Excerpt from my paper

Selected excerpts from one of my earliest papers titled

"THE INEVITABLE DEMISE OF DEMOCRACY AND THE ULTIMATE FORM OF GOVERNMENT"
written during a college sem-break

Couldn't help recall the hypothesis formulated in it, especially as newer validations unfold every passing day...

.............start of the excerpt...........

The Real Culprit
Democracy reflects the opinion of the majority.
This single sentence summarizes the greatest strength as well as shortcoming of democracy.

While it reflects the opinion of the majority it does not reflect the entire opinion. A democracy does what most of its members think right; in some cases this may be a 51% opinion or a 67% opinion or any such value, which is rarely 100. The logical fallout of this is that the remaining 49% or 33% is constantly striving to create a society where they are in a majority. This is the reason for the friction and fragmentation in societies all round the world. And it this phenomenon that is driving men to discover newer identities - civilizations, cultures or religions are just the means used to establish this elusive majority.

And there is no reason to believe that this break-up of society shall end at the civilization stage, it is just a phase in the process. As soon as a society is established on the basis of a certain common identity, there is a minority whose opinion is trampled upon. This minority in turn will try to create another new identity to obtain that elusive majority. This is a recurring and never ending process. And this shall continue up to the stage of the individual, because no two humans can think alike on all issues and democracy can reflect the opinion of only the majority.

And there is material evidence of this phenomenon everywhere. Indians, united as a civilization have developed new fault lines along every conceivable identity from religion to language to caste to place of origin etc. As soon as Afghanistan obtained freedom from the Taliban regime, there appeared fissures among the various clans and sub-clans. Similar is the case with Iraq or in fact any democratic society in the world, as these democratic societies continue to shrink in size as newer common identities are discovered regularly by the disregarded minorities.


Democracy Promotes Mediocrity
Any idea ahead of its time is seldom understood by the majority who benefit in the long run from the idea. In a democracy such ideas are inevitably outvoted at the first conceivable opportunity. But without these strokes of genius, any society is destined to moribundity. On the other hand, these are strokes of genius only because most men cannot easily conceive these ideas. The dichotomy is evident. Any pure democracy is destined to doom as its creative visions are constantly outvoted by the majority.

Any variation to the above hypothesis, and in fact most of the so-called high points of democracy, have been clever circumventions of democracy. Mahatma Gandhi used his personal popularity to push through far-reaching concepts like Satyagraha etc. which, if open to vote would never see the light of the day. Hitler too circumvented democracy but for diabolic purposes. Though the purposes were different, both represent the clever ingenuity of far-sighted individuals in manipulating democracies. An unadulterated democracy, as is the pronounced goal, is bound to stagnate and degenerate.

Thus, the continual fragmentation along with mediocrity, which is inbuilt in the definition of democracy, guarantee the slow but sure degeneration and ruin of any purely democratic society or organization.

.............continues with my formulation of the ultimate form of govt............