A Saner Democratic Model

Major decisions cannot be democratic. The general mass is not intellectually able or equipped to decide on important matters. It is atrocious to let 'majority' decide on important matters. The majority is not always right.

The current system of legislative bodies making the decisions through the representative heads is even worse. Neither do these representatives posses any superior intellectual ability, nor do they really ensure the will of majority. Once elected, it can become their individual will, not that of the people who elected him. And our electoral process does not really mandate a 'majority' for becoming MP/MLAs - the one having greatest number of votes gets the post. He might be representing as low as 20% of the population.

We next have the different cabinets who often consists of specialists. But again, the will of say 15-20 specialists deciding a country's fate is unjustified.

So we have two problems at hand. One - ensuring that the true mass population gets to play some part in decision making process, second - ensuring that the final decision making is done by minds capable of such an action.

Capitalising on the infrastructure of electronics and telecommunications, a solution model can be proposed. Of course, this is model presently not feasible in India due to lack of electronic penetration and illiteracy in sub-urbs, but in more developed nations, this could be a reality.

For any decision, the decision would come directly from a vote taken from the entire population, and not just the representative heads. The voting would be done through some electronic device like mobile phones or through internet.

Now, how would it be ensured that only able minds make decisions? The voting system would have a system of forwarding (handing over) your vote to any other voter. This would mean, your vote would cast the same choice as that of the person you have forwarded it to. The forwarding can happen upto any level. That is, A can forward his vote to B, B can forward to C and so on. In this case, C's choice would become that of A and B. Under such a system, if you are unsure of a particular thing, you can just choose someone in a better position to make the decision for you.

Of course, this assumes the basic moral sincerity and willingness on the part of a voter to forward his vote to someone more suitable, in case he is unsure. This mentality will get cultivated only with proper education - which as mentioned before, still has not happened in India.

However, this system can immediately be tried and tested at a micro level in smaller premises where a democratic system is wanted. Colleges or educational institutions can be a very good testing ground since both educational maturity and electronic penetration is expected to be adequately available in such premises.