After all what is the test of a democracy? Carried to extremes it may be perfectly democratic in the sense of elections everywhere but this may procedure conflicts, with the result that the machine begins to creak. Look round the world today. How many governmental machines are working smoothly: how many are creaking and how many are cracking up all the time for political or economic reasons. There are very few stable democratic machines anywhere. In providing for a stable democratic machine it is very important for us not to take any step which might tend towards loosening the fabric of India or loosening the governmental machinery and thus producing conflicts. We have passed through very grave times and we have survived them with a measure of success. We have still to pass through difficult times and I think we should always view thing from this context of preserving the unity, the stability and the security of India and not produce too many factors in our constitutional machinery which will tend to disrupt that unity by frequent recourse to vast elections which disturb people’s minds and at the same time divert a great deal of our resources towards electoral machines rather than towards the reconstruction of the country.
