Destiny of Choice 005

Democratic Equality and Freedom

G: You seem to be of the view that the Natural process or your Stochastic Destiny Principle entirely explains all social phenomena? What about political systems like democracy?

S: Yes.

G: How can that be so? We know that Democracy is a Political System created by Man to treat all human beings equally in the political process.

S: You have an illusion. Try to answer a few questions and you will realize that Concept of Democracy was not created by Man but evolved out of a process. Societies or the Mankind did not make a deliberate choice in favour of democracy but had no choice but to become democratic in varying degrees depending on circumstances.

G: What are the questions that one should ask?

S: The first question is: Is democracy as a political system everywhere it is claimed to be adopted the same?

G: Certainly not. There are wide differences. They talk about liberal democracies, people’s democracy. In some democratic countries, elected governments and military generals become rulers in musical chairs. In some democracies, women had no right to vote. In others, dead citizens appear in electoral rolls and cast votes, many living citizens do not find their names in electoral rolls, some other citizens find their votes have already been miraculously cast by the time they get to the polling stations and still others are either not allowed to enter polling stations or are not willing to go to cast their votes because of fear of being physically assaulted on the way or they do not find any value in voting process.

S: Yes. There are democracies that boast of two major parties contesting elections and others with large number of parties. There are strong single-party governments and there are governments of five to ten parties in coalition. If there are so many variations, can we call democracy has been a deliberate choice made by different societies? There are countries where elections are held under the supervision of large complement of military and police forces brought from different localities or even different countries.

G: Why should foreign countries get involved in installation of democracy in a country like say Iraq? Each country should decide to choose whether it should adopt democracy or not.

S: You have to answer this. For, oppressive dictators in so-called republics or democracies would always argue that no elections are necessary as the people in their countries have accepted the military dictatorships as the best for them. At best they will conduct their own version of elections to force all people to vote only for the military junta or get killed. There is always a chicken and egg problem: which comes first- democratic choice or choice of democracy. Even within a declared democratic country, the way elections are conducted in a locality cannot ever be disputed. The ruling party will always win the elections through unfair election processes and claim that the election results show that the people have exercised their choice in favour of the way the elections have been conducted. The ruling party will say that no Independent Election Commission is necessary in democracy and such Independent Election Commisions’ interference in laying down new rules of electioneering, election campaign, drawing up voters’ lists and other related processes is unwarranted. If a country is really destined to have real democracy, it would also be destined to have political parties that are willing to accept fully transparent and open election process even to the extent of independent third country supervision and electronic/ live camera monitoring of the entire process. The election processes differ considerably among democratic countries in terms of their credibility and as indicator of the quality of democracy.

G: Despite the differences, they are broadly of the same category. And, some of the differences are not because of a fundamental difference in the concept but because of the characteristics of politicians. For example, in our country politicians seem like inevitable devils of democracy. India was ruled by outsiders for several centuries, and is now ruled by 'insiders'. As a 'nation' we seem to have a history of liking to be 'ruled'. I guess it will take quite a few decades to clean democratic processes. Politics has always been interesting, despite the dirty things, the killings and so on associated with politics.
S: So ask the second question. Is it democracy in which most citizens are really interested? The basic property of most human beings throughout the history of civilization is that they in general like to be ruled. There must be one individual or group who should rule with the help of their cronies. Kings, aristocracies, communists have all been dictatorship rules. Democracy in most countries for most of the time benefited the so-called elected rulers rather than the ruled. The difference between democracy and other political systems is only that in the other systems, a bad ruler may be thrown out by another ruler, good or bad, depending on the luck of the ruled. But, in most democracies, a bad ruler is almost always replaced by the ruled through their ballot boxes, by only another bad rulers. Good rulers have theoretically negligible chance/ probability of emergence in democracy. There is another theorem: Those who sell democracy to the people are almost always aspiring to become kings or their cronies. If I were a teacher in politics, I would have taught my students to prove the above theorems mathematically and helped them to laugh at how the most oppressive political system ever known is sold in the new label of Democracy in India and elsewhere.

G: I agree with you that there are problems with democracy. But what could be an alternative to democracy?

