On Sat, Jul 4, 2009 at 6:02 PM, Bruce Metcalf <[email protected]>wrote:
> . wrote: > >> lukhman_khan<[email protected]> wrote: >> > > For a person to be able to vote there should be a minimum education >>> criteria. >>> >> >> I disagree. Adding any form of criteria is discrimination and it flies >> against the very tenet of democracy, besides being unconstitutional, >> by denying each individual an equal right to _one_ vote. >> > > I've got to side with lukhman here. I do not wish the mentally deficient to > help decide the fate of my country. We can all imagine those so enfeebled by > age, disease, or damage that their vote could never be more than a random > selection, though we can agree to disagree on how to draw that line. > But how does an educational requirement strike the rest of you? > > Bruce > Well..I read Full-Stop's comment, and since I have always been a proponent of the "must have a school education at least" school of thought, it did make me stop and think. But Bruce..between the educated people and the mentall deficient you talk about....there are vast number of human beings who are NOT mentally deficient just because they do not have a formal education. So what about all of them? Why can't the canny (excuse that terrible pun) villager who never went to school, but who follows national politics on the local TV and radio, and who also knows the local politics, vote? What we need in some system that would prevent the kind of votes that are cast because the politicians suborn the voters with promises of pay, free food, and so on...essentially, "bought" votes. How to achieve this in India, where education does not prevent bribery? Any ideas? When I vote, sometimes I am not able to even choose who is the less blackguardly of the candidates list. We tried an iniatitive, amongst Mohan's IIM classmates, to bring IIM graduates to politics...but it was a miserable failure. The general perception is that politics is a cesspool and "decent" folk want to have nothing to do with it. Why hasn't Shiv jumped into this discussion yet? Deepa.
