Washington: Noted social activist Aruna Roy has said that rural India, which suffers the worst aspects of democracy, is also where democracy is most alive.
"The people who live in rural India are intelligent people. Ordinary people are intelligent. They are bright. We don't listen to them," Roy said yesterday at a conference in London on 'Open Government Partnership Annual Summit'
"We have Gandhi. Gandhi travelled all of India, listened to people, and that's how the national movement for independence really originated, and civil disobedience. Listening to human beings whom we dismiss as ordinary is part of the Indian culture," she said.
"So rural India, which really suffers the worst of the worst of Indian democracy, is where democracy is most alive. That's where they want to set it right. They do protest, they do struggle," Roy said.
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