Isn't it democratic if we are getting free service?

India is an older democracy than the US because our constitution guaranteed the right to vote to every citizen from the time it was written while blacks were allowed to vote in the US only after the civil rights movement in the 1960s, writes a professor. Although the British Parliament was established in 1701, women were not allowed to vote until the suffragette movement won that right in 1928. So what is 'democracy'? 'Democracy' comes from the Greek words 'demos' which means 'the people' and 'kratos' which means 'power'. But is true democracy really possible? In India it means going and pressing a button on an electronic voting machine every 5 years, following which politicians are free to do whatever they want under the protection of 'innocent until proven guilty', which is a fraud perpetrated on citizens because cases drag on forever so criminals are never punished. Americans at least have a 'Bill of Rights', consisting of 10 amendments, which give the right to property, free speech and the rule of law. We have nothing. Politicians give rights to people, not for equitable distribution of opportunities, but to divide people into little segments so as to get votes. Those left out feel discriminated against and angry. Earlier we had the Patels agitating for reservations in Gujarat and now we have Kapu agitation in Andhra. A Nobel Prize winning economist argues that poor people will always vote for increasing taxes on the rich to help the poor, which is not bad for the economy, and that is why the rich are against democracy. " All advanced nations have had substantial welfare states since the 1940s - welfare states that, inevitably, have stronger support among poorer citizens. But you don't, in fact, see countries descending into tax-and-spend death spirals - and no, that's not what ails Europe," he writes. We would suggest that it is because social security and Medicare is available for everyone but in countries where welfare is targeted only towards the poor, as in Brazil, Venezuela and India, taxes are very high to pay for social schemes, which harm business and increase poverty. There is constant attention on the top 1% of people who own more than half of all the wealth in the world. In the US, which has the largest number of billionaires in the world, the top 1% pay nearly half of all federal taxes. The recent election in Bihar is held up as an example of the poor voting to exert their rights to equitable distribution of resources. Was it? They were voting for handouts and not for some nebulous gains, from education or from reforms, in the distant future. It is a bitter truth that billionaires are rich because they innovate, have radical ideas, work hard and take risks to enrich our lives. After all Google, Facebook, Instagram and Youtube are free. You can phone across the world on Skype, for free. You cannot get any more democratic than that, can you?