So le grand voting day came and went... I went and stood for two hours (paced up and down the line actually) to get my finger painted with a ghastly brownish-purple streak that looks more like smurf shit-stain. So anyway, after pressing the button on a machine which was strategically placed so everyone present could see where my hand went, I returned home - head hung with shame and guilt,
with the knowledge that I've done my bit to help choose the hand that partakes in the running of our corruptocracy.
So why'd I do it you'd ask? Why that's so simple: being an egoist I can't just allow anyone to use up my choice, which would have been the case had I not shown up. It's just a point of pure selfishness that I did it. While the consequences of the act are worth far less than a nanogram (all puns intended) of cockroach-shit to me.
If you ask me (I know you would do no such crazy thing but let's imagine you did), I don't believe in the current election system... whatever happens here can be much easily and cheaply achieved by allotting the parties some open fields to battle it out... they already have enough ammunition among themselves - whoever wins gets to play the official arsehole for the next term. In fact even that'd be better than what is now, at least the violence will not affect the commonfolk... and the terrorists can form their own party and join the war, I'd love to see the faces of our politicians on that one!
How is the current system useless? Okay, let's examine the basic tenet of democracy - power to the people - so we're assuming that the people know what's best for them - do they? Of course not - the majority of this country is consisting of illiterate morons who'd vote for the local mangy mutt if offered a straight meal. This democracy does not work. It's just the political olympics, a time to flex muscles and kick around the blame ball... and nothing more.
So how'd have I done it? Simple, democracy can happen when the voters are aware - how do you make the voters aware? You don't, silly! Just allow the aware ones to vote! Let the number of votes per person be decided by sheer brains - have a computer adaptive culture specific IQ-EQ-KQ (intelligence, emotional stability and knowledge) test taken as a part of the voter registration, assign number of votes depending upon the percentile rank of the result.
The bottom 25% gets 1 vote per person, 26-75% gets 2 votes, 76-85% gets 4 votes, 86-90% gets 8 votes, 91-95% gets 16 votes, 96%-97% gets 32, 98-99% gets 64 and the top 1% of the population gets 128 votes per person.
The photograph taken during registration will be analyzed for facial biometrics and that would stop repeat/duplicate registrations (biometrics are unique, just block the registration of a biometric already submitted).
The polling booths are to be manned by the military (to avoid coercion), and it'll be mandatory for the top 25% to vote wherever they are (since the database is centralized, it's possible for anyone to vote from any booth, ID's will be supplemented by biometric verification).
And the sweetest part? Let the percentile ranks be private information, the top 25% voters themselves will be aware of their importance but no specifics would be given out (again, for the safety of the very high rank voters).
Repeat the process every year to keep the records updated (updation is much less resource hungry).
Well I can keep coming up with further details but I'm just not in the mood... except for... Oh damn! I forgot the basic point: Anybody scoring below 75 DOES NOT GET TO HOLD A POLITICAL POSITION. We can increase this cutoff as we go higher up the political ranks - the cabinet ministers may need to be from the top 5% only. Oh wow... I'd give an arm and a leg (figuratively duh!) for such a government!
Y'know what's funny? All of this is implementable within the current technological infrastructure we have! And y'know what's yummier? There is bound to be corruption, but most of the corrupt morons are not smart enough to fuck with the technology... hahah! Top that! Of course we'd have to spend a neat packet on hiring the best Indian/global hackers to design the security of the client/server backbone of the database and the security protocols.
Anyway, enough of the political wet dream... So I believe you get the point how much better it could be, and how bad it exactly is. That's the point I'm trying to get across - "This democracy sucks big time and it CAN be improved" eat that. And go to sleep with a full mental stomach tonight. Ciao mateys...
NesQuarX
Edit: I've had many of my esteemed friends giving this a serious thought (silly them!) and debating a lot many valid (and some obviously foolish!) points about the whole thing. If anyone else thinks of something to say: I'd like to have it as a comment as I believe that may actually help iron out the kinks in the feasibility or impossibility of the whole thing.
Thursday 14 May 2009
My take on the Indian sElections.
Read full post...
Tags:
democracy,
dream,
elections,
insights,
intellicracy,
iq,
nesquarx,
politics,
rules,
society,
speculation,
technology,
thought
Tags:
democracy,
dream,
elections,
insights,
intellicracy,
iq,
nesquarx,
politics,
rules,
society,
speculation,
technology,
thought
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
20 Attacks:
Okay this is interesting..but I don't think it's is going to work.Cuz that computer adaptive culture specific test is bound to estimate a person's IQ,EQ and KQ based on either an online questionnaire/some software or from information from that person's life which means the evaluation is bound to be flawed.And a voter may have a high IQ or a fair amount of knowledge about 'politics'(whatever that means) or maybe emotionally stable.But how do you determine whether he's honest or not?Different parties are gonna queue up in front of someone's house who's worthy of casting 128 votes!
