Democracy is supposed to be a government by the people, of the people and for the people. Nobody can, ofcourse, question its efficacy and the philosophy behind it as a political system. However, democracy does present its own unique set of dilemmas, which seem to be similar to the case of a free market, which might inch towards local optima while never realizing the global optimum without any external government regulation.
Consider the case of democracy. What is its philosphy? Representation for all people. Why? So that each set of people is equally empowered to ensure their own best interests. What does this lead to? Caste-based, religion-based politics. Vote Banks. What does that imply? Poor remain poor. Because their poverty is the reason behind their voting patterns. Rich become more rich. Because that is where their primary interest is, in voting for a particular faction. The gap widens. This breeds nothing but hatred, and more of such politics. A vicious circle.
What else? This ensures sensitive issues never get sorted out. Why? Because the day they are sorted, a large vote bank disappears!
Another peculiarity. What is the principle behind democracy? The one with maximum support is the representative. What does this imply? All social measures such as family planning are unlikely to ever achieve success in large vote banks, namely the underpriveleged. What does this mean? 10% of the people holding 90% of the country's wealth. Conspicuous inequalities again!
No, this is not over yet. What about states which do not have large populations? That means lesser representation. That means, lesser focus by the central govt. That means development in those states suffers. That means, inter-state rivalry becomes even worse. And what does that lead to? Naxalite problem raging most of the states of the country today.
All these problems. And why? Because of a simple principle named "democracy". Is democracy really a farce? Or am I being too pessimistic and ignoring the positives? Or is there is a way to resolve these apparent dilemmas? No answers with me!
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Strange Dilemmas of a Democracy
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7 comments:
Hey ,just checked your whole blog ...very interesting ....But , I will have my share of criticism ...why so much 'FOCUS' on 'Politics' ?With youth awakening to Democracy ?...Thinking of joining Politics or something ?...anyways ....gud work....keep it up ...will visit again :)
To be politically correct, can't say anything for sure! Just making an effort to understand things, maybe :P
i'll requote nehru(i think!) who said that democracy is not the best way to govern but its better than the rest...
the key might lie in decentralizing power, civil governance...more along the lines of panchayati raj ...like the spartans or vaishali in ancient india...
ps: india unbound setting fire to your imagination?
I understand tht the quest for a perfect political system is akin to the quest for a perfect artificial model for human brain, for analogy purposes! Maybe no system can be flawless.
But maybe the leaders of the system should recognize the shortcomings and frame their policies accordingly.
Just a thought.
Yeah, india unbound is one of the better books I ve come across, in quite sometime
The aim of democracy is to ensure that power _cannot_ be centralized. This has nothing to do ensuring local optimas. Its aim is simply to escape any possible catastropic events.
In fact, any other method of governance, at its best, could work better that democracy at its best. The problem, however, is that these methods have some _rare_ events that suddenly negetes all the good achievements. Democracy, on the other hand, ensures that there are no _sudden_ reversals. This is because the power is too decentralized, it takes a long time to have major changes and so on - precisely the reasons why democracy is so inefficient.
On another note, Indian democracy is much worse than it could be. The reason, I think, is that we have long been working with quick fixes - small elements that make sense in the short run, but taken together they make the whole system look senseless.
Nirmesh: Agreed that democracy may not have the best Best-case performance, but I guess its winning point is that it allows ppl like u and me to argue and present our ideas even in the worst case scenario.
Similarly, I feel that democracy does lead to problems when there are ppl of multiple origins governed by a single system. India has had unique problems in this case only because the diversity we have is much higher than in any other democracy. But I cannot think of another system of governance that would ensure such an equal opportunity for ppl irrespective of their origin. The only thing we need is that the leaders of our democracy understand its shortcomings and work not towards exploiting them, but towards plugging them, so that a better and a more robust system results.
Deaar Ashwit
you are too young to understand Democracy described in the pre modern age by philosophers like Plato and Aristotle or post modern thinkers like John Rawls.So you are destined to become the cannon fodder of modern day Manus holding the reigns of Indian Business or media - Print and Electronic .So face water jets on the streets for their cause.
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