Saturday, December 24, 2005

Democracy or Dictatorship: Which will work for India?

This is the assignment I wrote, along with the comments of the professor. I think parts of it is stupid, but here is the unaltered version. Would have liked to explain the concept sugested in the end more.

Democracy or Dictatorship: Which will work for India?

Democracy or self governance exists so that the people of a state have a say in the administration and functioning of that state. IT hopes to enable the people to govern themselves, at least in principle. In practice however, self governance is nothing ore than a fairly transparent illusion. (Good) Especially in India, with indirect democracy, no Citizen really feels that the government is in his hands.
Dictatorship, strikingly opposite in its principles, gives no illusion and instead the dictator governs the people in an absolute regime. An ideal situation would be a benevolent and unambitious dictator, but an unambitious dictator is not likely to be a good one. (Good) Men of power want only one more thing - more power, (Matrix Dialogue) and hence no dictatorship can survive for very long. The history of mankind is a testament for this. Dictatorship will be easily criticized, targeted by foreign powers (especially in the present times of the United Nations driven by the United States) (V. Good), revolted against and more probably than not, overthrown.
Funny thing here is that while people resent the existence of absolute power, they do not resent the illusion of self-governance even if they recognize and acknowledge it. This is the chief reason why democracy does not world - DEMOCRACY CANNOT WORK IN A NATION OF LAZY CITIZENS. (Good) (Some famous dude I forgot said this).
People fail to realize that self-governance is so large a responsibility that our lack of democratic drive harms not only us but our neighbors as well. We take pride in our freedom, in our status as the world's largest democracy, but blatantly abuse our rights because there is plenty of room in democracy to do so.
The problem runs deeper. the flaw is not in the government but in the people. The responsibility of responsible citizens does not end at the ballot box (or, for that matter, an overthrown dictator) but extends beyond to a genuine contribution to the system. An ideal form of self governance, according to me, would be in the guise of participatory democracy. (Good)
This concept rides on the IT wave, and there is sufficient infrastructure already in place to make this idea an immediate possibility. The functioning is as elegant as i is simple - online voting and discussions of bills and laws. Basically a larger parliament with real-time participation from the citizens. Obviously there is room for abuse, glitches are bound to occur, but this will take democracy to a whole new level, and this, is what, I think, will work for India.

--> Very Good. Just perfect.
--> futuristic concept. Well explained.

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