Better India

Friday, February 08, 2008

India is only 38% democracy

In my opinion India is not 100% democracy. Here are my reason:
1) At Federal/Central goverment Indians only select M.P. for lower house (Lok Sabha). A common person can not elect M.P. for upper house (Rajya Sabha) or President. As Indian constitution says all 3 branches of government are equal and but only 1 out of 3 directly elected by common man. So I give central government 33% rating for democracy.
2) Similarly at state level again common man can not elect either Governor or MLA of upper house of state. So at state level I again give 33% rating to democracy.
3) At town level, a common person can only elect city councilor. At most places the common man have no power to elect mayor of municipality. Even at some places where mayor is directly elected, he/she has very less power than state government appointment IAS officer. Here I give 50% rating to democracy.

If I average all 3 levels local, state, central goverment I see only (33+33+50)/3 = 38% people's representative ruling. So, who are rest 100-38% = 62% of people who are sharing power ? They are "power broker"s. Likes of Amar Singh (M.P. for upper house, not faced election in last 10 years), IAS cadre, Governors who never get to face common man's vote.

So next time if you see any news or advertisement claiming "India is world's largest democracy" just ignore it as false advertisement. As long as common people can not elect all "power sharing" branches of government, India will remain 38% democracy and 62% autocracy. And Sonia Gandhi will decide who will be governor of your state.