The same old thing

In the present world the most potent, and public, display of democracy is elections. It’s is a huge exercise involving entire populations. The theoretical explanations of a thing called  democracy is an entirely different entity when placed against the practical arrangements put in place to ensure the implementation of basic democracy. Elections, as the first post of democracy, involve huge mobilisation of human and material resource. In Kashmir the human resource is majorly, if not entirely, drawn from the government employees. There is no alternative to it, goes without saying. However, in our state the point has been made more than once that one arm of government employees, and that is the teachers, is first tied to this election exercise. Earlier also the point was made that such kind of human resource deployment inflicts a severe blow to our education system. This time around the point is again made in the backdrop of the announcement made about the upcoming urban local body and panchayat elections. It is pertinent to mention that during the winter vacations the government had undertaken the CM’s Super50 coaching programme. This programme was started with a fanfare sometime back under the chiefministership of late Mufti Muhammed Saeed. The programme is solely dependent on government teachers. When a sizable number of such teachers would be designated for election duties, it is bound to impact the program negatively. Earlier also this point was raised from different quarters that education should be spared of such vagaries. But it seems that despite some good talk on this issue by the concerned people, nothing has changed. Once again the same thing is happening and the same effects on the education department are expected. No doubt conducting elections requires huge numbers in terms of human resource, but at least it could be rationalized. There must be ways to deal with this problem, and ensure that the education department suffers the least. If the concerned authorities are sensitive to the issue, there is no reason why we can’t have a way out.