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good example of that where the level of overall schooling, or number of years
people staying in school is not, globally speaking, that high, yet they are able to
have flourishing functioning democracy even without the formal education. It’s
more, perhaps, they have gone through the democracy education through other
means.
If I were to prioritize, one would be free elections. So, you need free
competitive elections. You need to ensure that there are multiple parties
involved, where no one party is dominating over others in terms of access to
resources, or something like that. When you have free competitive elections,
then that is automatically a check on autocratic aspects of any government.
Another is free institutions, something like the judiciary which can be
counted upon to do the right thing as per the constitution and that will also
serve as a check on wayward executive action. I had one more which is, your
organization, where you are coming from. An active civil society is extremely
important, but that is not just political mobilization, but civic engagement on the
part of people and numerous other ways for ideas and decent issues like that
to be discussion there.
On the second question about the role of education. Education, we find
that even uneducated, illiterate people still go ahead and have very good
judgements when it comes to electoral outcomes. So, it’s not, sort of,
prerequisite in that sense, but education has played the role of creating. There
is a scholar who argues that India is also a state nation. We have created an
India. And we may have been created by all of us cheering for the same
cricket team, watching movies in Hindi which unites the country in some other
way, or learning in school about our history, freedom movement, and various
other symbols and activities that make us Indian, or our own identities. But
where I feel that we are somewhat failing in the education system is in
teaching people the values of compassion, inclusion. You know when we talk
about groups that have been historically disadvantaged, people who are from
formerly advantaged communities will say, ok, give them a formal education for
50 years. Why continue us anymore. But if you actually look at the kind of
backward that it exist, you have to continue this for a long time. Maybe caste
is no longer the criteria. It may be rural origin. It may be gender. It may be
educational attainment. There’s so much inequality that’s there because of birth,
birth circumstances that we need to do something at the state to ensure a
more level in playing field. Those values, the values of inclusion and compassion ²£ ´£²¢¡¸¡¡Á¥°£°ª²£l²h²£°À¨
to other minority religions. All of these values, we need to nurture and talk
about. There is a great fascination for authoritarian, autocratic leaders because
it harks back to historic kings and things like that. And yet again, we need to
