This was published today in the Pioneer. Comments/criticism are welcome as always.

Democracy imperilled

Sandeep B

The arrest of Hari Prasad, a technologist whose research helped prove beyond doubt that Indian EVMs are vulnerable to fraud, sends out a dangerous signal: That anybody who challenges the Central Election Commission runs the danger of persecution and prosecution in our democracy

Voting and freedom in a democracy are inseparable. Voting stands right at the top as one of the important ways people exercise their freedom to choose who they want to entrust with running their lives. Voting is what gives a Government the authority to govern and this authority must ideally be based on virtuous principles. Those who vote perform their duty in the fullest sense when they thoroughly understand exactly what the person they’re voting for truly represents. While this is not true of an average voter anywhere in the world today, there are thousands of such well-aware voters.

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In a deliciously-rude but perfect lampooning, John Dolan calls the Verbal Terrorist

…a fake saint who fucked her way to fame and survives, in spite of her complete lack of talent, because her crude scolding warms the heart of old British lefties who love it when their tame Indian slaves get up on their hind legs to denounce the bloody Americans, who oppress the world so much less skillfully than they used to…Roy’s real argument, the one which makes her so beloved of the grumpy old Brits, is much simpler: ha ha on you upstart Americans.

My piece is not about the Verbal Terrorist but mark those underlined words. Also mark these words from the same piece.

The Americans put [the British] guys out of an Empire-managing job, and they will never forgive that or lose their conviction that the world was oppressed far better under the Union Jack than the Stars and Stripes…If what went around ever actually came around, Roy and her sponsors would not exist — because if ever a culture inflicted horrors on the world, it was Victorian Britain. Yet no divine lightning ever struck that lucky, bloodstained Empire.

Now read these lines.

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