Democracy was not meant to work on small scale: Mansoor Khan

Mansoor Khan delivers a lecture on his book `The Third Curve: The End of Growth As We Know It, at Town Hall in Auroville. Photo: S.S. Kumar

The concept of democracy was not meant to be extended to a large scale. It works only at a village or a town level, film maker and author Mansoor Khan explains.

The idea of democracy was to elect a leader who was people-friendly and who could be approached with ease. But the same thing is not possible when it is extended on a larger scale, said

Mr. Mansoor Khan, while delivering a lecture at Auroville on Tuesday.

Mr. Khan was in Puducherry to launch his new book

The Third Curve: The End of Growth As We Know It . He spoke at Auroville and Pondicherry University, explaining the concept behind his book. Khan is a successful Bollywood filmmaker, who directed Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak

“Many concepts that start out at a smaller scale are successful. But when they begin to grow exponentially, they stop being effective,” said Mr. Khan.

In the 1850s, the world discovered the power of oil. It is the energy from this oil that has powered the world all along. It brought in the concept of growth and money and led civilisation to where it is today. Initially, the use of oil was not much, but through the years the use of oil increased drastically. Along with this, there was also the growth of money. For sometime, the growth of money and the increase in the use of oil were at similar rates. Unfortunately, while the demand for oil began to grow exponentially, its supply will not be able to match the growth. At the same time, money began to grow exponentially, and there was no energy or actual production to match this growth.

As a result, mankind began using up various resources in order to fuel the economy to generate more money to support growth.

The extinction of species around the world has been growing at an exponential rate, so has the decrease in rain forests, water usage, carbon dioxide concentration, ozone depletion, the increase in the number of cars and the consumption of paper. Unfortunately, none of these resources are infinite, he said.