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The Dead Democracy

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Submitted By akashmukherjee
Words 2760
Pages 12
Money, coercion, and power - the three things that rule the world's second largest nation with 1.1 billion people. Corruption in India runs so deep within the society that it can no longer be considered simply a problem with the society but instead a way of life that there is no escaping. This problem has grown to such a magnitude that the corruption is affecting the fundamental establishments of democracy. As Ben Doherty, a reporter for Guardian Australia and twice a Walkley award winner for his foreign reporting, states, “[India] instead of being of the people, for the people, by the people, has become a government of the corrupt, for the corrupt, by the corrupt.” The sad truth is that India, although once prided as the world’s largest democracy, can no longer retain that title as it has transformed into an oligarchy where the power lies in the hands of the rich and the corrupt.
While a democracy must be driven by the people, it is not necessarily a good form of government. The definition of a democracy, according to Sean Connolly in his book Democracy, is a “government where the people have the power and… [that] works to benefit these people” (3). Essentially, he is saying that the government in a democracy is “of the people” and “by the people” so that the people have the power, and “for the people” so that the government actually works for the people and not for its own selfish interests. In addition, Connolly supports the definition that Winston Churchill put forth calling democracy the “worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time” (Churchill qtd. in Connolly). This is vital as the presence of corruption does not automatically disqualify a country as a democracy. In fact, corruption can be prominent as Dr. Michael Kugelman, Senior Program Associate for South and Southeast Asia AT Woodrow Wilson International

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