What is the future of our democracy? Will the leaders and the parties they represent keep coming back to power on the promises of freebies justifying the same as people’s will? Certainly, money of the people must go back to the people. However, don’t they have to earn the same? How long does someone only earn and someone else only spend in a rather disproportionate way? Is the freebie economy sustainable? There is nothing like a free lunch, because somebody must bear the costs of the supposedly ‘free’ stuff. Nothing is free because every action has an opportunity cost. When the government doles out gifts, all it means is that it was bought with money taken from others. Or, sometimes, the money is taken from the person receiving the gift, who thinks he’s got something for nothing. Is this a sleight-of-hand or a political trick? Come elections, and every political party indulges in this wholly unsustainable gimmickry to the detriment of the system, our democracy, which allows it to happen.
Today’s promises include free college, free healthcare, free paid time off of work, free houses, and all sorts of goodies, even cash directly deposited in one’s account. Why and when can one gift? Only when in abundance. Do governments have everything in abundance? One has to create wealth before one can exchange it, consume it, or give it away. As long as there is a mismatch, gifts only tend to expand the economic incongruences in a society. A slow deterioration can implode democracy from within.
One must see the machinations of ‘vote-hungry’ politicians who calibrate their appeals in a culturally diverse society, through ever increasing freebies, for they believe, it to be the only way to the altar of power. Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, said as long back as in 1780, “A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government and that it will continue to exist, up until the time that voters discover, they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.” This is profound wisdom in the current context. The majority always vote for the candidates who promise them most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy. History is witness, for what follows is always dictatorship.
The average age of India’s greatest rulers from as early as we can trace its history, be it through the classical or the medieval or the modern ages, the early rulers or the Mughals, or the British, has always been about 200 years during which, the country has always progressed through, bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence and from dependence back into bondage.
India, like the established democracies Britain, France and the US, is facing unprecedented challenges, with the political leadership unable to manage the deep divisions among its people. We are undergoing fundamental changes caused by the digital revolution. Just like so many traditional businesses have been upended as a result, so too will politics be disrupted. New norms and institutions will emerge in this difficult and divisive transition. Instead of managing the deep divisions in our societies we endlessly debate the act of deciding whom to vote.
Can any leader now bridge the divide? Are our people not angry about politics and society? If some are angry about the national register, the others are angry about religion taking the pole position. In Britain, people are deeply divided on Brexit. In US, people are divided on the gun policies or the so-called Mexican wall politics. Even President Emmanuel Macron had to face extremely motivated protests from ordinary people. Extreme polarisation seems to be defining all democratic nations resulting in vitriolic campaigns. The British may have left seventy years ago. Their version of democracy, couched as it is in aristocracy, is still evolving in the country riddled with inconsistencies of caste, religion and language. Power and greed of the leaders and their parties, seem to make them jump steps to success, resulting in chafing at the very roots of democracy. Digital revolution has only given tools to accelerate the spin to doom, with a widespread use of fake news and fake accounts, hate speeches and smear campaigns to influence the way people vote. Will democracy survive such a vitiated environ?
Democratic governments are turning authoritarian, by increasingly seeking to ‘game’ democracy’s strengths by using digital tools. Privacy of citizens or privacy of adversaries is no longer a subject of intelligent debate since all, including the intelligentsia have willingly bartered even their most personal data and continue to do so on social media platforms, that is available to anyone willing to pay a price. Governments don’t even pay a price for the same. With intelligentsia thus castled, and the poor hooked to freebies, what is left of democracy?
When the Internet was commercialized, it was widely assumed that it would accelerate the global spread of democracy. The design of the Internet itself was decentralized network that empowered individuals to freely associate and share ideas and information and reflected liberal principles. The spread of social media, people thought, was a great leveller of class differences. However, the internet and social media have become potent tools in the hands of the leaders, to fashion democratic autocracies or autocratic democracies, depending on what suits on a given day. The nexus between the Internet and social media is such that, without resorting to diplomacy or conflict, adversaries can change a democracy’s behaviour by influencing its citizens in scale and in real time. It is doubly bad if our foreign policy too, were to be dictated by someone living in digital glass house in some remote town in China, or in Ukraine.
Our democracy, by far the best in theory, must rely on the private sector to drive economic growth, prosperity and create jobs, in a way that is compatible with the overall public good. The enormous amount of valuable data honed with the capability to drive citizens’ decisions and opinions, amassed by Facebook and Twitter However, has not matched a sense of public purpose. If it had been, freebies would not have been the order of the day.