What is Government?

"In order to maintain a smooth functioning of the society, we need someone to take up the task of monitoring. It requires making and enforcing laws for the society. This is done by the government."

1.0Introduction

Every country needs a government to make decisions and get things done. These can be decisions about where to build roads and schools, or how to reduce the price of onions when they get too expensive or ways to increase the supply of electricity.

2.0Functions of a Government

• The government also takes action on many social issues, for example it has several programmes to help the poor. It does other important things such as running postal and railway services.
• The government also has the job of protecting the boundaries of the country and maintaining peaceful relations with other countries. It is responsible for ensuring that all its citizens have enough to eat and have good health facilities.
• When there are natural disasters like the tsunami or an earthquake it is the government that mainly organises aid and assistance for the affected people. If there is a dispute or if someone has committed a crime you find people in a court. Courts are also part of the government. When human beings live and work together, there needs to be some amount of organisation so that decisions can be made.
• Some rules have to be made that apply to everyone.
• For example, there is a need to control resources and protect the territory of a country, so people can feel secure.
• Governments do this on behalf of their people by exercising leadership, taking decisions and implementing these among all the people living in their territory.
• Various facilities provided by the Government

3.0Levels of Government

• The government works at different levels: at the local level, at the level of the state and at the national level.
• The local level means in your village, town or locality, the state level would mean that which covers an entire state like Haryana or Assam and the national level relates to the entire country.

4.0Laws and the Government

• The government makes laws and everyone who lives in the country has to follow these. This is the only way governments can function.
• Just like the government has the power to make decisions, similarly it has the power to enforce its decisions.
• For example, there is a law that says that all persons driving a motor vehicle must have a licence.
• Any person caught driving a vehicle without a licence can either be jailed or fined a large sum of money.

• Without these laws the government's power to make decisions is not of much use.
• In addition to any actions that governments can take, there are also steps that people can take if they feel that a particular law is not being followed.
• If a person feels, for example, that they were not hired for a job because of their religion or caste, he or she may approach the court and claim that the law is not being followed.
• The court can then give orders about what should be done.

5.0Types of Government

• Who gives the government this power to make decisions and enforce laws?
• The answer to this question depends on the type of government there is in a country.
• In a democracy it is the people who give the government this power.
• They do this through elections in which they vote for particular persons and elect them.
• Once elected, these persons form the government.
• In a democracy the government has to explain its actions and defend its decisions to the people.
• Another form of government is monarchy.
• The monarch (king or queen) has the power to make decisions and run the government.
• The monarch may have a small group of people to discuss matters with, but the final decisionmaking power remains with the monarch.
• Unlike in a democracy, kings and queens do not have to explain their actions or defend the decisions they take.

Democratic Governments

• India is a democracy. This achievement is the result of a long and eventful struggle of the Indian people. There are other places in the world where people have also struggled to have democracies.
• The main feature of a democracy is that the people have the power to elect their leaders. So, in a sense a democracy is rule by the people. The basic idea is that people rule themselves by participating in the making of these rules.

• Democratic governments in our times are usually referred to as representative democracies.
• In representative democracies people do not participate directly but, instead, choose their representatives through an election process.
• These representatives meet and make decisions for the entire population.
• These days a government cannot call itself democratic unless it allows what is known as universal adult franchise.

• This means that all adults in the country are allowed to vote.
• In their earliest forms governments allowed only men who owned property and were educated, to vote.
• This meant that women, the poor, the property-less and the uneducated were not allowed to vote.
• The country was governed by the rules and regulations that these few men made!
• In India, before Independence, only a small minority was allowed to vote and they therefore came together to determine the fate of the majority.
• Several people including Gandhiji were shocked at the unfairness of this practice and demanded that all adults have the right to vote.
• This is known as universal adult franchise.
• Writing in the journal Young India in 1931, Gandhiji said, "I cannot possibly bear the idea that a man who has got wealth should have the vote, but that a man who has got character but no wealth or literacy should have no vote, or that a man who works honestly by the sweat of his brow day in and day out should not have the vote for the crime of being a poor man...".

6.0Votes for Women

• Nowhere in the world have governments willingly shared power.
• All over Europe and USA, women and the poor have had to fight for participation in government.
• Women's struggle to vote got strengthened during the First World War.
• This movement is called the women's suffrage movement as the term suffrage usually means right to vote.
• During the War, many men were away fighting, and because of this women were called upon to do work that was earlier considered men's work.
• Many women began organising and managing different kinds of work.
• When people saw this they began to wonder why they had created so many unfair stereotypes about women and what they were capable of doing.
• So women began to be seen as being equally capable of making decisions.
• The suffragettes demanded the right to vote for all women and to get their demands heard they chained themselves to railings in public places.
• Many suffragettes were imprisoned and went on hunger strikes, and they had to be fed by force.
• American women got the right to vote in 1920 while women in the UK got to vote on the same terms as men some years later, in 1928.

7.0Glossary

• Government - A government is the system by which a state or community is governed.
• Laws - It is a system of rules that are enforced through social institutions to govern behaviour.
• Elections - It is a formal decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual to hold public office.
• Democracy - A government of the people, by the people and for the people.
• Universal Adult Franchise - It refers to the extension of the right to vote to all adult citizens.

8.0Mind Map