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Home » Democracy

The People Matter

26 July 2007 4 Comments

Character and culture determine destiny. Every time our great “democracy” throws up corrupt immoral shortsighted asinine “leaders” — which is happening with sickening regularity — it is important to remind ourselves that it is the “will of the people” expressed unambiguously through the political process. The nature of the leaders and their policies bear a direct relationship to the basic nature of the people. This is my theory and I continually seek facts to support an alternate not so cynical theory. So far I am unsuccessful.

I was reading Tarun Vijay question “Where is the Citizen?” in the Times of India (sorry) and saw the same idea — that we are culpable for the crimes that the politicians commit — repeated. Go read it. And forward a copy to the Prime Minister and to Dr Singh.

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4 Comments »

  • WalkOn said:

    “And forward a copy to the Prime Minister and to Dr Singh.”

    Subtle, oh so subtle. :)

    # 26 July 2007 at 5:44 pm
  • Sameer said:

    Your view is not isolated. Some time ago I had come across the following quote:

    Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

    Politicians on both sides in India are to blame for giving more importance to the religious or caste identities. Under various pretexts such as development of the marginalized, secularism, hindu nationalism each party has sought out its own vote banks. I believe the poison is widespread.

    # 26 July 2007 at 5:47 pm
  • Michael said:

    Atanu,

    You say, “the will of the people expressed unambiguously through political process..” I don’t see this is the case. “Alliances” would not be necessary had the political process been unambiguous. Ah! how easy it is to solve the problem of ambiguity in people’s thought(if any) – through alliances!!! NDA, UPA etc.

    Secondly, Tarun is blaming “the voter”. In practice there is no concept of “the voter”. A single voter, seen in isolation, is worthless.

    He says he saw crowds fighting the reservation policies, but not on Kashmir. Isn’t that a simple one to figure out? – reservations are directly grabbing the seats under their asses, but not the Kashmir issue, atleast not in the remotely conceivable dreams.

    And finally, lets admit that so long as independent thought is not exercised, so long as critical thinking is not subjected to stress, we are not going to come out of this Matrix. Let education be our sole goal. It may be that in our lifetime or in our grand children’s lifetimes that we may not see a different India – lets accept it as a possibility and spread the message of education across, restlessly.

    On the other hand, to get a very practical perspective on humans (who have come from monkeys) I invite you and the other folks who scrub here, to read an article called “The Monkeysphere”. Every line is a treat, and every humorous statement has a wit.

    http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/monkeysphere.html

    -Mike

    # 26 July 2007 at 10:11 pm
  • Aravind said:

    The people get the government they deserve

    # 27 July 2007 at 1:15 pm