Who Says India Wants Censorship?

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 citizens 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 $3,000. He, however, admitted that India is an (and the only) exception. With a $1,200 odd per capita income, India has a fairly stable democracy, with an impeccable track record of freedom of speechexcept 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 Masjid riots, in many places, law-enforcement authorities asked cable TV operators to blank out channels like BBC. Going by the 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 finds some content about his political bosses objectionable may say he saw that Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook had images that could be insulting to Indians, especially the religious. And can believe extremely foolishly that people would actually believe it.

The good part is, such efforts have never succeeded. And the chance of failure is directly proportional to the level at which it is tried. It may succeed at local levels for 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, and 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 with 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.