Is democracy a panacea?

A lot of people in India are feeling that democracy is overrated - it hasn't helped us deal with the national security issues and the tough economic decisions - specially on infrastructure fall prey to political in-fighting and vote bank politics. The Western media though continues to give India higher marks than China - perhaps to fulfill its own prophecy!

I'm kinda divided on this - I see good reasoning on both sides of the debate - haven't come to a conclusion yet. What do you think?

Nuclearization and Indian National Identity

A very good analysis of the Indian identity that resulted in nuclearization and the subsequent impact of nuclearization back on the Indian identity. Do listen to the .mp3 file that is available on this page.