THE MYTH OF INDIAN DEMOCRACY:A SIMPLIFIED OBSERVATION

“Democracy is the worst form of government other than all others that have been tried.”
-Winston Churchill
India has the distinction of being the largest democracy in the world, and most Indians would indeed be proud of that fact. They often believe- We choose our representatives who make decisions and thus we govern ourselves through them.
In the context of anarchy it becomes immensely important to examine that statement and thus show democracy for the farce that it is in real life.
In India, the first-past-the-post system of ‘democratic’ elections is followed. In this system the country is divided into constituencies on the basis of population and each constituency sends a member to the parliament. In each constituency, the candidate with the maximum number of votes is elected.
It is safe to assume that on an average; around 10 candidates contest the elections from each constituency. The average winner gets around 30% of the total votes polled.
While this in itself may not seem so alarming, it means that the entire parliament has the direct support of only 30% of the entire population.
Any bill can be passed through a majority in the parliament. i.e. A little more than 50%.
In purely mathematical terms, this means, in theory it takes only the support of 15% of the population of the entire country to make decisions on the lives of the remaining 85%.
In any election, all people do not vote. In India, the voter turnout is around 60%.
This means that the government gets the actual support of only around 9% of the country’s population.
What is even more disturbing is that this percentage can go even lower.
This percentage of actual representation can be called the ARP(actual representation percentage)
Thus the fact that we are ruled by a government of the people is a myth.
The person a voter elects to the parliament does not like the same kind of food as he does, have similar taste in movies or music. His mindset will be completely different to most of the voters. Thus it is highly unlikely that this elected person’s decisions in each situation will be identical to the decisions every person who voted for him would had made for themselves.

Many of the supporters may not really agree with every decision of their representative. None of them have any means to change those decisions that they don’t like.
For the majority of people who voted for other political parties or coalitions, their lives are governed by people they don’t support and whose ideology is not compatible and often conflicting with theirs. They are governed by people who they haven’t chosen.
Another great shortcoming of our democracy is the great contradiction of representativeness. While democratic theory dictates that it is a success of democracy, this actually decreases the ARP as winning candidates in each constituency will secure an even lower percentage of votes.
Taking all these factors into account, it can be said Indian claims at being a highly representative democracy are exaggerated. In fact, on careful observation it will be found that many of these factors are applicable to most countries, making democracy a non-representative form of government.
There is but one solution to all these problems-anarchy.