NEW DELHI, Jan. 27 -- Just two years after India's independence, Dr Rajendra Prasad noted,

"We have prepared a democratic Constitution. But successful working of democratic institutions requires in those who have to work them willingness to respect the view points of others, capacity for compromise and accommodation. Many things which cannot be written in a Constitution are done by conventions. Let me hope that we shall show those capacities and develop those conventions. The way in which we have been able to draw this Constitution without taking recourse to voting and to divisions in Lobbies strengthens that hope ... We must admit that the defects are inherent in the situation in the country and the people at large. If the people who ar...