A ‘New’ democracy?

Context: A systemic transformation of democracy is taking place from within its very opposite.

General features of democracy

• Free and fair elections
• Multi-party system
• Fixed-term elections based on universal adult franchise

The structural flaw in democracy:

• Flawed Majority:
  • The ‘majority of votes’ actually boils down to the majority of seats in the legislature.
  • 99 % of the time, the legislature is formed by minority voters.
  • Rarely a government formed backed by a majority of votes won in a free and fair election.
• For, E.g. Rajiv Gandhi’s formidable; the highest-ever majority in Lok Sabha in 1984 was still short of a majority of votes by about 2%.

Positive Aspects of Democracy:

• Universal adult franchise
• Guaranteed individual rights and freedoms
  • Equality of all citizens
  • Free market economy
  • Freedom of life and property.
• Created space for a change of governments: even as they guaranteed security against challenge to the regime:
  • For, E. Most ‘revolutions’ could not escape the dragnet of ‘democracy’, their existential as well as conceptual adversary.

Concerns

• Rising Inequality: is threatening free market, not from its adversary but from its own internal dynamics.
  • For, E.g. Unprecedented concentration of wealth at the top 1% around the world knocks the bottom out of competition in the market.
• Hollowing of the principles while retaining the form: For E.g.
• In the Electoral Process: Distortions injected through control and misuse of the institutions:
• Restricted and Manipulated Choices: for the citizens – For, E.g. -
• De legitimisation of dissent or protest:
• Circumscribing the dispensation of fair justice using the sentiment of patriotism 
• Control of the flow of information through the ‘independent’ media
• Creating and propagating fake news.
• Creating and promoting hatred between communities by patronising identity politics to mobilise voters.
• Harshest treatment to the most prominent dissenting voices.
• Global Presence:
  • Misuse of constitutions: Constitutions around the world give rulers enough space for misuse for achieving those goals and yet making the misuse palatable to voters through media and mobilisation. 
  • Unaffected voters: Rising voting percentages shows that the voters are not tired of this misuse anywhere.
  • Difficulty in inferring the cause: Since the hollowing of democratic principles is seen at a global scale, its cause cannot be restricted to personalities or diktats like Hitler in the past.

Conclusion: We are witnessing the transformation of the regime of democracy from the promise of liberty, equality and fraternity- social, political and economic to its opposite, i.e. concentration of economic, political and social powers in few hands.