DEBATE: 'Democracy is the worst form of government but the best one available.'

The term democracy first describes a form of government, then a type of state, a pattern of a socio-economic system, and a way of life and culture. Promising rights and freedom to all, a democracy certainly raises high expectations. However, as of recent times, I believe that it has failed to live up to the hopes of the masses.

Good morning to one and all present here. Today I, Tamanna Sharma, will be speaking against the motion- 'Democracy is the worst form of government but the best one available.'

Democracies encounter problems like short-termism, elite capture, division and conflict, and voter ignorance while authoritarianism is enjoying a global surge of self-confidence. Many democracies, like Belgium, France, Italy, and Japan, have struggled to cut budgets and reduce high levels of public debt. However, Singapore, a unitary parliamentary republic has limited the flow of money in politics, avoided the dominance of wealthy people in legislatures, and crafted national economic policies that have reduced inequality.

It's also worth pointing out that democracy does not exist in a vacuum. It exists with fake news, capitalism without a free market, corruption, populism, propaganda, a web of lies. Great thinkers like Socrates and Voltaire were against democracy as they believed that people are easily fooled, considering that only an educated population can make true democracy. This is the harsh truth, as the right to choose means nothing when you do not possess the knowledge to do so!

In trying to explain the dispiriting descent of democratic politics into pervasive paralysis, conflict, and sheer mediocrity, it is hard not to wonder if many of our ills result from intrinsic shortcomings of the democratic model itself—democracy design flaws, if you will!

Systems like technocracy, intellectual oligarchies, netocracy, consensual demarchies, timocracies, or noocracies need to be explored. In a nutshell, I believe that if the apathetic and elitist majority puts its minds together, the alternatives that already exist or can exist are the true future of our governments.

With this, I rest my case.