Flowery words have been spoken about the virtues of democ­racy. It has been touted as the best form of govern­ment society could possibly have, and its sanctity has remained unques­tioned for many generations.

There have been rebels. Socialism and its offshoots have stood defiantly in different corners of the world, but with the demise of the power of the former USSR, socialism as an ideology has become a chapter of the past. Never­the­less, the failure of socialism is not to be mistaken for the success of democ­racy. To go beyond and improve on what we already have, we must recog­nize short­com­ings of the existing machinery, and aim for better.

The funda­mental flaw of the democ­ratic process is its failure to under­stand that society is an evolving organism. If citizens of a country were to sit together at a confer­ence and democ­ra­t­i­cally decide to limit their own freedoms, is this decision binding on those that follow, the ones who could not partic­i­pate in the confer­ence? Ideally, a new vote should be taken with their partic­i­pa­tion, and the decision should be re-evaluated. If a nation voted to follow the princi­ples of commu­nism, would it remain a democ­ratic nation, given that this was the choice of the people? Indeed, what is the differ­ence between a so-called democ­ratic nation and a so-called commu­nist one? If we leave aside the economic struc­ture and functioning of the state, we are left with a set of beliefs that essen­tially points to the power of the people. The question, really, is about how this power is exercised.

In India, elections are held every five years. In this period, the elected govern­ment has the power to enact any law within the limits of the Consti­tu­tion of India. Moreover, it is not too diffi­cult to alter the Consti­tu­tion itself, given that a finite subset of the citizenry can always conspire to achieve their ends. There are certain measures meant to prevent blatantly corrupt practices, but a deter­mined Parlia­ment is guaran­teed to succeed in its schemes, whether good or evil. In fact, the elected members are kept on a leash of fear – the fear of losing the next elections. What this implies is that, there will occasion­ally rise to power a few who show little concern about how the electorate might judge them at the next test, and conse­quently, their indif­fer­ence will crystal­lize into arrogance and misuse of power. This has happened before, and it will happen again.

The power of the media in this context is grossly overes­ti­mated. A dog that barks can be silenced with a knock on its head. If the media were to be gagged, expres­sions of outrage may become louder in the global commu­nity, but it is economics and self-interest that ultimately decide what punitive measures are taken by neigh­boring states, and carefully calcu­lated moves can leave the country invul­ner­able to economic attack.

Some people might be under the impres­sion that the law-makers are the ones entrusted with improving the existing system by enacting new laws, but they are mistaken. Laws, even Consti­tu­tional amend­ments, are made within the frame­work of the existing system. Moreover, elected repre­sen­ta­tives have not studied polit­ical systems; they are not experts who can confi­dently suggest better solutions to problems posed by the current form of democracy.

At the end of the day, if citizens can be made aware that the system they abide by is imper­fect by choice, then they can try again and do better.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 14th, 2006 at 03:52 and is filed under Daily Rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.