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How is this weird? A country of law and order and checks and balances rightly allows orders like this to be contested. India, used as the example, has a very f

How is this weird? A country of law and order and checks and balances rightly allows orders like this to be contested. India, used as the example, has a very flawed democracy and a high degree of corruption. EDIT: LOL, downvoted to oblivion by the HN India contingent. As provided elsewhere, India's democratic and corruption rankings are mediocre.

blocked_again 6y ago
> India, used as the example, has a very flawed democracy How come?
- hn_check 6y ago
  https://www.eiu.com/topic/democracy-index https://www.eiu.com/topic/democracy-index https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi India is no benchmark. There are far worse countries, but if someone cites India's actions as an example, it falls flat.
  - blocked_again 6y ago
    I was asking why India has a flawed democracy. I went through the list. India is ranked around 50. If you ignore all the cute european countries like Finland, Denmark, Liechtenstein etc from the top, which doesn't even qualify as a big city in India, I would say India is doing pretty good for a country where 1/6 population of the world live.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > I would say India is doing pretty good for a country where 1/6 population of the world live. Sure, India is by far the most democratic country of its own size or larger. But that literally just means “not as bad as China”. It's kind of like if the Republic of Korea (which could support stronger claims, to be sure) was said to be “pretty good for a country located on the Korean peninsula”—it is true, but doesn't say a lot.
      - blocked_again 6y ago
        Sure. A democracy index where you have countries ranging from less than a million population to greater than 1 billion population also doesn't say a lot :)
        dragonwriter 6y ago
        I think it says quite a lot. It's possible that one of the things it says is that democracy (at least the values measured by the index) is not scale independent, and more specifically democratic values are inherently incompatible with large states. I don't think the second part is actually true, at least with current technology and at the scales involved, but that seems to be the “defense” of India here.
- known 6y ago
  Elections != Democracy https://archive.vn/hmUx2 https://archive.vn/hmUx2
jjcon 6y ago
What about Japan and Australia which are currently working to ban it.
- hn_check 6y ago
  What about them? I replied to someone saying "ha ha isn't that weird they can contest it in the US look countries like India just went ahead and banned it and there's no recourse". Great. Other countries can talk about it, go through a legislative process (in Japan lawmakers aren't even going to start talking about their possible options until September), then there are legal challenges and normal processes to go through, etc.
markdown 6y ago
India's democracy is far superior to that of the US (which is TBH, like any two-party system, a bit of a joke - see Bush v Al Gore, dem race Sanders v Clinton), and as for corruption, the US leads the entire world on that score. The difference is where the corruption happens (lobbying for billion dollar contracts, rather than a private citizen slipping a civil servant a few notes to speed along some approval or another). The former type of corruption doesn't get taken into account in any world corruption index, so Americans think they're not corrupt.
- hn_check 6y ago
  The US is nowhere near leadership in either democracy or corruption. I didn't hold it as the stellar example, beyond countering someone who is surprised (or finds it "weird") that a government has checks and balances, and a legal system. I know few Americans who "think they're not corrupt", nor does that change the fact that India is very corrupt and has a very flawed democracy.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    The US in not a leader in corruption, but it is an interesting study in creative ways to be corrupt.
parthdesai 6y ago
Because being allowed to legally bribe politicians (lobbying), influence them which basically means that politicians have interest of corporations at heart and not that of general population is democracy. Being able to rig primaries so that a candidate that people wanted to vote for as a president can't run for the elections is democracy. Gotcha.

blocked_again 6y ago

> India, used as the example, has a very flawed democracy How come?

hn_check 6y ago
https://www.eiu.com/topic/democracy-index https://www.eiu.com/topic/democracy-index https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi India is no benchmark. There are far worse countries, but if someone cites India's actions as an example, it falls flat.
- blocked_again 6y ago
  I was asking why India has a flawed democracy. I went through the list. India is ranked around 50. If you ignore all the cute european countries like Finland, Denmark, Liechtenstein etc from the top, which doesn't even qualify as a big city in India, I would say India is doing pretty good for a country where 1/6 population of the world live.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > I would say India is doing pretty good for a country where 1/6 population of the world live. Sure, India is by far the most democratic country of its own size or larger. But that literally just means “not as bad as China”. It's kind of like if the Republic of Korea (which could support stronger claims, to be sure) was said to be “pretty good for a country located on the Korean peninsula”—it is true, but doesn't say a lot.
    - blocked_again 6y ago
      Sure. A democracy index where you have countries ranging from less than a million population to greater than 1 billion population also doesn't say a lot :)
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        I think it says quite a lot. It's possible that one of the things it says is that democracy (at least the values measured by the index) is not scale independent, and more specifically democratic values are inherently incompatible with large states. I don't think the second part is actually true, at least with current technology and at the scales involved, but that seems to be the “defense” of India here.
known 6y ago
Elections != Democracy https://archive.vn/hmUx2 https://archive.vn/hmUx2

jjcon 6y ago

What about Japan and Australia which are currently working to ban it.

hn_check 6y ago
What about them? I replied to someone saying "ha ha isn't that weird they can contest it in the US look countries like India just went ahead and banned it and there's no recourse". Great. Other countries can talk about it, go through a legislative process (in Japan lawmakers aren't even going to start talking about their possible options until September), then there are legal challenges and normal processes to go through, etc.

markdown 6y ago

India's democracy is far superior to that of the US (which is TBH, like any two-party system, a bit of a joke - see Bush v Al Gore, dem race Sanders v Clinton), and as for corruption, the US leads the entire world on that score. The difference is where the corruption happens (lobbying for billion dollar contracts, rather than a private citizen slipping a civil servant a few notes to speed along some approval or another). The former type of corruption doesn't get taken into account in any world corruption index, so Americans think they're not corrupt.

hn_check 6y ago
The US is nowhere near leadership in either democracy or corruption. I didn't hold it as the stellar example, beyond countering someone who is surprised (or finds it "weird") that a government has checks and balances, and a legal system. I know few Americans who "think they're not corrupt", nor does that change the fact that India is very corrupt and has a very flawed democracy.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  The US in not a leader in corruption, but it is an interesting study in creative ways to be corrupt.

parthdesai 6y ago

Because being allowed to legally bribe politicians (lobbying), influence them which basically means that politicians have interest of corporations at heart and not that of general population is democracy. Being able to rig primaries so that a candidate that people wanted to vote for as a president can't run for the elections is democracy. Gotcha.