Killing Democracy... And Progress

As our ideological enemies celebrate the ritualism of their “democracy,” now that the results of the elections in Jammu & Kashmir are with us, allow me to turn the focus on the fact that, while the Congress and the National Conference of the Abdullahs will now call the shots, both these parties have actually LOST vote share significantly. In other words, the results actually do not reflect the “popular will.” As this report says:

"It is perhaps the ultimate irony of the Jammu & Kashmir assembly elections - the party that lost most in terms of vote share looks like being the biggest gainer of the elections. That's the National Conference (NC).

Analysis of vote shares based on detailed results shows that the NC lost a huge 7.1% in terms of vote share in the Valley and 3.9% in the Jammu region and yet managed to hold on to the same number of seats as in 2002.”

The report closes by saying that the vote share of the Congress in the Valley is now less than 10 per cent.

The report is aptly titled, “Losers turn winners.”

I feel sorry for the poor people of Kashmir who turned up in droves in the bitter cold to vote. They had hope. Now it is “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

The government in J&K is also highly centralized, in keeping with Congress public administration in the rest of the country. Srinagar is a city without a mayor. The CM calls all the shots all over the devastated territory.

Note that democracy seeks to diffuse power, not concentrate it. Which is why I believe only the Swiss practice real democracy. Switzerland is land-locked, like Kashmir or Nepal. Yet it is one of the richest places on the planet. They do not fight wars – but all the citizens are armed. They like trade: The WTO is headquartered in Geneva. (Who needs a WTO anyway?) Rousseau lived in Geneva. Would he call the J&K elections "democracy"? Would Pericles?

The Swiss have no national language. The people speak French, German and Italian and occupy distinct linguistic regions. Just like J&K has three distinct parts: Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh.

There is a better world than this.

And we must get there.

Soon!

Now for some more bad news: A new report says that the Indian market is “not suitable” for low cost airline services.

It says 5 airports handle 70 per cent of traffic. Further, there are no secondary airports. And there is very little air connectivity outside the 5 mega metros. The report concludes by advising entrepreneurs to stay away from this field.

I have no hesitation in saying that it is our The State that has killed this industry – an industry that was keeping the customer happy; that too, in a country where surface transport is horrible. This was Progress.

They killed it.