Indian Democracy - A Non-Inclusive Farce

It is surprising how, over a period of time, governance is defined less and less by the long term betterment of the governed and increasingly in terms of the exorbitant greed and narrow perspectives of the unscrupulous who govern. A certain amount of corruption is acceptable in any form of democratic government and it has been proven often that a little bit of grey spotting in the space between the black and white is motivation for progress and helps things move along smoothly. We have however arrive into an eon where the fundamental outcome has become one of extreme greed and power mongering.

It is disappointing to see a nation built on the sacrifice of many thousands and fought for by great leaders, a nation that was the seat of civilization, a nation that has been the cradle of some of the greatest of mathematical and philo sophical doctrines, fall to such stupor over money feeding greed for more power aimed at greater amounts of money. And where there is money, darkness and evil find its way to create an extreme downward spiral that sustains itself while spinning everything that it touches completely out of control.

What have we elected to lead our nation? Or have we elected at all? In a thought proving discussion some time back, I was attempting to define the modal class of voters in the country – who is the single largest group of voters that can be discretely characterized? This single largest group or profile of voters is who decides the fate of the leadership that governs our fate.

Not supported by anything other than my educated guesstimate and conviction born of having read enough statistics from different sources, the average voter is a person who is educated somewhere between incomplete school education and an incomplete college education, struggling to make ends meet for himself and a family of at least two through some form of unskilled or semi-skilled labor – possibly residing without access to most, if not all, amenities of comfort like 24 hour good quality water, round the clock electricity, good infrastructure and without access to a dream or hope of a better future. Whether this exact electorate exists to fit into the profile, I am not sure, but the collective consciousness that is defined thus will decide the fate of the elected leadership. The collective consciousness may be bolstered by subsets of the stated characteristics or be defined by intersections with samples flanking the defined median; it can be represented by any of the hundreds of our demographic markups or geographic boundaries or can be part or full of any cross section of the population that we can study. 

It is at this playing field that fate and future of our country is being bartered through material or abstract promises. It is this population, without access to a source of information surrounding current affairs or the intellect to tell fact from propaganda and without the will to exercise informed macro choices, beyond those that are basic sustenance related, that builds the numbers when it comes to electoral turnout. And therein lies the truth of Winston Churchill’s realizations that the best argument against democracy is 5 minutes spent with the average voter. It is this voter who is building the numbers of electoral turnouts and it is among them that the future and present of our nation is being nickel and dimed by those who have inherited the money and power to buy and sell votes.

While we are proud of the fact of being the world’s most complex and largest democracy, and given the opportunity, holler it to anyone who will lend a listening ear, we are probably one of the worst performing democratic machineries in terms of outcomes – progress, transparency, electoral maturity and the true ability to make a free choice of leadership. And the leading cause is the stark unavailability of decision driving intellect or information with the median voter. To be able to drive true universal adult franchise through informed decision-making, we must first ensure that the average median voter is informed and can comprehend the truth (the facts without prejudice) and be given the ability to drive accountability of the elected. Without media, rules and controls that can separate fact from propaganda intelligibly to the median voter, democracy is largely a non-inclusive farce being sponsored by the taxpayer’s money.