000			01751nam a2200193Ia 4500
999			_c176217 _d176217
005			20220309161522.0
008			200208s9999 xx 000 0 und d
020			_a9780143030225
082			_a320.954 MEH
100			_a"Mehta, Pratap Bhanu"
245		0	_aBurden of democracy
260			_aNew Delhi
260			_bPenguin
260			_c2003
300			_a178p.
520			_aAfter nearly seven decades of its existence, there is a pervasive feeling that India's democracy is in crisis. But what is the nature of this threat? In this essay, republished now with a new foreword from the author, Pratap Bhanu Mehtareminds us what a bold experiment bringing democracy to a largely illiterate and unpropertied India was. He argues that the sphere of politics has truly created opportunities for people to participate in society. Looking at various facts, he also finds that persistent social inequality on the one hand and a mistaken view of the state's proper function and organization on the other have modified and hindered the workings of democracy and its effects in innumerable ways. Posting the quest for self-respect as democracy's deepest aspiration, this essay explores how inequality and the crisis of accountability have together impeded collective action to achieve such an end. To recover this sense of moral well-being and responsibility, Mehta suggests, is the core of the democratic challenge before us. Optimistic, lively and closely argued, The Burden of Democracy offers a new ideological imagination that throws light on our discontents. By returning to the basics of democracy it serves to illuminate our predicament, even while perceiving the broad contours for change.
650			_aDemocracy-India
942			_cB _2ddc