On Shades of Gray she was pining, for the once promised Silver Lining

There once was a cloud, in a gray gown
The only hope, for the people in her town
They'd look up at her, in drought and pain
To see her burst open, into drops of rain

The people were always grateful
They'd send back water, each handful
To rebuild their beloved cloud
Who always promptly pleased the crowd

T'was a happy town, and a happy cloud
But a seething enemy, was being allowed
To push the cloud to another town, so proud
Wind was his name and to nobody he bowed

The cloud had fought, but gave in she did
For a moment of direction, offered by the wind
Her old town she missed, and the people she'd left
For her new abode was not home, she wept

A new resolve, was beginning to form
To find her home, before the next storm
Forests and meadows and seas, she passed
But lost her way to home she had, alas!

As she wandered across the mountains
And the endless beauty of nature's fountains
They helped her forgive herself and heal
And she thought of home with a bittersweet feel;
"A stronger cloud would've taken my place
 One that'd give them joy and peace
 One that'd fight all winds to stay
 Because there really is no other way"

Soon her grief she dropped, inspired and strong
For a fresh start meant 'do no wrong'
A new town in the valley, she found
With cheerful people, she liked their sound

A mild drizzle she dropped their way
To test the waters you could say? 
They jumped in joy and it made her day
And when the winds came she knew
Her silver lining was shining through

Guest post!

A friend of mine sent me this in response to my previous post.

He thought it was too big for the comments section, and I thought it was too interesting to not post it at all. So here's his message - 

Great article! Really well written! It is a really positive post talking about the merits and demerits of each of these systems. The cynic in me was waiting for the post to end with the generic question - when other countries can do it why can't India do it too? It was really a breath of fresh air to read a post which didn't do that.

I am going to talk about a number of things that come into my mind, so at times it may not be coherent. And just like all your disclaimers, I would also like to say that I have no expertise in this topic :)

I feel that freedom of speech is a basic requirement in a democratic setup because in a democracy the government works for you. It is elected by you and ideally it is not above you. Hence you need to have the right to criticize it when it is not doing its job and talk freely without the fear of retribution. But we cannot always monitor what the government is upto. There is a gap between the people and the government, which is filled by the media, which relays to us how the government is performing. Ideally, it should present us with the facts and let us decide. Unfortunately, the bias in the media combined with their interest in grabbing our attention by sensationalizing everything, leads to a media that is ineffective.  I agree than sensationalism is not a good thing but it only a side effect of this system. People like Arnab are trying to make money by exploiting this system. But that does not mean that there is no contribution from the press and sensationalism does not render media useless to a point that its existence is equivalent to it not existing at all (which is approximately what is happening in the other two countries that you have mentioned). If I read your post correctly, the press in those two countries are more closer to a well produced movie than it is to the media that we have in India or the US.

In my opinion democracy is the best form of government. A lot of progress has been made since a large proportion of the countries in the world have adopted a democratic form of government. It is true that not a lot of work gets done because people keep arguing with each other all the time and stall every possible good idea. But, in a way, that’s how democracy is supposed to work. Ideally, everyone’s decision is checked at every stage and then policies and laws that help most of the people are passed.

Having said that about democracy, I also wonder whether very large democracies struggle to implement great ideas like free education and free healthcare. Because, whenever I hear about countries which have successfully implemented these ideas, they are usually either extremely small in size or their population is extremely small. The two countries that you mentioned in your post are both small. Similarly, there are several European countries who have done it too, but are small (relative to the two of the largest democracies). When I think about this, I get reminded of Rome.

Rome abolished monarchy around 500 BC because the people did not want power to be concentrated in the hands of a single person. They made sure that they created public offices in such a way that there was always a check on every man with power. But whenever Rome was facing insurmountable odds, usually during wars, they elected a dictator who held power over everyone else and lead Rome to victory over their enemies. This seemingly worked well for almost 400 years and in the meantime Rome grew in size by a lot. In the 1st century BC, the city of Rome had over a million inhabitants (this would not happen again until 19th century London) and the Roman republic had more than 50 million people living within its borders. But everything wasn’t peaceful in the republic. The people were multicultural and there was no uniting factor. People living thousands of miles away from Rome did not feel strongly about the ideals of the Roman republic. Hence they were more faithful to the local lords than to Rome. This eventually lead to a civil war (this is probably the briefest history of Rome ever :)).

This situation to similar to what we see in India, a country, apart from a brief 100 years in total under the rule of Ashoka and Aurangzeb was never a single country until the British started controlling the subcontinent in the 19th century. The country is so large and different parts of it is so different from each other that I wonder whether that is why we find it hard to cooperate with each other to get things done. I wonder if every Indian identifies himself with people from other parts of the country. Even in the last Lok Sabha elections, TN voted for AIADMK in spite of knowing that it will not help the BJP is any way at the centre, who were always looking like the party that will form the government (This is certainly not true for all states. Delhi shrewdly voted for BJP during the Lok Sabha elections but voted for AAP during the assembly elections). The smaller democracies don’t suffer from this problem. People might be multicultural in a place like Singapore, but I wonder whether the small size helps them identify with each other and make decisions that are beneficial to everyone. (Having said that isn’t it illegal in Singapore to have same-sex relationships? I guess they also don’t make decisions that are beneficial to everyone. This is the problem of trying to condense such a complex issue into a simple situation :))

In spite of these arguments, democracy is definitely the best form of government (I have been talking a lot about democracy instead of talking about freedom of speech. To me, these two are connected at a deep level and both need to coexist). Coming back to argument about getting things done, it may be true that in a benevolent dictatorship, things might done faster because it is the vision of a single person, or at the most, a small group of people. But I feel that this form of government goes wrong fairly quickly. There have been so great absolute monarchs who have done well for their kingdoms but there are far more who have mismanaged and caused a lots of damage. Even if we come back to the example of Rome, after the civil war, both the Caesars, Julius and Augustus, tried to bring order to the Republic and in the process turned it into an empire. I am not going to pretend that both of them didn’t have ulterior motives. But it is true that they were interested in putting an end to the civil war and restore order in the state as dictators. But within a couple of generations, we had Caligula, the guy who promised to make his horse a consul (the second most powerful position in Rome) and a few generations after that we had Nero, after whose death Rome descended into another civil war. So such a form of government doesn’t really work either. 

Based on the things that I have said, I guess a form of democracy where the citizens are well educated and well informed about the policies of the government and how it affects their lives will be a good government. Though I feel like I am asking for something ideal, I guess actively working towards it will be beneficial.

Thanks for sharing!