How educated politicians can make a difference in our country

Have you ever thought why most of the development in India has happened ‘despite’ the government rather than ‘because’ of the government?

In India, the top career choices of students (or their parents) have been medicine and engineering since independence. Politics as a career is not a chosen profession other than for those who parents were senior politicians. Our current crop of politicians are those who failed to get into the choice professions or those who lacked the necessary discipline to complete any good course of education. Most of them, if they have some education, have that only in paper and would have passed their examinations by luck or through other means.  These guys, when they eventually get elected, cannot be expected to do anything good for the people or the country. First of all, they lack the intellectual capability to make decisions that are best for the people and the country. Secondly, they lack the discipline and self control required when they get power – as they say, ‘Power Corrupts, Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely’. This lack of self control makes them do things that do not lend any support to the wellbeing of the population or the country. Unfortunately, poor learning skills and poor self control have a high degree of overlap and this compounds the problem.

Compare our situation to that in some of the developed countries. The first one that comes to mind is the US. Educationally, US presidents, senators and representatives have been good if not exceptional. Obama had his undergraduate degree from Columbia and law degree from Harvard. Bill Clinton had his law degree from Yale. Think of Britain now.  David Cameron had his education from Eton and Oxford. David Miliband, the ex-Labour leader studied at Oxford and then MIT. Tony Blair is an Oxford alumnus. In Germany, Angela Merkel has a PhD in Quantum Chemistry and has numerous publications to her credit. In France, Francois Hollande also had a great education before starting his political career. If we go further down the pecking order, and look at the educational achievements of senators in the US, most of them are qualified attorneys (JD degree) and please note here that the law degree in the US should not be compared to the equivalent in India. In the US, there is a highly selective entry process for the law degree. Similarly if you do some quick research on the educational background of the MPs in Britain, you will realize that they all have a great foundation in the liberal arts or science or judiciary. Further, many of the legislators in the developed world had a distinguished career in the armed forces.

If you now compare this to the situation in Kerala, it does not take long for one to realize that we are being governed by a set of legislators who do not have the intellectual ability to make a decision on behalf of the population. Would you want to be treated by a doctor who does not have the required credentials? Here, these uneducated buffoons are not treating just individuals; they are setting the trajectory for a huge population.

Of course not all politicians and leaders need to have formal education. Education can be had from life experiences, reading and pure intellectual curiosity. If at least half of the politicians in our country had good education, then the intellectually challenged politicians would have found it impossible to move to senior positions within the political parties, while others who may be talented but do not have formal education would still make it through to the top.

What we need is a mind bend at this point, a shift in preferred career choices. We should encourage smart kids to consider a career in politics. We can change what politics means in our country over the next decade if we do this. A political career may not fetch the same monetary rewards as a career in some of the other realms, but the responsibility and the power that come with an elected office will more than make up for that. We need to change if we do not want our children to have to dance to the tunes set by those who do not know what is best for our country. The only other option would be to migrate which is never as good as being able to live in ones own country.