https://www.deccanchronicle.com/amp/opinion/columnists/191223/mohan-guruswamy-what-ails-our-democracy-power-flows-from-the-top.html * The manner of anointment of our party leaders should raise concerns in our mind as democratically functioning political parties were meant to be the bedrock of our democracy. But they don’t. It is now the way of all parties, where inner-party democracy is dead.* The exception, and this is the great irony, is the CPM, a party committed to the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the end of liberal democracy. We in India have equality in the sense implied in a democracy. We have periodic free and fair elections — at least reasonably free and fair, an independent media, an independent judiciary and all of us enjoy all the freedoms we believe to be essential to be a free people. But why then are we unhappy with the system of government we have? To begin to understand this, we must first understand what kind of a democracy we have evolved ...