Also I think it's not fair to only blame the poor illiterate masses for their choice of candidates.Whenever we,the 'educated' and so-called progressive people from the upper stratum of society cast our ballot,we think of our own narrow interests as well.Like for example,people would vote for the best candidate from their area who'll or has already served them well without giving a second thought to whether he/she belongs to a party capable of providing a much better administration at the centre.No one gives a damn about 'national interest'.
Same goes with industrialists who'd just want the economy to thrive.They couldn't care less about the other aspects.
So who exactly are 'aware' here?
Ah, Excellent, an opportunity to clarify.
Let's get on to it one by one.
psychometric evaluations based on a person's response to specifically designed questions are quite accurate, at least more than accurate as to estimate the general awareness of the person, it's been proven that these tests can reveal more about a person than they assume it can.
You can never be sure of a person's honesty until they are dead, what I'm trying to suggest is that at least the smart dishonest people will make better general decisions than foolish dishonest people (who, mind you, are far more in number!).
No one will know who are the 128 vote casters. The information is private, in a highly secure database (We'll hire Google if necessary!). There will be a general idea of the top 25%, the 8 and up ballot casters, which amounts to one in 4 people - do you think the parties will queue up to woo every 4th person from the populace?
Poverty and Illiteracy is nowhere mentioned here. I'm just taking stupidity into account. By making a test culture-specific, you can ensure that even a completely illiterate person who can hardly form a sentence gets a fair evaluation, being educated won't give you higher voting power (don't believe me? just try making all the people in your class take any popular online IQ test, you'll be assured that so called 'education' is hardly a marker).
When you talk about people voting for their narrow interests (notwithstanding the fact that being upper class won't boost your score), you're only looking at the 75%-95% group... that's the bright and smart people... but you're forgetting that the top 5% minds, the brilliant ones: they DO think about personal, regional, national, and even global interest when taking a decision; that 5% has enough voting power to sway the rest 95%, and that too taking only the worst case as an example.
By aware, I mean the people of the mind, the intelligentsia, the true leaders of the society, let the smart industrialist vote for the thriving economy, that's a bit more important than petty communal issues if you ask me.
And thank you for thinking on it... That's basically the primary objective of this post.
Give me the money, I'll do it
I hear you bro, I hear you.
Hmm apparently I missed out the part where information on the voters is kept private.My apologies!
Anyway you did mention something about 'illiterate morons' casting their votes in favor of someone offering them a morsel of food which,of course, is very true.But this is where I surmised you're talking about the poor masses at large.
And how's a person incapable of forming a proper sentence supposed to have a good enough knowledge of the political scenario of the country and a decent IQ?He most certainly wouldn't qualify to be able to cast more than a single vote.There'll be exceptions of course but they'd be few and far between.So basically we are looking at a system where the opinions of the majority of our population won't count which is of course what you want.
But what makes you count on the 5% who'd score the highest on that test of yours?Before today's results different industrialists were openly declaring that they were okay with either UPA or NDA at the front since both administrations are considered to be liberal with their economic reforms.Now would you be okay with empowering these people with the right to cast 4-128 votes?(most industrialists,I'm assuming,would fall in that category)I think I'd call their views quite narrow since they're choosing to ignore the other policies of both these alliances.(I don't think communal issues are petty)
Further with your system of voting the greater majority of people(with the right to cast a single vote or 2 votes) out there will be ignored BIG time by the government for the simple reason they wouldn't have a high IQ,EQ or KQ.Parties will be intent on wooing voters assumed to have a higher percentage of these(it won't be too hard to guess)
Demands of the masses will be completely overlooked.'Cause there's a possibility that the brilliant minds with the 95-99% score will ignore their interests/existence altogether.
P.S.:I guess today's results have done more than anything to prove that the Indian voter is not to be underestimated.He/she is quite capable of choosing the right person at the helm of matters.And this has re-established my faith in the people of my country.So I go with 'equal voting rights for everyone' :)
Very logical points you've popped, I guess I wasn't clear enough conveying the idea. I'll clarify.
Illiterate morons - Illiteracy which is a wide enough thing even when detached from poverty, but 'moron' is the keyword here.
I didn't say that the speech impaired person will be the 128 vote maker. I just said the person will get a fair evaluation, the language will not be a problem. (Testing is not always done with word riddles :) )
The majority of our population won't count. True, so true. But in your head when you're imagining the map of voting powers your own urban setting is creating a 'kupomonduk' effect and you're imagining the metros to be heavily concentrated with high rank voters and the top urban thinkers getting highest ranks. I can assure you it's not so, True, there will be concentrations in/around the metros not because urbanity breeds geniuses but rather simply due to the population concentration.
The top 5% would include the smart farmer guy from XYZ village who's just happy helping his family out. It'll include the wizened old slum dweller who's seen a lot of ups and downs and has been turned to the streets by circumstance. It'll include the struggling artist who hasn't paid 3 months' rent yet. It'll include the homeless fellow in the small town who works in a factory which may be closed down any day. And so on and so on.
Intellect does not seek urbanization, it's a global phenomenon. And stupidity permeates every field, it's a global disease.
