Where is our democracy heading?

Democracy, either as a means or as an end, is alien to our Society which has been characterized throughout History by feudal and joint family systems, wherein life’s duties were clearly cut out depending upon one’s station in life.  There was little need for individual decision making, and if one were so inclined, choices were strictly limited.   The leaders, the elders or the system dictated what was to be done and one simply did it. No questions asked, and no answers given. Liberty and Equality, the fountain-head of democracy, were not only beyond the pale but were even subversive of established systems. Yet, here we are today liberating managements for not embracing democracy in a culture where both the management that are supposed to initiate it and the employees who are clamouring for it are strangers to it at least in spirit. Managements shrink practicing democracy for their own reasons.  And the unions which demand democracy rarely follow it within their own rank and file.   How many unions function democratically, holding election for office-bearers regularly?  If industrial democracy today is nothing more than a fad, then the causes for this have to be ferreted out and a course of action chartered so that we cease perpetuating inimical practices.  

From this beginning, the study of management in the US has been bedeviled by a clash between values. Those whose manner is authoritarian argue that autocracy is indispensable to the promotion of efficiency. How true it is, looking at the performance of a noted economist like Dr Manmohan Singh who cannot solve simple economic problems in India because of the governance of like-minded parties called coalition who would at any time turn ‘unlike’?  Industry should serve’ man’ and not man (to serve) the Industry?

Democracy like love is among the most misused words in our vocabulary and one of the evanescent and slippery operational concepts.   Movements conceived in its name assume a life of their own and frequently produce the very opposite of their originator’s intent. Sad though it is, it should not come as a surprise that ‘Theory’ and ‘Reality’ often fail to mesh.

Historians explain the Past and the Economists predict the future! And, we dream of the Present.

The Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,- the popular doctrines that lit up the French Revolution, slowly turned the Road and created anarchy, chaos and lawlessness. It was civil war among its own people. Guillotines were part and parcel of the waywardness of governance. Nonsense took over sense.  It required the might of one man- Napoleon Bonaparte- to quell anarchy with ruthless precision and restore law and order from the lawlessness that prevailed through iron fist.  He brought back the military rule thro’ the back door.  How did the poet react to this terror cum horror story of France when at the beginning of the Revolution, he sang, “Bliss was that dawn to be alive, to be young very heaven.” What happened to the Utopia of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity? Did they realize their dream?   Russian revolution, climaxed in the gruesome massacre of the entire Royal clan. Lenin, who came to Power, according to some stories circulated now, was poisoned by Stalin, who took over the reign on his death. Michel Gorbhachov, who wanted to bring open economy to USSR and usher in modern Reforms, paid the heavy price of seeing his United Soviet Socialist Republic splinter into parts. The super power behind the Iron curtain split into pieces. The echo was felt world wide. The Berlin Wall was felled by public wrath.  A number of Communist countries turned democratic.

But the Dragon, China continues to swear by Communism but is emerging as the most capitalist country in the third millennium. Its lavish Trade, international exposure, external investment in China, all taboo to Communist philosophy, is in full swing. It is the capital of Trading and Commerce.

Oliver Cromwell, who was Lord Protector of the Republic of England after beheading Charles I in 1849, was considered a regicidal dictator so much that Englishmen wanted to return to monarchy. Socrates, an old man, who was a plain thinker and questioner of beliefs was found guilty of treason when the People’s assembly ruled Athens. The period of Periclus in the Athenian History was regarded as the Golden rule. But history weeps that a good man was innocently put to death without reason.

Bertrand Russell, the author of History of Western Philosophy,  , noted thinker, philosopher had criticized warfare as an evil crushing people’s rights. He was a great friend of India’s V K Krishna Menon who was India’s high Commissioner at Britain and later India’s Defence Minister until the Chinese War of 1962.

George Bernard Shaw, a wild critic of William Shakespeare, and himself a dramatist, writer, thinker, and was the founder of the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1895.   His “an unsocial socialist” has ridiculed democracy.

Indian democracy glorifies mediocrity. Democracy has been defined by a European Social scientist as the ‘madness of money”. According to French Political philosopher, it is, ‘the cult of incompetence’. We have in every walk of life men of average ability. Great vision in Planning and Planning can provide a proper place for intellectuals who have the ability to transform ideas into products. Men of genius, make a dash to other countries where they win Nobel prizes. Indian Planners, who draw a Plan for better India of tomorrow, need to understand India of the Gandhian era.

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