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India is a democracy

Götterdämmerung;2317577 said:
The EU with over 500 million people is big enough to be compared to India. And we also are very diverse with 23 official national languages and hundreds of local dialects. And still our social problems are far from the ones you guys have.

EU is not a country...
 
Götterdämmerung;2317136 said:
I'm from a democratic country. India is far from it, no matter how you look at it.

thats because u have a budget surplus and u have more than u need,last before the indystrial revolution or even 50 years you country was killing people in gas chambers.India has never done stuff like that,even if we fight and slaughter we do it face to face.
 
Aren't u confusing a developing nation with a democratic one??

We became democratic after we became industrialised and relatively wealthy. During the industrialisation our governments were rather authocratic, dictatorial.

EU is not a country...

We have an EU constitution and an elected EU Parlament.

---------- Post added at 05:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:25 PM ----------

thats because u have a budget surplus and u have more than u need,last before the indystrial revolution or even 50 years you country was killing people in gas chambers.India has never done stuff like that,even if we fight and slaughter we do it face to face.

How come I already knew long before that the gas chambers will come as an argument in this thread?

Sure, you never gased anyone as we did in the past and we did pay dearly for that. You in India are killing 6 million children each year by governmental neglect.
 
wow 8 pages Indian democracy, Tibet , IQ, starvation, Somalia, North Korea and i still have no idea what the topic is exactly about ?
 
FSf5r.jpg
 
And Tibet was Eternal Part of China ? That wasn't Forced Occupation huh?

Thanks for your equaling India democracy with China authoritarianism!

Indeed you've proven India democracy is no more holly-cow than China authoritarianism.

So, stop being hilarious about I-saner-than-you sort of cr@p!
 
Democracy ain't worth a penny these days. You know what I am saying? It's a bluff rather than virtue.
On a side note, the Chinese are genetically free, so their society is authoritarian, to keep the humans in order, you know what I am saying?

---------- Post added at 09:44 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:42 PM ----------

EU is not a country...
Very true. EU is nothing but Burssels. You know what I am saying? It's nothing but a Euro Jews dream.
 
Now shut-up, India is a democracy

...

This line of words reflects vividly how Indian democracy is.

Indian democracy is a type of oligarchy that those without power must shut-up. – Indian democracy is a shut-up democracy.

Indian democracy is a place where under-privileged caste must obey their superior caste, where millions of children disallowed access to the benefits of democracy and their only fate to take the ill results of democracy and to starve to death; where many others are deprived the human rights of being educated. – Indian democracy is a starvation and illiteracy democracy with rampant corruption.

…

Let me tell you (in the biggest font):
Somalia is a democracy!
 
Thanks for your equaling India democracy with China authoritarianism!

Indeed you've proven India democracy is no more holly-cow than China authoritarianism.

So, stop being hilarious about I-saner-than-you sort of cr@p!

India was a dominion in 1948. It became a republic and democracy in 1950.
 
The Farce of Bharati “democracy” was shattered by the Dr. Ambedkar and the Dalits who after 60 years have not been able to get the “right to live” and or shed the bondage of slavery and untouchability. The Untouchables, Dalits and Shudras represent 450 million people, but they are subservient to majoratarianism which is controlled by a coterie of upper caste familis. The Nehru/Gandhi famliy have a stranglehold on the politics of Bharat and they will not allow alternate leadership. This plutocratic kleptocracy is imposed to keep the power away from the Muslims, Sikhs, Dalits and Maoists. If it is a democracy it should adhere to the “popular principles” of adult franchise internally and externally.“

Indian Hollow "Democracy": Arundhati Roy​

Today, words like “progress” and “development” have become interchangeable with economic “reforms”, deregulation and privatisation. “Freedom” has come to mean “choice”. It has less to do with the human spirit than it does with different brands of deodorant. “Market” no longer means a place where you go to buy provisions. The “market” is a de-territorialised space where faceless corporations do business, including buying and selling “futures”. “Justice” has come to mean “human rights” (and of those, as they say, “a few will do”).

