Meaning of democracy

I remember to read a book which discussed true meaning of democracy in depth. I can not recollect name of the book as I read it long back when I was in school. But few things from that book.

Democracy by definition is for the people, by the people, of the people. Now if you look at current implementation of these democracies all across world, what you see is a large nation which has kind of a senate/loksabha where all parts of that nation sends representatives.
If you look at the Autocracies in history, especially if you dig deep into Shung Dynasty and how they ruled in around 500 years starting from 200 AD to 700 AD in Northern part of India ie above Narmada then it is completely different. What happened was there is one central decision making mechanism which decides bold points. It will be in control of decisions which affects all parts of the nation. For example foreign policy, military. It creates few simple rules which are implemented across all parts of nation.
Most interesting thing is, there is no fixed definition of the part. A village can be a part, a State or Prant can be a part. So what people get is micro level control in decision making process.
Courts, Tax structures, Policy making committees were defined at any of such Part level. Group villages can agree to become a single unit to form a larger part. Such groups can come together to form an even larger part and so on so forth.

The advantage is - People are involved in democracy.

Current implementation that we see across the world, be it parliamentary democracy is people involvement is limited to selecting representation. So the basic idea was that people will choose wisely and better people to represent them. But this assumption does not hold true, as people have chosen wrong representatives all the time. Many times due to lack of availability of good people who are interested in representing them.

In part-based democracy, we force people to be involved always, which makes sure that good people, better people who have the requisite qualities necessary to lead are also involved. People are not merely voters but also executers.

Voting is probably the least important responsibility for a person in democracy. Often we do glorify it to be the most important. Reason why I think it is least important is, voting is merely selection. But execution of decision making, development plans are more important than selection. Off course voting is also important but not as much as selection.

Second advantage - Fixed decision makers.

In current form of democracy, especially in India, what we see is some parties come together after election. They break away. People change parties all the time. Around the world also, there is not fixed party which runs the country for longer period.
Which means that lot of importance in given to administrative staffs, who are not elected members. They do not represent people. But yet they have decision making powers.
In part based systems, since the decision making is done by the part, which is a physical section of the larger nation, it essentially means that decision makers are going to be same people over a longer period of time. Off course, there will be migrations, immigrations which will affect this. But still I think around 90% of people will be similar. Who understand each other, who understand each others problems better.

One argument you can have is - In India there is already such system in place. From gram-panchayat to Loksabha we have micro to macro level of decision making levels.
But I doubt it is implemented correctly. In principal, yes it is there and we can be involved in the decision making and execution process. But only upto certain extent. That extent of participation is not at correct level.
For example, Nasik as a part can not decide its on tax structure. Tax paid by Nasik people, is used only partly in Nasik and there is no transparency to that as well. So money I earned and tax I paid from that is not used by government to provide me with better infrastructure, develop my own city or 'Part'. True, that tax paid by larger parts is used in development of smaller parts, but that should not have been the case. Why should I be responsible for development of other parts of my nation. We are enforcing a rule which is not correct in true sense of democracy. Tax is one such issue, and may be the most controversial one, but if you start thinking about it then, there are many such issues.

For example - Take case of the Tata Nano project in Singure. If we truly had the micro level democracy in place, the issue would not have blown so much out of proportion. All Tata would have to do is take permission from the micro-level decision making framework and execute the project there if they agree. Why the larger part West Bengal needs to be involved. Its their land and they should decide what they want to do about it. They should decide the terms and conditions with Tata directly.

I know that education will be an argument when we think about such framework. People are not educated, people dont understand their own good and hence we need policy makers etc. But we are talking about democracy here. If we dont trust peoples judgment they how can we run a democracy?

More to come in later posts.