A new bug of demanding to see the educational qualifications of opposition members has now infected politicians. Instead of focusing on the country, this is a huge diversion which fails to make the least sense. The Constitution of India on the eligibility criteria for an MP or MLA categorically makes no mention of educational qualifications. Ironically, right or wrong, perhaps the only professions in the country which does not require an education to practice are medicine and politics, both related to the well-being of the individual and the nation. An education is desirable but not mandatory for election as a people’s representative. For that matter, no democracy (to the best of my knowledge) in the world asks for educational qualifications of its contestants. The criterion to stand for elections are mainly a certain age, citizenship of the country, and an absent criminal record. If at all, political parties can focus on the last to attack the opposition with.
The defining criteria in democracies today is in making the education of its representatives irrelevant! Since the times of Socrates, the ideal governing model has always been an enigma for thinkers. Democracy just appears to be the least of all the evils. Like the Greek philosophers two thousand years ago, thinkers across the ages worry that all forms of governance (democracy, socialism, communism, monarchy, oligarchy, or autocracy) to get the ‘wisest and the best’ from its pool of citizens to guide the rest fails at some point. Each form of governance ultimately ends in a revolution, according to some, as an excess of the basic principle gains hold to become poison.
Thus, as Plato (4th century BCE) thought, even democracy ruins itself by excess of its basic principle of an equal right of all to hold office and determine public policy. Democracy becomes disastrous because people are deficient by education to select the ‘best and wisest’ rulers even as the most educated and capable choose to stay away from the process of elections. Oratory skills, nepotism, money, corruption, and general incompetence take over with the single purpose to garner votes and gain power in a democracy based on adult franchise. Have things changed after almost two thousand years? Aristotle thought that democracy bases on a false assumption that those who are equal in one respect (like the law) are equal in all respects, including governing. He says that in a democracy, ability sacrifices itself to number, while trickery manipulates numbers.
However, whatever be the end result of Indian democracy (whose present state confirms to the predictions of thinkers two thousand years old) education is not a criteria to stand for election today as per the all sacred Constitution. Whether good or bad, we do not know as only time will tell. However, the present crop of politicians showing their degrees and challenging the opposition members to do the same is only laughable. It only exposes ignorance at the most basic level.
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