Why Democracy Evolve To Stupid Governance?

No doubt, democratic form of governance is the best that we humans can have. Nevertheless, democracy can lead to stupid governance or government when the majority people have not attained the desired levels of mind development.

When the majority people are not in a position to correctly assess the quality of their would be leaders and exercise their democratic voting rights judiciously, democracy often leads to the choice of evil leaders. Often, this would hamper the development of good governance and pull the nation's progress backwards.

In this context, I would prefer to share with my readers the caution that my favorite book of divine guidance has to say about democracy. Let me quote:

Democracy, while an ideal, is a product of civilization, not of evolution. Go slowly! select carefully! for the dangers of democracy are:

Glorification of mediocrity.

Choice of base and ignorant rulers.

Failure to recognize the basic facts of social evolution.

Danger of universal suffrage in the hands of uneducated and indolent majorities.

Slavery to public opinion; the majority is not always right.

Let us examine the dangers of democracy when adopted carelessly:

Glorification of mediocrity

What we inherently understand as the basic quality of leadership is merit. Only meritorious leaders with good leadership qualities such as competency, character, courage and compassion can ensure overall good of the society or for that matter any group. Though, this is a well accepted fact, when democratic choice of selection is vested with the people without any safeguarding regulations, the majority people are often observed as glorifying mediocre people as leaders.

This happens when the majority people have not attained proper levels of human development index. In such a situation, the majority people would be with a mind development below the mean level. When majority choice is the democratic form of selection, the majority often try to select a leader who is equal or similar to one among them rather than going for the wise choice of selecting one with the desired qualities of leadership.

The result is most always the selection of mediocre leaders. Eventually, the society is forced to glorify mediocrity and the meritorious ones in the society are pulled down.

Choice of base and ignorant rulers

Democracy is essentially majority rule. When the majority are ignorant or below average in knowledge and other good qualities of human civilization, their choice for leadership would often be for the selection of characterless and ignorant rulers. Once that happens, continuous degradation sets in.

Failure to recognize the basic facts of civilization

A democratic government with glorified mediocre rulers with below average leadership qualities then leads to a governance that will ignore the basic facts of civilization. This will lead to reverse civilization or anti-progress or the development of non-homogeneous civilization. The gap between the rich and the poor and the haves and have-nots widens. The quality of education widely differs from place to place. The quality of commercial, judicial, law enforcement, media and other establishments begins to deteriorate.

Universal suffrage lands in the hands of ignorant and lazy majority

The democratic right of selection of government slowly get in to the hands of a majority who is essentially lazy and ignorant making it difficult for any one to do any positive changes in governance. The result is permanent or long term disaster of the nation from poor governance.

Slavery to public opinion

The democratic governmental system adopted for a nation with underdeveloped people soon evolves a government which is essentially enslaved to ignorant public opinion. It is not very difficult to see that the majority is not always right when the majority is not comprising of cultured and well educated individuals.

In this kind of a government, good people often suffer the most. Evil start enveloping the whole of the nation.

It is not difficult to visualize this problem. Any one with a reasonably good mind can easily realize this problem of democracy for any nation with majority underdeveloped people.

Democracy though the best, it is the best for the best kind of people and not for any tom-dick-and-harry! For the latter, democracy needs to be implemented with caution and restraint or due care.

If not, democracy could pull a nation backwards in progress. It could lead to stupid governance. Or even the so-called demon-cracy!

How many of my readers agree with this?

What could be the solutions?

I leave it to your wise thinking.

Share your views if you feel it important.

When Does Democracy Become Demon-cracy?

Before I go to explain my views on the question in the title of this blog, I would like to tell you a small real life experience that I had some time ago.

It was the time when the city where I lived during those days was on the verge of beginning a real estate bloom for the first time. It was not a metro, but a booming tier-2 city with a population nearing about a million.

Since plenty of farm land was available around the urbanized areas, lateral development was not much of a problem. The city planners had been pretty liberal in approving land diversion from farm land to housing plots. Land for building independent bungalow type houses was not very expensive.

Things got changed as the lateral expansion of the city reached its limits due to mismatches in the infrastructural development with regard to roads and public transport. Then the real estate businessmen of the area came out with new housing offers in the form of apartments and flats.

Many people, who did not want to get in to the problems of roads, water, electricity, transport, safety, etc that plagued the independent houses offered by the colonizers in diverted farm lands, thought the multi storied buildings which contained the flat type houses would be better. I too was one among them.

