None ever imagined that Uncle Ben’s statement, “With great power comes great responsibility”, in the movie, “Spiderman” on power and responsibility will be epitomizing the current democratic situation of India. The statement made by Uncle Ben was true to the core. With power definitely comes great responsibility and when the balance of the union is disturbed chaos ensues. Democracy, as it gets epitomized by the famous words, “Of the People, By the People, For the People”, is in deep shackles and under scathing criticism in India currently.

Analysis of the situation points out to a very interesting linkage between Democracy, Autocracy and the marital relationship between Power and Responsibility. We will get to the actual analysis later. A quick look of the current situation of India paints a very grim picture.

1. Every quarter on an average two terrorist attacks are happening all over the country leading to severe and unwarranted loss of innocent lives.
2. Political leaders are openly caught in horse – trading for serious issues like the 123 agreement for nuclear deal.
3. Upcoming political aspirants hijack linguistic issues and create a mess out of it resulting in loss of innocent lives in the political cross – fire.
4. For the sake of vote bank and the in the name of Women Empowerment men are being discriminated against leading to the unleashing of Legal Terrorism onslaught on them which leads to abysmally high suicide rates amongst married men especially.
5. Women pamperment goes on to appease the affluent women lobbies who misrepresent the situation to the governing agencies and staunchly anti – male draconian laws are passed to extort money from men and treat them as free ATM machines to the extent that all over India abroad, affected and aggrieved citizens have formed support groups under the aegis of the Save Indian Family movement, to create awareness about the ongoing injustice and to help the families of falsely implicated men.
6. A fatherless society is in the making in the increasing age of divorces with children trapped in divorcing marriages being routinely deprived of their right to meet their fathers and paternal grandparents and vice versa due to which juvenile crime is on the rise.

And many more things are taking turn, as this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Ironical as it may sound, but countries having autocratic governments are doing better than democratic country like India. Though one may go by the argument that in an autocratic government, the people do not have any say in the government, whereas in a democracy the people have a right to choose their own leader and have a say.

But there comes the glitch. Autocracy reflects a conjugal union of power and responsibility as whosoever comes to power has the responsibility to maintain it and justify it. This sense of responsibility not only induces an inherent sense of accountability but also guarantees good governance as is evidence from the GDP index of countries.

Whereas in a democracy as it is the people who choose their representatives through general elections, there is an automatic divorce of Power and Responsibility leading to utter chaos and non – governance as depicted in the current grim picture of India. Since the representatives are given power by the citizenry of the country, they shelve off the responsibility and become non – accountable loose cannons and power centers sans responsibility who work not for the country and the citizenry but for themselves and as per their own whims and fancies.

Whereas the citizenry who takes the responsibility to enthrone the power mongers loses its power once given and becomes an emotional fool with responsibility sans power who takes the blame of responsibility for every fallacy and being powerless has limited powers other than crying foul. And this is the norm of the day as various support groups have come up to fight the deficiencies in the system be it the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information, or the Save Indian Family Foundation or Save Family Foundation or the Protect Indian Family.

It’s in fact a matter of great shame for the stakeholders of democracy, that various groups as mentioned above are coming up to beat the shackles created by its stakeholders and participants. Only time will tell the future of the divorce between power and responsibility. It’s high time some inherent sense of accountability is introduced into the system for larger interest of public.