Tale of Three Democracies

The younger, seen-the-West generation has varying degrees of pride in India. Sure, they have their complaints and criticisms too, but when I was a kid, people rarely had any pride in any aspect of modern India. If at all, their pride was limited to ancient philosophies or ways of life from back then. But even today, there are still plenty of Indians who talk of the West as if it is better than us on parameters where the situation has actually turned 180˚, done a U-turn.

Take the recent ranking of countries based on the confidence of citizens of a country in their government. Keep in mind this was done by the OECD, a grouping of most of the world’s largest economies, barring China and Brazil. While India was 3rd best on that list, both the US and UK were below even the average confidence ratings among the OECD countries!

Some people tend to explain this as a Trump/Brexit induced effect. But even if that was true (and it probably is), it only raises another question. After all, in all 3 countries, India included, we have elected governments that are hated by a large set of people. And yet, Indians have a lot of confidence in their government whereas the two Western democracies don’t. Why the difference?

Besides, Americans knew what Trump stood for when they voted, didn’t they? Or as Ross Douthat wrote:

“Trump hasn’t had a stroke or suffered a neurological disaster, and his behavior in the White House is no different from the behavior he manifested consistently while winning enough votes to take the presidency.”

That was true about the Brexit referendum and about Modi’s win too: people knew who/what they were voting for. And yet, in America, there are just too many people who refuse to accept the verdict:

“(Trump) is nonetheless clearly impaired, gravely deficient somewhere at the intersection of reason and judgment and conscience and self-control… This president should not be the president, and the sooner he is not, the better.”

Does any of that sound like an objective criteria to you? Can’t almost every politician be thrown out by such subjective criteria (even if they are true)? In Britain, there were demands for a re-referendum on Brexit!

In India, on the other hand, even those dislike Modi-BJP-RSS, don’t say Modi cannot be PM. Nor do they demand a re-vote. Sure, politicians do, like Kejriwal and Mayawati after the UP elections, but the common man on the street doesn’t. Unlike the UK and the US, where a large number simply refuse to accept a democratic verdict.

How the times have changed…