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ARTICLE |
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Anna’s opposition front
It’s no longer an anti-corruption drive
by T.V. Rajeswar
Anna Hazare
and his team have moved far away from what he demonstrated at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi, in April this year. Then Anna’s slogan was eradication of corruption, and his major demand was a strong Lokpal Bill, which he called the Jan Lokpal Bill.Subsequent events, including his arrest and brief incarceration in Tihar Jail, were important milestones in Anna’s march towards his goal, which is yet not fully defined. The next major event was the constitution of a 10-member committee by the UPA government with equal representation to Anna and his team. While the committee was presided over by Mr Pranab Mukherji, Anna Team included former Law Minister Shanti Bhushan and others. In his exuberance, Mr Bhushan claimed that the 10-member committee was re-drafting the Constitution. It was an indication to show which direction the Anna team was thinking of going and how their concept of the Jan Lokpal Bill was shaping. When the committee concluded its last sitting on June 21, some of the members of Team Anna told the Press that the government was only biding for time and, in fact, playing hoax in the name of the Lokpal Bill. However, eventually, the draft Lokpal Bill reached the Standing Committee presided over by Mr Abhishek Manu Singhvi, a Congress MP. After a series of deliberations, the Lokpal Bill reached Parliament. Now the government has withdrawn the old Bill and introduced the Lokpal and the Lokayukta Bill 2011. While Parliament is yet to deliberate, Anna Hazare and his team are making much noise that a conspiracy is afoot to mislead the public and that the new Lokpal Bill will not serve the purpose of tackling corruption at all levels. Anna announced that he would observe a daylong fast on December 11 at Jantar Mantar followed by a prolonged agitation at Ramlila Maidan. Now he has shifted his protest venue to Mumbai because of the weather factor. This amounted to upstaging Parliament and the national debate as a whole, but that did not deter Anna from going ahead with his Jantar Mantar token fast on December 11. What was particularly significant was the representation of almost all the opposition parties, including the BJP, the JD-U and the Leftist parties like the CPI and the CPM as well as the Samajwadi Party, the Telugu Desam Party, the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and the Shiromani Akali Dal(SAD). This was a new version of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Anna began by calling for an effective and independent Lokpal Bill, which should be passed in the winter session of Parliament. He said that if necessary, the winter session should be extended or a special session should be called, but the Bill should be got passed at the earliest. Anna was followed by Mr Arun Jaitly of the BJP, Mr Sharad Yadav of the JD-U and others, who said that they would fight tooth and nail to ensure that a strong Lokpal Bill was adopted. Anna urged the opposition leaders to come to the streets and join his movement in case they failed to get a strong Lokpal Bill passed. He added that if the opposition parties did not have the number in Parliament to defeat the government’s Lokpal Bill, they should join the people in the struggle for a strong, effective and independent institution of Lokpal. Anna in his speech also asked opposition politicians to make laws in streets. He said the Gram Sabha was bigger than Parliament. Anna team member Arun Kejrival said the Gram Sabha and the Mohalla Sabha were more important where decisions should be made and laws enacted. Mr Kejrival said there should be a law to ensure that before making a decision, MPs should consult the Gram Sabhas and the Mohalla Sabhas and not the party high command. Laws can no longer be made in a closed room or in North Block and South Block, but in the streets and villages of the country. Mr Prashant Bhushan, a senior lawyer of the Supreme Court and an important member of Team Anna, asked whether the Indo-US nuclear deal was cleared by the people. He wanted to know if the government took the people into confidence before it signed the nuclear deal. It appears that the speakers got carried away by their own oratory and their own logic. Mr Prashant Bhushan also alleged that democracy was in the hands of the Ambanis and the Reddys; policies were not made for the people but to serve the interests of big companies. There was only one dissenting and sobering voice when Mr A.B. Burden said that they should leave it to the wisdom of Parliament and they should not insist that the Bill should be finalised outside Parliament. The emergence of a new opposition front was all but clear. The very fact that all the opposition leaders came to debate the Lokpal Bill at Jantar Mantar at a time when Parliament was in session was a moment of victory for Anna. Where is Anna politics heading? There is no doubt that there are clear signs of Anna and his team spearheading a new opposition conglomeration, which consists of the erstwhile constituents of the NDA as well as the Leftists and the parties like the BJD and the SAD. The only party targeted is the Congress. Anna Hazare himself specifically mentioned Mr Rahul Gandhi for allegedly weakening the Lokpal Bill. While the opposition leaders did not name leaders of the Congress, it was obvious that their target was the UPA government. The new trend of shifting the venue of the debate to the streets is something which Anna and his team have now invented and assiduously propagated. Even a senior lawyer like Mr Prashant Bhushan, who ought to know better, spoke in terms of making laws in the streets and villages of India. This was a form of demagoguery, which is not in the larger interest of the polity. It is unfortunate that Team Anna’s level of debate is being taken to the street level. Asking for laws to be made at the level of the Gram Sabha or the street level is nothing but empty oratory. This only reflects the mindset of the so-called crusaders against corruption. After all this, one thing is clear: Anna Hazare has emerged as the leader of an amorphous but definitely identifiable opposition group whose target is the UPA headed by the Congress. Can we eliminate corruption in this
manner? The writer is a former Governor of UP and West Bengal.
