The 'myth' of democracy

Plato's criticism of republic, when applied to today's democracies, poses a pertinent question: Are the citizens adequately interested and informed to participate substantially in the democratic process? If the electorate do not develop an independent mechanism to regularly review the performance of their representatives and the appropriation of their tax money, there starts the "perversion" of democracy, in the words of Plato and Aristotle. In that case, the representatives put up controlled instrumentation of accountability, which diminish the degree of citizens' awareness and their participation in the state affairs, thus enhancing the risk of abuse of authority.
Democracy was born In South Asia in 1919, a year after the end of the First World War. The native nobility had not only donated huge funds, horses, food and weapons towards the war, but also raised one of the largest volunteer armies in the world of that time comprising approximately 1.5 million soldiers. The Indian troops reached all the major theatres of the war in Europe and elsewhere just in time when the British Expeditionary Force had already been almost wiped out within the first few months.
The common experience of the horrors of trench warfare provided a rare opportunity of social interaction between the ruling British and the ruled Indians thus eliminating master-slave distance. They breathed, ate and slept under the same roofs. Their wounded were treated in same hospitals and their deceased were buried in same graveyards side by side.
The Crown imported local self government from England and bestowed as a gift even though it was not a general policy for colonies. Starting from a limited scale, democracy flourished to the highest possible stages in the days of the Second World War when India provided 2.5 million of its strongest men to fight along British troops, besides huge supplies of commodities.
India joining the two great wars had come as great surprise to most of the left philosophers in the independent world who had actually been forecasting revolt from India in the weak moments of the Crown. However, the Indian elite perhaps did not see preparedness for such radical movement and they had rather found it the best available option to trade war support for social upgrading and democracy.
This was perhaps a unique experiment of democracy where ultimate authority rested with the foreign power while the elected natives acted somewhat like collective bargaining agents (CBA) of all the political elements. In essence the native politics did not qualify as more than somewhat trade union activity at that time. By all means though, this was quite an ascent from the earlier master-slave relation.
After the end of the Second World War, the Crown decided to grant independence to India. The Empire had collapsed, and Britain needed workforce to return from India for rebuilding its completely destroyed cities. Viscount Mountbatten of Burma was sent with the vital responsibility of bringing all the Englishmen, and women, back home safely and in one piece. His Partition Plan was in fact a kind of pullout mission.
The natives of the British days might have made a wise decision by trading war support with decapitated democracy. However, their descendants perhaps got overwhelmed by the unexpected temptations that came with freedom, and they lost direction. Adult franchise for Indian general election is perhaps the only big change made to the master plan of colonial democracy. Except that, for all practical purposes, things have not altered much from where the Empire had left them. The native nobility swiftly grabbed the moment and actively took over the Masters' seat vacated by the British. The common people, in turn, missed the opportunity and passively opted to remain static at their previous slave posture. Somehow they could not manage to rise to the occasion and establish a real democratic society. To date, no departure is in sight from this position on both sides. This is what is called "the status quo."
By virtue of the number of electorate, India is currently acknowledged to be the largest democracy on planet earth with more than 900 million voters enrolled. Elections are held every five years or so, and the voters' turnout is recorded somewhere between 50 to 60 percent at an average. However, the world does not find any measuring system in place to determine the degree of interest and awareness of India's common citizens so as to figure out how meaningful is their participation in the decision making about affairs of the state.
Under the non-stop exercise of vote, the Indian general election of 2014 constituted the 16thlower house of Parliament. Outside, there is optimism about Indian people gradually learning to participate in the decision-making process. However, a little deeper look into the state of affairs inside that country discovers enough indicators to understand that the learning process is not moving into the right direction. People are losing faith in the system more and more. They seem to have learned negative methods, from voting fraud down to acquiring personal benefits out of the common tax money through clandestine means, instead of seeking equal opportunities for everyone. Overall, it is a journey into the reverse.
