Democracy imperfect

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time" - Winston Churchill, 1947

This Op-ed in the Times by Paul Krugman could as well have been written for India.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Polish legislature, the Sejm, operated on the unanimity principle: any member could nullify legislation by shouting “I do not allow!” This made the nation largely ungovernable, and neighboring regimes began hacking off pieces of its territory. By 1795 Poland had disappeared, not to re-emerge for more than a century.

Today, the U.S. Senate seems determined to make the Sejm look good by comparison.

Whether its a regional movie like Jhenda (also remember protests against Ashutosh Gowarikar's Jodha-Akbar) or a comment by SRK on IPL, any political party or son of a politician objects and brings half the nation's media to attention and sometimes even holds the Govt's policy decisions to ransom.

Just explains that democracy as practiced across the world is far from perfect!

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