Cargo Cult in Democracy

Read this excellent article which first explains the term "Cargo Cult" and then goes on to relate it to the Indian Democracy and where it is headed.

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805 – 1859), the French political thinker and historian and author of the masterwork Democracy in America, asserted that “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of Government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilisations has been 200 years.”