SunnyDev writes: "As any other definition of democracy, your too is not objective enough. There is no end to this debate." Yes, public reasoning, as Amartya Sen writes in his latest book, is at the heart of democracy. And public reasoning, by definition, is open and available to all who are interested. It's only by CONTINUOUSLY discussing together, arguing together with people from various different political beliefs and persuasions that we can begin to reason together about democracy. Unfortunately, there is no off-the-shelf "democracy package; version 5.0" that we can get, plug it in and play with. We have to reason things out by ourselves -- at the rate of one discussion at a time in open, public sphere. That is why, democracy is a MESSY system to begin with. [The US, the world's oldest democracy, is, for instance, currently debating whether the presidental power extends to authorising that spying be done on citizens in the name of some national security! It's a fascinating debate about the limits of the executive power in a country that has had 40+ presidents already!] Yes, the process is unending, but that's 1000 times better than some arbitrary official telling us when to speak and when to shut up or even deciding who speaks and who listens or even deciding who to join club to discuss Nepali democracy and who to be shut out in PUBLIC non-paid space . Here's an arctile I wrote years ago, only for those who are interested. - http://guild.sajha.com/guild/read.cfm?guildid=42 oohi ashu