S: I do not think I know if there exists any better alternative
to Democracy. I believe that Democracy is the only alternative to
Democracy. I will try to clarify the confusion arising now. For that we ask the third question. What are searching for in democracy or what is our objective?
If the objective is to maximise (a) the extent of freedom and liberty to
individuals, (b) the level and quality of education among the people in
general, (c) the progress of science and technology in the nation, (d) the
quality of life of all and (e) economic prosperity for all, Democracy alone
can not help us achieve this. Nor can Capitalism alone achieve this on its own.
Many countries have declared them as Democratic Socialist Republics or
People's Republic. Last century’s history may help prove the theorem that countries with such names are most likely to be oppressive and guaranteed to fail in achieving the standards of economic progress and individual liberty achieved
by the advanced countries which do not have any prefix or suffix like
republic, democratic, socialist and the like. Again, in ancient India there might have been many small Hindu Kingdoms that were really ruled in the most democratic manner and they were reasonably prosperous, safe for citizens life and liberal in tolerating diversity of ideas, besides being enjoying peace and non-violence at least within the country. But they did not announce to the World that they were democracies. Their democracies succeeded so long as they valued individual liberty and freedom more than the King. So, the answer to the third question is that democracy is not the solution to all our problems. It can deliver only to the extent the overall environment in which it functions.

G: You seem to be arguing for examining democracy not as a pure political concept but in the overall social, economic, cultural, philosophical context.

S: Yes, we are not merely trying to debate for the sake of it. Therefore, we need to see how the choice of a political framework in practice arises. To me, it is not a deliberate choice. It is a destined choice: an evolving outcome of a natural process that I call the Stochastic Destiny Principle. The people who conceptualized the idea of democracy did not do so in a vacuum but were influenced by the forces in operation in the society in relevant times and therefore were in the strictest sense forced by the Destiny Process to think in the ways the actually thought. Secondly, Democracy by itself cannot help us achieve most of the desired objectives. If the cultures in which you place democracy, people do not really understand, believe in and place the highest value on individual liberty and freedom, democracy cannot help achieve the societal objectives nor can it become democracy.

G: How would a most democratic State behave if the overall culture were not so congenial to practice real democracy?

S: I cannot make definitive prescription as I am tied to my Stochastic Destiny Principle. All that I can say is that a state that places the highest value on the freedom and liberty of each individual will try to build the most
efficient, extensive infrastructure for justice, peace, education, health,
science and technology rather than wasting time in building steel mills,
watch factories, bread factories and manage cloth factories, fertiliser
factories and so on. A State that calls itself democracy but whose priority
is on economic development is not going to practice democracy and will fail
to deliver economic prosperity to its people.

G: Since you seem to be placing the value of democracy only in the overall environmental context, we need to ask about the concept of capitalism, socialism, international economic order and militarism in our discussions. I am particularly worried about corruption, fast depletion of non-renewable resources of the earth, brute capitalistic exploitation and international military conflicts.

S: You are worried about corruption. Democracy on a stand-alone basis does not cure corruption. You may find corruption to be low among
countries that have democracies, largely free market capitalism, high standards of living, high literacy, high level of efforts in science and technology, low levels of
religious intolerance. And, the countries that are in the top in terms of
corruption are those ruled by dictators/ groups of ruffians with citizens
afflicted by low levels of literacy and education, low level of science and technology, high levels of religious intolerance.

G: I need to empirically verify this.
S: You also need to verify certain other facts. If you are worried about the depletion of the earth's resources, you must verify whether the most inefficient extraction and utilisation of nature's resources takes place in countries like India, Pakistan, China and whether the most efficient are the advanced Western capitalist democracies. If you talk about wars, you must verify whether most wars are among economically advanced western capitalist democracies including Japan.
G: I guess I am getting what you are trying to say.

S: What I am saying is that looking at democracy or capitalism for all
solution is not the correct way of thinking about the society. This way of
looking at solving society's problem has arisen from the indigestion of
western education by low quality brains of Indian social elite leaders and their
followers mostly those who could not have competed in any other sphere of life except politics and without the help of political clout. The latter included many who were first class cheaters as well: they sought to increase their popularity by singing the songs of Gandhiji or Tagore or Karl Marx, but had no intent to understand or follow their preaching. When such people lead the Nation, people in general become like them: cheaters, power-seekers and power-abusers. The objective of democracy in such environment is to allow access to State power for personal and group enrichment. The same is the story in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Iran, China, Indonesia, Bangladesh, etc.

G: So, you are not recommending that we strengthen democracy in all countries, irrespective of capitalism or socialism or communism being there or not.

