EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS AND EFFECT OF DEMOCRACY

Elections are the lifeblood of democracy, which provide an opportunity for voters to
exercise their sacred right, i e, the right to vote to choose their representatives. They became
an intrinsic to the life of Indian citizens these days. This vital process, therefore, needs to be
made effective by freeing it from the influence of money and muscle power and there should
be a systematic check to prevent the inflow of candidates with criminal backgrounds into the
system. Free and fair elections are one of the inherent features of democracies be it direct or
indirect. India has both types of elections.1

Democracy is not new to India; rather it is a concept which has been transplanted
back into the field as in ancient India there were Janapadas and Mahajanapadas which
functioned in a manner which was quite similar to the notion of Democracy. There are
problems related to the operational aspects of election. These may be like mistakes in voter
rolls in terms of the non-inclusion of the names of some voters in the list, duplications of
some names, wrongly written voter names, lack of proper training to list makers, the
preparation of voter list without properly consulting area maps, lack of efficient super-vision
on the part of line department staff, lack of proper training to data entry operators, puppet
candidates/relatives standing on behalf of an uneducated politician, politicians procuring fake
degrees etc.etc, which are associated with the electoral operations. More or less, these
problems have been found in many constituencies. Some of the above problems can be
solved by having people of good education in the fields of maintaining democracy.2

Education plays a vital role for achieving democracy. Primary education in india has
not received adequate attention. The most important and urgent reform needed in education is
to transform it, to endeavour to relate it to the life, needs and aspirations of the people and
thereby make it a powerful instrument of social, economic and cultural transformation
necessary for the realization of the national goals. For this purpose education should be
developed so as to increase productivity, achieve social and national integration, accelerate
the process of modernisation and cultivate social, moral and spiritual.

1
SEN, RAHUL, and D.K. BHATTACHARYA. “Education in India.” Indian Anthropologist, vol. 21, no. 2,
1991, pp. 67–74.
2
DEVANSH MALHOTRA and RITIK RATH,” ELECTION REFORMS IN THE LIGHT OF RECENT
JUDICIAL AND LEGISLATIVE ACTIONS.” Pp.20-43
 Education is meant to develop the role of acculturation in the community, it can not
emphasize spiritual development.3 The former is centrifugal while the latter is centripetal in
character. Once again there is an emphasis on scientific temper, self reliance and the role of
providing man power to different levels of economy. The role of Government is to provide
adequate facilities for education in certain areas and hence the candidates in such areas
should be exempt from the application of the qualification.4

Article 45(after 86th ammendment) clearly endows the state to mandate free and
compulsory education for all the people to age between 6 to 14. This was envissged from
article 21 A which mandates Right to Education by invoking RTE act, 2006. Introduction of
the RTE can certainly not be a justification for this qualification. An important point to be
considered here is the fact that the minimum age for participating in elections. Even if we
consider that people stand for elections as soon as they turn that age, the people presently
aged presently certainly did not have the state-provided means of education during the years
they would have required the same to make them eligible.

Elected candidates rule people. They should have a minimal level of knowledge
(education upto class VII) about the governance, politics rule and economy of the area he is
elected. When it comes to statisstics places like rajasthan though has least level of literacy
made it obvious by electing people who are illeterates or having non-suitable character as a
leader for the people. These places even faces critiques like absentee teachers, eagar students
to remain illiterate etc. There always lies a political significance despite access to edducation
over the years. Illeterate people may have a chance to become politically vulnerable .To put
things inmotion: one member of the Constituent Assembly suggested that it was unfortunate
that the adult suffrage had to be extended to illiterate persons. But he also conceded that the
very notion of adult suffrage would be rendered meaningless if it were denied to the illiterate
because it was such a large share of the population. There has, hitherto, been some strength in
numbers. Democracy needs Responsibility, it comes through awareness and knowledge
where education is the key factor for those things.

3
Ramesh, R. “HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES OF THE ELECTORAL REFORMS IN INDIA.” Proceedings
of the Indian History Congress, vol. 72, 2011, pp. 1325–1336
4
Kumar, B.Venkatesh. “Critical Issues in Electoral Reforms.” The Indian Journal of Political Science, vol. 63,
no. 1, 2002, pp. 73–88.
 In the javed v state of haryana case, the Rajasthan High Court could have mimicked
the Supreme Court’s reasoning – “Education, including primary and secondary schools”;
“adult and non-formal education”of schedule 11 of the constitution. It is also manifest that
the basic error committed by the Supreme Court in Javed was to conflate the two different
objects of lending legal recognition to the Panchayats (vide the 73 Amendment and the
Panchayati Raj Act) –

(1) One is to create a right of political participation and self-governance by opening up

positions to institutions with statutory power for those hitherto deprived of it;

(2) the other is to encourage such constituted bodies to engage in certain activities and
promote certain goals.

A statutory amendment, in order to survive the object-nexus test, ought to be

consistent with the corresponding object of the main Statute or the Constitutional
Amendment authorizing the statute. The High Court here aptly identifies this distinction –

“The disqualification for membership, under Article 243F of the Constitution, to be

prescribed by the Legislature of the State, could not have provided for any such condition
attached, which may have taken away the rights of the self governance, except for
disqualifications, which have material object to achieve, such as the character, integrity or
morality of the person to represent. Any other disqualification will negate the object of self
governance at grass root level, peoples participation, and social justice”. “In fact,
prescription of educational qualification for inclusion for contesting elections in any
democratic institution, unless there is strong nexus with the object, to be achieved, is an anti
thesis to the democratic governance of the institution in a republic”

The 73 Amendment itself states that one of the objects of constitutionalizing the
Panchayati Raj institutions is to remedy the “insufficient representation of weaker sections
like Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women”. In order to fulfil the object-nexus test
for article 14, a statutory amendment to a law ought to be consistent with the corresponding
object of the constitutional amendment or provision authorizing such a law.5 If one of the
stated objects of the 73 Amendment could effectively be subverted by setting electoral bars in
pursuance of goals the constituted body is to pursue, then the object of the Constitutional

5
Vance, Cyrus R. “Reforming the Electoral Reforms.” Yale Law & Policy Review, vol. 1, no. 1, 1982, pp. 151–
157.
Amendment would be defeated. It should be in a more passive way by electing the people
who has “horse sense”,“who makes political judgement”.6

6
REDDY, A. ESWARA. “PANEL IV: ELECTORAL REFORMS IN INDIA.” The Indian Journal of Political
Science, vol. 52, no. 1, 1991, pp. 140–144.