Jan 10 2009
Concept of Intellocracy
Democracy provides equal voting rights to all citizens, while all the citizens do not have equal intellect, their intentions are not of equal value, and most importantly, their interests in the formation of a government are not of the same intensity. These things are of great value for electing a right government for a nation. Therefore, governments formed through democratic process are failing to meet the expectations of their people, in most of the democratic countries of the world. I was thinking that probably American countries are electing their governments properly and so are getting good governments, but I am shocked to receive a comment on my blog that description of failures of democracy in India look like those on American countries. This is indicative of the fact that cracks in democracy have started appearing to most of the thinking citizens of the world, and we need some thing better than democracy. The answer is the ‘Intellocracy’.
Intellocracy, in brief, means rule of the intellect of a nation. This is opposed to quantitative approach of democracy and is conceptualised to have a qualitative approach for electing a government for a nation. This is done by giving different weightage to votes of different categories of people in the nation. As an elaboration of it, everybody in the world would agree with me that a highly qualified citizen must be given a higher rating than an illiterate compatriot of his. Like this, we have other factors of a citizen’s qualities for providing him a higher weightage. Some of these are - Maturity in terms of Age, Family Background, and Intellectual Level. No doubt, economic level of a citizen also counts, but if it is given consideration in formation of a government, a vicious circle may cause grabbing of political power by the economically sounder citizens, as is happening today in capitalistic and may defective democracies of the world. So, I am of the opinion that the economic level be left out of the voting value considerations.
Although, the vote weightage considerations may vary from one nation to other due to their historical and geographical backgrounds, I suggest here a general model for vote weightage -
Quality/Vote Weightage
Citizen Quality Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4
Education Professional/3 Graduate/2 Matriculate/1 Illiterate/0
Age 60 - 80/3, 40 - 60/2 25 - 40/1 0 - 25/0
Occupation: Intellectual/3, Business/2, Pvt.-job/1, Govt.-job*/0
Intellectuality: International/3, National/2, Regional/1, Other/0
With such a rating, a citizen may have his vote weightage anywhere from the highest level of 12 to the lowest level of zero. This shall give a qualitative touch to the government that is elected. Here, one important point is that I have provided zero marking to a person employed by the government, which is not accidental but a well-considered opinion. Since a government-employee already has a say in the working of the government, he need not have any valuer in electing the government.
The most glorious advantage of intellocracy is that it provides an incentive to the citizen to become quality-conscious in inner as well as outer considerations. This is what the humanity is supposed to acquire for further evolution. Quantitative approach of democracy is dragging the humanity towards animalistic levels, degrading the world of ours. This is what we, the intellectuals of the world, are gradually coming to realize.
