Pseudo Democracy in India

India is going for another election and as always Indian politicians and journalists would remind the Indians and the rest of the world about the strength and deep roots of democracy. It is true that in the 60 years of history of local rule (I would not say independent), democracy was never really threatened unlike several other countries of about same or lesser age.

Aristotle thought that in a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.
In India it is still true but in a bit convoluted manner. In India the majority of the poor votes can be easily purchased but the power of money or shear strength. So even when Aristotle is still right, in India, still the rich have the power. Yet another paradox in a truly Incredible country.

In a democratic process, all individuals are given a single and equal vote. For the success of democracy it is important that each voter realizes the worth of its own vote and the candidates who are seeking the public mandate respect the idea of individual vote and do not demean the vote by offering some monetary or personal favor in return.

In India, whether we accept it or not there none of the above holds on average. A randomly chosen citizen (irrespective of a his/her education or geographical location) would not be able to explain you the worth of his vote in an election comprising of several million voters. An average voter who can never understand the meaning of his one vote among the other several million votes is very likely to sell off his/her vote for small benefits. A large fraction of politicians exploit this ignorance and offer monetary or other kinds of benefits in return of a single vote.

In a slightly remote village (where most of the votes reside), the early birds get the worms i.e. the candidate who is the first to send some money and means of transport to take the votes to the polling station, is more likely to get the votes of that group of people. On top of this physically or economically strong candidates are more likely to get the votes, irrespective their agenda. To put it in other words, in India a candidate without money to buy votes or gain favor of a political party is unlikely to win in any election, no matter how strong development agenda that person has? It is not a hidden knowledge but it appears that as a country India accepts these non-democratic practices as a part of democracy.

So even after India has seen some 15 or so general elections and numerous by-elections, voters dont understand the worth of their vote and anyone can purchase votes and in turn the public mandate. Given this situation can we say that there exists democracy in India?

So long as individual voters do not understand the meaning of their vote, we cannot say that democracy is successful and is flourishing in India. Indian system of governance may be based on democracy but it is a very degenerated kind of democracy that they practice in India.

Should we blame the average voter for his/her ignorance about his vote? I do not think so. As country India has completely failed to educate its votes about the process of democracy and thus, there is no mutual respect between voter and vote and between candidates contesting in the election and the voters.

How do we educate a poor voter that his vote is worth more than some money or a small favor the politician has promised him? I dont know if there is an easy solution but unless that happens we cannot say that Indian rules are determined by a process of democracy. At best it is a pseudo-democracy.

Disclaimer: On a personal level I do not agree with the idea of democracy, because it gives equal vote to all the citizen. When citizens are not equal in their knowledge and understanding, they all should not have equal vote. More on this later...

Attacks on SriLanka Cricket Players-- Please Dont Isolate Pakistan

The attacks on the Sri Lanka cricket player while they were on their way to resume the third day of a test match is really unfortunate and is very rightly drawing a lot of international attention in condemning this act of terror.

I am pretty sure that no one in this world (except for the terrorists themselves) would have expected that there could be a terror strike on the cricket players, even in Pakistan; because in Pakistan and in the sub-continent cricket is like a parallel religion and cricket player, irrespective of their nationality are treated like demi-gods.

So if cricket and cricketers are not safe in Pakistan then who is...

The cricket world is all but scared and future cricket-tours to Pakistan have been cancelled. Pakistan as a joint host of the 2011 world cup is very doubtful. It unlikely that any team can be convinced to tour Pakistan in near future. This is so unfortunate as with this tour of Sri-lankan team cricket barely resumed and this act of shame happened.

A lot of words have been and will be written about the yet another lapse in security and why not even after such an attack the gunmen managed to escape, making a full mockery of the security in Pakistan. It is obvious that given the circumstances, Sri-Lankan team should have been given a top-class security. Note that Sri-lankans traveled to Pakistan, despite the advice of not traveling to Pakistan. Sri-lankans showed their solidarity by traveling what did they get in return... Former cricketer Imran Khan noted that some irrelevant ministers have better security than the Sri-Lankan team.

The effects of this particular terror strike certainly will go beyond cricket for instance the stock-exchanges in Pakistan crashed fearing that all investments will dry up. The economy which is already in shambles will completely crash.

After this particular strike the opinion is converging to isolate Pakistan and declare is a terrorist state. My biggest fear is that once Pakistan might even be quarantined.

I dont know who planned and executed the terror strike (and it doesnt really matter), but I am sure they are not stupid that they cannot predict that the attack on visiting cricketers would result in a complete isolation of Pakistan on the international stage. If they still went ahead and executed the strikes, indicates that terror outfits want Pakistan to be isolated from outside influence. Perhaps an isolated Pakistan would be easier to tame into the fundamentalistic mentality of the terrorists outfits.

Pakistan is a country full of brave and talented people with a great deal of knowledge about the latest technology of all sorts. Leaving such a pool of knowledge and talented population in hands of the terrorists would only strengthen the terrorists and they will pose challenges of bigger surprise factor and magnitude would become more frequent.