The purchase and getting in to the hotel type living in the flat were not much of a problem. For us it was like living in the heart of the city in a large hotel by spending much less. Initially, the flat owners and residents hardly felt any problem as the apartment complex was kept managed by the builder. The resident owners of the flats were a happy lot because they hardly realized the hardships of administering the complex!

There were security guards who saluted us at the gate, cleaning staff who cleaned the vitrified tiles of the corridors and the parking areas better than we ever imagined, staff who collected the wastes from our doors and others who did pretty odd jobs for the owners without any hue and cry. The water supply in our taps inside our flats was a neat 24 x 7 and so was the electricity. The lifts worked smoothly to take us up and down from all the floors! And all these things happening in the heart of a busy city! It was marvelous and totally enjoyable!

Our joys did not go like that for ever. A couple of months later, the general manager of the real estate company invited us to their office for some important discussion. There we were informed that our honey moon days are over and we, the flat owners are now of our own. We were told to take over the day to day management of our apartment complex. The responsibility of the builders was over, we were told. We were reminded to read the fine prints in the sale deeds to which we were all signatories when we signed up for making those deeds registered in our names.

Nothing to worry, though. They re-assured us. All we have to do is to form a democratic association of the owners, register it, get it equipped with an elected management committee in accordance with the laws of the land. We have to form a registered society of owners with its own bye-laws and an elected committee of our own representatives who did the management of our apartment complex in accordance with the law of the land.

Many of our co-owners resisted the move. No-no! This is injustice. We do not have time to do all these things. We do not have the expertise for this. Had this been the case, we would not have purchased this flat. Is this the way it happens elsewhere? 

As the majority group opinion was against, we simply moved out without any action plan. We were typical citizens who liked to enjoy all facilities but not with those thorns of responsibilities!

But the builders went ahead as they had told. One fine morning the security guards and the staff were all withdrawn from the premises of our large apartment building.

All of a sudden there was great anarchy. There was no security, no cleaning, no water and the stench of the filth accumulating became nauseating!

I was too surprised to find the ignorance of the educated upper middle class house owners in these matters. All the rules of the game were given to us well in advance and we all had all documents to make us aware of the situation. But none of us bothered to know. The majority of us were neither willing to accept any responsibility nor had the enthusiasm to enhance our basic knowledge in these matters so that we could responsibly act for our own sake.

I also remember the pains I had taken to gather a few like minded flat owners, educate them with the consequences and the action plans to mitigate the problems that we suddenly got into. I remember the pains I had taken to draft the bye-laws of our society and the joint efforts some of us took to get it registered and take over the day to day management of our apartment complex from the builders. It was one of the first of that kind of acts in that city at that time! I was one of the founder members and one of the office bearers of our society. I had to spend much time and efforts to manage the day to day maintenance of the building complex by doing the honorary service as an office bearer.

Now being directly involved in the day to day management of our residential apartment building, I learnt certain things. 

For me personally, it was not a difficult task. But I experienced that this otherwise simple administrative task could  turn out  pretty bad and embarrassing  unless I honestly do my honorary service with sincerity ensuring cooperation with others in the management committee.

The service you do and the decisions you take on behalf of others are much more difficult than similar things you do for your own.     

It  is not so easy when you have to do your service or take decisions in a democratic atmosphere. You are bound to be criticized or opposed even for those things that you consider as the most appropriate and desirable! 

If there are ten people, there would be at least ten opinions and preferences. Your fellows will not agree with you for many things unless they too have the same understanding level as you. When your fellows all seem not liking your ideas or when you have to devote much time to convince your fellows for your wise decision to get implemented you are bound to become frustrated! More than thinking and adopting the best administration for every body's good, the requirement now demands some thing else. You have to manage your fellow beings 'cleverly' for a good administration to set in. 

Thus it would become important for you to adopt the game of politics for managing the day to day administration! 

The game of politics thus becomes an important necessity when democratic administration is implemented. Democracy is rule by the people. But when the people are a mix of individuals with varying degrees of mind development, they can be considered as good and bad all at the same time! 

You realize that you and your fellows are all with two opposing qualities built in one. All are essentially demonic with some divine qualities  incorporated within their minds.

The good and bad traits are not equally distributed, but are in varying degrees. In many groups now, the root mean value is obviously trending towards bad or demonic. So when demonic qualities predominate, democracy becomes essentially a tricky game of politics making it demon-cracy!

In other words, democracy is the best when the root mean quality of the concerned group of people is essentially good. Otherwise, democracy tends to become demon-cracy and the demonic game of politics becomes its integral part!

And in the game of politics, every thing is right or there is nothing termed as wrong.

