*Associate Professor, Department of Community Education and Disability Studies, Panjab University, Chandigarh
**M.A. Student, Department of Community Education and Disability Studies, Panjab University, Chandigarh
Online published on 11 June, 2014.
John Adams has rightly said, “As the happiness of the people is the sole end of the democracy, so the consent of the people is the sole foundation of it”. The main objective of our Constitution is to achieve a Welfare State. It can only be attained when all organs of the State follow their respective duties and work within their defined roles. The focus of this research is on the first organ of the State, that is the Parliament, as it has been accorded a pre-eminent position in our constitutional and political setup, with the power to make laws, to exercise control over the nation's purse, to make the executive accountable to the popular House, and when considered necessary, also to amend the Constitution. This research was an attempt to know the awareness level of the young and mature educated electorate about how our supreme organ of the state works. It was found that the girl students belonging to the science background were not aware of the working of the parliamentary democracy in India. The picture appeared to be different in the case of girl students from arts, humanities, commerce and business streams. The maximum awareness level was found amongst the girl students from these streams. The students from the law stream have been purposely avoided because the study of parliament is part of their course. Their knowledge about this subject would definitely have hindered the result outcomes of the present study.
DemocracyParliament, Constitution, Democratic political set-up, Awareness, Youth
