Gift of democracy!

   

Whom to curse as I am made to wait?? (PC: Myself)

  

"The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting." - Charles Bukowski

     The citizen looked blank because he knew not whom to curse. He was waiting for change and reform since the day they were promised to him.  When he explained his predicament, I too was perplexed and shared his confusion. If it was an autocracy or an anarchy or something of that sort, we could have cursed someone specific. But damn it, this was democracy!!

     He clearly knew he was a citizen, a part of the public; he had to find a public servant in a public office to attend to his problems. Irrespective of being part of a major or minor socio-religious group from which he derived a sense of identity, his existence as an individual citizen had bestowed on him the right to demand for the redressal of his grievances.

    But all that the much hyped and promised democracy offered was a government with its ministers and officers. The guarded government spaces, the rigid bureaucratic structures and the erudite officer elite who manned them! Among these government officers where were the public servants the citizen had to approach? Whom was he to fight with for justice? Whom was he to curse for his plight? Had the public sphere vanished into thin air as the reach and spread of the government had widened by leaps and bounds?

        Has it always been a struggle for the survival of the 'public' at the mercy of the 'government'? Or is it the modern 'gift of democracy'!?