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Showing posts with the label Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation

The Senior Citizen’s Role in a Democracy

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Once you enter the category of a senior citizen, you are put out to pasture: inconsequential and dispensable. There was a time when ageism was not even a word, but today we have to address this issue very often. In India, we have not managed to deal with the problem head on, even though the United Nations leads an ongoing campaign themed ‘Take a Stand against Ageism’ to curtail the discrimination of people based on their advanced age. The attitude usually trends towards the idea that age makes people ineffectual and that younger people are more ‘with it’. But is it a dead end for people who have retired and are now senior citizens? We fail to realise that there are numerous older people who, with their immense experience and expertise depending on the professional careers they have had, can contribute in jump-starting monumental positive changes in society. The problem lies in the fact that many older persons do not realise they can play a significant role in civic decision making in I