But the game of politics in demon-cracy slowly does wonderful things for the people. Its gaming experiments enhance the experiential mind capacities and slowly make the people recognize the desirability of  adopting good over bad. In simple terms, this means the era when people naturally seek goodness or divine qualities rather than slipping in to the darkness of those bad and evil attributes of the demons!

Divine goodness is superior to demonic evil. All evil and bad things will vanish and good things only prevail  as things get forward in the evolutionary progress.

The only hitch is that it, the evolutionary progress, takes long time spanning several generations!

The Twelve Essential Safeguards to Ensure Progressive Democratic Governments!

Democracy is by and large the best form of government for all progressive peoples. But this system could also cause degenerative governments to come into existence when the majority people who exercise their franchise are either irresponsible or do not have the basic mental maturity to discern right and wrongs.

It is the responsibility of the people to create their systems of government. They should not expect that there would be some divine intervention or help for them to create their system of governance. Whenever the governments cause extreme distress to the people, it has been natural for people to expect some divine help. But what they fail to understand due to their own immaturity is the ability that they have to set things right within themselves. Often it is their own stupidity that cause their miseries!

Humans in large groups often fail to evolve collective wisdom for their own good because most of them do not use their divinely bestowed intellect to analyze situations wisely.

Humans do have abundant freedom of choice and that is a divine endowment. However, it is also divinely mandated that they take the responsibility of all their acts and decisions. Wrong acts and decisions by the individuals and the groups could cause miseries to the wrongdoers and also to their innocent fellow beings.

When it comes to the selection of their leaders and their governmental systems, it is the responsibility of the people to use their intellects properly. If they fail to do it, they will face the consequences.

They should chose the wise men and women among them to create the most appropriate constitutions or guiding principles of their governments. If they fail to judge the wise among them, they will face the consequences.

Wise men and women are not those intelligent fellows with the least character. These are the clever ones and not the wise ones on whom they can trust. When the clever ones are entrusted with leadership, they would definitely take them for a ride!

So it is essential for the people to use their utmost available brains to find and select the worthy among them as their leaders. 

For representatives in the legislative branch they should elect only those who are qualified intellectually and morally to fulfill such sacred responsibilities. As judges of their high and supreme tribunals only those who are endowed with natural ability and who have been made wise by replete experience should be chosen.

If people want to live under good governance, they should prevent the following 12 things from happening:

1. Gain of unwarranted power by their elected leaders.

70:12.8

2. Machinations of ignorant and superstitious agitators.

70:12.9

3. Retardation of scientific progress.

70:12.10

4. Stalemates created by the dominance of mediocrity.

70:12.11

5. Domination by vicious minorities.

70:12.12

6. Control by ambitious and clever would-be dictators.

70:12.13

7. Disastrous disruption of panics.

70:12.14

8. Exploitation by the unscrupulous.

70:12.15

9. Taxation enslavement of the citizenry by the state.

70:12.16

10. Failure of social and economic fairness.

70:12.17

11. Mixing of religion with governance

70:12.18

12. Loss of personal liberty.

[ Adapted from the Urantia Book] 

Some Fundamental Truths About the Evolution of Wars and Governments

The first major challenge for the human races which had been evolving on earth was learning the techniques for acquiring the essential things for life such as food, shelter, family and the groups or clans. Once this was mastered at least partially, the next task was the regulation of human contacts.The development of industry demanded law, order, and social adjustment; private property necessitated government.

Not only on earth, but on all evolutionary planets beaming with evolutionary life such as that is on earth, development of antagonisms among the evolving humans are a natural phenomena. That is because, the evolving humans are not yet perfect in their mind levels. This causes the humans to be with varying capacities of understanding each other. Misunderstanding, mistrust and consequent animosities are therefore, natural.

When this is so, human groups have to learn the technique of bringing peace and soon they begin to appreciate the necessity for peace among them. They learn how to regulate themselves so that peace is established among them.

Anarchy causes misery and therefore establishment of law and order becomes essential for the evolving human groups to reduce their miseries.

The need for bringing law and order necessitated formation of governments.

It was essential for the struggling humanity to forcefully adopt the path of civilization as a necessity for their own existence. This is the natural tendency of evolutionary growth in all evolutionary worlds in this universe!

War is the natural state and heritage of evolving man; peace is the social yardstick measuring civilization’s advancement. 

Before the partial socialization of the advancing races man was exceedingly individualistic, extremely suspicious, and unbelievably quarrelsome. Violence is the law of nature, hostility the automatic reaction of the children of nature, while war is but these same activities carried on collectively.

And wherever and whenever the fabric of civilization becomes stressed by the complications of society’s advancement, there is always an immediate and ruinous reversion to these early methods of violent adjustment of the irritations of human inter-associations.

