Is Sham Democracy working for India ?

Repeated protests by people of Delhi on rape , Anna  and Kejriwal on corruption and other civilians  have brought forward a very potent question : why is the current democratic system not listening its citizens . Common wisdom would say that democracy should do good for a country where people decide on issues through their representatives. But in India, current form of democracy has utterly failed to provide real fruits that were expected out of democracy. Neither the electorate nor the elected are what they should be .

For once, a country where literacy is just around 65 %, how much wisdom and knowledge does electorate have to decide on complex national issues ?  We know well that educated class votes much less than the uneducated one. That precisely exposes them to the tricks of politicians who raise the slogan of democracy while knowing that these gullible and illiterate people can be conned with rhetoric and token measures. The democracy loses its core and becomes a ridiculous tamasha .

 Being selected by a often prejudiced and ignorant electorate , the elected behaves in a manner which defies common sense . He knows if I have to be elected again, I must appear worthy in eyes of those people who elected me , not in the eyes of intelligentsia  of the society , experts or international community. He does stupid acts of erecting idols , renaming places, etc and surreptitiously indulges in making money out of corruption . He takes care that his electorate don’t get to know much about his misdeeds and should only get an artificial sense of satisfaction that their elected guy is doing a good job for “them”.  In reality , elected representative does everything to loot those people and divide them for political gains. The outcome of democracy is so much distorted from what it was intended, that you find it hard to interpret where the hell is the real problem. 

There are few good and sane voices too among these people. But they are woefully outnumbered and let me remind you , democracy is only a number game. We have seen that enough during confidence votes in the Parliament. Just consider a normal college class of 50 students . If the best tennis player among them is made tennis captain and entrusted upon to manage tennis court for college , he will do it best among  those 50 students. But if he has to get elected for being Tennis captain and general students do not know much about tennis  , they will elect any other candidate who appeases them through  free snacks/drinks  on the court  .

The majority is never an expert on every subject . Hence in a democratic election , the best tennis player of the college will loose election  and the one who manages to appease electorate , wins. Is this what is happening in India ? Is this the result of democracy we are so proud of ?

On the other hand, if meritocracy was the form of governance , the tennis player would be an obvious choice for being tennis captain and he would built a world class tennis court . This sounds simple enough except for the fact that that captain would have a chance to cheat students for their lack of understanding of tennis. Enough safeguards and heavy penalties must be enforced upon such actions.

So  a purely democratic college with an ignorant electorate gives us a sham tennis court  . It cannot hold world class tournaments and produce world champions. India’s Olympic 2012 tally is an example enough. But don’t forget , students are satisfied with snacks and drinks. On the other hand , a meritocratic college would have resulted in a world class tennis court which would  produce several Olympic gold medalists. Imagine the overall impact of this excellence on college. Other sportsmen also get inspired and emulate this example. A win produces immense sense of bonding among fellow students . Everybody starts striving to bring laurels like the tennis players. The college becomes the best college in the country.

It is high time we introspect on these issues to adopt a system that delivers for our country.