Sunday, September 23, 2012

THE MYTH OF DEMOCRACY


Democracy has an unknown meaning. This particular word is said to be complete in itself. An unquestionable term, "democracy" is the key word in anything and everything around in the political, social and economic sphere. You can find democracy everywhere-from N. Korea's official state name to Putin's Russia, from Suki's Myanmar to India ,democracy is the buzzing word. However, the drawbacks of democracy have been ignored for a long time, which has resulted in underutilization of human potential. The alternatives provided by likes of Hitler, Mussolini,Stalin, Castro, Kim Jong Il, Dalai Lama, Khomeni has blinded our imagination to accept that democracy is the brink of human's political evolution i.e.nothing can pass the comfort that democracy has achieved for us. It cannot be further from the truth. With the rapidly increasing technology and educational revolution the current setup of democracy can't last forever.Until we dont erase the mindset that "we can't do better than democracy" things shall remain stagnant like it is at present.
via thenuancedphilosopher.wordpress.com

Democracy consists of voting. Actually, democracy means to vote for represantatives, not leaders. Like, if somebody's elected from a certain area of Rolpa, he is expected to stay among Rolpalis and represent them being a Rolpali. However, that seldom happens. Instead, these member of parliaments begin to take a role of being a leader. They tend to teach people, rather than learning from the people. These MoP, tend to pass a bill first and than explain its usefulness to the people later.This is a trend seen everywhere in the world. This is one of the loopholes of democracy since the persons elected and among whom legitimacy is provided to represent a group; begins to lead a group. Suddenly, the right of thousands of people to decide for themselves, remains in hand of a single person who himself believes to be the leader not representative of the group. So, it is a myth that self right is protected in democracy. It is just that we get to choose an autocrat every 4 years, and if we have luck we tend to choose the best among the autocrats not at all a democrat.

Second, democracy leaves us with very little of a choice. Yes, you may think we have a lot of choices. But they are infact limited in a mysterious way. If you want a presidential style democracy and non ethnic federal states in Nepal, you have zero choice.  If you vote for UCPN Maoist, they gonna give you the first choice but not the later. And, if you voted for UML or NC they gonna give you the second but not the first. So, you are asked to compromise. There are many such issues in which you shall find strangled. The problem is much of the population has got into the habit of leaving into a selected few that they don't even care. This phenomenon has been degrading democracy ever since its inception and has rather burnt down the hopes of the state trying creative but minority backed ideas.

Third, democracy is the rule of the mightier to the minnows. None are going to be as lucky as South Africans. Imagine the blacks in SA fought for their rights and won it even with a population vastly smaller than the whites. Could they have maintained the same momentum through the parliament? Absolutely not! And another series of systematic absuse of the blacks would have intitated.

Fourth, democratic institutions are all based on revolutionary acts, but they themselves are the appartus to supress it. The French parliament recently announced not to allow any Muslim protests in backdrop of release of a blashphemic movie in the US. The legacy of the French parliament goes back to the French Revolution as radical and as creative an idea, however it is such fearful of its own people, that too of a stunning minority in terms of population.

Fifth, democracy needs money to run. From running a political party like in ours to run a presidential campaign as in USA, money  plays a serious role. In fact in many previous elections in the USA the nominee getting the highest campaign fund has ultimately won the Presidency. This has developed illicit role between the hidden capitalists and the politicians. The policies are made in accord to these chosen donors though said to be representing the mass. In fact democracy has served as a disguise to serious economic crimes like the recurring recessions. If recession repeats every 3 decades, its only current day democracy that is preventing everyday people from breaking down the system. It is the last thing that demoralizes scholars who ought to challenge the current economic setup that is too much biased to the banks and corportaes.

There are many more drawbacks that democracy contains, too many leaks that can't be maintained forever. The world is just waiting for a revolutionary spark in one intelligent mind. That can be you. Don't stop thinking. Don't stop dreaming. It is almost sure that this skeleton of ragged and failed but still evasive form of democracy shall crumble and the propoganda that democracy is the best system shall just be another myth to be rewritten in the pages of history.


2 comments:

  1. Very well written as always Sumedh. I feel this is one article that was desperately wanting to come out of you. I agree to almost all of what you have mentioned. But what this writing lacks is an alternative to democracy. I do believe that democracy is the best system because it is better among all the other systems that have not worked. The development of China can by no means be dedicated to democracy. The rise of Russia in the 19th century was not a result of democracy.

    As you have mentioned democracy has its own flaws and some of them if exploited can be devastating to a country. The example of greater nations of today has been a result of democracy with a good governance system. I think the alternative to democracy can only be an improved democracy. In todays world, the theory of communism is not going to work because peoples' minds can not be motivated by patriotism. As per the definition of democracy, it is a system in which people are governed by people. I believe that in theory democracy was not supposed to be the way it is now in the world. Now when you decide to give power to the people, there are definitely going to be less than good people in the world who would not like to use that power for everyone's well being. The loopholes are the thorns that come with the roses. However the present situation is like autumn where there are no flowers to see by only thorns which is going to make you bleed.

    I look forward to discussing this more with you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, thanks for your view Saurav. What i wanted to put through this article was we needed to get it off from our head that "democracy' (by this i mean the current day democracy not the theoretical one) cannot be bettered. Many world leaders tend to use democracy as a cover up to many economic and social assaults.

      As far as alternative is concerned, I am trying my best. I hope you and all of us to think on it. That way as i stated in the article itself its just that spark in an intelligent mind we need to get an altogether different system that the humankind desperately deserve.

      Delete