Most what we learnt or rather most of what I learnt in my seventh standard about local governance lies long forgotten in the civics text book. Most of us have a step motherly treatement to local level politics which ironically affects our lives the most. In getting the picture the macro-way we forget that god lies in the details, and that it matters, in the long run.The one place where I found people truly bothered and interested in knowing and discussing issues concerning local governance is Kerala.
And it would be really presumptous of me to even comment on the GK of teenagers in a city like Mumbai, but my interactions with some of them I realise that it would be quite an achievement if even one of them could correctly answer to "who is the CM of Maharashtra?" And no they are definitely not to blame? So question is 'who is?'first published:May 15, 2006, 18:11 ISTlast updated:May 15, 2006, 18:11 IST
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How many of us as precocious twelve or thirteen year olds would even remember or for that matter be bothered to know who exactly is the corporator of their respective zone? As a teenager my general knowledge extended upto the central cabinet and the CMs of different states but I woudnt go as far as saying that I would know who or what party did the local corporator belonged to.But my thirteen year old nephew in Punnapra, a small taluka in Kerala, knows every little bit of local politics that affects the taluka. He knows who and why a particular MLA has quit a party and gone to another. His political awareness,which began in his high school, amazes me, not that he is a political science student or an ardent follower of a particular party or that he hails from a political party. He's just a normal middle class boy growing up in a place where people live with local politics as if it seriously matters to them. In Pune, the town where I grew up or even Mumbai where I work, people including me would hardly ever go out of their way to know details about local politics, but we were quite up to date with international and national level politics and local politics would be of interest to us only at the time of the state assembly elections. Until then it would be blissful ignorance.
Most what we learnt or rather most of what I learnt in my seventh standard about local governance lies long forgotten in the civics text book. Most of us have a step motherly treatement to local level politics which ironically affects our lives the most. In getting the picture the macro-way we forget that god lies in the details, and that it matters, in the long run.The one place where I found people truly bothered and interested in knowing and discussing issues concerning local governance is Kerala.
And it would be really presumptous of me to even comment on the GK of teenagers in a city like Mumbai, but my interactions with some of them I realise that it would be quite an achievement if even one of them could correctly answer to "who is the CM of Maharashtra?" And no they are definitely not to blame? So question is 'who is?'
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