The second corrosion we have witnessed is that democracy has been equated with a numbers game and reduced to pure identity head counts. Of course in a representative democracy, numbers matter; and in the end we have no option but to accede to elected representatives. But when instead of focusing on the quality of arguments and consequences of policy, mere numbers are cited (only a tiny minority thinks this), democracy is put at risk. After all, this is exactly the logic that pure majoritarian politics pursues: if you have the numbers you are right. Many have argued that the last decade or so has seen a considerable deepening of Indian democracy. Power has shifted to hitherto marginalised groups, and politics has indeed become a more representative space. But is this all that there is to deepening democracy, the counting of heads and identities represented? It is probably true that the middle class, by virtue of its financial and educational endowments has more access to media spaces. But we seem not to worry about the fact that politics itself has become such a closed space. When no political party has even the slightest space for any dissent on the quota issue, when all political parties appeal to the logic of nameless numbers to dismiss alternative arguments as the elitist or products of middle-class selfishness, what kind of open democratic spaces are we taking about? We have become so single-minded in our invocation of democracy that we do not pause to think of its relationship with other values we cherish: liberty, constitutionalism to name just two. Just as people often argue that concerns about quality, merit, competitiveness are mere ruses to subordinate marginalised groups, it could equally be argued that the rhetoric of social justice and democracy is invoked to curb real argument and discussion.

... contd.