Lok Sabha Education Level

Niket brought up a very valid point in this post about the education level of the candidates standing for elections.

I tried to look up some information on this and couldn’t come up with much. There isn’t much information about all candidates standing for the Indian elections. However, plenty of data exists for actual Lok Sabha (Lower House of the Indian Parliament) members. The statistics reveal something I would never have imagined.

The level of education of the Lok Sabha members has increased since India’s first ever Lok Sabha.

Here’s some data on this:

The percentage of LS members

  • Under Matriculates (No degree):
    • 1st Lok Sabha: 23.2%
    • 13th Lok Sabha: 2.81%
  • Graduates:
    • 1st Lok Sabha: 37.1%
    • 13th Lok Sabha: 48.03%
  • Doctoral degrees:
    • 1st Lok Sabha: 3.5%
    • 13th Lok Sabha: 5.06%

Source: Rediff

This is a fascinating statistic. I would have never thought of this and do really wonder what the reason is for it.

I also noticed that the numbers changed drastically after the 6th Lok Sabha. Does this have something to do with the freedom struggle perhaps?

It sure will be interesting to find out the answer to this.

Any thoughts?

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Comments (4)

  1. Sushubh wrote::

    Graduates:
    13th Lok Sabha: 48.03%

    This actually surprised me!

    Thursday, April 29, 2004 at 9:41 pm #
  2. tragicomix wrote::

    maybe it is to do with falling education standards and diminishing value of a degree..degrees bought by every tom ,laloo, and jaya, from every cowshed college, sanctioned by corrupt colleges.

    Monday, May 3, 2004 at 8:24 am #
  3. Prashant Mullick wrote::

    Interesting point ! :-)

    Monday, May 3, 2004 at 10:48 am #
  4. Niket wrote::

    I find two things tragic
    1. tragicomix’s comment that every tom, laloo and jaya can buy a degree.

    FYI, both laloo and jaya happen to be well educated. Oh heck, even Subramaniam Swamy has a PhD from Harvard.

    This shows the lack of respect we have for politicians. The primary reason being that politicians acts as jokers most of the time. But have we thought the problem might be within us. I am not ready to give up on Indian political process, I am not too cynical about our politicians… at least NOT YET.

    2. That 48.03% of Lok Sabha members being graduates surprized Sushubh.
    It surprized me too - the number is too low than it ought to be. But perhaps it is apt, considering the Indian demographics.

    How the hell can we think ourselves to be on our way to be the “IT powerhouse” or whatever with such numbers? We have a long way to go, and have a lot of struggle ahead of us. But I am happy and hopeful because we may have faltered at times, but we are still developing and not regressing.

    Tuesday, May 4, 2004 at 1:04 pm #