This theft of language, this technique of usurping words and deploying them like weapons, of using them to mask intent and to mean exactly the opposite of what they have traditionally meant, has been one of the most brilliant strategic victories of the tsars of the new dispensation. It has allowed them to marginalise their detractors, deprive them of a language in which to voice their critique and dismiss them as being “anti-progress”, “anti-development”, “anti-reform” and of course “anti-national” – negativists of the worst sort. Talk about saving a river or protecting a forest and they say, “Don’t you believe in progress?” To people whose land is being submerged by dam reservoirs and whose homes are being bulldozed they say, “Do you have an alternative development model?” To those who believe that a government is duty-bound to provide people with basic education, health care and social security, they say, “You’re against the market.” And who except a cretin could be against a market?

This language heist may prove to be the keystone of our undoing. Two decades of this kind of “progress” in India have created a vast middle class punch-drunk on sudden wealth and the sudden respect that comes with it – and a much, much vaster, desperate underclass. Tens of millions of people have been dispossessed and displaced from their land by floods, droughts and desertification caused by indiscriminate environmental engineering – the massive infrastructural projects, dams, mines and Special Economic Zones. All of them promoted in the name of the poor, but really meant to service the rising demands of the new aristocracy.

The battle for land lies at the heart of the “development” debate. Before he became India’s finance minister, P Chidambaram was Enron’s lawyer and member of the board of directors of Vedanta, a multinational mining corporation that is currently devastating the Niyamgiri Hills in Orissa. Perhaps his career graph informed his world-view. Or maybe it’s the other way around. In an interview a year ago, he said that his vision was to get 85 per cent of India’s population to live in cities. Realising this “vision” would require social engineering on an unimaginable scale. It would mean inducing, or forcing, about 500 million people to migrate from the countryside into cities. That process is well under way and is quickly turning India into a police state in which people who refuse to surrender their land are being made to do so at gunpoint. Perhaps this is what makes it so easy for P Chidambaram to move so seamlessly from being finance minister to being home minister. The portfolios are separated only by an osmotic membrane. Underlying this nightmare masquerading as “vision” is the plan to free up vast tracts of land and all of India’s natural resources, leaving them ripe for corporate plunder.

Already forests, mountains and water systems are being ravaged by marauding multinational corporations, backed by a state that has lost its moorings and is committing what can only be called “ecocide”. In eastern India, bauxite and iron ore mining is destroying whole ecosystems, turning fertile land into desert. In the Himalayas, hundreds of high dams are being planned, the consequences of which can only be catastrophic. In the plains, embankments built along rivers, ostensibly to control floods, have led to rising riverbeds, causing even more flooding, more waterlogging, more salinisation of agricultural land and the destruction of livelihoods of millions of people. Most of India’s holy rivers, including the Ganga and the Yamuna, have been turned into unholy drains that carry more sewage and industrial effluent than water. Hardly a single river runs its course and meets the ocean.

Sustainable food crops, suitable to local soil conditions and microclimates, have been replaced by water-guzzling hybrid and genetically modified “cash” crops which, apart from being wholly dependent on the market, are also heavily dependent on chemical fertilisers, pesticides, canal irrigation and the indiscriminate mining of groundwater.

As abused farmland, saturated with chemicals, gradually becomes exhausted and infertile, agricultural input costs rise, ensnaring small farmers in a debt trap. Over the past few years, more than 180,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide. While state granaries are bursting with food that eventually rots, starvation and malnutrition approaching the same levels as in sub-Saharan Africa stalk the land.

It’s as though an ancient society, decaying under the weight of feudalism and caste, was churned in a great machine. The churning has ripped through the mesh of old inequalities, recalibrating some of them but reinforcing most. Now the old society has curdled and separated into a thin layer of thick cream – and a lot of water. The cream is India’s “market” of many million consumers (of cars, cellphones, computers, Valentine’s Day greeting cards), the envy of international business. The water is of little consequence. It can be sloshed around, stored in holding ponds, and eventually drained away.

