Dear reader,
Democracy, for all its imperfections, appears to be humanity’s best defence so far against tyranny and oppression. Yet its price has been steep, paid in the blood and sacrifice of countless people who believed in the radical notion that people, commoners, should have a say in their own governance. There are many instances in history when the desire for self-determination has confronted power face-to-face. We saw it in the streets of Paris, in China’s Tiananmen Square, in Hungary, Germany, Latin America’s many regions, and even in India. Often, these cataclysmic events resulted in devastating human cost. The English Civil War alone saw 2,00,000 deaths when Parliament challenged royal absolutism, culminating in the surprise execution of King Charles I.
Today, from the comfort of our democratic societies, these struggles or uprisings can feel like distant history. For many of us, especially from the generations that did not have to pay such a hefty price to walk, talk, work, and voice opinions the way we do now, these events might seem like tales from dusty textbooks rather than urgent lessons for our time. But look closer and carefully, we can see a steady decline of democratic values across the globe, from falling voter participation to rising authoritarianism, showing how complacent we have become about the freedoms our ancestors died to secure.
This complacency works in troubling ways. We see it in the cavalier dismissal of electoral integrity, in the willingness to revere and endorse “strong leaders” who promise simple, often DIY, solutions to problems that require nuanced, complex, and historical analysis, and in the growing acceptance of anti-democratic rhetoric in mainstream discourse.
Perhaps the most concerning is the rise of soft authoritarianism—which means systems that maintain the facade of democracy while hollowing out its substance. In many countries, we have watched “elected” leaders neutralise democratic institutions through, quite shockingly, democratic processes. These politicians show how democracy can die not with a bang but with the whimper of a thousand small compromises.
The digital age has intensified these challenges in ways our forebears could scarcely have imagined. Social media platforms, once heralded as beacons of democratic empowerment, have metamorphosed into conduits of misinformation and societal division. In parallel, the rise of surveillance technologies has given authoritarian states unprecedented capacities to monitor and control populations with clinical precision.
Yet more insidious is the emergence of what we might call the new leviathan—Big Capital—whose historical attempts to subvert democratic processes have found renewed vigour in the digital era. Armed with state-of-the-art technology, the financial oligarchy now seeks not merely to influence democracy but to customise it according to market imperatives.
This marriage of concentrated wealth and the decline of democracy has deep historical antecedents. The American Gilded Age is a great example, when industrial titans like J.D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan amassed formidable economic power that controlled parts of the US government. It took the determined efforts of Theodore Roosevelt, through his “trust-busting” campaigns, to challenge these monopolistic forces that had begun to strangle both market competition and democratic governance.
Today, we stare at the dawn of a second Gilded Age, where tech giants (fondly called Big Tech) wield influence that would make their industrial-era predecessors envious. The statistics are striking—global billionaires now command more wealth than the bottom 60 per cent of humanity combined. In countries like Indonesia, as the economist Jeffrey Winters reveals, just 50 oligarchic families control more than one-fifth the nation’s GDP. This pattern repeats across nations, including India, where economic elites exercise outsized influence over public policy while ordinary citizens find their voices increasingly muted or muffled.
The concentration of financial power works through multiple channels. Beyond the obvious mechanisms of direct political contributions and media ownership, Big Capital has perfected what might be called the art of perception management. Through precision-targeted advertising and algorithmic manipulation on social media, wealthy interests can now create bespoke narratives for different demographic groups, effectively fragmenting social cohesion and undermining collective political consciousness.
The corporate capture of democratic institutions has far-reaching consequences for both policy outcomes and the common good. Even widely supported initiatives—climate change legislation, healthcare reform, financial regulation, workers’ rights—falter when they collide with corporate interests. Social scientists term this phenomenon “policy drift”: the systematic failure to update policies in response to changing conditions, a pattern that ends up benefiting wealthy interests.
Countering this demands institutional reforms that create clear boundaries between economic and political power. While the solution appears straightforward—stricter campaign finance laws, stronger enforcement of anti-monopoly rules, and improved transparency in corporate political activities—history suggests that implementing such reforms will be anything but simple. This generation faces a challenge analogous to our ancestors’ struggle against political absolutism: it must confront economic absolutism.
So what can be done?
Democracy’s greatest strength, as history has shown, lies not in perfection but in resilience—its capacity to adapt, reform, and renew itself through peaceful means. In this mission, there are two powerful weapons: public awareness and civic engagement.
Understanding how Big Capital degrades democratic processes is the vital first step. And, unlike authoritarian systems, democracy inherently possesses the mechanisms for positive change. They stay dormant without the active participation of citizens. So, we must engage, educate, and empower.
That said, perhaps the most pressing question before us isn’t whether democracy will survive, but whether we merit the democracy we inherited. Will we, through apathy and neglect, allow our freedoms to slip away, betraying not only our ancestors’ sacrifice but also the aspirations of generations yet unborn?
The answer lies not in grand gestures but in daily commitment: showing up to vote, actively taking part in civil discourse, defending democratic norms, and remembering that democracy demands participation, not spectatorship. While our ancestors paid democracy’s price in blood, we must now honour it through vigilance, engagement, and dedication to its principles.
This brings me to Frontline‘s latest issue, which analyses an event of seismic importance for global democracy: the second coming of Donald Trump, openly powered this time by Big Capital and surveillance capitalism. Our distinguished contributors—Jayant Prasad, Radhika Desai, Tabish Khair, Ambreen Yousuf, and Iftikhar Gilani—examine how this watershed moment could change democratic institutions worldwide, from the US to India, and what fallout we might expect.
Enjoy the essays and write back with your comments, not merely as readers but as stakeholders in democracy’s future. In these challenging times, every voice matters.
Wishing you a meaningful week ahead,
Jinoy Jose P.
Digital Editor, Frontline
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