KNOWLEDGE BASED DISCRIMINATION
Why do we not publicly discuss on political, social and academic plateforms the knowledge based discrimination ? And why do we not let knowledge be freed from the clutches of a few ? Exorbitant fees, more than toughest entrance examinations, donation induced addmission, selective grants for specific research projects, several hierarchy based eligibility criteria, gender based discrimination, social grouping based discrimination etc make even genuine knowledge illegitimate knowledge. we argue that certain knowledge should not be imparted to certain groups. These unequal selection creates fissures and fractures in the system and knowledge becomes carrier of discrimination and this true even for most advanced form of knowledge.
This practice has been being carried from the ancient times. For example excluding women and certain social groups such as non Brahminical castes in India, particularly African-American in the US are marked examples of confinment of knowledge within a favoured elite circuit have illegitimate knowledge for these deprived social classes.
Hierarchy and discrimination makes knowledge inaccessible for many and in turn the privileged people make knowledge more hierarchical and discriminatory. Hierarchy and discrimination make knowledge illegitimate for certain sections and illegitimate knowledge breeds illegitimate population. This has immense shocking impacts on our democracy as hierarchy and discrimination prevent dissemination of knowledge to many sections of people and such population which is bereft of relevant knowledge becomes fodder for those who have monopolized knowledge for their own political mileage. This creates a class of people in democracy who can't recognize their own interests and so they don't vote for their own citizen centric agenda but vote for realization of agenda of those who have mastery over knowledge. A large section of people deprived of knowledge becomes source of power for those who have knowledge in a democracy. This paves the way for limited democracy despite the availability of universal adult franchise and despite of regular conduct of free and fair elections
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