Rather than gaining more confidence and maturity, the Indian citizens are far away from self governance. The rulers feel free to follow in the footsteps of colonial masters while suppressing the voice of protest. Politicians are looked down upon as being generally corrupt to the extent of having become outright criminals. Many of them are petty time servers, uneducated and unskilled, and each generation is considered to be having lesser qualities than the previous. They are often found involved in staging fake communal riots causing mass killings and destruction.
During recent decades, communal tensions and religion-based politics have upsurged to extreme levels. Issues of substantial poverty, extremely bad sanitation causing epidemics, widespread corruption, poor education, lack of opportunities for youth, caste-based and religious violence, terrorism, insurgencies in central and eastern parts, and rapidly increasing distrust of general public in governmental functioning especially police and justice system are only a few highlights of today's India.
Crime rate has been shooting up like never before. New Delhi is now called the rape capital of India. Members of Parliament indulge in greatly higher degree abuse of their status than before like influencing criminal cases, acquiring undue grants or public contracts, extorting kickbacks and commissions in big deals, and interfering in postings and transfers of civil servants rather than concentrating upon legislative business to which they seem to be least interested.
Even after repeating the election exercise for 16 consecutive times, they have not been able to create an atmosphere where common man could run for elections. The quantum of money spent on election expenses is increasing every passing vote instead of decreasing. Money is not only spent on holding of election rallies and publicity like before, but is now directly distributed among voters as political bribe, such as cash bags, expensive dresses, colour television sets etc. An ordinary man cannot spend this kind of money to run for vote unless he joins underworld.
More and more people now vote for the candidates whose success is visible, irrespective of their personal qualities and party manifesto. Parties in power only carry out certain populist development projects which benefit either their individual candidates or the party itself, and not for the sake of the country's development. Increasingly the centre-based or national political parties are losing ground and the individual state voters are opting more for their own state specific parties. Families of politicians have become dynasties; most of them are the descendants of the elite and noble families created by British deputy commissioners. Caste system plays very important role while selecting party candidates, appealing for vote, and distributing favours.
Criminal record of candidates does not bar them from taking part in elections. On the contrary, they run for assembly seats from jails and lock-ups and they win. In the Parliament, politicians are not free to speak up their mind in the interest of the nation but they strictly need to toe the party line.
People are generally opting for subversive trends to exploit democracy in their personal interest, rather than building up lawful ladders to success available to all. One of the chief ministers has commented, "What is wrong with corruption. It makes everybody's life easy." Some top corporate leaders asked, "Why don't we legalise corruption?"
Statistics from the 2011 census claim that there are more than 200 million Scheduled Castes - the Constitutional term for Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist Dalits - in India. The total number of Dalits is probably much higher as Muslim and Christian Dalits are not included in these figures. Unofficial sources estimate them as being around 400 million. Except for reserving quotas for these untouchables, the Constitution fails to offer an equal human status to around one third of the total population.
Issues relating to foreign policy, including those related to China and Pakistan, are dealt with in a haphazard manner, more on the basis of historical hatred and venom than on wisdom and far-sighted approach. The policymakers hardly ever offer peaceful answers to questions arising out of foreign affairs but rather prefer to go for extreme power options like buying and constructing nuclear weaponry and arsenal.
So much for Plato's critique of the republic. Democracy in India has become a deadly weapon of mass manslaughter and destruction in the hands of its perpetrators; a stranglehold for the billion and a quarter inhabitants. Any challengers to this system of oppressiveness are told either to wait for the next vote, or go to hell. The most pertinent question here is: What is the point of the voting exercise if Indian people are not getting increasingly interested and informed with each election for participating meaningfully in the affairs of the state?
For an ordinary person in today's India, a comparison with the British days is just a reminder that now they don't even have the silver lining of independence to look forward to. In such bleak scenario, the Indian leadership needs to rise above petty personal interests, give up their obsession to threaten Pakistan with their nuclear dump on the slightest provocation, stop misleading and confusing their people, and demonstrate statesmanship to bring their own house in order.