Most countries including India and other democracies like US is facing this challenge.

(i) This involves applying the basic principles of democratic governance across all regions, social groups and various institutions.

(ii) Extension of federal principles to all units of the federation.

(iii) Ensuring greater power to local government.

(iv) This also means that less and less decision should remain outside the arena of democratic control.

The reasons for this:

(i) The decision making process in democracy is delayed.

(ii) Democracies often frustrate the needs of the people.

(iii) It often ignore the demands of majority of its population.

(iv) The routine tales of corruption associated with it.

(v) Most democracies fall short of elections that provide fair chance to everyone and in subjecting every decision to public debate.

Pressure groups and movements exert influence on politics in following ways:

(i) They try to gain public support and sympathy for their cause by carrying out information campaigns, organising meetings, filing petitions, etc.

(ii) They often organise protest activity like strikes or disrupting government programmes, in order to force the government take note of their demands.

(iii) Business Groups often employ professional lobbyist or sponsor expensive advertisements.

(iv) Some political parties grow out of movements. The issues raised by them often influence the policies of political parties. 

(v) Most of the new leadership of political parties comes from the interest or movement groups.

RTI is the best law which empowers people to carry out democratic reforms. The Right to Information (RTI) Act empowers every citizen of India to seek information from public authorities, including central, state and local governments; parliament, judiciary, police, etc.

Under RTI, a citizen can ask questions regarding the official work, see information, take copies of official documents and inspect govenment work and its progress.

The impacts of Right To Information Act are:

(i) It empowers the people to find out what is happening in the system of the government.

(ii) It acts as a watchdog of democracy.

(iii) It supplements the existing laws that banned corruption.

Ways in which democracy have succeeded in maintaining the dignity and freedom of the individual are explained below :

i. Economic disparity in society has been minimised to a great extent in recent times.

ii. Long drawn struggles were launched by women groups to gain voting rights in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Eventually, democracies of the world did acquiesce to these demands and women got the right to vote and the right to equal treatment by the State.

iii. The Indian democracy has taken to positive action by extending various benefits to the historically disadvantaged sections of society, i.e. the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes. Various benefits are provided by the State to these sections for them to attain equal status and opportunities.

iv. In a democracy, all adult citizens have a right to vote and elect their political representatives.

v. Democracy evolves a mechanism which takes into account the differences of various ethnic groups within its population. In a democracy, the majority has an added responsibility of assimilating the minority community in the decision-making process so that the minority does not feel alienated.