The lines are: “Sarkaarein aayengi, jaayengi. Paartiyaan banengi, bigadengi. Lekin yeh desh rehna chaahiye, is desh ka loktantra amar rehna chaahiye.” — “Governments will come and go, parties will rise and fall. But the nation must endure, and its democracy must live on.”
The message about Parliament and leaders. It draws a line between two different kinds of thing:
| Temporary | Permanent |
|---|---|
| A particular government, a particular party, a particular leader | The nation, the Constitution, and the institutions — Parliament, the State Assemblies, the Judiciary |
| Holds office because an election gave it a majority, and only until the next one | Continues whoever wins |
So leaders are trustees, not owners. Parliament does not belong to whichever party holds the majority in it; it belongs to the people who elected it, and the majority is only borrowing it for a term. A leader’s real achievement is measured by whether the institutions are left stronger than they were found.
Why democratic values must be protected across changes of power. Three reasons, each of which you can test against this chapter:
- Rules only protect you if they hold when you are losing. A majority that weakens the Question Hour, or ignores committees, or pushes bills through without debate, is building tools that the next majority will inherit and use against it. Restraint in power is self-interest with a longer memory.
- Continuity is what makes a country governable. Laws, budgets, courts and the civil service carry on across a change of government. If each new government could rewrite the rules of the game itself, no citizen could plan and no institution could be trusted.
- Rights would otherwise depend on who won. Fundamental Rights are worth having precisely because they do not depend on the current majority’s goodwill — which is why the Judiciary, as custodian of the Constitution, can test even a law passed by Parliament against it.