There is
just one thing that has been talked about this previous month and, most
probably will continue to be talked about in the next couple of weeks as well.
The Indian
General Elections 2014 has made its buzz and impression in news around the
world. One of the star highlights has been the impressive number of Indians
preparing to vote this time around – 815
million. Morgan Stanley's Ridham Desai declared this would be the "biggest election in world history!”
So what is
the story of democracy from around the world? Are elections and democracy
universal? The answer, I’m afraid is not a yes. Even though 80% of countries on
this planet are democratic – there are still a handful of countries that are
autocratic.
Even the
quality of many of these democracies remains deeply flawed. Only 15 percent can
be described as "full democracies," with 31 percent counting as
"authoritarian regimes." Another interesting fact about democracy is
that the wealthiest countries tend to be democracies: outside the petro-states,
the top 25 richest countries in the world (as ranked by the World Bank) are
also fully established democracies.
It all
began way back in the 1900; New Zealand was the only country with a government
elected by all its adult citizens. By the end of the century, there were
ostensibly 120 electoral democracies in place!
Here in
India, the story of democracy will take a new turn when the new government will
be decided next month based on the majority of votes from the current electoral
process. For good or bad, only time will tell.
Hope each
of you exercised your voting power this time around. Why? Read my post on the
importance of voting here: http://sandeepsonisays.blogspot.in/2014/04/one-citizen-one-vote.html
Source for all the amazing facts
and the picture in this blog: World Bank