Republic Day and the Common man

Today we have celebrated our sixty first Republic Day and of course we feel proud of all that we have achieved in the past sixty years of our independence.Its true that India has marched ahead on the path of development to a great extent but this is also the fact that we have not done as well as we expected at time of winning our independence.We have definitely gone to the extent of managing food to all our citizens,a better shelter than what they had in pre-independence era,more roads and electricity ,better clothings,medical and education facilities,better police and justice system etc etc,but can we claim to have provided to our citizens all those that we promised to do when we got independence and framed our own constitution?

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We celebrate 26th January every year as our Republic Day because our Constitution fully came into operation on 26th Jan 1950.We do not call it Constitution Day but we call it Republic Day,the the reason given is that on this day all the provisions of our Constitution came into force(many provisions of the Constitution came in force on 26 November 1949)and the Constitution provides for the institution of elected President as the head of the state although his election is not a direct election by the people.Republic means the system where the head of the state is elected by the people and not a hereditary head like in monarchy.

But becoming a republic is not a big deal because already we decided to adopt the democratic system of government in parliamentary form,of course the coming into force of the whole Constitution was an important event.Since ,in democracy, the head of the government is a directly elected representative of the people,it makes hardly any difference whether the head of the state is elected by the people or not because the real power of the government remains in the hands of the head of the government and the head of the state is simply a ceremonial head.The real issue is not whether we have adopted the republic system because already we adopted the democratic system of governance,but the real issue is that we adopted a Constitution on 26th January 1950 that provided for the preservation and protection of people's fundamental rights and directed to the government to adopt measures to ensure a better life to all citizens by ensuring equality in opportunity and providing for good health and education facilities,besides others.

It is more important that on every Republic Day we must go for introspection of how much we have really achieved in order to follow the spirit of our Constitution and why have we failed to realize the goals, that our Constitution set,in the past sixty years.The Republic Days are not only to highlight our achievements and be happy for what we have done,it must also be used to see our past mistakes and failures and to resolve to take serious measures to correct them.We must take notice of the fact that how many of our people really feel happy on Republic Day and willing to celebrate it by their heart.For those who are in the positions it is a day of celebration and enjoyment because they get leave from the work and use government money and machinery to enjoy and enrich in the name of celebration.For other government workers it may be a matter of joy because they a leave.For businessmen it may be a time to attract customers in the name of a festival.But those who are not in privileged positions or not in jobs,it is just like another day and they hardly feel attached to this psychological and emotional hype.Their problems remain unaddressed and Republic Day do not make any difference.Our common people who are not so fortunate to be attached with or an insider in our administrative and governmental system remain an onlooker of what is going on and cursing their fate of being a common man in this country.