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> The leaders and the bureaucrats of the Govt. of India deserve to be shot in a public square for their sheer corruption and incompetence. The Indian public de

by Arun2009 14y ago

> The leaders and the bureaucrats of the Govt. of India deserve to be shot in a public square for their sheer corruption and incompetence. The Indian public deserves an equal or greater share of the blame. Government is the people's responsibility in a democracy. If governance sucks, the citizens are not doing their job.

csomar 14y ago
You are living in a developed country, right? You got many years of language, writing, speaking, thinking and maybe higher education. You don't know what illiteracy means (when you can't read/write; and don't understand anything about democracy or the banking system). Your average person in a developing and poor country is not Arun2009. It's a fairly ignorant person who doesn't know either his rights or his duties.
- awakeasleep 14y ago
  Yesterday an article made it to our frontage about what 'bubbles' we live in. By bubbles the author meant assumptions that shape how we see and interpret everything. I think literacy & education is one of the biggest bubbles. I had to spend a lot of time thinking about it, and talking to people with experience in the subject before the vast idea of what it means to be illiterate started to dawn on me. For example, teaching a class on how to use computers to people at the library. They all want to know how to 'look for a job' online. Show 'em how to use the mouse, what icons represent the internet, how to get email, and see they're having trouble. Slowly begin to understand they're only memorizing shapes and patterns of letters, and don't really know how to read or write. We're all so hyper literate, I can say that about everyone here. We're practically a different species than people who don't know how to wirelessly communicate through space and time. It's impossible to hold poor people in india who basically only have spoken word communication, and oral tradition historical context, to our standards.
jbp 14y ago
Easier said than done. You know it is more complicated than that. India is a namesake democracy, same families get elected all the time. With about 30% illiteracy rate, people don't even know they have a choice, thousands of years of oppression of majority of the population, ... so on.
grandalf 14y ago
Do you seriously think that the average Indian citizen is less politically empowered than the average American citizen?
- suprgeek 14y ago
  The average Indian is likely making less than $2 a day [1] and likely illiterate with not having the ability to read or write ANYTHING[2]. Is a dirt poor, illiterate person "politically empowered"? [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_India [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India (the numbers here are severely underrepresented - there is consensus among most NGOs that more than 50% illiteracy prevails)
  - grandalf 14y ago
    Why does one have to be literate to be politically active? Do you think that most US voters base their political decisions (or their decision whether or not to vote) on something they read?
    - srean 14y ago
      I don't know why this got down-voted to hell. You raise a very valid point. That democracy has to be representative is one of its basic tenets, and you cannot have that if you shut out a large fraction of your citizens. It is very patronizing to assume that the uneducated do not know what is good for them and the educated class knows what is better for them.
      - ameasure 14y ago
        Another basic tenet of democracy is that its citizens must be informed. I think it's fair to assume that those who lack access to written knowledge are at a disadvantage in this respect. For what it's worth, I upvoted the comment. Downvoting it to the point of invisibility strikes me as rather undemocratic.
    - 14y ago

csomar 14y ago

You are living in a developed country, right? You got many years of language, writing, speaking, thinking and maybe higher education. You don't know what illiteracy means (when you can't read/write; and don't understand anything about democracy or the banking system). Your average person in a developing and poor country is not Arun2009. It's a fairly ignorant person who doesn't know either his rights or his duties.

awakeasleep 14y ago
Yesterday an article made it to our frontage about what 'bubbles' we live in. By bubbles the author meant assumptions that shape how we see and interpret everything. I think literacy & education is one of the biggest bubbles. I had to spend a lot of time thinking about it, and talking to people with experience in the subject before the vast idea of what it means to be illiterate started to dawn on me. For example, teaching a class on how to use computers to people at the library. They all want to know how to 'look for a job' online. Show 'em how to use the mouse, what icons represent the internet, how to get email, and see they're having trouble. Slowly begin to understand they're only memorizing shapes and patterns of letters, and don't really know how to read or write. We're all so hyper literate, I can say that about everyone here. We're practically a different species than people who don't know how to wirelessly communicate through space and time. It's impossible to hold poor people in india who basically only have spoken word communication, and oral tradition historical context, to our standards.

jbp 14y ago

Easier said than done. You know it is more complicated than that. India is a namesake democracy, same families get elected all the time. With about 30% illiteracy rate, people don't even know they have a choice, thousands of years of oppression of majority of the population, ... so on.

grandalf 14y ago

Do you seriously think that the average Indian citizen is less politically empowered than the average American citizen?

suprgeek 14y ago
The average Indian is likely making less than $2 a day [1] and likely illiterate with not having the ability to read or write ANYTHING[2]. Is a dirt poor, illiterate person "politically empowered"? [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_India [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India (the numbers here are severely underrepresented - there is consensus among most NGOs that more than 50% illiteracy prevails)
- grandalf 14y ago
  Why does one have to be literate to be politically active? Do you think that most US voters base their political decisions (or their decision whether or not to vote) on something they read?
  - srean 14y ago
    I don't know why this got down-voted to hell. You raise a very valid point. That democracy has to be representative is one of its basic tenets, and you cannot have that if you shut out a large fraction of your citizens. It is very patronizing to assume that the uneducated do not know what is good for them and the educated class knows what is better for them.
    - ameasure 14y ago
      Another basic tenet of democracy is that its citizens must be informed. I think it's fair to assume that those who lack access to written knowledge are at a disadvantage in this respect. For what it's worth, I upvoted the comment. Downvoting it to the point of invisibility strikes me as rather undemocratic.
  - 14y ago