why an expensive democratic extravaganza?

America elected Obama in a fair and transparent presidential election and at the same time in China, another country of importance, Xi Jinping is gearing up to be the next leader in a very secret and mysterious (18^th Chinese Communist party congress) process without democratic ways. Two extreme ways of political institutionalism.  Total spending on the presidential and congressional election in the US crossed 5.8 billion US dollars and for sure the Chinese process cost very less compared to the American expenditure in election. Democracy seems to be a very expensive extravagance. For example in the 2009 the parliament elections in India cost a slightly more than 2 billion US dollars. The same day when the expenditure details of US elections were published I happened to read in Twitter a text from the World Bank. The study reveals that there are 2.47 billion people in the world who live below 2 US dollars a day. Interesting to note that the poverty rate in US jumped up from 11.3% in 2000 to 15.3% in 2010. The election expenses indicate the worth of the value system of the American politicians. What a paradox? At least in India there are some restrictions to the amount of money to be spent by every candidate in the elections. If the cross the limit of their permitted expense level, the candidates will be suspended of all their offices they have won and also debarred from contesting elections for the next six years. Why to promote such a very high expensive election process of democracy which denies food and shelter to the poor? A Facebook post that attracted my attentions runs as follows. “I don’t believe in democracy because it is the system that freed Barabbas and crucified Jesus”. More than that now an added reason. In world where one of every seven people go to bed hungry, it is very expensive to uphold the democratic system at a very high cost. Need to go for a new system ………