From: Arvind
Date: Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 9:06 PM
Subject: Restrictions on radio violation of free speech rights
To:
http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column_restrictions-on-radio-violation-of-free-speech_1682857
Restrictions on radio violation of free speech
The government’s policy of disallowing the dissemination of political views and news over radio is one of the most flagrant transgressions of the right to free speech, but this infringement on the freedom of expression has gone unchallenged so far. As the government permits the broadcast of political opinions over television, the ban on the broadcast of such views over radio is a strange policy unless the ruling class oligarchs believe that television journalists serve their cause well and the freeing up of radio waves will upset their applecart.
In the past, Indian politicians have relaxed restrictive rules in other sectors of the industry only after creating laws to secure such sectors for their cronies while keeping out everyone else. They have typically done this by requiring huge license fees or bank guarantees that are beyond the reach of most Indians and have argued that such barriers were needed to keep out non-serious players from the industry. In the case of radio broadcasting, the government has pursued these measures and has additionally created eligibility criteria that will disqualify most citizens from operating radio stations.
Despite India’s journalists discovering the cause of free-speech rights in the recent past and making a lot of noise on the topic, they have not opposed the government control of radio waves.
That is because the vocal minority that dominates the English media consists of centrists and leftists who do not understand the concept of freedom of expression. Their demands for the right to free-speech lack conviction and are no more than fashion statements. Until a few years ago, they supported the suppression of free-speech rights in the name of sensitivity towards everyone and ostensibly to prevent what they called hate speech.
India’s centrists and leftists have never been defenders of liberty, but have merely sought appreciation from the West by regurgitating arguments made in the US and UK and repeating them in India, sometimes leading to absurd claims. As the freeing up of radio waves is not an issue in the West, these self-proclaimed defenders of free-speech rights in India have never been bothered by the government exercising control over radio waves. Their indifference towards the control over the broadcast media isn’t new and their silence goes back to the days when the government held monopoly over radio and television broadcasting.
The position of the centrists and leftists is consistent with their behavior of accepting several laws that violate the free-speech rights of more than a billion people even as they get worked up by stray acts of vandalism against the works of a single individual.
Even this individual, establishment-artist MF Husain, forfeited his free-speech rights when he justified Indira Gandhi’s censorship laws after her seizure of power and helped build up her personality cult though his paintings. Any group that is serious about defending our liberties must exclude the centrists and leftists from its campaigns as the fight for our freedoms can neither be passing fads nor be selective in nature.
Campaigns for free-speech rights must also include the freedom to broadcast one’s views over radio. The government’s excuse that radio frequencies form a scarce resource and hence must be subject to stringent controls is not only an erroneous claim but also an unacceptable one. Even if the claim of radio frequencies being a scarce resource is accepted for the sake of argument, it does not justify handing over control of the frequencies to a few chosen people while preventing most of the population from ever transmitting their views. It also does not justify the government determining the type of information that can be broadcast over radio.
The government’s fear that information over radio can be used to influence politics is an irrational fear as one of the legitimate objectives of spreading information is to influence politics. If the government wants to prevent people from freely exchanging ideas that can be used to shape public policies, India must stop calling itself a democracy.
For the government to be truly accountable, it must not exercise any type of control over the flow of information. It must not only stop telling us what we can or cannot speak, but must also stop blocking us from using whatever means of communication we choose to use.
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