War is an animalistic reaction to misunderstandings and irritations; peace attends upon the civilized solution of all such problems and difficulties.

But there could be no such phenomenon as war until society had evolved sufficiently far to actually experience periods of peace and to sanction warlike practices such as sports and games. 

The very concept of war implies some degree of organization.

With the emergence of social groupings, individual irritations began to be submerged in the group feelings, and this promoted intra-tribal tranquility but at the expense of inter-tribal peace. 

Peace was thus first enjoyed by the in-group, or tribe, who always disliked and hated the out-group, foreigners. Early man regarded it a virtue to shed alien blood.

Modern air travel has reduced the limitations of distances.

But that has not yet enabled man to remove his suspicion about the foreigners!

When the early chiefs would try to sort out misunderstandings among their clans, they often found it necessary, at least once a year, to permit the people to have some other kind of fun-fights among themselves. The clan would divide up into two groups and engage in an all-day battle. And this for no other reason than just the fun of it; they really enjoyed fighting. The nature of enjoying a fight is within the minds of all underdeveloped humans. Humans will remove this trait only when they become perfectly developed in civilization!

Warfare persists because man is human, evolved from an animal, and all animals have a tendency to fight! In humans, this animal tendency of fighting and killing slowly gets removed from the human mind as human perfection of mind takes place with successive generations!

As it stands now, war and fight among humans in some form keep taking place due any one of the following reasons:

1. Scarcity of food: Man will fight to get food at any cost when food becomes scarce.

2. Scarcity of woman or opposite partner: Imperfect man would not mind fighting or killing for fulfilling this!

3. Showing off pride and superiority: Imperfect man does not consider others as equals. They would resort to violent ways to establish their superiority! They will resort to violent methods when their egos are hurt!

4. Imperfect humans have the animal tendency to acquire leadership at any cost. They would not mind resorting to violent means for achieving this. In olden times it used to be slavery. In today's world, it is all kinds of bossism. All imperfect humans would like to become adorable bosses to others. When they get the power or opportunity, they might even become sadistic to trouble those who happen to be under their control! Wars can happen for establishment of leadership!

5. Imperfect animal minded humans cannot forgive the wrongs of others and they get satisfaction only when they take revenge. The human imperfection of revenge is another cause for wars!

6. Imperfect humans cannot tolerate long term peace as their minds do aspire for fighting. Such imperfect humans create war like situations during long term peace times. Sports and games, to some extent, help the imperfect humans to vent their fight loving agitations of mind!

7. Religions of imperfect humans invariably approve war to establish superiority of their own faith. It is extremely difficult for the imperfect humans to understand the true divine nature of God!

Man will never accept peace as a normal mode of living until he has been thoroughly and repeatedly convinced that peace is best for his material welfare, and until society has wisely provided peaceful substitutes for the gratification of that inherent tendency periodically to let loose a collective drive designed to liberate those ever-accumulating emotions and energies belonging to the self-preservation reactions of the human species.

Nature confers no rights on man, only life and a world in which to live it. Nature does not even confer the right to live, as might be deduced by considering what would likely happen if an unarmed man met a hungry tiger face to face in the primitive forest. Society’s prime gift to man is security.

When rights are old beyond knowledge of origin, they are often called natural rights. But human rights are not really natural; they are entirely social. They are relative and ever changing, being no more than the rules of the game—recognized adjustments of relations governing the ever-changing phenomena of human competition.

Natural justice is a man-made theory; it is not a reality. In nature, justice is purely theoretic, wholly a fiction. Nature provides but one kind of justice—inevitable conformity of results to causes.

Justice, as conceived by man, means getting one’s rights and has, therefore, been a matter of progressive evolution.

Law is always at first negative and prohibitive; in advancing civilizations it becomes increasingly positive and directive.

Mankind’s struggle to perfect government on earth has to do with perfecting channels of administration, with adapting them to ever-changing current needs, with improving power distribution within government, and then with selecting such administrative leaders as are truly wise. 

So long as the majority humans remain without achieving reasonable levels of mind perfection, their evolutionary progress is incomplete. The last strains of genetic features they carry from their animal origins need to be polished by successive generations of evolutionary growth. This progress does not happen uniformly across all and therefore human society at any time during its evolutionary progress remains as a heterogeneous lot with varying levels of imperfection. The chances of democratic systems achieving near perfect governance under such a situation is very low and non-sustainable. Yet democracy is the ideal and desirable form of governance for humans who have surpassed their primitive stages of development.