After the shameful terror strikes if the we would leave Pakistan alone, then we will commit a crime of bigger magnitude. This is a time when Pakistan needs genuine support.

This support should not be in the form of money to the government but it should be provided in the form of intelligence and logistics support. When a country cannot provide proper security to a visiting cricket team, it means that basic concept of security is somehow messed up in the system. So the world should come forward to provide necessary training and equipments to the security personnel in Pakistan.

At the same time there should be more pressure on the so called democratic government to enforce the law from the United Nations, US or other countries including India. The government in Pakistan should evaluate the fear of the fundamentalist forces more seriously and rise above the short-term gains of retaining power and protect the freedom and honor of Pakistan.

My sincere hope is that Pakistan government will take this one instance of terror strikes seriously and the rest of the world will behave in a more responsible way and support Pakistan in controlling the terrorists organizations and we will see among other things, cricket resuming in the country.

Terror Strikes in India and Elsewhere: Whom to Blame

Who is to blame for the recent terror strikes? Tradition is to blame those who attacked. India has followed this tradition for many years. And why just India, every country who is at the receiving end of the terror strikes follows this tradition.

This approach gives the impression that the those attacked are innocent and were attacked for none of their faults.

I hold a slightly different opinion on it.

Its human nature to conquer others and expand. So it is but natural that others (henceforth enemies) would attack and overtake.

But this means that technically we cannot blame the enemies for the attacks or in recent times for the 'Terror Strikes".

In my opinion the "Terror Struck" populations are to be blamed. It is their inability to secure themselves makes any terror strike a success. The fact is that the success of a terror strike is directly related to the failure of the "Terror Struck" population in identifying the build up process of a terror strike.

So, nations and their people, please stop blaming the terrorists for attacking your borders or create terror from within the nation. The act of blaming others only creates a delusion. In fact, its your lack of security measure and intelligence, that lets the "Terror Strikes" happen.

I am not trying to suggest that Governments show enforce a very dense intelligence system and increase the budget of armed forces in order to improve intelligence information and security.

This not likely to work because the terrorists have made their way in the countries and most strikes are planned from within the country. There is no way armed forces can track those, neither intelligence agencies can keep track of all the people without creating a situation of public panic. We have example of US in front of us, where in name of securing the nation from terror strikes, the governments has increased the scope of FBI and have essentially panicked that whole country.

When enemy or the terrorists are more or less uniformly distributed among the non-terrorists or law-abiding citizens, efforts organized by the Federal governments will not work, without creating a panic in the masses and disturbing the day-to-day life in the country and most likely in the following election the government would be changed.

In my opinion the solution lies in finding a solution that is also distributed like the terrorists are. When we realize that most of the terror strikes are organized from the within, it means that success of every terror-strike is in fact, a failure of every citizens and not just that of the governments.

Had the citizens been vigilant and had the vendors who supplied logistics information and/or the raw material for the weapons and ammunition, been a little careful and had asked few simple questions, I think none of the terror strike would have been possible.

When the terrorists are among us its only a vigilant population, that can bring them out.

To reduce the probability of any further terror strikes we do not need to blame the terrorists and the countries presumably supporting them. Neither, do we need to start any special organized efforts that involve multiple nations and intelligence agencies.

As a first step we need to blame ourselves for lapses in the intelligence and security system.

Secondly, we need to secure our system by developing a better more distributed intelligence network. A vigilant population, in which every citizen is aware and conscious can already make a very effective intelligence network.

If we can drop our short term small benefits and as vendors of information and or raw material, we ask a simple question while dealing with other -- whether this exchange of material or information can in some way support a potential terror strike.

This does not mean that we start to distrust our fellow humans. Neither do I mean to say that by default assume that every single one is a potential terrorists. According to me the job of the distributed intelligence system would be sniff any suspicious activity in its local neighborhood. [More on this in a latter post]

I strongly believe that only a distributed intelligence system made of common people can bring out the terrorists hidden in the population and negate the terror plans.

What was unique about the Mumbai 26/11 terror strikes

For the first time terrorist tried to directed their attack on the rich and influential people. To me this appears as a paradigm shift in the nature of terror strikes.

For some reason none of the new media took notice of it.

Usually terror strikes occurred at places like busy train stations, market places. In such place of course it was more likely to target more people. But most of the victim were likely to be from the working class and middle class.

For the first time, terrorists in India target places like Five Star Hotels which are mostly visited by high profile, influential and typically rich people.
I think terrorist are understand there is no point in killing or terrorizing the middle class, because such a class of people rarely are the focus of government policies.

Even if a terror strike consumes lots of working class people, rather rapidly the tragedy will be forgotten. Such is the nature of the middle class, They are so engrossed in their struggle for life that even death of fellow people does not stop them from their daily struggle for money or fame or power. But if a single powerful person is killed for years that remains a part of the public memory.

So in this instance of the terror strike, rich and influential people were targeted. Of course terrorists want there terror to be alive for longer time.

I hope this will work against the terrorists and some serious actions will be taken.