December 17, 2006...5:13 pm
Side effects of democracy
I was born in a democracy and I have not known any other system . India is the largest democracy of the world and the despite the fact that literacy rate is not very high the number of people taking part in an election are too many.We have seen transfer of power from one party to another without blood shed and very smoothly.Still there so many problems in a democratic system.Firstly the party that comes to power is the one that gets maxim no of votes which in a multi party democracy like ours could be the one that gets about 30 % of votes which means that the will of 70% people doesn’t prevail.
Some days back in reference to another post one of the readers commented on minorities (racial,religious or any other ) voting in a block which means they are vote banks because majority always votes individually and thus their votes counter each other.The politicians make use of these voting patterns and try and divide people so that insecuirity increases among the minorities and thus the divide increases.
This doesn’t help anybody except the vested interests.The poor people who are normally the illiterate ones as well are lured into voting for these selfish people by either showing them dreams of good life or scaring them .This impoverished lot is the one that comes for voting ,the literate and the well to do prefer discussing politics in their drawing room.I have seen so many corrupt politicians being elected by using these tactics.
The politicians with good intentions can’t take risks because if they are not elected they are no good anyways.This is not the case with poor countries alone; we have seen George bush being elected the second time with wafer thin majority .What happens to the wishes of the people who voted against him even though their numbers were nearly as much as was of the people who voted for him. Hamas gets elected in Palestine but I don’t know how it would help the people over there?
Pinochet is apreciated by Margaret Thatcher because not only did he stop communism from spreading to Chile but he was the only leader in South America who was on Maggie’s side during the Falkland war.We very coveniently forget the human right abuses by him during his regime.More than 3 thousand people went missing during his rule.
We have to find some sort of middle path because the abuses of democracy currently outweigh its benefits. China is the flavour of the world today despite Tiananmen square ,no accountability there ,economy rules you see.For the world community, approach towards democracy is selective,Iraq is attacked -Saudi arabia is in good books.Iran is threatened -Mussharaf is a close ally.Double standards everywhere .Things have to be changed to make sure that the people of the world live in peace and with dignity, irrespective of race ,religion or economic power.
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