Q3."Legal-constitutional changes by themselves cannot overcome challenges to democracy". Explain with example.
- Democratic reforms are to be carried out mainly by political activists, parties, movements and politically conscious citizens.
- Any legal change must produce positive effect on politics as sometimes the results may be counter-productive. For example, many states have banned people who have more than two children from contesting panchayat elections.
- This has resulted in denial of democratic opportunity to many poor and women, which was not intended.
- Generally, laws that seek to ban something are not very successful in politics.
- Laws that give political actors incentives to do good things have more chances of working.
- The best laws are which empower people to carry out democratic reforms for example:
- The Right to Information Act is a law that empowers the people to find out what is happening in government and act as watchdogs of democracy.
- Such a law helps to control corruption and supplements the existing laws that banned corruption and imposed strict penalties.
