Thursday, September 23, 2010

The stimulus to implement "Right to Education" act

I had been having this idea for some time now. There has been so much noise being made on the importance of voting during the elections and how it will help elect the right candidates (without criminal backgrounds etc). But how many people amongst the ones who vote are really aware of the background of the candidates who are contesting in the elections? Or rather I should put it this way. How many of people amongst the ones who vote are learned enough to read/understand the background of the people they are voting for? I guess not many. Then how can we expect people to elect the right representatives for themselves. We cannot clean up this system without our people getting educated and all of them. We have definitely made a start when we passed the "Right to Education" bill. But are we sure that it will be implemented? Do we have enough infrastructure to provide education to each and every child in the age group of 6-14 years? As of now, I don't think we have enough schools in our country to implement the "Right to Education". So, are our politicians doing or will be doing enough to provide the infrastructure for this. I am a little skeptical here. Many of them would want that the people remain ignorant so that they can play their dirty politics and instill their own ideas into the minds of the poor uneducated people. I have an idea here. The right to vote should be conditional. Yes, on the conditional that the person has acquired minimum amount of education. Of course, the person has to be above 18 years of age too. I know this would be unfair to may people who have already voted and have not had enough education in their childhood. So let me put it this way. All the people who will be reaching the age of 18 years after 2020 will be eligible to vote only if they have completed minimum primary education. The older people who were above 18 before 2020 can vote without this minimum education condition. This will have two advantages. One, it will sure that the people who are voting are atleast educated to the primary level so that they can read and understand the manifestoes and the campaigning banners and also read the backgrounds of the candidates which I hope will be published by the newspapers, which ultimately will help clean up the system. And two, the infrastructure required for implementation of "Right to Education" will be hastened (atleast till the primary level) to some extent since the politicians will want that people whose vote will be surety for them are eligible to vote. We could make the eligibility criteria stricter for people who attain the age of 18 after 2030 by making the minimum education level to 10th standard for gaining voting rights. I don't know how much of the above idea is practical, but I hope that some wise individual in the government reads this and does something about it. The numbers I have put for the years and minimum education levels are just random and people who would want to implement this can discuss amongst themselves and come up with the right numbers which is practical. My motive was to just explain the idea using the random numbers which is not too bad I guess ;).

1 comment:

electionreddy said...

nice idea Ajesh. Hope this get implemented.