Agricultural reforms, farmers' agitation, and the power of narrative

A group of people holding an elected govt to ransom and a govt turning against its own citizens in the name of law and order are both instinctively troubling in a democracy, writes T N Ninan

There is something instinctively troubling about a group of people holding an elected government to ransom, as much as when a government turns against its own citizens in the name of law and order. Both point to a breakdown of the normal democratic process of give and take through debate and discussion. People have the right to protest. But if the protestors insist on an all-or-nothing approach, and if governments start putting spikes on arterial highways and building concrete walls alongside serried ranks of barricades, then representative democracy has slipped into more problematic territory.
 
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