Is Liberal Democracy in its last lap?

BR Ambedkar, the Proud Legacy of every Indian

We live in the Age of Disruption. Not just technology, products, or service delivery, but our ideas, beliefs, processes, and structures are also in a change mode. Will the lofty legacy of liberal democracy and egalitarian governance give way to newer, scarier, and more ominous changes? 

Donald Trump has, in his avatar 2.0, solidified his image as the ultimate disruptor- unpredictable, inconsistent, totally transactional, and visibly selfish and greedy. He pursues a nakedly, racism-tanned divisive agenda but couches it in ultra-nationalism.  If Xi, Putin, Modi, and Netanyahu are all equally upset and scurrying to find fresh equilibrium, then Donald Trump is indeed somebody the world cannot wish away.

The truth is Trump is the result of an evolution, in fact, a governance devaluation, that has been in the making over the past decades. To be fair, where on Earth can you still find the vintage liberal democracy? 

Governments and leaders in the democratic world are displaying individualism, nepotism and egoism to the core. It is a pity that while most governance models profess elected leadership, the leader once elected uses his term to cement his brand equity and his loyalists’ dominance over the rest of the party’s democratic hierarchy.

Just last week Vijay, the Tamil film star who is elbowing himself onto the political stage to challenge the Dravidian party dominance, asked openly a rather inconvenient question to MK Stalin, the CM, “You call BJP fascist. But what are you?” One could not be straighter and more direct.

In state after state, in India’s kaleidoscopic democratic matrix, the pattern is the same. A party comes to power mouthing promises that look ballooned and unrealistic. But people fall into the game and vote. Then over a few years, the leader who initially sounded sincere and simple would morph into a self-serving family satrap. Politics still has a place for public posturing. But the hidden agenda remains rent-seeking, promoting clannish and sectarian groupings and cementing dynastic continuity.

Globally, irrespective of the ideological veneer or sophisticated campaign sloganeering, the playbook is essentially built around iconizing an individual and elevating him to the stature of an unquestioned autocrat.

Democracy is thinning out, individualism is on the ascend, and demi-gods are being chiseled out and installed on high pedestals. Putin today with over three decades of unquestioned leadership is akin to a Russian God. Xi of China can and does play a ‘holier-than-thou’ game to his supposed comrades in arms. 

Modi is enjoying an unquestionable air of supremacy which in this country was last seen when Mrs. G declared an emergency.

Like Homer, the poet, who said “Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink”, I would say we now have democracy everywhere but only in words not in deeds. When the greatest of democracies, the US, can turn patently undemocratic, whimsical, and stubborn, what can we say of democracy’s future?

It is indeed doubtful if democracy in the form we have hitherto understood will be around two decades from now. But of course, most rulers and leaders would vouch that they are democrats. The people might laugh silently within, with obvious derisive contempt. But hardly anyone would dare to openly challenge or protest the leaders usurping the universal and collective concept of the rule of the people.  A junta would no longer be just a derisive, military, or authoritarian term. The term is increasingly acquiring respect and unquestioned compliance. It is time for the amber light to be switched on – surely, it is caution time for democracy!