While there is too much of cribbing going on about the dysfunctional government and the mis-functioning authorities, at some point we all fail to see to what an extent we have been using these as excuses to cover up our own fallacies.

After a point, these become chants of procrastinating individuals, who would do nothing but only have vibrant conversations about the changes they will want to see. Starting from performing their own duties like voting, debating and questioning the sap of democracy – The People are no conveniently relishing the state of limbo.

Text book democracy
Blaming the politicians, most of us are mostly taking it as an excuse to ‘bunk’ elections. The turn out for voting is plunging and the ones who end up voting are the planted voters, or the ones operating on ‘election perks’. This notion of text book democracy, where the population is theoretically still participating in elections to elect their representatives of course will lead to an oligarchy that we witness today in India.

The greatest evil of all time “ignorance” is gaining hold in today’s ironically scientific world. An ignorance of many more folds, where people might know evolution, or even know to use smart phones, but would not know who is causing them the daily troubles they face – fuel price hike, inflation, debt, pollution and a whole lot of the issues today the population faces is attributed to an umbrella term ‘global crisis’.

The leaders feed the same trash, and the population is more than happy to chew on that cud and stay lethargic about the problems – these are problems which are directly affecting everyone’s lives on a daily basis. The cloud of ignorance has culminated into a carapace which the population uses to blame everyone else but themselves and silently move on their crawling lives.

When the people stop speaking and acting, that is technically the death of democracy. We in India, the largest democracy in the world will blame anyone else but not ourselves.

Why won’t we vote?
Everyone’s the same – this political party or the other – everybody is corrupt – they come, loot us and go! Why should I vote and become an accomplice?

This tone is commonly heard amongst us. Well some of it might be true – that we are left with little choice, but then we have reached this state also because of our inaction. Further inaction will push us into an abyss with no chance of return. Participative democracy might be flawed, but for now there is no better alternative. Keeping this as the first step we can slowly build better systems with integrity and compassion.

Abstaining from participating in democracy is anarchic. And anarchism yields nothing but chaos ; while some might argue that chaos is good, I would say not beyond an individual. You cannot have a chaotic society with infinite orientations.

Gist is, by blaming the system all we are ending up doing is finding an excuse to excuse ourselves of our duties and responsibilities.

Change should start with the person in the mirror!