Notice the example the Election Commission of India is setting for wishy-washy democracies of the world.

The electoral process must be enforced in double quick time, even if you die doing so.

There are the morons who quibble that it is an oxymoron to hold that democracy must be enforced.

These are so obviously Macaulay's leftovers.

And there are those who ask why double quick time, especially where no elections are due in the near time.

Here is the answer to both:

Should you desist from enforcing democracy, you never know where the voter may lead the republic.

Left to herself in relaxed deliberation, the military sensibility to ensure a nationalist government may never fructify.

You heard that right:

A proper democratic process must make certain that desirable results emerge from the franchise – a circumstance that may no longer be left to the wisdom of the voter as in old, deleteriously unimaginative times.

Once that patriotic consequence is granted, does it matter that Block Level Officers (BLO) – mostly devoted school teachers, office clerks, etc., – feel so charged as to think nothing of giving their lives to bring about that consequence?

Or that eager hordes line up in double quick time to register for the ten thousand bucks, which alone may persuade them to produce the results that the electoral process wishes to produce?

Not until democracy's wherewithal is thus nudged in caring, nationalist ways may overt autocracy ever be averted.

Thus after seven decades of heinously lackadaisical thoughtlessness, let all devotees thank the Commission for resurrecting the necessary idea of a guided democracy; one which privileges the electoral result before the casting of vote.

Not even the assertive Trumpean democracy is quite able to do this, notwithstanding the greater majesty of the American Presidency.

So, here is what the Commission says to the BLOs and to "we the people":

In casting away your lives, O brave warriors of democracy, know that your sacrifices shall be etched forever in the minds and hearts of grateful nationalists who wish to make India great again by dressing up democracy as a call to arms.

And, to "we the people", it says shed now thine old habits in which you ruminated at leisure, asked questions, weighed options and goals, troubled your own minds, and be gloriously led into a future that the Commission has in mind.

Having been converted into devotees over the last unparalleled decade of transformation, O citizens, know that devotees do not ask questions; they experience ecstasy and spiritual trauma, and do as gods, be they in temples or in government, ordain them to do.

Only thus can democracy be of one supremacist mind, dwarfing realms unable to achieve such unthinking cohesion of power and pelf.

So excelsior into martyrdom, O electoral officers, and prepare to cast your votes in the right place, O populace, and be certain the SIR will prove to be the talisman that will arm democracy to the last voter and keep enemies of Bharat away, doomed to attempt only childish pranks now and then, easily neutered by our security set-up in a perpetually engaging merry-go-round.

Theirs is not to reason why, theirs is not to make reply, theirs is but to do and die – if democracy is to be muscled aside.

Jai Commission, Jai Democracy.

Badri Raina taught at Delhi University.

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