Re: Is India a model Democracy?

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

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On Sun, 31 Dec 2000 vamsi@siliconcorp.com wrote:
 But the Government has established a ban on private FM Stations from
 broadcasting any news instead of coming out with a regulatory framework
 where the delinquent FM stations would be tried in a court of law - as
 would be the case in a model Democracy.  Hence, my question on this
 debate remains: Is India a model Democracy?.

Banning is a form of regulation [we ban nuke testing to regulate
proliferation].  A parallel example might help this discussion. The
Government's case last year against the Shiv Sena for the 1992 Saamna
editorial was absurd because there was a case for its delinquency when it
had first appeared. Indeed Newspapers can be given complete freedom simply
because the *time-lag* gives the police the power to counter any abuse of
the freedom [in the instance the Mumbai police were also guilty because
they didn't do that job and waited while the riots were brewing]. In the
case of an *instantaneous* FM radio dissemination, it's very hard to
counter any abuse as *soon* as when it occurs; we don't have the
technology [if you have read Ayn Rand, then you would need John Galt's
jammer to do that; get that and we can have more freedom!] and so we ban
it till such time the FM walla promises not to abuse [that's against
his/her boundedly rationalised interest but s/he is always welcome to
promise, because it's in everybody's interest].

But this is not the full point. One might argue that if the law was
applied once it would work to dissuade others from doing whatever it was
and hence there is no case for a ban.

The point is, the government has no business interfering in whatever is
broadcasted by anybody. The government should only have the power to take
preventive action that is unobstrusive and protects the non-violent
members from being harmed by the violent members. That means, if I and my
friend are going knife and bullet at each other and either of us have no
problem with that [as evident in neither of us approaching the
police/court], then the government has no business coming between us. BUT,
it has every business waiting in the sidelines, unobstrusively, to prevent
the 200 others in the neighbourhood from being harmed by either of us. In
this sense the Saamna case was as absurd as it could get [it is a
newspaper with a subscription base and anyways no one is forced to listen
what anyother says; we do it by our own volition], because the police
failed in its primary duty of attentive prevention [I admit it could be an
absurd expection given Mumbai and its 11 million folks; but if it was in
Nasik or Mysore the police's case is weak; aside, this brings up the laws
and law enforcement set-up for huge systems]. The ban on FM's currentnews
coverage is also absurd, but there is no counter reason to hold the
government and so it is justified. The counter reason should show how the
government can take preventive action efficiently and unobstrusively. The
government/community/neighbour's interests comes first, and then mine. If
I don't give you freedom, I can rest assured you won't let me have mine,
so I better allow you first. If our definition of freedom is absolute that
wouldn't cause me any loss. So the government's comes first.

Thanks.

Padmanabha Rao


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