Democracy in India

The word democracy has its origin in the Greek word “Democratika”. The history says that few Greek cities like Athens had democratic form of government as early as in 400 B.C. But, the democracy that we are seeing today is something which developed in France during the 18th century as a result of French Revolution.   Until the last quarter of the 18th century France was under king’s rule. The society was a feudal one, divided into three estates namely, the first, the second, and the third estates. The First Estate consisted of the clergy men and the Father of the Church. The Second Estate consisted of Nobles, Landlords and the aristocrats. The Third Estate consisted of the rest of the society i.e. the big businessmen, the merchants, the court officials, lawyers, the peasants, landless labor and the servants etc..
The French King, Louis XVI, of the Bourbon Family of Kings ascended the throne in 1774 only to find empty treasury and the dwindling financial position of the state. Even in this financial state France under the reign of Louis XVI helped thirteen American colonies win independence from common enemy Britain. This added to the financial woes. The debts had increased substantially and the lenders were demanding interest on the credits provided by them so the French Government was obliged to allocate a large part of its budget to meet its interest expense. Apart from these expenditures the state had other regular expenses to meet like that of maintaining the army running the court, the government offices, universities and other similar offices. The king was forced to increase the tax burden on the public. The first two estates were exempted from tax liability so the entire tax burden fell on the shoulders of the third estate or the common man. Apart from the taxes imposed by the king at that time the church also imposed taxes on the citizens called the tithes, it comprised of the one tenth of the total agricultural produce this was imposed mainly on the...