Who Says India Wants Censorship?

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India is not just the largest democracy in the world; it is also the
only stable democracy with an annual per capita income of below $1,500.
Democracy works on a very simple principle. When people create wealth
by working, they pay taxes. And when they pay taxes, they expect
development and freedom of speech. So, in countries where there is not
enough scope to create wealth by working and hence cannot pay that tax
(low income countries) or the countries where they get development
without paying taxes (because of natural resources; like in the Arab
countries), freedom becomes a casualty. It is very difficult to expect
democracy to work in such countries.



Fareed Zakaria, in his book, Future of Freedom, argued that democracy
does not work in countries when the per capita income is less than
$3000. He, however, admitted that India is an (and the only) exception.
With a $1200 odd per capita income, India has a fairly stable
democracy, with an impeccable track record of freedom of
speech—except for a few months during the Emergency.



This anomaly of India is also the reason why time and again, men in
power keep trying to curtail that freedom. In some cases, it is
difficult not to agree with the rationale. For example, during the
post-Babri Majid riots, in many places, law enforcement authorities
asked cable TV operators to blank out channels like BBC. Going by
principle of freedom of speech, that was anything but fair. But it
helped in curtailing spreading of hatred and thus in saving lives in
many places. You cannot prove that using Pythagoras theorem. But most
of us know that from experience.



But more often that not, these kind of reasoning is also used as a
pretext for trying to bring in censorship. So a Union Minister who find
some content about his political bosses
“objectionable” may say he saw “that
Google, Yahoo!, Facebook had images that could be insulting to Indians,
especially the religious." And can belive extremely foolishly that
people would actually believe it.



Good part is, it has never succeeded. And the chance of failure is
directly proportional to the level at which it is tried. It may succeed
at local levels some time. But if a Union Minister is trying it, it is
bound to fail. And backfire. Which is what we are seeing today.



Users of these social networks are aghast that such an attempt was even
made. From “India trying to compete with China” to
“Kapil Sibal is an idiot”, there is no dearth of
one-liners in Facebook and Twitter. Some are plain abusive
(“objectionable” and
“offensive”, according to Mr Sibal); some are witty
and humorous.



In a couple of days, it will die its natural death. Till another Kapil
Sibal finds another way to “protect sentiments, security and
sovereignty of the country” by doing some kind of censorship.
There will be some more uproar, some more blogs, Facebook posts,
tweets. In India, it will never go beyond that.



If India really wants to do that, it could have done that easily. But
while I am not sure if the Indian government really wants to do that,
“India” that is not synonymous as “Indian
government” does not want that for sure. And hence, it will
never happen in India.



China has shown how to actually do it. Neither these companies nor the
newspapers in the West create such an issue of those attempts. In fact,
many companies willingly cooperate with the Chinese government. If they
have courage to oppose it in India, it is because they know Indian
people themselves are opposed to any kind of censorship.



That is democracy.