Ok! Can we just stop idolizing democracy because the whole concept sounds so harrowing and Ludacris and what we have is not even true democracy but a representative democracy- an illusion of democracy. We don’t vote for policies, we just vote for people who look appealing and promising. Now on paper, it sounds so cool with its three essential elements- Voters, Politicians and the System. Voters choose someone who could provide them representation and politicians have a support system to execute and cross check the functioning of it. Democracy seems efficient at a lower scale like a village or a tribe- people coming together and making a decision because it’s quick, inclusive and easy to rectify but you scale it up to a million plus or like ours a billion plus society it collapses into tiny pieces of broken governance. Its basic science, what works at one scale may not necessarily work at another scale, even universal laws break down at quantum scale but ok now let's break down the whole concept.
VOTERS: Now in a democracy a stupid drug abusing illiterate gets as much of a vote as an intelligent responsible citizen. When it comes to choosing a political candidate a rape survivor shares the table with other sexists and molesters. You probably won’t see that under normal circumstances. It's one system that values someone who doesn’t believe in evolution as much it values someone who is Post Doc fellow in evolutionary biology. It completely discards meritocracy and is blind to the inability of masses to make a sensible decision. If there is a small group that is more or less homogenous in interests this mode of governing seems fine but as the group grows and the interests of the group changes and largely becomes opposing to one another, democracy becomes meaningless, the value of a single vote decreases, people lose power and is more or less controlled by corporations, soft powers and other influencers. In a larger nation, a united front of 35% can override mostly divided opinions, that’s evident in Indian democracy- you get as much as 35% votes you win. You wont pass with that kind of score in most universities but here you not only win but you enact the will of the people who chose you. We as a civilization are in a rave party where no one has any clue what they are doing but everyone hopes the other person has a better value judgment and everything turns out good. Ideally, politicians and system should provide a coherent and safe environment to people where they can flourish and develop scientific temper but that doesn’t usually happen because <See next two points>.
POLITICIANS: Now, to become a seasoned politician it requires a lifelong, single-minded commitment to the pursuit of power. You go through smaller elections, gains the ground, adhere to the ideology of established political parties’ and go through humiliation either by public or press scrutiny. You suck up to powerful people and corporate sectors because you need funds and people who are truly power hungry or sons and daughters of politicians are only able to get on the top. Mostly the most shameless and corrupts reach the top and deserving and honest people are wiped out by treachery and lies. People who choose politics as a career know its weakness. They know politics is not a solution but a system established to prevent tyranny or dictatorship. That’s it, there is no other purpose of this form of government- JUST AVOID TYRANNY. Politicians know voters are sheep and can be swayed and manipulated with a little effort. Voters can be largely put in two categories – uninformed voters and pseudo-informed voters. Now, it's hard to be an informed voter, there are so many alternative versions of the same story floating in the media that even if voters are on news for 24/7 they are still pseudo informed about the right issues that matter. Politicians collude with media houses and make you think you are voting but they are on your shoulders nudging you who to vote each time you find yourself in a voting booth. Most politicians are one-half power hungry, one-half ignorant of core values and one-half lobbyist of corporates.
VOTERS: Now in a democracy a stupid drug abusing illiterate gets as much of a vote as an intelligent responsible citizen. When it comes to choosing a political candidate a rape survivor shares the table with other sexists and molesters. You probably won’t see that under normal circumstances. It's one system that values someone who doesn’t believe in evolution as much it values someone who is Post Doc fellow in evolutionary biology. It completely discards meritocracy and is blind to the inability of masses to make a sensible decision. If there is a small group that is more or less homogenous in interests this mode of governing seems fine but as the group grows and the interests of the group changes and largely becomes opposing to one another, democracy becomes meaningless, the value of a single vote decreases, people lose power and is more or less controlled by corporations, soft powers and other influencers. In a larger nation, a united front of 35% can override mostly divided opinions, that’s evident in Indian democracy- you get as much as 35% votes you win. You wont pass with that kind of score in most universities but here you not only win but you enact the will of the people who chose you. We as a civilization are in a rave party where no one has any clue what they are doing but everyone hopes the other person has a better value judgment and everything turns out good. Ideally, politicians and system should provide a coherent and safe environment to people where they can flourish and develop scientific temper but that doesn’t usually happen because <See next two points>.
POLITICIANS: Now, to become a seasoned politician it requires a lifelong, single-minded commitment to the pursuit of power. You go through smaller elections, gains the ground, adhere to the ideology of established political parties’ and go through humiliation either by public or press scrutiny. You suck up to powerful people and corporate sectors because you need funds and people who are truly power hungry or sons and daughters of politicians are only able to get on the top. Mostly the most shameless and corrupts reach the top and deserving and honest people are wiped out by treachery and lies. People who choose politics as a career know its weakness. They know politics is not a solution but a system established to prevent tyranny or dictatorship. That’s it, there is no other purpose of this form of government- JUST AVOID TYRANNY. Politicians know voters are sheep and can be swayed and manipulated with a little effort. Voters can be largely put in two categories – uninformed voters and pseudo-informed voters. Now, it's hard to be an informed voter, there are so many alternative versions of the same story floating in the media that even if voters are on news for 24/7 they are still pseudo informed about the right issues that matter. Politicians collude with media houses and make you think you are voting but they are on your shoulders nudging you who to vote each time you find yourself in a voting booth. Most politicians are one-half power hungry, one-half ignorant of core values and one-half lobbyist of corporates.
SYSTEM: A democracy is not a single cohesive entity it relies on the executive, judiciary and soft powers for it to work in the welfare of the people and keep a check on each other, which again becomes difficult in a large country. It’s a bit paradoxical but let's understand- if you have one person in charge of a department who is accountable for everything then the chances of corruptions are low because if found guilty the person cannot shun it away, accountability is paramount. If you have 10 people in a department and you can find a way to corrupt 2 of them, you control one fifth of the department but there is an accountability. Now, suppose if you have 1000 people working there, and you corrupt 20 of them you are just controlling 2 percent of the department, here one can carry out small acts of corruption but really can't influence the direction of the department but then accountability is almost negligible. Now in a country like ours, with a larger population and limited resources, our system falls somewhere between the latter two- 100 people holding a department where corruption is strong enough to influence the whole department and accountability is low enough for you to scot free. And even if you are an honest worker, the cocktail of political greed, individual ego and corporate interests burdens you down to work efficiently. The next pillar, the judiciary has more cases than they have time and resources to pull them off and the lethargic condition of the judicial system allows corrupt politicians to win despite malpractices which create a wheel of the chain of misdoings that it's almost impossible to break the wheel.
The democratic system can't work productively in its present form. To break the wheel, one spoke is needed to bend. The voters think they are unheard because they really don’t participate in this otherwise nonsense system but just to make it work, even slightly in the right direction, voters need to be proactive and anti-beliefs. No one should associate themselves with any political party- they must question and see every politician with a skeptic's eye. It’s not enough to vote once every five years and then expect things to work out (they won’t no matter what) but for things to improve slightly, even for a sliver of hope, for that 1% chance (made up stats) one need to be a rational individual. In an ideal world, we would have a good democracy heck! In an ideal world, we won’t have to deal with democracy.