While there is a divine and ideal form of government, it is a futile exercise to give the details of it to humans when they remain vastly under lower levels of mental maturity. The minds of such people will not accept the principles of such a governance even when that is divinely revealed!

So, humans of earth has to go forward to future generations facing all the trials and tribulations which in essence are there own creation. 

But that does not mean that the human race is going to be doomed.

On the contrary, it will progress continuously and every generation ahead would have some improvements over their predecessors! 

It is divinely destined that all evolutionary planets reach to their respective perfection levels at some point of time. No living planets are divinely destined to be doomed! Such a destiny is not in the plans of their divine creators!

Hence, earth too would eventually reach a glorious future. A future time when its peoples and its governments are more or less with the highest possible material perfection!

[Adapted from the Urantia Book-Paper-70]

The Politics and Strategy of Bans!

Many leading personalities in my country are very good strategists, who understand the great potential of artificial scarcity has in accumulating wealth in a selective manner.

They understand the first principle of economics very well which states: 'Demand is inversely proportional to supplies'. Simply put, it means that the demand for any goods (or even services) is more when its supply is less. In other words, if something is in excess, it would be difficult to realize good money from it because its demand (and price) would be less.

Would You Like to Ban the Plants from Growing?

So, if supply is abundand, there would be some problem for the suppliers to make good money or wealth for them. So if supply is abundant either more demand has to be created or else the supply is artificially cut from the consumers for creating an apparently high demand. 

If tea production is less, some straight forward producers adopt the technique of marketting which involve in enhancing the tea consumption in consumers by various advertising techniques. But this method is time consuming and expensive.

But you can perhaps make more money by less production through artificial scarcity created by the modern marketing technology called the ' ban technique' which is widely used in developing nations such as my own India.

Ban technique is relatively simple. It uses democratic power of administration and the psychology of humans.

First about the psychology of humans. Human beings, both men, women and children are naturally bound to do some challenges before they acquire their desired possession of food, partner, toy, recreation, freedom and the like. If food is abundant, they do not feel like eating! If it is not available, they feel so hungry that they can do anything for it!

If a man or woman is free to move around, then they do not feel the importance of freedom. But if they were imprisoned, they are prepared to spend any amount to buy their freedom!

So the ban technique is essentially involved in preventing people from getting what they need.

So, if a high demand for tea is to be created, you can use the ban technique instead of other less effective marketing methods. What is done in this is to make the people who are involved in government or administration to promulgate a law or ordinance which bans the possession and consumption of tea by people. If any one is found to violate the law, various kinds of punishments are stipulated. 

If the people are found not taking the law seriously, the law enforcing authorities need to catch a few harmless violaters and punish them in accordance with the provisions of the law to make others scared of the new law.

When this is done, tea would become a banned item and people start feeling the desire for this item which is now scarce and illegal. Some fellows might even become so entrapped in their desire for drinking tea that they would now be willing to spend a fortune for it. The tea which used to sell for Rs.250/- a kg would now begin to sell for Rs.25000/- a kg! The producer would now make a killing by less production. The only thing that he has to do now is to share a good part of his huge profits to the ban enforcers!

Ofcourse, the ban equations need not be so clear and obvious. For bans to become effective, they need to be implemented cunningly and deceptively! The good thing here is that the ban supporters are normally very clever people with very good intelligence than the average common man. They know exactly what they are supposedly doing or have to do.

So some enlightened leaders of the people may advice the less developed folks about the reasons why they took the trouble to ban the sale of alcoholic liquors in a particular state or a region or country. Alcohol brews are very easy to produce. It could be produced in the homes of the ordinary people just as they make their normal foods. If it were so, these alcoholic drinks would not have been a charming thing for the people to spend money for getting it and consuming it. They would never have liked its obviously nauseating taste! They would not have liked the half poisoned state of their mind and bodies after consuming it!

But then the clever leaders have been doing the ban technique on it for centuries in various nations and regions of the world that people have developed the motive force of attraction to it because of its ban and undesirability forced upon them.

Same is the case with all kinds of bans. The more you ban, the more the motive force of desirability developing in the people affected by the ban.

You deny some thing to your child and your child will develop the curiosity and eagerness to go after it. The more you try to punish, them for their violating your ban rule, the more they get the impulse to violate. When you try to stop a natural flow, pressure builds up. That is the natural law. The build up of pressure can go to such heights that it could even burst to full destruction of the thing that prevented the natural flow!

The americans a few generations ago had been experimenting with the ban technique on various things. Many of them in the current generation are realizing the follies of their previous generations. The current move to liberalize marihuana (ganja) could be viewed as an example to this kind of drastic changes in thoughts.