Or so they think, the men in suits. They didn’t bargain for the violent civil war that has broken out in India’s heartland: Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal.

As if to illustrate the connection between “union” and “progress”, in 1989, at exactly the same time that the Congress government was opening up India’s markets to international finance, the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), then in the opposition, began its virulent campaign of Hindu nationalism (popularly known as “Hindutva”). In 1990, its leader, L K Advani, travelled across the country whipping up hatred against Muslims and demanding that the Babri Masjid, a 16th-century mosque that stood on a disputed site in Ayodhya, be demolished and a Ram temple built in its place. In 1992 a mob, egged on by Advani, demolished the mosque. In early 1993, a mob rampaged through Mumbai attacking Muslims, killing almost 1,000 people. As revenge, a series of bomb blasts ripped through the city, killing about 250 people. Feeding off the communal frenzy it had generated, the BJP defeated the Congress in 1998 and came to power at the Centre.

It’s not a coincidence that the rise of Hindutva corresponded with the historical moment when America substituted communism with Islam as its great enemy. The radical Islamist mujahedin – whom President Reagan once entertained in the White House and compared to America’s Founding Fathers – suddenly began to be called terrorists. The Indian government, once a staunch friend of the Palestinians, turned into

Israel’s “natural ally”. Now India and Israel do joint military exercises, share intelligence and probably exchange notes on how best to administer occupied territories.

By 1998, when the BJP took office, the “progress” project of privatisation and liberalisation was about eight years old. Though it had campaigned vigorously against the economic reforms, saying they were a process of “looting through liberalisation”, once it came to power the BJP embraced the free market enthusiastically and threw its weight behind huge corporations like Enron. (In representative democracies, once they are elected, the people’s representatives are free to break their promises and change their minds.)

Within weeks of taking office, the BJP conducted a series of thermonuclear tests. Though India had thrown its hat into the nuclear ring in 1975, politically, the 1998 nuclear tests were of a different order altogether. The orgy of triumphant nationalism with which the tests were greeted introduced a chilling new language of aggression and hatred into mainstream public discourse. None of what was being said was new, only that what was once considered unacceptable was suddenly being celebrated. Since then, Hindu communalism and nuclear nationalism, like corporate globalisation, have vaulted over the stated ideologies of political parties. The venom has been injected straight into our bloodstream.

In February 2002, following the armed raid on a train coach in which 58 Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya were burned alive, the BJP government in Gujarat, led by Chief Minister Narendra Modi, presided over a carefully planned genocide of Muslims in the state. The Islamophobia generated all over the world by the 11 September 2001 attacks put the wind in their sails.

The machinery of the state of Gujarat stood by and watched while more than 2,000 people were massacred. Gujarat has always been a state rife with tension between Hindus and Muslims. There had been riots before. But this was not a riot. It was a genocidal massacre, and though the number of victims was insignificant compared to the horror of, say, Rwanda, Sudan or the Congo, the Gujarat carnage was designed as a public spectacle whose aims were unmistakable. It was a public warning to Muslim citizens from the government of the world’s favourite democracy.

After the carnage, Narendra Modi pressed for early elections. He was returned to power with a decisive mandate from the people of Gujarat. Five years later he even repeated this success: he is now serving a third term as chief minister, widely appreciated by business houses for his faith in the free market, illustrating the organic relationship between “union” and “progress”. Or, if you like, between fascism and the free market. In January 2009, that relationship was sealed with a kiss at a public function. The CEOs of two of India’s biggest corporations, Ratan Tata (of the Tata Group) and Mukesh Ambani (of Reliance Industries), celebrated the development policies of Narendra Modi and warmly endorsed him as a future candidate for prime minister.

Only two months ago, the nearly $2bn 2009 general election was concluded. That’s a lot more than the budget of the US elections. According to some media reports, the actual amount that was spent is closer to $10bn. Where, might one ask, does that kind of money come from?

