Scared Congress regime seeks to curb freedom
By Sandeep Balakrishna
People are rightly outraged over the Congress-led UPA Government’s cloak-and-dagger blockade of Twitter and Facebook accounts, websites and blogs that have been critical of it. Copious amounts of angry ink have flowed from the pens of freedom-loving people, which is a heartening sign.
A crucial point in all this commentary has been missed. This has everything to do the arithmetic of Internet usage.
India has the third largest population of Internet users after China and the United States. Yet, Internet penetration is a paltry 10.07 per cent. Twitter and Facebook combined, contribute less than 10 per cent of total Internet traffic in India.
Specifically, India has about three to four million Twitter users out of which only 10 per cent are active. Within this 10 per cent, there are only a few members who focus exclusively on politics, policy, and Government-related matters. If we further drill this down, the number of Twitter users who are critical of the Government’s policies and stance on various issues that affect the nation further shrinks.
These numbers apply more or less in equal measure to blogs and websites critical of the UPA Government and the Congress.
So what we have is a situation where the ruling party has clamped down on the right to free expression of a minuscule number of people on the Internet. It is a truism that any Government that indulges in censorship has something to hide. However, in our nation, what was sought to be hidden has been tumbling out of the closet—the innumerable scams that have come to light so far, and if the CAG’s reports are an indicator, more scams will follow.
People online who have questioned and criticised these scams have been muzzled under the pretext of stopping rumour-mongering. Of the 300-odd various online properties that have been silenced, only a handful actually incite hatred and peddle incendiary material. As FirstPost notes, “Bizarrely, two of the Pakistani webpages that have been blocked are actually pages that debunk the fake images.”
Needless, the banning has badly backfired on the UPA, which neither had the courage nor the transparency to make public the banning notification that emanated from the ***. Now, the media has put the *** notification in the public domain. Despite this, Home Minister Sushil Shinde is still trying to defend the indefensible stating that there was no censorship!
The fact that the powers-that-be are feeling threatened by a handful of Indians who speak up for the national interest is just the latest proof of the all-round bankruptcy of the UPA Government.
===================================================================================
It’s about Freedom, not just Freedom of Speech
Here we go again. The UPA Government of India wants to dictate once more what people should know and what information is OK for people to handle. It routinely blocks websites, prohibits or limits the use of mobile text messages, and is now threatening to block Twitter altogether. The Government’s repression of the people is an old habit and it should not evoke any surprise or comment. Yet the fight for freedom of speech and expression is too important to life and liberty that one should not give up merely because one has been on a losing streak for centuries. We, the people, have to win that battle if we have to win the war for freedom.
The cornerstone of a democracy is an informed citizenry, if the notion of a democracy has to have any meaning that is internally consistent. If those who ultimately are in charge of determining how society is going to be ordered are not informed, then the result would be disastrous. Let’s be very clear that in a democracy, ultimate power rests with the people and not the Government which is granted its legitimacy by the people. Unlike an authoritarian system where the people are ruled by a small gang of powerful overlords, a democracy is by definition rule by the people. A democracy cannot function if the people are prevented from knowing what’s relevant for proper decision making.
If in a democracy the Government makes the claim that information should be carefully controlled, curated and censored for public consumption, it leads to an inconsistency. It means that the people are incompetent and incapable of handling information but yet somehow, even though not fully informed, are able to decide and choose who is to be entrusted with the important task of making public policy. Without the people having the freedom of speech and expression, without the freedom to be exposed to the widest range of ideas and opinions, democracy is a meaningless word parroted by ignorant demagogues for purely self-serving ends.
India is supposedly a democracy. But that is a contestable claim given the reality that Indians are ruled rather than being the rulers. Citizens have to get permission from a paternalistic Government for what they can read or write, see or hear. The British colonial Government of India quite understandably ensured that it controlled all avenues of information and that the people were not too well-informed. Colonial rule is like that. The situation does not appear to have changed after 1947. For sure, India got free of British colonial rule in 1947 but it is equally clear that those who rule India today are not free of the colonial mindset. It appears that Indians transitioned from one form of repressive Government to another.
Let me put it this way. India is not free today any more than it was under the British. India is under what I call British Raj 2.0. India’s lack of freedom of expression is one very important component of the new Raj.
