India is an emerging delusion but the antidote is wakeup and stand for Rule of Law

Soutik Biswas has a book review in Mint Lounge which I think fair enough. Some excerpts.

• “Monarchies, fascism and communism have been discredited. Theocracies don’t have many takers. Roy, however, wonders whether democracy should be the “utopia that all developing societies aspire to”. Her political insight lags far behind her clever prose. Sample this: “What happens once democracy has been used up?” Used up? How? Then she continues, “What happens when each of its institutions has metastasized into something dangerous? What happens now that democracy and the Free Market have fused into a single predatory organism with a thin, constricted imagination that revolves almost entirely around the idea of maximizing profit? Is it possible to reverse the process? Can something that has mutated go back to being what it used to be?” What did it use to be? Weren’t democracies and free markets always compatible? Is this an activist’s cant or a writer’s rant?
• Roy’s apocalyptic pitch continues: “Could it be that democracy, the sacred answer to our short-term hopes and prayers, the protector of our individual freedoms and nurturer of our avaricious dreams, will turn out to be the endgame for the human race?” So, what fascism and communism and feudalism couldn’t do, democracy might. The end of the world is nigh, thanks to democracy’s failings.
• In all these respects, India remains a work in progress. The country is still quite a distance from being a truly “liberal democracy” in which democracy extends from being a mere celebration of free and fair elections to a rule of law, and protection of rights to speech, religion, property and so on (Journalist Fareed Zakaria calls this “constitutional liberalism”). Also, it is common knowledge that democracy hasn’t always led to liberalism and elections don’t necessarily lead to more democracy—after all, Adolf Hitler was voted into power through free elections.”

More interestingly:

• “Democracies have often been imperfect, with rulers abusing power, undermining human rights, stoking intolerance, and promoting sectarianism and bigotry. It is surprising to see Roy writing off democracy because it is not delivering all the goods; this is hardly a revelation. Indian democracy is even more complex.”