ‘Janata’, let me recall two incidents, each of them accurate.

One: When after imposing an Emergency in June 1975, Mrs Gandhi called for elections in January 1977 and lost, most people were concerned: would she call in the army? To her credit she did not. Would she respect the mandate of the people? Despite the advice of some lawyer-politicians, she did! I recall with pride Prime Minister James Callaghan’s tribute to this event in our political history. He said that the ultimate mark of a true democracy is the willingness of a government defeated at the ballot box to surrender power peacefully to its opponents. That is what happened when Mrs Gandhi was defeated at the polls in March 1977, and that is what happened again when her opponents (the Janata Party) were in turn defeated at the elections of 1980, and Mrs Gandhi came back to power.

... contd.