J. Dhopte
This book is a first part of the series - DEMOCRACY, a series of three books. Democracy during the last decade has suffered a dramatic decline.The constitutional democracies are being overthrown and there is an increase in the regimes that retain the formal institutional trappings while flouting the norms and values on which constitutional democracies are based.The forces of neo- liberalism are gaining ascendency in the world and the democratic public spheres are confronting a growing crisis.Politics has become an extension of war. The state supported corporate power seeks to reporoduce and reward an orientation to the world innfused with authoritarian ideas, pracices and principles. Uncivil behaviour by elites and pathological mass communication reinforces each other. There is a public ripe to be polarized and exploited by demagogues and the media manipulators. Thus, any response must involve ordinary citizens, but are they upto the task? If democracy is to have a future, all the various pedagogical apparatuses available must be transformed to support - critical thinking and a public culture capable of exerting a formative educational influence in favour of democratic freedom, justic, equality and fraternity. The author argues that the solutions cannot be found only by strengthening the constitutional institutions, the democracy must also seek to reinvigorate its democratic aspirations. Democracy must be saved and protected to acheive security, stability and prosperity for the entire world.
