Democracy is a lot like pancake

AMERICAN basketball coach Pat Riley mapped out the terrain in the following words. He said it starts with a nobody, who becomes an upstart, who becomes a contender. And when the contender is a winner, he becomes a champion, who then creates a dynasty. In politics, that is often the case before it succumbs to the stranglehold of a few influential families. Dynasties are always nasty because their politics thrive on power and not on people.

That's why dynasties are a riddle for democracy. Once American politics was dominated by the Roosevelts and the Kennedys, and now the Clintons and the Bushes have stepped into their shoes. The Indian politics since independence had been in the grip of the Nehru family until last year. The Bandaranaikes ruled Sri Lanka until 2005. In South Korea, the incumbent president Park Geun-hye is the daughter of former president Park Chung-hee. In Bangladesh, we're all too familiar with the two families who control our national politics like a river hemmed in between two steep banks.

The creation of a democratic society is comparable to the making of pancake. The flour is placed in a large bowl and then a well is made in the middle. Eggs and milk are added to it with a pinch of salt. Next, egg and milk are whisked together, drawing in the flour gradually until it creates a smooth paste. The mixing continues until the lumps are entirely eliminated.

Lumps are also critical for democracy because they interfere with its success. Luck and talent favour certain families. Hence, the fortunate few are rulers and the miserable most are ruled.The concept of democracy had emerged hundreds of years ago to prevent lumping and make all men equal in the eye of law. The fervent passion of egalitarian politics was supposed to produce the batter to make government fluffy and yummy for the masses irrespective of their class, creed and competence.

Dynastic politics prevents mixing and promotes lumping. It focuses less on the flour, meaning the people, and more on eggs and milk, meaning power and money. Instead of drawing in the people gradually, it alienates them from power to create pockets of tyranny. Inequality gravitates politics towards concentration of power in a few hands in any form of government other than democracy.

That explains why our politics is primarily divided into two magnetic fields. That also explains why professionals are polarised, institutions are pulverised and people are perfunctory. It all has to do with the mixing, which is performed to allow heat and mass transfer to occur between one or more streams, components or phases. In our case, the lumps have got lumpier as power concentrated in certain hands. The magnetic fields of power have been turned into minefields for people.

So, our democracy has been a dubious intermediate between plutocracy and oligarchy. The charisma of patriarchs has been used like franchise by their families. And these families have created their respective spheres of influence, politics reduced to sycophancy. The spirits of descendants are light years away from the dreams of their ascendants.

In dynastic politics, the link gradually weakens between people and their rulers as the bond gets diluted between rulers and their ancestors. And, this brand of politics eventually suffers from ideological fatigue because the inherited leadership becomes obsessed with power, neglecting its source and means.To consolidate power, inheritors are often ready to liquidate both.

Meanwhile, the country becomes a breeding ground for lumps, which appear in business, bureaucracy, academia, media, medical profession, law-enforcement and legal practice. And these lumps choke the arteries of people's aspiration as hunger for power fuels desperation amongst the rulers and their lackeys. Concentration of power has its trickle-down effect, creating a culture of concentration, concentrated on the subcultures of plunder and deceit. 

Fu Sheng is known as the "One-Eyed Tyrant' in Chinese history. This emperor of the former Qin kingdom was blind in one eye and apparently very self-conscious about it. He would have people killed if they used the words "without," "devoid of," "lacking" or any other words that would remind him he had lost his sight in one eye. 

The example entails the sensitivities surrounding dynastic rules for all the wrong reasons. All such rulers are one-eyed and paranoid. They're intolerant and impulsive at the slightest reference to their reigns because it reminds them how they must have failed in their obligations to the people. A dynastic ruler is a ruler in the manner soup of the soup is also soup.

If we're looking for one silver bullet for our political crisis, it must start with the mixing to remove the lumps. These lumps are anathema to democratic sensibilities, because they work politics like filter in the reverse order. Impurities clutter politics, while people are extracted from power. 

The writer is Editor, First News and an opinion writer for The Daily Star. 
Email: badrul151@yahoo.com