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MIDDLE |
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The sweet, sad scents of childhood
by Harish Dhillon
I
was
driving back from Patiala to Mohali. It was a pleasant day and I had my window rolled down. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by a delicious ,haunting smell. It was a familiar smell but it took me a while to place it — it was the smell of jaggery being made. The smell took me to another place another time: winter vacations from school and the small village of Dingrian, where one of the winter activities was the making of jaggery. We would take turns ladling the white scum off the surface of the boiling cane juice. As a special treat, my father would ask for one lot of jaggery to be made with peanuts and coconut and caraway seeds for the children. Those were carefree days, basking in the easy, simple life of the village and the attention and love that we took as a matter of course. It is all gone, my father, the land in the village and all those beautiful days and loving people. My heart aches with the longing for what once was and what will never be again. Stepping further from this, my mind looks for other smells from those glorious days. The summer vacations and my mother sending me to the tandoor at the street corner in Sadar Bazar, Jalandhar, with kneaded dough to have tandoori rotis made. I have never been able to figure out why this was done only in summer and never in winter. Then there was the wonderful, hunger-inducing smell of the rotis, as they roasted in the tandoor. And for me, perhaps because the lady who ran the tandoor was one of my mother’s patients, there was always the bonus, a handful of freshly roasted corn which had its own appetising smell. The smell of homemade glue which we used to repair our kites when they were damaged, bringing with it all the exhilaration of flying the kites and getting into battle with our rivals’ kites; the excitement of planning strategies for future battles and conducting post mortems on the ones that had just taken place; the joy of success and the despair of failure. And all in that one smell of home-made glue. The smell of the first rain on dry ground, which was the signal to strip down to our underwear, and run out to dance in the rain, that spontaneous action celebrating the joy of all that the coming of the monsoon represents — a rebirth, a rejuvenation of life, the hope of fulfilment My heart aches at the memory of all these smells and the way of life that they stood for. It aches with the knowledge that my children and my children’s children have never seen jaggery being made, have never waited besides a wayside tandoor, have never flown a kite and have never danced in the rain. My heart mourns the passing away of a way of life which was at once simple, pure and naïve.
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OPED
— YOUTH |
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internet: In the
line of (f)Ire
The not-so-modest proposal recently made about censoring the Internet by Union Telecommunications Minister, Kapil Sibal, has literally set the cat among the pigeons. The netizens cannot understand the need or naiveté behind this suggestion, and perhaps don’t need to, writes
Nosheen Kapoor  Censorship
in any degree or form will always be antagonistic to freedom of expression and a threat to personal liberty. It is also considered a totalitarian tool to repress the so-called ‘dissenting’ voice or a voice that makes too much noise and cannot be stopped from rising a few from slumber. And when it’s about censoring the media or its content, the attack is not only limited to the surface but attempts to break down the very fibre of an institution that is sustained by the act of voicing.So when Mr Kapil Sibal expressed his indignation over some user-generated content on Internet giants such as Google, Facebook and Youtube and suggested screening of content before it found a place on people’s screens, it was time to unleash some ire (on the Internet or elsewhere). Kapil Sibal who is now vehemently denying his proposal of pre-screening or pre-publication moderation of user-generated offensive and objectionable content and is quoting misrepresentation of his concerns in the New York Times article that sparked off the fireworks. Calling on representatives from Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, the minister asked them to be more proactive in evaluating content before it is shared online. Peeved over the indignant and satirical portrayal of Congress President, Sonia Gandhi on Facebook, Sibal is reported to have demanded removal and better regulation of content before it is uploaded. Unreasonable as it may sound, but the demand was made and perhaps too strongly before it was met with a discouraging yet logical rationale by the companies’ executives. Obviously, no one is the deciding authority on what is acceptable and what is defamatory? A dialogue from the movie, The Great Debators goes, “My opponent is the voice of dissent and I speak for the truth” and quite describes the situation Sibal is finding himself in. You can protect the image of your allies only to an extent but if there’s going to be fire, the smoke will spread far and wide. India comes after United States and Brazil for requesting the removal of certain content which the government terms incendiary or defamatory. As per Google’s Transparency Report for India, our country had forwarded about 68 requests for removing about 358 items of content. These included hate speeches, threat to national security and a major chunk were listed under the ‘government criticising’ tab. We all know how disheartening it is to be not ‘likeable’ enough on the social media but we all have to live with it, don’t we? And when there are cyber laws, available legal assistance in case of defamation then do we really need to resort to undemocratice measures of prescreening and Big-brotherly tactics? The IT Amendment Act of December 2008 made Cyber Law more effective and comprehensively made it more panoptic vis-a-vis the