Re: Is India a model Democracy?

[Padmanabha Rao <kvprao@igidr.ac.in>]

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On Fri, 5 Jan 2001, Arun Mehta wrote:

 There is an irony in people on the Net discussing what level of
 censorship there should be for the rest of India.

It's not about *censorship*. It's about *technology* and the 'abuse' it
could provoke and so how to 'contain' that. No more. Further, the Net is

just not comparable to the any of the other media -this is owned by the
web/net servers and yet not controlled by them. In fact the Net probably

defines the word media best: just a pipe, nothing more. On the other
hand,
the other so-called media are not media in this sense - they actually
*produce* in an institutionalised manner that may not be absolutely free

of interests (needless to say on the Net too it is institutionalised,
only
that it is freedom at its chaotic best that is institutionalised here)

 How many of us would tolerate censorship of what is said on this list?

No one would.

 Now, why are the poor people who can only communicate through the
spoken
 word, be denied that same opportunity of free speech?

It's not about censoring "free speech" by "poor people". The issue is
about countering free-news by people (assuming bounded rationales
abound,
rich or poor doesn't matter here since the reward is only more money
-not
more information [and just why could this be so ? It has to do with
money
being equal to information + carelessness, and not just information as
economics would have one believe]). When free and news go together,
either
the free is not, or news is not. What I have been writing is not free in

the sense it has come from my mind and has my agenda attached to it. To
be
free the producer (me) should be free of agenda, just a pipe (like the
Net?!). If that's not the case, then you should be doing something about

me, like either ignoring me or educate me on the negative externalities
of
my doings and convince me that it's not 'good' to be doing negative
things
and get me to shut up voluntarily (oh yeah, that also means you will
educate me on what is negative and positive to begin with, because we
may
not agree on that first definition itself), or maybe simply ban me if
that's most economical (of course we have not defined 'economical' here,

but I don't know if one should care about that because why should I
bother
about extra-personal things like the economics and society ? Maybe
that's
the problem, but I just don't know. Don't know, and maybe *that* is the
problem too). Of course when I say "educate" I mean "make him/her
agree",
and the problem of "making" and even "agree" is left unspoken. Why
SHOULD
you be doing something about me FIRST in such a case ? Because RIGHTS
flow
from the performace of DUTIES. If I am dutiful to the law of absolute
freedom, then only do I get to have that from others in the comity of
humans I live amongst.  Is free-speech anywhere denied here ? Please
indicate for the better efficiency of this list.

 Rumours spread quick as wildfire without electronic help. I'd much
 rather mischief-mongers went on the air, where everyone can hear what
 they are saying and possibly correct it, than that this kind of talk
was
 pushed into the back alleys.

That would mean: it already does without any help. Why not go and add
more
fuel so it can become a truly magnificent sight to behold. A
qualification
needs repetition here I guess: the ban on CurrentNews coverage by FMs is

justified on the grounds of their ability to expand fatal VIOLENCE and
not
anything else. If that can be established as counterable then there is
no
case for any ban. Even with the ban, everyone can still rake up the next

Ganesha Miracle Part II if they want. That's hardly a law-and-order
problem (or is it?).

 I am in favour of completely opening up the use of short-range FM
 transmitters in areas outside the reach of the existing FM channels.

That's great! India is opening up a large part of its territory for
discoverage by FM. To remind it is not in a position to open the
coverage
of CurrentNews by these FM wherever they operate. That needs a small but

important qualification: CurrentNews may be an explosive in relation to
the size of the consuming population in relation to the magnitude of the

counterable force required in case of a law-and-order problem. It should

be easy to ensure that in smaller places as compared to a place like
Mumbai or Delhi or Blore or Ahmedabad and so on. So maybe 'wherever they

operate' is wrong analysis. 'Wherever not possible to manage the
law-and-order problem of a vast spread' is probably more real.

Thanks.

Padmanabha Rao



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