S: I am destined to hesitate in recommending because I do not believe that my recommendations, if accepted and acted upon, will, definitely or most likely, yield the desired results. I can only say what I have observed. I have observed that the democracy, capitalism and socialism are not stand-alone instruments that have succeeded or failed to deliver. Countries have practiced these ideas in varying ways in different environmental contexts. Some combinations of features in certain environment succeeded in bringing about results that we may consider most desirable, while certain other combinations did not. You may like to consider imagining introducing democracy in the society of elephants, tigers, lions, and other animals. Will such societies practice democracy they way human beings would have wished? Democracy is practiced by educated, civilized people
who really value individual liberty in a ways that are different than the largely uneducated societies ruled by all pervasive State (Governments) power in the hands of elective representatives.

G: On similar grounds, you may say that capitalism is destined to. Capitalism yields 'good life' to great many people who do not have time and energy to care about others in the World. Capitalism seems to thriving on 'creating want' and 'rampant consumption'.

S: What I can say is that capitalism has been seen to succeed in delivering prosperity to great many people for long periods, though not all the time only in civilized societies that values individual liberty and freedom more than the power of the State/ Government. For the past two centuries, capitalistic societies have made the most dramatic advancement in economic prosperity, education, science and technology, sports, culture and entertainment, human rights and human values. It seems to me that rich of the capitalist societies has shown greater concern and care for the poor in non-capitalistic societies. The large population of the poorer nations of the World have only benefited from the progress of science and technology in the capitalist countries. For example, India has only little to boast of her contribution to the progress of science and technology, but much of her economic progress is due to the technology borrowed or bought from the capitalist West.

G: I do not agree with you. I am rather concerned that capitalism’s arrival in India and China can have disastrous consequences for planet earth. Again, capitalism may be lesser evil than the only alternative of socialism that talks great about 'needs' of all and particularly the weaker sections op the society but successfully degraded into a different form of power-abuse and corruption?
S: I am neither agreeing nor disagreeing with you on the consequences of capitalism coming into India or China. The experience of capitalism or democracy may not be the same in the animal world or human societies where most children are taught to either fear or grab the State power and discouraged to value individual freedom and liberty. Rather, the individuals and groups are encouraged to seek economic prosperity by clandestinely influencing, grabbing and abusing State power in one’s/ group’s favour.

G: You seem to be against any big role of the State beyond law and order and external security.

S: I am neither against nor for any of the political or economic models. I do not find much merit in justifying anything. Whether a country claims to practice democracy or socialism is immaterial. What is actually practiced delivers the results. If the results are consistently good for long periods for most people, the practices must have contributed to that. The practices prevailing in a country evolve over time and the results that such practices produce are part of what were destined to happen, they are not independent choices. Those who claim to practice democracy are not necessarily those who actually practice democracy. Those who actually practice democracy are destined to so. And, the same is true of those who claim so but actually does not believe in individual liberty and freedom except for restricted purpose to elections.

G: You will say the same thing about socialism. In a sense you seem to against socialism.

S: I repeat that I am neither for nor against anything because of my belief in Destiny Principle. I only state what I observe. Socialism and Communism have been found to perform the way capitalism has done in some countries in the West.

Even Socialism and Communism as practiced in the World so far are to my mind nothing but variants of capitalism, variants in which capitalists, though not owners of resources, enjoy all the power to use them and these capitalists are those who do not get selected through market competition but get elected to use State power or their selected servants. These countries are destined to go through the experience of such socialism and communism, as are distorted versions of capitalism.

G: But how do different countries go through the experience of different variants of democracy, socialism and capitalism?

S: The whole time path of events and happenings are different in different countries. I do not know why they are different. What I believe is that this is in the nature of things in the evolutionary process. It is like the difference of skin colour of people in different regions, the variation in food habits in different regions, the differences in languages, in natural endowments or in history of conflicts and wars. Nothing that happens today in a society is independent of what happened in the past.

G: But things change over time. How?

S: The seeds of change are also in the past. High population growth during the past decades has altered the demography in India. Now close to 50% of the Indian population is below the age of 25 years. The younger generations seem to be viewing things in a different way and trying to assert their freedom and liberty in the urban and metro areas. The recent years have been witnessing rapid spread of international television channels, the coverage of international news in domestic channels, the variety of debates on domestic and local social, political and economic issues, the spread of internet usage and the like. All this has considerable impact on the attitudes and preferences of younger generations. The adolescent and the youth now show both a growing pride in the recent economic successes of the nation as well as a stronger preference for adopting a broader international perspective for acquiring knowledge and skill. The narrow perspective, reluctance to face challenges of the unknown and the strange, and the obsolescence of the skills of elder generations are fast waning in their impact on new generations. How far and when the attitudes and preferences of the new generations will begin dominating, I cannot forecast. One may only speculate about two possible destinies. One possibility is that the highly populated societies like India (and China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iran and Saudi Arabia) will become the cause of the gravest disaster that you may call man-made because you do not believe in destiny. The other possibility is that some of these societies will be transformed by the attitudes and preferences of the current generation of children who place greater value on individual liberty more than the State and more open to globalization and technological progress.

