In a bid to address voter apathy among young Indians, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) will both introduce and update textbooks to include content on electoral literacy and will advise State Education Boards and other Boards to follow suit.
Beginning with classes 6 to 12 in all schools, this integration will also extend to the curricular framework for all colleges and universities, tailored to suit different disciplines and credited accordingly.
The measures are part of a Memorandum of Understanding signed on Thursday between the Election Commission of India and the Education Ministry. It is aimed at extending the ECI’s flagship Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) in schools and colleges.
The MoU aims to address issues such as voter apathy among urban and young Indians.
A senior official in the ECI said there was a concern that there were almost 297 million electors (out of 910 million), who did not cast their votes in the General Election to the Lok Sabha in 2019.
“Therefore, this MoU is signed with the long-term vision of instilling electoral literacy in the young people through the educational institutions. This initiative is expected to help in the Election Commission’s endeavour to address the urban and youth apathy, leading to better electoral participation in the next general elections,” he said.
Training of teachers
The document also focuses on the orientation and training of teachers in effectively imparting electoral literacy in classrooms, establishing Electoral Literacy Clubs (ELCs) in schools and colleges and encouraging various activities to promote voter awareness among students.
It also seeks to evolve a robust mechanism to fulfil the aspirational goal of the ECI to handover the voter ID cards to every student immediately after their attaining the age of 18.
Inclusion of electoral literacy section in the curriculum for adult literacy and basic education, and designating one of the rooms in every senior secondary school as the ‘Democracy Room’ for the regular display of voter education materials and the conduct of Continuous Electoral and Democracy Education (CEDE) activities throughout the year are some of the other salient points in the document.