If you want your child not to go after some food or drink or drug or other kind of  perceived sins, the wise way is not any forceful ban technique. Do not create the ban presssure on the child to instigate him or her to violate your diktat. The best and ideal way is not to project any negative clamour on any thing resulting it to gain some degree of sin value!

Just as it is applicable to the child, it is applicable to groups of people as well.

Clever fellows who are proponents of the ban technique are trying to enhance the so called sin value to otherwise normal things such as alcohol, beef, pork, porn, meat, drugs, coffee, tea, carbonated drinks, packed foods, plastics, books, ideas, and the like. By doing so, they are enhancing the marketability of such things in an indirect fashion making those otherwise non-desirable things as most desirable to many fellows who are possessed with a bit more adventure type characteristic deep in their minds.

Do not be under the impression that the ban proponents do their ban propaganda for your good. All propagandas are for gaining some benefits. Bans are promulgated by governments and governments of modern times act only when propagandists do their work with full force. And for creating that full force propaganda, money is required. That money comes from the beneficiaries who spin money from the bans.

But humans are not same in mind. Their minds have so many things in varying degrees. While some say yes, some others are bound to say no! All propaganda naturally generate counter propaganda! For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction!

But then what should be done by us? Should we go with the ban proponents or the ban antagonists? 

My dear friend! Remember this universal law: Anything in excess is destructive poison. You have the freedom of choice. But your freedom should not harm my freedom or their freedom. While you live in this world, you should respect others who too are living in this world. How much and how best you proceed is well recorded in your mind itself. That is called human maturity and wisdom. 

But unfortunately, some humans do not have enough receptive power to tune to their own wisdom. Else they do not have the patience to do it. Some of them even forget that they are short lived humans and keep thinking that they are even greater than God!

What a pity!

Why It is Difficult for Government Institutions in a Democracy to Become Pioneers in New Technologies?

A couple of days ago, two senior level executives from a new foreign equipment manufacturer visited me. Their purpose was to introduce a few of the latest innovative process plant equipment that their company has successfully designed in the recent years. A few companies in the world who are keen to take advantage of modern innovations have already installed those in their factories and are taking advantage of those equipment.

As a matter of every day life for those involved with the engineering and technology business, this is nothing very unique. As for every business, there are consumers and suppliers in the engineering and technology business as well.

Engineers working in engineering and technology oriented line of business may have to work as a supplier or a consumer either at the same time or at different occasions.

Inside an Indian Public Manufacturing Facility-It is Too

Difficult for New Technologies To Be Adopted Quickly!

Researching, designing and commercializing new innovative machines, equipment and systems are the core business for some. Taking advantage of those new innovations for improving their own business activity is equally important for some others.

Humans of the advanced type are inherently innovative. They take advantage of the opportunities and innovate. In business innovations are dynamic process and is an essential requisite for existence. Those who fail to innovate perish or go out of business after some time.

Unfortunately all humans are not intellectually equal. All are at varying abilities at any given time as of now. Hence, there is the danger of the intellectually higher order humans keeping their lower order cousins perpetually under their command and disposal. Remember, in the olden days, the physically stronger ones had been doing exactly the same.

Higher ability does not necessarily mean that they are also higher in their spiritual qualities such as love, compassion, justice and character. Thus, there is a potential danger of the characterless but cleverer types keeping the inferior types always at a disadvantage.

Present day democracy is in its nascent state of development. But it came in to existence after testing all other forms of government in the past. Though it is not perfect as of now, it is undoubtedly the best form of government that humans can have.

Democracy gives some powers to the majority of those intellectually inferior humans to checkmate the potential onslaught of the superior minorities among their lot.

Thus, all democratic governments  try to ensure a leveled playing ground for all players in all human activities, including business.

Monopolistic and restrictive trade practices are not encouraged as a result of this. 

Are you wondering why I have written all these?

I shall try to clarify it now. Suppose that some superior humans invented some new technology which is beneficial to others in several ways. This benefit is likely to cause a high demand for this new technology. The group who pioneered this could now exploit this situation fully to their advantage. They can monopolize it and charge a high premium from the users which would enhance their returns several times their legitimate cost of developing this technology.

Had they been people with human values, perhaps they would not have done so. But, as of now, we have more number of clever characterless people than intelligent humanists.

Thus democratic governments and governmental institutions adopt the widely accepted practice of tendering for acquiring any types of goods or services. Justified practices which give equal opportunity to all stakeholders are kept as the ideal. All these processes are subjected to various kinds of checks and audits for finding and preventing violations.