The Congress and its allies, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), have won a comfortable majority. Interestingly, more than 90 per cent of the independent candidates who stood for elections lost. Clearly, without sponsorship, it’s hard to win an election. And independent candidates cannot promise subsidised rice, free TVs and cash-for-votes, those demeaning acts of vulgar charity that elections have been reduced to.

When you take a closer look at the calculus that underlies election results, words like “comfortable” and “majority” turn out to be deceptive, if not outright inaccurate. For instance, the actual share of votes polled by the UPA in these elections works out at only 10.3 per cent of the country’s population. It’s interesting how the cleverly layered mathematics. Into the Inferno: Hollow Language and Hollow Democracies. What can we do, now that democracy and the free market are one? by Arundhati Roy
 
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Dont waste your time in "google"ing about places where India is lagging behind, instead "Google" how great the word "DEMOCRACY" means.

...

What a joke! :lol:

The meaning of democracy is NOT dependent on what you google out!

The meaning of democracy is solely dependent on how the people, culture of the people, the condition of social soil, and the quality of the people that collectively behave.

Unlike the European countries, the land of Bharat does not have the culture of democracy. A typical anti-democracy tradition is your Hindu caste system. Another problem is you poor education. Surely your educated a few are striving to eliminate this social illness and try to educate the mass. But the social soil can’t be changed overnight: it takes centuries of continuous, unremitting work by all the people.

Stop being hunky-dory! The mere form or label of democracy will NOT make you democracy.

Open your eyes:
North Korea is The Democratic People's Republic of Korea

---------- Post added at 12:16 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:14 PM ----------

India was a dominion in 1948. It became a republic and democracy in 1950.

May I change your statement to reflect the truth?

"India was a dominion in 1948. It was labeled a republic and democracy in 1950."
 
Götterdämmerung;2317781 said:
We became democratic after we became industrialised and relatively wealthy. During the industrialisation our governments were rather authocratic, dictatorial.



We have an EU constitution and an elected EU Parlament.

---------- Post added at 05:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:25 PM ----------



How come I already knew long before that the gas chambers will come as an argument in this thread?

Sure, you never gased anyone as we did in the past and we did pay dearly for that. You in India are killing 6 million children each year by governmental neglect.

we dont have resources and please dont give your 50 years bullshit.Your government actively participated in arming the Croats and indirectly caused so much mayhem in the erstwhile Yugoslavia.

Dont give me statistics here,India is a huge country with zero natural resources and despite all the humbug,we have been managing well.

That EU you talk about is made out of enslaving the brown and black man and sucking him dry,dont act cool now.

We ll see what u do when the world stops buying your cars.
 
India was a dominion in 1948. It became a republic and democracy in 1950.

Once you step out of the new shiny Airport in any of the Indian cities you would find beggars lining up the streets almost all of them from the Unfortunate lower castes. In cities like Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi more than 60-80% of it is SHANTY TOWN where you will find the worst imaginable inhuman conditions and people are living out there eking out a living......

And the point is according to Hindu caste system.....you arent supposed to help them because it was due to their previous lives such a situation has come forth.......another myth spread by the upper castes.

In almost all the villages Lower castes live segregated...........I am not getting the website but just last week a family in a village starved to death due to lack of drinking water as their village was cut off from the drinking wells just because someone dared to take water from the Common well which Upper castes had access to.

Such is the state .
 
India is a disgrace to the world......this is coming from an Indian who had the great privilage to live in a true Democracy - USA. In India picture this out:

5-10% of Upper castes have garnered all resources from Govt to the media .....u name it.....bueurocracy everything........And the Hindu caste system which denies education to the majority (80% of populace) is in place........

Most of the posters here are either Brahmins (Highest priestly caste) or from other upper castes and it is obvious they would support it......

Picture this out guys......I am in India ......I know the reality.

81% of India lives on less than 0.40 cents per day (that is 0.40 $/day).

70% of Indians dont have access to toilets.

50-60% OF Indians dont have enough food to eat 2 times a day.......Most eat once a day or some people eat once a week.

Infant malnutrition is atleast 10-20 times worse than Subsaharan africa.

