Originally Posted by
Arvindc
Freedom of thought is more important then freedom of speech. If the thought is not free then the speech would also be not free and so would be the decision of pressing choosing ballot box's button.
For democracy, a holistic view has to be taken. The filling nomination papers and pressing of ballot box's button is not sufficient. It is just a small part of whole complex system of governance.
In a simplistic form, the correctness and effectiveness of any process can be determined by considering the whole process as a black box and then evaluating the outputs based on the inputs.
The input here is an opportunity for the people's to choose their leader (MP/MLA) (not the vote). The output is a the elected MP/MLA.The evaluation criterion is whether the elected MP/MLA is the choice of majority of the people.
To check the result, the output can be compared with known choices of the majority of the public. One of the formost of which, in this context, is people do not want a corrupt, criminal or an ineffective person as their leader. (This has been obtained by other procedures like mass opinion survey at community, national levels. People can also cross check such results, if they doubt, at individual level by aggregating the opinions of his/her friends relatives, co-workers etc. It can be reasoned that such opinions would be honest as the result of opinion is not impacting the participant in any way.)
Obviously, If the result of applying the black box procedure is an MP/MLA who has either one or more of the characteristics of corrupt, criminal or an ineffective, then the black box procedure has failed.
Considering that the above happens, the question is why do people have such biases?
The important thing to note here is that biases of caste, religion, region, party-loyalty, etc comes from taught behaviour and not hereditary behaviour.
People always choose what they thing as "good" unless, they are compelled to compromise.
The term "putting a gun on head" was used not only for it's literal meaning .
Again, what happens inside the election booth, does not make a nation's government as democratic. Democracy has much wider meaning. It has to be viewed in much wider context.
There is a lot of social engineering that's being applied which, I believe was not accounted in the 'democracy ratings'.
To give a small example, look at any elections, 'Gram Panchayat, 'Civic Body', MP/MLA, people would know who has voted for whom. Though it's only you who know's which button you have pressed in the election booth, still people find out which button you have pressed. It's also a common knowledge that this vote data is aggregated, based on region, cast, religion, profession, etc which ultimately forms the 'agenda' of real governance. The agenda of whom to give punishment postings and whom the reward posting, which region has to be developed, who all are to given preferential treatment etc. etc. Even the, police, judiciary and public departments/agencies like Income Tax, CBI etc falls into the same category, they are not free from government intervention. That's why creating a candidate's 'hawa' (will win image) is important. People fall for this 'Hawa' to avoid being seen in the wrong side. Do you see the complexity and interlinking of the multiple process?
Haven't you seen many people changing their behaviour ones they enter a foreign country? Have you ever wondered why this change in behaviour happens at two different places, when the person and personality still remains the same? Doesn't governance play a big role here in people's decision?