What does Freedom in particular and Democracy in general actually mean to us?

Well last saturday when i met friends i was telling them how i felt like leaving this city and country for good. I have always loved this beautiful city of mine called Bangalore. But with the second boom of IT happening currently which the city is witnessing, it is unable to handle the amount of people who are coming here everyday. Someone told me an average of 1500 people come to this city(p.s. i have no source to prove this data).

Well with so much of influx into the city; city which has lacked planning and above all the bad governance at the state to provide the city with basic amenities like good roads, no decent public transport will cause Bangalore to loose all its pride.

I was telling my friends look at how Shanghai the fastest growing city in China has been coping with incereasing demands and they are able to provide the infrastructre, and on the other hand India's fastest growing city Bangalore is crumbling due to the lack of governance. Well they started defending by saying that China is communist and the people have no Freedom of expression; they also told me that people don't even have the right to choose thier jobs and that they are harassed to work for long working hours. I don't know if what my friends said is true, someone who has been to China can cofirm this to us.

All i can i say is India has been a democratic Country for many years no doubt on that. We have got the freedom to expression in our own Indian way, i can quote this blog i am writing as an example for my freedom of expressing my thoughts. But we Indians have always taken freedom for granted i guess and misused it in every posssible way.

Does Freedom/Democracy to us mean any of the following things:

• We have every right to dirty our roads by littering, spitting where ever we go?
• We can drive/ride our vehicles the way we want to without caring for others?
• We pay bribe to get away from cops when caught for drunken driving or break any law for that matter?
• The government doesn't need to provide good infrastructure?

Well this was enough to silence my friends, the recent decisions taken by our very own Kannada Film Industry to postpone the screening of all the non-kannada movies by 7 weeks, which is not even endorsed by the State Government; well is this called freedom of expression?

While we take the pride of saying we are living in a democratic nation, is it really making so much of a difference between a communist and a democratic nation?

I feel ashamed to say this being an Indian, but the virus called corruption has infected every section of our society and lack of governance at both Centre and State has made me feel that it would have been better if British had ruled this land for some more years. Atleast then the country would have remained united, we would have better infrastructre & growth and above all free from corruption.

Well i know many of us feel that way but we never tell it out.