Inducements of various kinds are often practiced and tried by some unscrupulous players to circumvent the rules of tendering and get undue advantages. As the time passes, more and more information on the types of inducements are gained by others which results in more and more rules and regulations in the public tendering processes.

As a result of this, over the time, public procurement procedures by the tendering process become very complex to such a situation that it is no more easy for government institutions to procure some thing for public benefit in the right time and in the right manner.

Now let me come back to the case of the two business executives about whom I told in the beginning. No, doubt, their company has a technology which is unique and very useful for my organization. Perhaps, my organization, which is a governmental one, could benefit both directly and indirectly if this technology is implemented. There are tangible and intangible benefits.

But perhaps, going by the rules and regulations which have matured over the years, it would be extremely difficult for my organization to make use of this new innovation. The reason for this is because the new technology is almost unique that we may designate it as 'proprietary'. A proprietary technology or equipment has no competitors and any attempt to procure such things by any governmental organization can cause doubts and suspicions on any body who tries to favor it. Due to this, many public servants who are responsible for public procurement shy away from taking decisions that involve proprietary technology or systems or equipment. It is not that we do not have some solutions to this kind of a problem. It does exist. But regrettably, the rule book solutions are mostly impractical as of now.

Some three decades ago, when I was a young engineer, such a thing was not so difficult. We had more freedom to take decisions in favor of our organization. But the scams and unscrupulous acts of others have caused problems for those who are not of that kind as well. Perhaps the overall benefit to the organization stands more or less similar then and now, though for different reasons. Then it was due to the offsetting effect of bad acts of some over the good acts of some. Now it is the effect of the complexity of rules and regulations tying the hands the good people to take beneficial decisions for the overall benefit of the organization while the bad ones keep doing damaging acts either clandestinely or due to ignorance. 

Some time ago, I wrote a blog about the damaging effects of rules and regulations made under certain compulsions thoughtlessly and ignorantly.

The situation is similar in the case of public procurement procedures as it stands now. Unfortunately, we have a severe shortage of experienced people with all round expertise to draft rules and regulations which are both effective as well as simple.

This kind of a situation is not unique to any one nation or society. It is more or less the same everywhere, where democracy has taken roots.

Perhaps, we may have to wait till our individuals mature as wise citizens for matured nations to evolve. Till such time, we may have to live with such problems in varying degrees!

Is privatization a solution to this?

Would you like to share your views? 

When Politics Becomes Professional and for Gaining Offices of Profit, Will Democracy Sustain?

The other day I was watching a Malayalam TV channel news where the media was beaming  the clippings of two lower level political functionaries in a verbal duel in front of an office which is to be presumed as some office of a university located in Kerala. I do not know these two men. One was in his late forties or fifties while the other was a handsome youth in his mid thirties. The former appeared to be a seasoned professional politician while the latter bore a typical look of a much pampered son of any rich business man of Kerala.

Apparently they belonged to the same political party and they were in that verbal duel that appeared to be maturing into a physical duel any time. Perhaps it did. But the media fellows censored the audio and the latter developments.

I could not get much of what the news. But this is what I could make up. There is an ongoing election to the Syndicate of the university which is a kind of democratic government of the university. These two were apparently candidates for getting elected to the syndicate and were too eager to win those 'offices of profit'. Both were claiming to be the official candidates of the party they represented. Perhaps their much experienced superior political bosses played a trick on them! They might have created a situation for these two contenders to fight the duel first to establish their might! I really do not know.

But one thing got clear to me. Democracy is no more a field of public service in India ( I have no idea about other countries). Democracy is all about capturing offices of profits by hoodwinking the public. Once the offices of profits are taken under possession by winning the elections or by getting nominated to it with the patronage of senior elected representatives, those offices could well be used for making profits. The only requirement is to do the profit making acts in the most secret manner as possible. This might be because the fundamental building tool of democratic system is the secret ballot!

Those in professional politics would never agree to this. They keep telling that they are humble servants of the people who are there only to serve the people with all their might. They are selfless people who are sacrificing their good lives for serving the rest of the not-so-able people to provide them the best public administration and governance. If they are not there, the society would be doomed! 

Perhaps they are right. We need some people to take up those offices.We need some supervisors who are to oversee the work of our civil servants. We need our own representatives for that to ensure our paid servants doing the work properly as per our liking. That is how we have evolved to make the democratic system as the most suited after finding all other systems of the olden days not so good.

We thought there would be shortage of people to take up these voluntary work of service on our behalf. In that case, it would have been easy for us. But alas! We are surprised by what we have been experiencing. There are more and more people among us to take up the high responsibilities for us. That gave us the choice of exercising our voting rights to elect those whom we thought as the best.

