Our parties do not represent the economic interests at the bottom 50% of our population very well.

They represent their cultural and social interests on the right and the left they represent a bit their economic interests in a welfare stake

sort of framework but they don't really have anything that says, here you are people without university degrees,

you have a bright and blossoming burgeoning future in our society and our economy as it's developing because the truth is they don't.

And now the good fight with Yasha Monk.

There has been strong reason to worry about democracy in India for a number of years now.

The restrictions on free speech in the country kept getting stricter. Attacks on Muslim minorities

became more violent. The concentration of power in the hands of Nurembra-Modi's

government kept advancing at a fast pace.

But the last three days have accelerated these developments significantly.

Raul Gandhi, the flawed and imperfect, sometimes uninspiring and uninspired

leader of the main opposition party. The in Naur under Modi's state of Gujarat of defaming the Prime Minister.

He has been given a two-year jail sentence, which he is not yet serving and a supposedly neutral bureaucrat

quickly moved to expel Gandhi from his seat in Parliament.

A rooting government jailing the main opposition leader, especially on as spurious a charge as

libel is a classic tactic for consolidating power.

And it is a very worrying sign of where India is headed.

I have two additional observations about these developments in India. The first is that it reminds us of the

dangers of restrictions on free speech that can be abused by authoritarian populists once they reach power.

It is perfectly appropriate to have some form of liable law, but those have to be narrow with

an obligation on the person suing to establish the recklessness of the person who made

force claims about them. It certainly shouldn't be as loose as it is in India or in

...