Anil ji, Going back to democracy, let me quote some authors so that this discussion can be academically rewarding for both of us. " ..To prepare the ground for democracy today either in transitional societies or on a global scale is firts to re-create citizens who will demand democracy: this means laying a foundation in civil society and civic culture. Democracy is not a universal prescription for some singularly remarkable form of governmnet, it is an admonition to people to live in a certain fashion: responsibly, autonomously yet on on a common ground, in self -determing communities somehow still open to others, with tolerance and mutual respect yet a firm sense of their own values." (Barber, Benjamin: Jihad vs. McWorld. 2002 ed.) The key here is, civil society and civic culture. How do we go about creating a civil society- one of the preconditions of liberal democracy? Don't we need a strong middle class to have an impartial civil society- or the nagarik/bauddhik samaj, not pragatisil nagarik/bauddhik samaj or nepal nagarik/baudhik samaj sangh or nepali rastrabadi nagarik/baudhik samaj affiliated with the parties? And don't we need economic reforms/developmnet/growth to have that kind of impartial civil society that will look after the people's interests, not of the party it is affiliated with? I argue, we need economic growth ebcause without economic growth there will be no (impartial) civil society, and the system becomes autocratic. According to Zakaria, the success of democracy in any given nation is directly related to its per capita income. "A study conducted by political scientists Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi, looked at every country in the world between the years 1950 and 1990. It calculated that in a democratic country that ahs a per capita income of under $1500 (in today?s dollars), the regime on average had a life expectancy of just eight years. With between $1500 and $3000 it survived on average for about eighteen years. Above $6000 it became highly resilient. The chance that a democratic regime would die in a country with an income above $6000 was 1 in 500. Once rich, democracies became immortal." (Zakaria, Fareed: The Future of Freedom. 2003) So higher income is needed.. how do the nations go about creating higher income for their citizens? First and foremost, the nations need to guaranty political stability. According to Kaplan, "Social stability results from the establishment of a middle class. Not democracies but authoritarian systems, including monarchies, create middle classes-which, having achieved a certain size and self-confidence, revolt against the very dictators who generated their prosperity. This is the pattern today in the Pacific Rim and the southern cone of South America, but not in other parts of Latin America, southern Asia, or sub-Saharan Africa. A place like the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), where the per capita gross national product is less than $200 a year and the average person is either a rural peasant or an urban peasant; where there is little infrastructure of roads, sewers, and so on; and where reliable bureaucratic institutions are lacking, needs a leader like Bismarck or Jerry Rawlings-the Ghanaian ruler who stabilized his country through dictatorship and then had himself elected democratically-in place for years before he is safe from an undisciplined soldiery." (Kaplan, Robert: Was Democracy Just a Moment? Dec. 1997) Do "impoversihed" people want more democracy and instability that comes with it, or less democracy and stability and a clean, transparent non-democratic govt.? Let me quote Zakaraia again, "Consider Pakistan. In October 1999, the Western world was surprised when Pakistan's army chief, General Parvez Musharraf, overthrew the freely elected prime minister, Nawaz Sharif. The surprising fact was not the coup- it was Pakistan's fourth in as many decades- but its popularity. Most Pakistanis were happy to be rid of eleven years of sham democracy. During that period, Sharif and his predecessor, Benazir Bhutto, abused their office for personal gain, packed the courts with political cronies, fired local governmnets, allowed Islamic fundamentalists to enact draconian laws, and plundered the state coffers" (Zakaria, 2003). Desn't this resemble Nepal or else how do you understand the majority's lack of interest in the political parties' rallies and protest programs? So the best model, as all these new "heretic" scholars suggest is not your cold war era democratization- overnight democratization- but capitalism, rule of law and the democracy. And it has worked in Chile, in some East Asian countries and it has led China towards liberalism. (See Minxin Pei's "Is China democratizing? Foreign Affaifrs, 1998.. jan/feb issue.. not so sure on the date though). " The very fact that we retreat to moral arguments-and often moral arguments only-to justify democracy indicates that for many parts of the world the historical and social arguments supporting democracy are just not there." (Kaplan, 1998).. and when you deal with people who "constantly talk about morality in politics, which in practice means that anyone who disagrres with them is 'immoral'. You can't argue with these people. (Kaplan, R. Eastward to Tartary. 2000) So by automatically assuming a moral high plane, just because you happen to be a "democrat" (not you in particular, but GENERAL you)you kill the discussion. Either my way or the highway, either with me (or my group) or my enemy! I mean, what kind of democracy or democratic ideal is that? Let's not take democracy as something handed down by Gods.. let's treat it like something that developed over time and might have its own flaws. The beauty of "real democracy" is, you can discuss its shortcomings... To conclude, let me yet again quote Zakaria: .. like any broad transformation, democracy has its dark sides. yet we rarely speak about them. To do so woiuld be to provoke instant criticism that you are "out of sync" with the times. [makes me wonder if Zakaria visited Sajha and read some of the "political" debates here!;-)] But this means that we never really stop to understand these times. Silenced by fears of being branded "antidemocratic" we have no way to understand what might be troubling about the ever-increasing democratization of our lives. We assume that no problem could ever be caused by democracy, so when we see social, political, and economic maladies we shift blame here and there, deflecting problems, avoiding answers, but never talking about the great transformation that is at the center of our political, economic and social lives" (Zakaria, 2003). So to have a healthy debate on democracy, and I invite eeryone who is interested, some of us with high democratic ideals have to step down from their moral high place, and think of the issues in Nepal from a more practical pragmatic point of view, than just ideological. Then we all can have a "democratic" debate on "democracy" without branding/labeling each other this and that. la ahile lai yetti matra..