Is educational qualification for election "elitist democracy"?

                                                             

In India politics is quite a part of “pop culture”, we pay concern mostly to only those news which are often “hot topic” of discussion of media and news channels like prime minister visit to foreign country (which I guess most of the people do not have idea about a complicated thing like foreign policy of country, they believe what is being told on news channels) and the discussion about meat ban. And in this hot topic discussion sometimes some “not so hot topic”, but quite crucial topics, which are quite good topic for discussion often go unnoticed. Among this unnoticed thing was a recent decision of state government of Rajasthan and Haryana to not allow to contest gramsabha election by those who have not passed class tenth, who do not have toilet in their house and those who haven’t paid their electricity bill. When I heard about this news I thought its quite progressive outlook. Often when we have discussions about shortcoming of indian politicians we say that most of our politicians are illiterate and uneducated. In a country when there is campaign of making clean India how can we expect that in the house of representative of people there should not be a toilet, and the leader is not paying electricity bill.

But my progressive outlook was quite challenged when I read an article of Brinda Karat. Brinda Karat is a member of Communist party (Marxist), and with passage of time there is hardly anyone who want to hear the words of communist party. In the article she claims that if the basis of education is implemented for contesting gramsabha election then more than fifty percent of the population will be disqualified from contesting election and this is quite egalitarian democracy.

The topic of discussion about democracy is quite a debatable topic in itself and if there is no debate and discussion then it will not be democracy. When I think over her words I am reminded of history where from 4^th century BC People like Plato were sceptical of democracy, who believed that not all citizens should be allowed to take part in democratic process. Even in United States slaves were not treated equally or in France after French revolution there was limited franchise on the basis of wealth and whole Europe was marred into internal conflict in nineteenth century for the idea of universal franchise. The idea she present is similar to the views which whole world put when India became independent- “can such a vast illiterate, poor population have a democratic government?” In science you can have a definite answer for a question, but you cannot have a definite answer for a question dates back to 4^th century B.C.

 Surely here the idea is not only about democracy but about better governance. Most of us believe that an educated person will have better understanding of working of system and can manage things in better way. Any of my friends who will be reading this blog will agree with me because all of us are well educated. The argument she put in her article for such a small percentage of people having education lower than class tenth is that because people of lower caste were deprived of education because of their social background. And when I think more over her arguments its posing even a deeper questions in front of us like” haven’t we attained social equality even after 68 years of independence?” or “is really making educational qualification a criteria for contesting election is not an egalitarian democracy?”