It is almost axiomatic that comprehensive freedom of the people and the general prosperity of the nation are necessary correlates. It is not an accident that all countries that are free are also the most prosperous. India and the US are frequently mentioned in the same breath as great democracies. Yet, the contrast is striking and heart-rending. India is a desperately poor country while the US is the richest and the most powerful nation in the world. Americans enjoy freedoms that are entirely missing to Indians. That suggests at least, if not prove, that Indians are not really free in any meaningful sense of the word.
It is no accident that the entire modern revolution in information and communications technologies was born in the USA. Not just the underlying hardware — the internet or the computers — but all the applications that enable its use — such as the world wide web, the email system, blogging, social networks such as Twitter, the whole set of tools that make people to people communications possible — all originated in the US. Social networking and communications lie at the roots of social capital, and social capital is what creates the wealth of nations. India’s material poverty is certainly an outcome of the lack of social capital, and that is not being allowed to be created by India’s repressive Governments.
Once again, I cannot but contrast India and the US in this context. The Constitution of the US guarantees freedom of expression. The so-called Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the US Constitution, was adopted in 1791. The First Amendment states, “(United States) Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The Congress, the supreme legislative body of the federal government of the United States, is expressly prohibited by the First Amendment from putting limits on the freedom of speech or press. I have read and heard it repeated so frequently that I know it by heart. I cannot say the same thing about the first amendment to the Indian Constitution. In fact, I have not met anyone who has even read the Indian Constitution. Be that as it may, the First Amendment to the Indian Constitution empowers the Government to limit freedom of speech and expression. How is that for a contrast? And just by the way, you cannot memorise it either since it is long and written in such terms that no person without years of study can even understand it. I am certainly not going to quote it here but I challenge you to understand it and memorize it. I couldn’t.
But let’s get back to what the repressive UPA Government is attempting to do by throttling whatever little freedom of speech Indians have. The repressive (and I choose this word advisedly and repeat it lest we forget) UPA Government does not want people to know how disastrous their misgovernance has been for India. If Indians truly get to know about it, the Sonia Gandhi Congress-led UPA will not stand a chance of winning elections ever. In their desperation, they are now intensifying their war against the people.
It must be stated, in all fairness, that the previous Indian Governments have not been champions of freedom — including the freedom of speech and expression — either. What the present UPA Government is doing is in line with that but they have two reasons for their urgency in repressing information. First, they have misgoverned the most and therefore they have the most to lose if the public becomes fully aware. Therefore they have a desperate need to keep real information under control. If they had done a good job, they would not be running this scared.
Second, these days it is remarkably easy to store, disseminate and access information. Mobile phones and the internet have made it possible for people to circumvent the Government controlled traditional media channels and get past the Government propaganda. People are not stupid, although the Government may wish to believe it.
The UPA Government’s haste in repressing social media more than anything else reveals its desperation. This is actually a good sign and tells us that there is still hope for India. When the Government is afraid of people, the people are most likely winning the war. Indians still have a chance at real freedom, something that has eluded them for so long. But first, we must understand what real freedom is. And that is what the Government is afraid of people finding out. Social media might create social capital India needs for freedom.
Let me end with a quote from that indefatigable champion of human freedom, Prof Milton Friedman. He wrote, ”Freedom is not the natural state of mankind. It is a rare and wonderful achievement. It will take an understanding of what freedom is, of where the dangers to freedom come from. It will take the courage to act on that understanding if we are not only to preserve the freedoms that we have, but to realize the full potential of a truly free society.”
By Atanu Dey
================================================================================
Narendra Modi protests censorship by UPA
The government’s order to block Twitter handles and nearly 300 Web pages which it says threaten communal harmony and a fragile peace, led to outrage on Twitter. Hashtags like Emergency2012 and GOIBlocks protested against the government’s decision. Many turned their pictures black in protests and now Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi too has joined the protest.
He tweeted today that he joins the crackdown on freedom of speech, and has turned his digital picture black.
“As a common man, I join the protest against crackdown on freedom of speech! Changed my DP. ‘Sabko Samnati De Bhagwan’ (May God give wisdom to all),” he posted on #GOIBlocks. As a mark of their protest many netizens have joined ‘#GOIBlocks’ which is trending (bulletin board where everybody can express their opinion on the subject) on Twitter.
Instead of Mr Modi’s image, the picture display section on his Twitter account today showed a blank space, along with the message denouncing the Centre’s move to “muzzle” social media.
There are around 40 million Facebook and 16 million Twitter users in India.
What prompted the Centre to step in is the ‘provocative’ mobile phone text messages being in circulation and doctored website images about Assam and Myanmar violence going viral, resulting in exodus of northeast people from some states fearing attacks on them by Muslims.
