School For Democracy - Loktantrashala

What are the themes that the School for Democracy will deal with?

The SFD will look at democratic education, the constitution and its constituent parts. It will broadly cover political, socio-economic, and cultural aspects of a working democracy. The indicative list themes will be deepened by learner demands and the curricula will be drawn from this list.

This could include, the nature of governance and its manifestation, peoples control over decision making and establishing accountability. Economic models from the initial socialist planning process to the present market based economy. PRI institutions. It will also look at the relationship between State responsibility and market etc. This part will also deal with different forms of governance, as well as formations. The political system will broadly be divided into the electoral system of representative democratic process and institutions and the non-party political process inherited from Gandhi, JP and Vinobha. We will locate current movement politics in this context. The School will also deal with the role of culture and religion in a secular democracy.

How will the School for Democracy address these themes?

The School will facilitate three broad groups of learning to begin with

The first will be theoretical learning about varied aspects of democracy.

The second will be collective learning through action followed by reflection. They could be yatras, dharnas, protests, etc, which take current political concerns as the base for the same themes which are detailed in one above.

The third will be the organizing of specialized groups to look at specified issues of concern, like for example wages being looked at by a “People’s pay Commission” etc.