DEARTH OF DEMOCRACY No, this article is not about Syria, or Iran, or any other dictatorship.

It is about our very own Bharat mahan; the same shining India that is routinely touted as the worlds largest democracy. Well, if democracy is defined by Abraham Lincolns dictum of by the people, of the people, for the people, this country does not qualify. In fact, Indias system of governance defies conventional classification. It is not a dictatorship, but on the other hand, the will of the people if it prevails at all does so in a very arbitrary and unsatisfactory manner. Yes, there is an election every five years; a brief period when politicians, money grabbers and criminals prostrate themselves before the electorate, promising the moon but delivering peanuts. Once elected, however, the charlatans bask in the comfort of virtual immunity for their misdeeds and near-zero accountability. It is an accepted truism in the country that the majority of those who govern us have crooked intentions only the degree varies. And yet, while we the people routinely moan and complain about the pathetic state of governance we are tormented with, but we rarely acknowledge that it is the same people who elected the crooks in the first place. Not us, the so-called elite would remonstrate; we dont vote for these thugs. True, they dont vote for thugs; they dont vote and all and the thugs are elected by default. It is a continuing mystery why, even after 60 plus years of Independence, educated and privileged individuals who are capable of making an informed choice do not do so during elections. They dont necessarily make bad choices; they dont bother to vote at all. Dont they want good governance? Dont they want our politicians to behave ethically and be accountable? Dont they want the police to be to be impartial and respond to the needs of common citizens, instead of being coerced or bought by politicians and others with deep pockets? Dont they get furious at the fact that their tax rupees are squandered recklessly on overpriced and overdue projects with very little to show for the gigantic expenditure? Of course they do; and yet they make no effort to vote good people into office. Why is this so? Perhaps they have given up on good governance as a lost cause; a battle they cannot win. Since they cannot fight the system, they have made it redundant. They dont need the government to get their work done. They have their own network greased by large quantities of cash, no doubt, but at least it works. What they dont seem to realize is that it is their apathy towards the voting process only increases the sense of entitlement and unaccountability in those who get elected by default. The recent Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections provide prime proof of this. The Shiv Sena has retained control of the city municipal corporation for the next 5 years. A pity. I am not saying that the Congress-NCP combine would have been any less indifferent to Mumbai's problems or any

less corrupt. All political parties are birds of the same feather. However, by re-electing the Shiv Sena-BJP, the people (or those who bothered to vote) have sent out a wrong message. They have, in effect, rewarded the BMC rulers for 12 years of massive corruption, inordinate project delays and escalations; and awarding important city contracts to the least qualified agencies, purely on the basis of the kickback received. This undeserved victory will only encourage BMC corporators to be even more brazen while carrying out their nefarious activities. They will come to the conclusion that they need make any effort to mend their ways or be more accountable to Mumbai's citizens. The only stick available to the common man to extract some improvement and accountability from their corporators was the threat of removing them from the power they crave. That threat has now been removed. If you thought the past 12 years were bad for the city, wait for the next 5. The Shiv Sena has given the lie toAbraham Lincoln's famous adage. They can indeed fool all of the people all of the time. India is a country where the haves have always displayed supreme indifference to the needs and aspirations of the have-nots. Centuries of caste discrimination and feudal traditions have ingrained a sense of fatalism in the less fortunate. They do not expect any understanding, compassion or even acknowledgement from the entitled. They do expect it, however, from the government. The British quickly realized the inbuilt dependence of the Indian masses on their rulers, whoever they be. They cleverly exploited the natives need for a mai-baap government to keep them in check. After Independence, the Indian overlords simply continued where the Bristish left off. No matter how much India advanced economically, they made sure that threequarters of the population remained poor, so that would be grateful for the sops the benevolent government doled out to them no matter that 85% of the funds dispersed were gobbled up by the dolers. Come election time, the desperately poor could be bought off with paltry freebies and that suited the rulers just fine. And it's not just the government. In a telling comment on Indian society, it was recently revealed that the Maharashtra Human Rights Commission had ceased to function with the resignation of its last remaining member. Which was no great loss in reality since during its totally farcical tenure, it had examined almost 600 abuses without arriving at a single conviction. Moreover, this is a country where the well heeled have no compunction in inducing desperately poor couples to sell them their newborn infants for a pittance and where Indian diplomats abroad import their less privileged countrymen as servants and treat them as bonded labour. So you see, the world's largest democracy is a bit of a sham. It is a thin veneer pasted over India's caste and feudal system: a veneer that reflects a deceptive sheen to the outside world, but is quite flawed behind the curtain. And so it will remain until the self labelled intelligentsia and cognoscenti get off their soap box and panel discussions and get their hands dirty trying to bring some measure of equality and fundamental dignity to a majority of India's teeming masses.