The greater majority of people have every chance to be ignored were they clumped at any one place... But how can you ignore a village of a measly 1000 population where there are roughly 250 people who can cast anything from 8 to 128 votes. (And believe me, it's damn hard to guess, you can take your last comment as case in point)
Again... let the 95-99% contain a LOT of smart but ignorant/selfish people... let them think of their own interests... You're forgetting the top 1%... believe me, there are very, very very few ignorant/selfish people in that strata, they still have enough power to overturn the ignorant people.
What today's results have shown is that the Indian voter hardly exists. It's a single mob organism that's about as predictable as the next big bang. And whether the choice is right or wrong, you can hardly tell even after 5 years. Because there is no control experiment :) ... I say 'All of us are born a social animal, whether to be human or not is decided by us and our capability'. If you can't make the system perfect, at least make it idiot-proof!
i agree with you completely...but i dont think its possible..very impractical....but your concepts are really good...
Well... You're right, it won't happen, but only because it's too ridiculously good to be implemented. No sane politician of today would agree to it. It's just too big a change for anyone to handle. Very 'Tughlaqi' I'd say :D
Oh tempora, Oh mores...
Shotyo Selucus, ki bichitro ei desh...
Hahah, Chandragupta reloaded!
I remembered I was supposed to comment about this blog. But most of the things I had to say we already spoke about. I spoke to my teacher about your idea and he just laughed. I find it somewhat witty. It just more so objectifies people though.
Wow... I'm answering to 'Me'. Well... I'd rather have your teacher stop laughing and counter it if s/he could. And of course people too are objects... just with some attributes that we covet (puns? Go ahead, knock yourself out).
I'm not sure about the kind of results that test is gonna yield-especially about the part that the top 5% won't be concentrated in and around the metros.And I'm more than skeptical about the homeless guy working in a factory or the 'wizened old slum-dweller' being included among the top voters.*agrees on the part about the struggling artist*
Moreover,most of the educated(not the SO-CALLED educated)intelligent population seem to have political prejudices and inclinations towards certain parties...which wouldn't be a very good thing for the outcome.
And the politicians themselves being among the top 25%,I guess many of them would come up with bright ideas to mess with the entire arrangement.
It's hardly a test for education... General intelligence has far less to do with education. I have some research in psychometrics - and I can assure you it is good at finding what it intends to find: Intelligent individuals. And I'm quite sure because I've done the comparative study of raw intelligence using purely visual tests among rural and urban demographic samples myself...
Further... the prejudices among the intelligentsia either cancel each other out or simply are based on very valid facts.
Besides... one more fact which is escaping your consideration... there is a high rank voter among just a hundred people... It's not really that much high in IQ.. hardly around 135+... That's very smart but not extremely rare... There would be more than a billion such people. MORE THAN A BILLION. *repeated for stress*. You're really thinking of too narrow a strip when you're thinking of 'intelligentsia'.
Furthermore... politicians thin out above 90% and are too very rare among the ~95%+ range... and we're talking about a system designed by the top 0.001 percent population who're being paid to build something only all of them combined can break. (The way I envisioned it, we can have 3 teams of developers and visualizers (who are paid high enough not to be bribed in a combined scale) working on individual components of the system. Every component created by one team is cross-checked by the other 2 teams for signs of weaknesses and flaws/backdoors)... The team you'd need to crack such a system would cost our most corrupt politicians double their swiss-bank accounts just to hire (that too without surety of success).
i dont think the elections nowadays have any values..because most people nowadays are misled,misguided,ignorant...or just dont have the education...like me...to understand whats good or bad...but people wont agree....people will talk about democracy and people power....when most of them goes by what is apparent..and doesnt read between the lines...democracy is not the right of the majority to do wrong....but people would say..no...this is fair..everything's fine and dandy...you know why??because accapting that things are very wrong would mean changing...and no-one wants to change.....
I agree with most of it... except for the part of you being uneducated about rightness. Not enough evidence for me to agree with that yet :P
Easy said than done!! All those who are, say in your words "the literate" elect the government.. then wouldnt it be right if i said that you think like the ancient romans?? nobles and all that jazz?? would'nt ignore the needs of the ahem ahem *aam aadmi* (no political leanings intended) and for someone who is supposedly highly qualified......didnt varun gandhi make an ass out of himself?? and just because they are educated doesnt in anyway stop them from being corupt assholes!!!! going through all these procedures, wasting precious money that could be put to better use!! Since you have all these idea get into the political system and do something, instead of sitting pretty in the ivory tower you've placed yourself in (no offence ;) ).
Ooh, another mind to convert :D... Well, firstly - NOT the literate. Only the intelligent. There's a huge difference. I won't expand much but I'd recommend you read the previous comments, that'd make the idea clearer.
P.S. If I ever get into the system I'll just start killing people I don't like, very undemocratic that will be :D
Fantafabulous..>this is Kick Ass...
Politicians, like diapers, have to be changed frequently - and for the very same reason
Hahah, well said bro, and you got that bang on!
Post a Comment
Oh go ahead, write...
I promise I won't bite!