“It’s beginning to increasingly look as if this urge to the 10% growth rate and democracy are mutually incompatible . . . because this growth has been based on . . . the displacement of millions of people off their land. It’s based on extracting minerals and harnessing rivers in a way that is ecologically utterly destructive. And all of this has been done, keeping to the rituals of democracy but emptying them out. So you have the courts and the press and the police pretending to do their jobs, pretending to act as checks and balances, as the institutions of democracy are meant to, but in fact all of them have stakes in this process. They are acting as a cover for the rich, which dismantles democracy right from the bottom.” — Arundhati Roy
This episode of the Riz Khan Show was broadcast live by Al Jazeera on 2 November 2009. See, also, Karan Thapar, “Indian Democracy in a State of Emergency,” Interview with Arundhati Roy, CNN-IBN.
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