variety of crime committed in cyber space. And it’s not only the harmless Facebook-using or gmail-accessing user who has been asked to come under the radar, there have been much stricter practices being employed in China and United States to curb what is perceived by respective governments as excessively “liberal” or intellectually threatening. A lot of times authoritative governments cite reasons such as pornography, terrorism, communal vulnerability to tighten the claw on the content but when most of the web companies are already implementing a certain degree of check on the content and giving users the power to “report abuse” or mark as “offensive” whatever is suitable and also offering filters to exclude particular results in their searches then intervention by government is uncalled for and instead reflective of baser objectives. Also, if there are individuals ‘brazen’ enough to lampoon/ satirise or denigrate those in power, then there are others who are sane enough to sift the grain from the chaff and discard the latter as fluff. Netizens are not averse to either self-policing and many are conscious of what to follow or share so as not to tarnish their online persona. Nonetheless, the policing continues! Whether it was the print media that came under the scanner during the Emergency, the more recent closing down of Google in China or the Indian government’s attempt to sabotage Research in Motion’s Blackberry services, hegemonic control seems to be the way out when an unusual confidence is seen brimming on the horizon. There’s a need to regularise content on websites but not control or pre-screen it. Instead of the government intervening, the let the web giants be independent in deciding the measures or the legal bodies in conjecturing on the derogatory nature of content on the Internet. Coming of age, Internet has proved itself to be more of a sceptre of empowerment than a red flag of danger. There are countries which have obtained independence, people who have realised their revolutions and thoughts that have been acted out, all because the Internet and the social media gave them a platform to actualise their democratic rights application of which has rarely been beyond speeches and intellectual write-ups. Let’s also not forget how the direst of constraints create the most overpowering of human curiosity. So may be #liberty & #freedom of expression should be left as such. The writer is head copywriting division of CueBlock Technologies, a software firm.
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Youngspeak:
FreeDOM Matters & HOW
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If the laws are put in place, bloggers may think twice before publishing something; so there could be a chance of them being more guarded. That would defeat the purpose of blogging since it’s all about sharing views candidly. At IndiBlogger, bloggers need to go through a manual moderation process that is managed by the team; where we check blogs for plagiarism, illegal and pornographic content and so on. If the blogs do not qualify for these, they are flagged off. Where issues like these have come up, the blogging community has collectively taken it up. IndiBlogger,
Networking platform on censorship and content issues.  The Internet is a global network, and therefore the laws that govern other criminal acts are ineffective for this medium. Germany has legalised pornography, therefore, pornographic content uplinked in Germany and downloaded here would technically attract penalty in India, as pornography is an offence here. But the rule of criminal law is that the country in which a criminal act is committed would have the jurisdiction to try the offence. Since the act is not a crime in Germany, how would you penalise the offender? In a story I did on internet supervision for the Free Press Journal, Mumbai, I found that most content on the Internet goes unrestricted, because the police have neither the inclination nor the man-power and technological know-how to check everything on the vast internet network.
Uttara
Ramaswamy, Law graduate and journalism student  If any X-rated content is being censored, there should be no problem. If anything written against the government or any personal opinions are to be censored, it will conflict with the freedom of speech of an individual. Social media is the only place where we can discuss our concerns and if this is taken away, then instead of progressing we should get ready for an isolated future.
 Rahul
Ghai, Business Intelligence Consultant
People should have liberty and power to express themselves on their private spaces on the Internet and pre-screening will only be a violation of such freedom. Aseem
Shah, PPC Manager at an IT company Censoring the internet is a cowardly behavior on the part of the government as they are trying to curb the freedom of expression of the youth of the country. The internet is a boon to develop social consciousness and mass mobilisation. Richa
Bhardwaj, Delhi-based social worker  The rise of social networking is due to an increase in biased media reports, paid news etc. In a democracy, people need to have the freedom of expression, especially when our elected ones are becoming more dutiful to their affiliated parties than our concerns.
Gaurav
Sharma, political thinker
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The law curbing cyber abuse The parent legalisation regulating and monitoring the use of computers and computers system, The Information Technology Act, 2000 was amended in December 2008 to give birth to a more effective and panoptic law: Indian Cyber Legalisation which became a recognised law on February 5, 2009. The Amended IT law punishes anyone for publishing or transmitting obscene/ sexually explicit/ child pornography/ incendiary material in electronic form. There law also authorises cyber security institutions to monitor and collect traffic data or information through any computer resource for cyber security that threatens to have volatile consequences for an individual or the nation.
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