By NitiCentral Staff
=======================================================================
Looking like the People’s Republic next door!
By Shashi Shekhar
A defining characteristic of the Sonia Gandhi-led UPA regime has been its subtle manipulation of the electronic mass media. Beginning with the deafening hype in the media over the 2004 abdication by Sonia Gandhi the past eight years have seen the mass electronic media dutifully push the Left-liberal narrative carefully constructed by her backroom managers and spin doctors on issue after issue.
The only aberration in this love fest between the UPA and the electronic media was the 24×7 coverage of the various anti-corruption fasts and campaigns over the past year. While that aberration did not last long, one can cite at least two instances on Sonia Gandhi Congress exercising its leverage over media. While the Radia Tapes revealed the incestuous relationship between the two, a column that appeared in the DNA sometime back describing how ad revenue from the Government had dwindled following anti-UPA commentary in that newspaper showed how pressure can be brought to bear on the media by the Government.
The UPA’s near absolute control of the narrative emerging from Delhi’s television studios during its first term in office saw it buck incumbency and be elected for a second term despite some of the worst attacks of mass terror and a highly suspect confidence vote in Parliament. The UPA’s second term however has shown the limitations of such a controlled narrative with the rise of social media.
If the blanket refusal by Sonia Gandhi and her family to effectively communicate with the nation through the media was not enough we now have this sorry spectacle of a Prime Minister who rarely communicates attempting to make himself relevant in the social media by going after those parodying him. From frequent threats to control social media to the many requests to take down content sent to popular Internet platforms, the Sonia Gandhi-led UPA has made itself indistinguishable from Mao’s China and Putin’s Russia.
There is also a side story though to this transmogrification.
Trading a veteran print journalist for a TV studio anchor to be his media adviser, the Prime Minister sought to make a new beginning in mass communication via social media last year. The intent of that move has to now be questioned with the PMO itself seeking social media restrictions.
While the exact security concerns prompting the current crackdown on a wide range of websites, twitter accounts are unclear, one thing is clear — this was a crackdown that some celebrity television anchors were lobbying for some time now. Since the release of Radia Tapes, Delhi’s Media has had a crisis of credibility. While fellow media outlets have all but erased any public memory of the Radia Tapes that revealed media celebrities brokering political deals, it was social media that has held mainstream media’s feet to fire with 24×7 real time scrutiny and demands of accountability.
It has been clear for some time now that Delhi’s celebrity television anchors have been frustrated by the intense scrutiny social media has put their every word and action. The anchors clearly were unprepared to deal with this intense scrutiny towards them rather than on the subjects of their primetime television shows. While many have learned to take this scrutiny in stride a few it appears have taken it to heart. There was barely concealed glee over the past few days from some of these celebrity anchors over the prospect of an impending crackdown on social media. The panicky manner in which some of them reacted to news of the Home Ministry tracing inflammatory content on Assam to Pakistan revealed that a carefully constructed narrative against social media in India was being seen at risk of being sidestepped. While we are told the current crackdown was prompted by security concerns and hateful rhetoric, the significance of the surreptitious role played by some celebrity television anchors with an axe to grind against social media must not be underestimated.
But this debate is not just about celebrity media personalities and their egos bruised on Twitter.
The real political casualty of this crackdown by the UPA at Sonia Gandhi’s behest is it’s so called “youth appeal”.
By seeking to crackdown on a wide range of Internet voices the Sonia Gandhi-led UPA has reminded India’s young and digitally savvy citizens of an earlier era when Sonia Gandhi’s family members in political office suspended liberties and gagged the media. By getting a Sachin Pilot to be the political voice justifying and rationalizing the crackdown, the Sonia Gandhi-led Congress has blown to bits the many myths about its so called Next-Gen leaders. These Next-Gen dynasts by standing with the Government and the party on the crackdown on digital media have shown themselves to be as regressive and authoritarian as their fathers and grandmothers who were responsible for the Emergency.
The Sonia Gandhi-led UPA is fast losing Youngistan with its failure to understand the Internet and with its foolish attempts at controlling it with blunt means. India’s youth can no longer trust the Sonia Gandhi-led Congress with their liberties, digital or otherwise. This “Government of the aam admi” is but one step away from becoming a cheap imitation of the “People’s Republic” next door.
(The writer is a commentator on Indian politics and public policy. Opinions expressed in this article are his personal views.)
rather than INTERNET.
