Q3. Read the following passage carefully. Suggest a suitable title for it and write a precis of it.
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We talk so much about democracy without going into ancient records. Parliamentary democracy, roughly speaking, is something of the growth of the last 150 or 200 years. We might remember that, say in England and in other countries too, this parliamentary democracy and the system of giving franchise to people was very strictly limited. Till some 20 to 30 years ago relatively small number of people had the vote. Even now in quite advanced countries, half of the population consisting of women do not have the vote. Therefore, democracy in those countries is presumably thought of in terms of 'male democracy' not female.
When we talk of democracy in the nineteenth century it was a democracy which was limited very strictly to certain classes and gradually, after great struggles, it widened out; the franchise went wider and wider. Then again after a good deal of trouble, the actual representatives, who were chosen, also spread out from certain limited classes to others. It is a relatively slow process, therefore, it is only in the last 30 years or so that adult franchise has come into being in a number of countries. That clearly is long enough, and yet it is not long enough really to tell us what the ultimate effects of this are likely to be in solving problems because the ultimate test is how a system of government solves the problems which are before it and her people have to face. Any broadly theoretical approach to this question, good and bad as it may be, does not take you very far; the best of these fails to solve the problems which the country has to face. Of course, the problems are solved not merely by machines, the structure of government, but by many other things, - the quality and nature of human beings, by their training, their education, their character, and a number of other factors. All that the machine can do is to make it easier these qualities to develop and remove any element of suppression and actually encourage them to grow.
Now, we talk about democracy again. Democracy has been spoken of chiefly as political democracy, roughly represented by every adult having a vote. This is a substantial idea, but it becomes obvious that a vote by itself does not represent very much to a person who is down and out, to a person who is starving and hungry or has no other resources. He is much more interested in getting food to eat than a vote. Therefore, political democracy, by itself, is not enough except that it be used to obtain a gradually increasing measure of economic democracy, equality, and the removal of gross inequalities and inner tensions, which should be its goal.
