Democracy is the Myth of India
If you have come to hear me rant about how bad India’s democracy is, you have come to the wrong place. In fact I think Indian democracy is uncharacteristically good. That’s what this entry is about.
Mythology
Nation-states have myths. Myths, in this context, are not necessarily untrue statements but they are ideas or stories people believe about society or the world. The myth of America might be the one of individual freedom or that of the Jewish people maybe that they are God’s chosen people. The myth that is so prevalent in the Union of India is that it has to be a democratic country. Even when people of India fight bitterly on everything from language to religion to political views, the one thing that every Indian seems to agree on is that India has to be democratic. That seems to me, to be very symptomatic of dogmatism.
Objectivity
Firstly people in India do actually believe in Democracy and that can be seen by how well the democratic institutions like that of the Election Commission work. India is at a cool rank 41 on the Democracy Index published by the Economist Intelligence Unit. One only needs to look at a world map of the democratic rankings to see that India clearly stands out as one of the only actual democracies in all of the Africa-Asia region.
What’s so surprising about a country being democratic? Well this is definitely not the norm for countries in this region or at this income level as India ranks around the 120th position in a list of countries ranked by their GDP per capita at purchasing power parity.
People in India are dogmatic about the idea of democracy even when it hasn’t worked out all that well for India. As mentioned above India is a relatively poor country even after 70+ years of independence. And if the claim is that money doesn’t paint a good enough picture of the living standards of India’s people, then India’s rank on Human Development Index is number 130.
If the argument for democracy is that it protects human rights and freedoms, well it has failed there too with a pretty terrible human rights record. India also scores terribly on the Press Freedom Index (Rank 140) which is a measure of Freedom of Speech and that defeats the other reason to have democracy which is that democracies tend to have better governance because of their “transparent nature”.
Now democracy has definitely not been all bad, the shared belief in democracy has prevented any kind of disintegration of the Union of India. The first thing any country needs to do is to control its territory and ensure peace within itself which it has largely been able to achieve and this is definitely miles ahead of a lot of other failed states and regions and a great platform to build upon.
Absurdity
The absurdity begins when people believe that, since democracy has been achieved, everything else like economic growth, human rights and individual liberty will fall into place and it’ll all be hunky-dory. Democracy has not objectively been a success in a lot of the countries it has been implemented. Especially not when a majority of your electorate is fucking illiterate. Let me drive home that point a little more.
At least 1 in 2 Indians could not directly interact with ideas and facts which were written down, till around 1990.
The literacy rate is is still only around 75%, meaning 1 in 4 people still can’t read. This doesn’t even take into consideration other basic numeracy or logical skills let alone basic schooling. And to top it all off, this is considering the people have any actual interest in politics and how the country should be run beyond ‘do I get free shit right now?’.
How the designers of India decided to allow ‘the people’ to run the country even before they had basic education and before any real communication infrastructure existed is beyond me. Actually it’s really not that absurd if you look at the history.
History
If you look at a map of countries by how democratic they are, clear patterns emerge. One is that most democracies tend to be ones created by or brought about by people of European/Western origin. This makes sense since the idea of democracy was a product of the Western movements of Rationalism that culminated in the Enlightenment. Outside of regions that are still predominantly European in genetic (which is a strong indicator of cultural) origins, some stick out pretty starkly. These include Japan and South Korea which were basically occupied by the US and made to be democratic. The other 2 that particularly stick out are India and Indonesia which are actually quite similar in their predicaments. Both reign over massive populations that are extremely diverse linguistically, religiously, culturally, etc. They also control large and topographically diverse lands. The needs and wishes of these various people are gonna be diverse and a system that can at least pretend to represent the views of all these various communities is a absolute necessity.
The designers of modern India or rather its constitution are predominantly products of the English education system and since democracy and other western enlightenment principles were in vogue back in those days within the English speaking world, designing India to be a democracy seemed like an obvious and smart choice. Democracy was also a great way to appease all the different factions who had various demands for what the country should be and do without a lot of effort. Alright I’ll admit, that would have been lot of freaking effort.
Alternativity
So what is my point here? Is there any takeaway from all this blabbering?
Well basically I’d like to see the people of India prioritise things which should be of more significance like human rights, economic freedom and individual liberty and be less dogmatic about democracy. India may be democratic but if the problems democracy was supposed to solve are not being addressed, the whole charade of democracy is absolutely pointless.
Also, since I seem to really despise democracy I’m supposed to suggest an alternative right?
Well I propose we create a new system based on a federated corporate structure subject to synthetic market forces. That’s way too much to explain within this entry.