In other words.......India is way poorer than Sub-saharan africa.

Most of the posters here from India belong to the Upper caste and they will rush to defend their country........but they always blame others and deny the truth.

India is a joke in the name of democracy..........To determine a status of a person AT THIS BIRTH(caste system) is the most undemocratic system in the world.

You should take a look at the Indian media channels once.........you will think what the heck is going on?.......why are they reporting Cricket and bollywood????........where is the news for hunger, starvation , deaths which majority of Indians go through........thats right all of it is blanked out !.

I have nothing more to say...........If you call India a democracy then you can also call George Bush a peace maker.

5-10% upper castes have all the wealth?

If that was the case there ll be blood flowing in the rivers tomorrow.

Yeah i m Brahman from Tamilnadu and i have travelled all over the country and i know the status,inequality exists but not on the basis of caste,i can assure you that.

I dont think anyone gets rich simply on the basis of caste,in the old world the upper caste were rich because they had all the land and after the land reforms they are all gone.Today the biggest issue in the country is corruption and abuse of power,not caste.

From what we all know,there is reservation for every caste and even more so for the Dalits.In my state there is 69% reservation.Much more than the allowed 50%.

And secondly,u said india lives on 0.4 dollars per day,so how much is that in rupees?iwe take 40 rupees per dollar,it is 16 rupees.I highly doubt that statistic and even if u beg,u ll make more money than that.

Now,i ll tell u abt the indian system.a peasant living in a village tills the land and eats the produce,i dont knw how much he makes but he is not starving.This how most indian people live and they get food.

People who eat once/twice a day?You know what they eat?I know rickshaw drivers in Bihar who drink sattu powder with milk twice a day and pull rickshaws,u know what sattu is?

It is calorie rich,fat rich food which gives u taqat to last a day of hard work and they are not complaining.

According to you,if i go eat junk food paying 100s of rupees 4 times a day,i am prosperous but if i eat healthy sattu twice a day,i am starving.

And most of the lack of progress is in the states of UP/Bihar/Bengal/Orissa/parts of MP/AP

You come to any part of south india and nobody is starving there.who why are they not starving?

I ll talk about my home state TamilNadu,TN is a water starved state depending on few rivers for agriculture and we are the only place in India which dont get rainfall when the rest of the country gets,many parts of the state are very dry with no scope for agriculture.

But,TN is amongst the most industrialized and progressive states in the country.The people of TN are there alla round in every profession and in many countries.

This is because TN which had 50% literacy or even less during 1947 now has nearly 80.3% literacy and no religious violence or divisions.

This is because we had a mid day -meal scheme where kids were given food and a lot of freebies during the 1960s and 70s to attend school,getting educated was in the mind of most people,especially the dalits.

Today u can see TN a state with maximum backward castes and maximum reservations being a top state in the country on all accounts.

No need to talk about AP/Karnataka and Kerala.They are doing great too,Maharashtra and Gujarat are doing great too.

Punjab,Haryana,Himachal are also awesome.

That leaves us with the remaining states where it is a matter of governance.

I agree on only one thing,Government has failed in investing in Education and Health properly,like those gusy who are still uneducated even after 1991 liberalization are losing out on opportunities.

Now please dont tell me that this is the fault of the upper castes,it is a collective failure.

And Brahmans all across the world are amongst the least influential,poor minorities.

Hindu caste system denies education to no-one,dont talk mythology here.

And whatever education they denied back then is pretty much useless now.

In my state there are many people of other castes who are more intelligent than many brahmins and that includes dalits too.

So,now u r going to judge India from tabloids like TOI and NDTV,are not u guilty of giving them importance and attention in the first place and now complaining again.

And i dont know where u live/lived in india but i have lived in Madras/Bangalore/Hyderabad/delhi/Mumbai/Guwahati/Indore and travelled to all corners of India and i stand by what i say.

i dont know if you are a dalit,but in case you are,there is so much oppurtunity for u in India and if u r wasting all that and cribbing on the internet,then u r the loser.

simple as that.
 

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