G: But what do you conclude from our discussion on democracy, capitalism and socialism?

S: My conclusion is that the features of the society and the economy at any point of time and the changes we observe in them over time in any country is the result of the various naturally interacting forces in that country and the countries to which the particular country is connected to in varying degrees. All such forces are part of the Stochastic Destiny Principle. Thus, this Principle explains both the type of democracy or capitalism or socialism prevailing at any point of time and evolving over time in each country as well as the success of any country in achieving goals that you or me or others consider desirable. The destined time path of no country is in the control of deliberate choice of the societies concerned, least of all to political leaders. The actions of individuals, groups and political leaders are not deliberate social choices but the result of interactive forces linked to the Stochastic Destiny Principle.

G: So, you do not believe that societies make choices.

S: I do not believe that Individuals or societies can make real independent choices. What an individual does is to get into the choice that he is conditioned and forced to make given his/ her natural (genetic) propensities and the circumstances. Social choices are not made: they emerge as the result of interactions of destined individual choices. The political mechanism to translate or aggregate individual choices into social choices is also similarly destined outcomes. The Indians of today or of 1947 did not make a choice in favour of democracy: the variant of democracy that we currently operate in just evolved under the impact of various forces operating in the past. Sooner rather than later, India may transcend this distorted, negative variant of democracy to more open, transparent and positive variant of democracy.

G: You are saying many things. You not only believe in destiny and lack of independent choice for individuals and societies. You are also saying that what we term as democracy need not be democracy at all.

S: Yes, even if a society feels that it is making a choice to adopt democracy, it does not necessarily adopt democracy. It may not even know what democracy it wishes to adopt and how it evolves over time. Often democracy means Government “ of the people, by the people and for the people”. This rhetoric makes people believe that they are in democracy when actually they are not.

G: Please illustrate.

S: Most often democratic countries are actually run by governments that are “ off the people, beyond the people and fraud on the people”. You are led to believe that democracy means the right to cast vote in elections. If 50% of the electorate is illiterate or uneducated what you have is 50% illiterate and uneducated democracy. There is difference between 80% educated and 50% educated democracies. If there are 50% uneducated voters, why should they vote for educated people? Why should uneducated politicians make people educated? In democracies with political active population who are uneducated, efforts will be made to education a farce. They will question the rule of law. They will question the fairness of educated judiciary. They will question the authority and independence of educated election commissioners. They will question the quality and independence of the educated educationists/ teachers of the places of learning from primary school to universities. They will question the necessity of high standards of education. Thus you will slowly see the decline in standards of education, politicians as education administrators, relaxation of standards of tests and qualifying marks so that the uneducated can be counted as educated. So, the society will justify poor education as a desirable goal selected in a democratic way.

G: You are dramatizing.

S: Not really. In a country where 70% of the people are uneducated and also smoke bidis (a form of cigarettes), what kind of laws will be passed on smoking, what rates of tax will be imposed on bidis and what kind of research on tobacco and cancer will be funded by the Government? We know how low quality educationists have been inducted into education system by politicians. If the Government and the elected representatives of the people start acting on the premise that they are the only authorized and also the most competent persons/ groups to decide about everything in the society, you do not have democracy. Democracy is not all about winning the elections to get the power to lord over others.

G: So, people may claim that they have or trying to have democracy. But they are far from that. Democratic equality does not follow human choice. Nations have to accept whatever democratic equality or inequality emerges at any point of time in conformity with the Stochastic Destiny Principle.

S: Democracy is a formula to resolve conflicts among individuals and groups. It is an arbitrary rule. It has no sanctity of its own. But it has a special appeal because it is a rule for the domination of majority. Even if the majority is foolish or brute, cruel, you have to accept it sportingly. If the whole world was one country, Indians and Chinese would have ruled the World and taken away all the petroleum oil the Arab countries would have had. The application of democracy was not intended to serve the majority but to protect the oppression of the majority by the few. But that is not what democracy is able to deliver most of the time. It cannot because it is so destined. The process of practical application of the concept of democracy can vary so widely and is so susceptible to fraud, cheating and manipulation that the impact on the society often turns out to be opposite of and completely different from what the concept of democracy promises to deliver.

G: And, according to you, this is only natural and therefore destined.