Especially, as some people will assert, when there is somebody like the current overlord of 'change' at the helm though, others will emphasize that ‘democracy’ came to mark India only when the British left the subcontinent and took the Queen of England with them.

As it was, Partition was a bloody chapter to introduce the book of democracy to India, and then when a large proportion of those who sought Partition chose to stay back, the abridged and unfinished book left enough room for divided India to witness violent outbreaks every five years.

The ‘five-year’ rule, however, doesn’t apply because electoral democracy in India is actually at play year-round and there is always some or the other state/region where violent-laden electoral democracy is already not creating a furore and leaving a bloody impression, either on Election Day or in the run-up to elections. Lakhimpur Kheri is a case in point as were others throughout Modern India’s short history.

That said, they say democracy is the best form of governance; but, if that was so, the Americans would not be lacerating themselves for allowing January 6/2021 to happen and Donald Trump wouldn’t be threatening a 2024 comeback. The juxtaposition of totalitarianism with democracy is telling. The one-party CCP rule in China is bereft of any overt political violence. The last time there was open violence, it was Tiananmen in 1989 and memory fails at the very thought of it.

The point is, one need not abide by democracy to live a fruitful life—happy, satisfied and content. Democracy does not lift masses of people out of poverty, but one-party communist rule did just that—in the shortest possible time! Anybody travelling through China’s heartland of glass and concrete behemoths will see signs of poverty gone, disappeared. There may be shades left but they are washed and waning fast.

Yup, China’s billion and a half are living a far, far better standard of life than India’s billion and nearly half. The overall grinding poverty in democratic India beats every other country in sheer handouts—the reason why AAP will one day sweep India in a landslide with its vote-bank of freebies. Poverty is an “aam aadmi” in India, Laxman’s forgotten common-man.

That said, maybe what we have in India is not democracy. Maybe there is a better form of democracy—decent democracy! But then the United States is a democracy and there are the homeless in the United States, too—tens of thousands of homeless and jobless living on food stamps.

Compared to that, nearly a quarter of Indians—in the ‘below garibi rekha’—are not even given handouts, except when elections turn round the corner and head towards chaos and confusion, when everybody is lying and people are killed for having a different viewpoint.

Like right now, when we are in the cusp of another election phase—a divided people, partitioned along Hindu-Muslim, communal-secular, and India-Pakistan lines. The farmers are united but that is not confirmed. The fault-lines in the caste system that plague Indians are cracking and markedly defined under electoral pressure. The Sikh, the Hindu, the Muslim, the Jain and the Buddhist are speaking in different tongues. No wonder they—the current reigning dispensation— dropped ‘Abide with Me’, a song which does not fit democracy—the sort which plagues the India of today.

The flawed democracy of India is beating a retreat, marching to a tune that a whole wide swathe of people say doesn’t uplift. But, pause for a moment, and listen! The sound heard is that of the silence of the lambs. And you know what, the ‘Silence of the Lambs’ won an Oscar, but remains to this day a diabolical horror flick! Like the India of today, some would say. (IPA Service)