Tuesday, February 9, 2010
A democratic nation Empowers everyone
Democracy - "With great opportunity, comes great responsibility". Every citizen of India is empowered to choose the government of the nation. He has the right to cast his vote. I think its high time we should revisit the whole process of voting in a democracy and find out where are the loopholes. Is the responsibility of a citizen just limited to cast his vote. If the citizen is not aware of his action, then aren't we jeopardizing the whole process of voting which should be the most fair process carried out in a nation. So, lets consider how can we make it more fair and relevant. Lets make the voting process a little more informative and inquisitive. How about putting some objective as a reason to be ticked along with the vote for a particular party/person. And for those who are unread and unaware, then let them have the opportunity of listening to the reasons put forward by the parties as reasons to get them elected. Moreover, we can make this process weighted, where if a voter is educated upto minimum required level, then his/her vote carries more weight compared to a voter who is unread. Agreed, unread doesn't necessarliy imply being unaware, but in effect this will put more pressure on the political parties to get the voters educated enough. Will this then not be a win-win situation for the nation and the parties along with keeping the fairness of the whole voting process. Food for thought?
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I beg to differ.
ReplyDeleteDon't we get political parties' manifestos circulated before general elections? What is the need for objectives again while casting the vote? However they are not going to be met, both parties and people know very well. What difference does it make other than creating more confusion?
'Process-weighted' technique in polling doesn't work at all. In fact, it discriminates uneducated from the rest, which is not fair.
Bitter truth. Today's 'educated' India vote for color TVs. No constitution allows spending public money on color TVs for a party's benefit. At least on paper it is true.
Even bitter solution. Get people to think. Educating not only the ignorant and also the educated is the real challenge. Until it is met there is nothing to be proud of.
Lets face it...
ReplyDeleteIndia's literacy rate is 65%, USA's 99%, China's 91%. It is expected that India will be the most populated country in the world surpassing China with 1.52 billion people. Should we not start preparing ourselves to meet the future needs. Looking the current economic conditions, India is expected to outperform China not because that India is too good but China is not that great. They have certain value which makes them weaker in the international arena. However, as history has witnessed that the success of a nation largely depends on its literacy rate unless it has a natural advantage of being an oil nation, etc. which unfortunately we are not. So, we have to take the longer path to success and strive hard to be what we want to be.
I absolutely agree with your point of educating the already educated people. This is fine. But... when we stand in the Davos meeting or Copenhagen, where its a fight of country's thought-process. India has to do something to leverage its potential to be the most sought-after destination for investors, international corporate, otherwise we really will be sitting with huge demand and less supply because of our ever-increasing population and the little measures we are taking to control it. It's time we learn from our neighbours like China who implemented one child policy since 1979.
Indian government can do a lot more than what they are doing today for this nation. Being a responsible citizen, it is my duty to educate my fellow citizens and put a little more stricter policies in place so that we don't become Too Big to Fail. Having a weighted process of voting for not more than 10 years will be a kind of a reform which a government can implement to involve everyone to reach a goal of lets say 90% literacy rate. Taking this revolutionary stand, we are going to face a lot of opposition but in effect we will be just very close to China and US in terms of literacy rate. If we say that we are jeopardizing the fundamental right to vote, then are we not jeopardizing the fundamental right to give birth (human right) in China. Lets be practical. Organisation fires even its most loyal employees in case of turmoil. So, why don't we become a little more practical and do something to face the severe competetion we are going to have from China.
And, I didnt' say that the uneducated people should not be allowed to vote. I just said that they should be more informed and education is one way of doing it. And in this case political parties will go way beyond to educate voters so that they can be voted for.