Of all the world that are more spoken and less understood democracy is the most striking.Many political writers have made their best possible efforts to explain this important terms but none has been able to give perfect and any préciseefinition.Abraham Lincoln's definition that democracy is the government of the people,for the people is nothing more than a play on prepositions.However,there are certain elements which are regarded by all as the chief essential of democracy which we discuss.
It is admitted on all hands that in a democratic form of government all the citizens should be should be equally interested in the affairs of the state.This principle though outwardly perfect and pleasing,has in reality many imperfections.Every man is endowed with his own qualities,talents and limitations and no society can never hope to be so composed in such a manner that every citizen make as valueable a contribution to its corporate life as every other.In Pakistan we cannot except a villager to take the same kind of intelligent interest in political affiars as an educated gentle man does.The Pakistani villager cares only for three things which is his family,his religion and his fields.His universe is limited to these three interests alone.He can have no interest in franchise and or voting or other economical and political matters of country.In such a case it would be ludicrous to count his opinion as valueable as that of a university graduate.In democracy there is no difference between a peasant and professor,a shoe maker and scholar.Sucha type of democracy that treats all the individuals on the same level can have no future.As Gerald Heard puts it that there is no hope for the old individualized democracy of its own nature.There is no future for democracy which is not a living organism but only a heterogeneous accumulation of completely individualized people holding together merely in the diminishing hope what they each might get from so holding.
Another principle of democracy is that the majority is always in the right.But human experience has in every age and every country told that the majority generally consists fool and wise people are always in the minority.As the majority consists of only fool and as those who understand the art of government are few but the result of the system of voting is that good for nothing man are elected,to do the work of governing and the really graet man have no chance of being elected.Generally speaking under this system of voting only clever politicians who are ever ready for their false promises and their lies are elected.Wise men are slow to make promises for fear they might not be able to fulfill them.They avoid all show and noise,so they are not elected.Lastly,democracy means despair of finding heroes to govern you and being contended putting up with the want of them