But our problems began when those seeking to serve us have become professional vote seekers and professional service manipulators whom we call as politicians. We have accepted the dictum: In politics, war and love every thing is acceptable. We did not want to elaborate it. But we accepted that these are those areas where morality has no place.

So morality has no place in politics. Then should we be concerned about falling morality in politics? Or, is it that we are really not concerned, but these media fellows are making some drama just to entertain us? After all they need to create and produce entertainment for us by making up news and audiovisuals that keep tickling our senses. The media is not particularly concerned with falling morality of our politics. Politics, acting, mimicry, sports and women are all the same for them! They are only interested in keeping their viewer ratings and incomes. They are also profit oriented professionals, after all.

If we conclude this way, what the much experienced Kerala Chief Minister told the media recently make some sense. He was replying to the media questions about the higher secondary education politics built up around large potentials of money making in his own state. 

Yes, what is so big about all these? Are these any worrisome things? Who doesn't know that state politics is essentially built up on the invisible potentials of  educracy, boozocracy and transpocracy? It is not so easy for those weak in arithmetic and business to understand the big potentials of education, liquor and transport! It is better that we all keep quite and do not talk about things that are too conventional.

Instead let us talk about much bigger issues. Let us talk about the prospects of China overtaking America in the 2050's. Let us talk about global warming. Let us talk about winning Cricket in London. There are so many such important issues to talk about endlessly.

Yet, I can't help the pondering of my inner consciousness. Is democracy for the purpose of getting some people to occupy all our offices of profit alone? When our royals of the past, whom our ancestors had selected for being in the office of profit for generations, crossed the limits, we had swept them away and discarded them. That had happened even to those who clung to their respective offices of profit and began exploiting us by threatening and terrorizing us. 

How long we will be tolerating our neo professional politicians of our modern democratic systems who occupy the offices of profits and do nothing to solve our problems, but keep using those offices for their own pleasure and benefits? 

Would it be necessary for us to device another -cracy in the future? 

What Do I Expect From the New Central Government of India to be Formed in May 2014?

Media men and women of India have been  chasing the common men and women on the streets for the last many days with their microphones and camcorders for capturing  the latter's voices on their expectations from the politicians who would get elected to form the national government shortly. 

The folks on the streets may not have high aspirations from any government because that is what time has taught them. Yet, they are too enthusiastic about the general elections and are eagerly siding with some party as their own this time. Some of them might even risk their lives for their preferred parties and their preferred candidates even while they know that their support would not give them any real or lasting benefits. For that matter they might even do the same for their favorite cricketer or film star! It is like being in a big game and elections in a democracy are indeed big games that some people play and want to play at the cost of the majority whose roles end the moment after they return from the polling booths.

And there also exist a large group of people who are neither any party members, candidates or their near and dear ones and also not the enthusiastic voter who support and vote for the sake of getting the thrill of being in a contest. And they are the people like me, who are merely silent observers who may or may not go for voting realizing pretty well that their votes and opinions make no difference to any one even while some pseudo intellectuals preach otherwise! They are knowledgeable and responsible citizens who are concerned with their nation's progress, development and governance but are shy to raise their voices or try to assert themselves because experience has made them realize the folly of their gentlemanly behavior among the majority who have no such self imposed restrictions!

Being a wise and gentle person having some good human nature is not some thing that could draw some regard and respect from those who haven't acquired these qualities yet. A man who stands for principles and ethics cannot be a political leader who could win the confidence of the majority people of the present day. He or she could be considered as a weakling who could not be depended upon. What the people of the present day want is a leader who would not hesitate to assert his authority to have his way. If it hurts the people, they might moan, but yet they might feel proud of their authoritative leader. A circus lion has the strength to tear its trainer, but it won't do it so long as the induced fear resides in its mind. Common people are like such lions! The lion in the circus cage would be happy if it gets its meat and the cage floor to sleep and it won't mind those occasional lashes from the trainer!

The political leaders are like those circus trainers. They know pretty well to engage their caged lions dance to the tunes of the circus band! They know pretty well about the needs of their caged lions and the lions would sleep for hours in the cage if they are not fed well. If they roar in protest, those whips are sufficient to keep them under command. 

So what do I expect from the new government of India? If I am like the circus lion, what I expect is nothing to be elaborated much.

If I am like one of those lions in the wild, perhaps I may expect not to be caged just as those other lions who are there. Better hide away from the circus trainers!

I do not want to be either way. I do not also want that the political leaders to be like those circus trainers.

I want to live like a human being in this country. I also want the political leaders who form the central government to be like human beings and facilitate people like me to live like human beings. And not exist like those caged lions!