Democracy and freedom« Thread Started on Aug 2, 2007, 6:46am » --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Democracy and freedomread at sourceAs India completes 60 years of independence, it is important to ponder a couple of basic issues. We are justly proud of India being a vibrant democracy despite shortcomings. The gargantuan task of holding free and fair elections in a country with a population of over a billion people is being performed with increasing efficiency. People vote with remarkable freedom and change Governments. The country has an independent judiciary and a robustly free media. The main importance of a formal political democracy, however, lies in the fact of its being the institutional cradle for a progressive maximisation of human freedom. Not all democracies have discharged this function well. In some, people have voted for Governments and measures that have snuffed out democracy. After all, Adolf Hitler came to power on the basis of popular votes. Freedom has both an individual and a societal dimension. In its essence, it connotes a situation in which individuals are able to realise all their inherent potential and take and implement autonomous decisions on the basis of conclusions arrived through the exercise of reason in the light of morality. The societal dimension pertains to the creation of conditions that make all this possible. This is not an easy thing to do at a time when a wide-range of media-driven impulses and ideas, which are by no means value neutral, impinge on the mind. Particularly strong is the influence of advertising which, in the age of the television as the dominant media, is increasingly the cutting age of market capitalism. Its objective is simple: Increase the sale of goods and consumption of services through perennially rising demand. In the process, consumption is projected as the supreme goal in life, and everything else as subordinate to it. Two things result from this. The first is the tendency to judge a person's worth by his or her ability to consume and not by his or her character. Lifestyle is more important than whether a person is honourable, considerate, compassionate and rational, and has the ability to take autonomous decisions and the courage and strength to stick by them. Second, when consumption becomes the most important goal of life and morality takes the backseat then everything - including crime - that helps to further it, appears warranted. The law and order situation deteriorates.

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