Lakhimpur Kheri Tells Us It’s Time to Rescue a Democracy in Retreat – By Ashwani Kumar

This is a moment of reckoning for a nation scarred. The unspeakable tragedy in Lakhimpur Kheri has wounded the nation’s sensitivity to its core.

The 30-second video vividly depicting the gruesome murder of innocent citizens by a bunch of goons sheltered by ‘netas’ drunk on power has once again exposed the fault-lines of our politics and a constitutional democracy in decline. The absolute imperative of resisting the perversion of democracy and trade of power must begin with an unreserved acceptance of the truth that we are a faltering democracy, for more reasons than one.

A troubling scenario of debilitated institutions of democracy, absence of ’empathetic pluralism’, rise of muscular nationalism, the questionable ideological integrity of political parties, assault on first principles of the republic and accentuation of social and economic inequities and so on, point to a dwindling democracy and conditions of a ‘flailing state’….

https://thewire.in/rights/lakhimpur-kheri-tells-us-its-time-to-rescue-a-democracy-in-retreat