Rejoinder on Media Freedom to Hindustan Times Edits and columnist Karan Thapar's

intemperate comments re: Freedom of choice

http://balpatil.sulekha.com/blog/post/2006/07/rejoinder-on-media-freedom-to-
hindustan-times-edits-2.htm
Tags: Tobacco alcohol Coca cola traffic accidents bogus licenses poverty hunger
I think Mr.Karan Thapar is running amok with his penmanship (A Health warning for
Dr.Ramadoss, Sunday HT, 18-6-2006) which he might like to call his columnist’s
privilege to spew venom at random. In a style of imperious imperium of the Queen
in Alice in Wonderland in the Mad Hatter Tea Party he might pronounce on Minister
Ramadoss “Off with his head”. But the trouble with Mr.Karan Thapar in his self-
arrogated license to comment by stretching its intemperate limits to the utmost he
goes berserk with his pen he does not appear to do his home-work before embarking
on his column.

Perhaps he also has certain megalomaniac fancies in the cushy security of his
journalistic privilege which makes him issue mandatory sentences. He has certain
command over the Queen’s English which is conspicuously lacking in its
proprieties. It is not surprising therefore to see him come to right conclusions
for the wrong reasons that the minister treats “us” meaning obviously his tribe,
like “children, even idiots”.

Well, Mr.Thapar has hit the nail on the head: his comments suspiciously border on
the idiotic, and also infantile. There is nothing surprising therefore to see him
asking for Minister Ramadoss’s elimination “much like pests”. Heil Hitler! One
is not aware if there is any pesticide available in the branded market to
eliminate ministerial pests who are too bothersome for the therapeutic wellbeing
of the likes of Karan Thapar to be left functioning, but there is not the least
doubt that Mr.Karan Thapar would be out spraying such a deadly pesticide in the
governmental precincts if he finds one.

I cannot for the life of me imagine the grotesque prospect of such a Neroesque
spectacle which would obviate the need for democratic debate. You can simply
pronounce who is to be eliminated a la Karan Thapar, take hold of the KT brand of
pesticide and hey presto! The pests are eliminated and everything is hunky-dory.

I am afraid I thought the Hindustan Times was far above harbouring such
journalistic terrorism and penmanship moulded in fascist style columnists. One is
constrained to recall how the press excesses were exposed as irresponsible and
dangerous by Stanley Baldwin when he retaliated to the political consortium formed
by the press lords Beaverbrook and Rothermere in the 1930s and finished them off
in his famous phrase “power without responsibility the prerogative of the harlots
throughout the ages.” The press lords were never the same again.

It would be rather anachronistic to recall in the present context of “free press”

in a bizarre operational mode with a vengence, Jawaharlal Nehru, the grand father-
in-law of Sonia Gandhi as Mr.Karan Thapar would like to call him in his unique
style of reference to personal relationships like his calling in an earlier column
of his Sunday Sentiments Mrs. Sonia Gandhi as “Rajiv Gandhi’s widow”. (HT 4-6-
2006) Nehru had marked well the power of the press for good or evil in the modern
world because he said addressing the All India Newspaper Editors’Conference, New
Delhi on Dec. 3, 1950:

“I am sure they wield tremendous power, not only through the colour they give it,
through the restraint or looseness of expression, through vulgarity or its
absence. The daily dose regularly given, affects the reader’s mind.”

And again addressing the same Conference on Sept. 17,1952 Nehru said:
“You talk about the freedom of the press, Should a person bring out a sheet with
the liberty simply to say and do every kind of wrong thing, under the aegis of the
noble doctrine of the freedom of the press? Obviously anybody can bring out
anything; the only limitation can be that of money or the number of purchasers he
will have. And he can do a lot. I am not thinking in terms of politics. Suppose
some noted gangster started preaching gangsterism, not patently and obviously but
in a disguised way. Well, then the freedom of the press would mean the preaching
of gangsterism or the preaching of the hatred of others, which is common enough in
many countries. It may be that, if you have hatred in your mind, perhaps it is
better to have it out instead of nursing it; but to preach it from day to day to
immature minds, surely, cannot be good.”

Precisely. Freedom to choose indeed. Since KT has been pedantic enough to quote
Descartes, I think I too can quote equally pedantically Rousseau: L'homme est né
libre, et partout il est dans les fers- Man is born free but everywhere in chains.
Freedom of choice: a very captivating and glamorous philosophical formulation
which has historically led to laissez faire and spawned revolutions. But one must
remember not to be taken by its seductive appeal. Even Keynes the godfather of IMF
and the World Bank said about laissez faire in his Essays in Persuasion “The End
of Laissez-Faire”:

"Let us clear from the ground the metaphysical or general principles upon which,
from time to time, laissez-faire has been founded. It is not true that individuals
possess a prescriptive "natural liberty" in their economic activities. There is no
compact conferring perpetual rights on those who Have or on those who Acquire. The
world is not so governed from above that private and social interest always
coincide. It is not so managed here below that in practice they coincide. It is
not a correct deduction from the Principles of Economics that enlightened self-
interest always operates in the public interest. Nor is it true that self-interest
generally is enlightened; more often individuals acting separately to promote
their own ends are ignorant or too weak to attain even these. Experience does not
show that individuals, when they make up a social unit, are always less clear-
sighted than when they act separately."

This is the politics and economics of social justice. And hence it was natural for
the Father of the Indian Nation, Mahatma Gandhi to give a dire warning: "Economic
equality is the master key to non-violent revolution. A non-violent system of
government is clearly an impossibility so long as the wide gulf between the rich
and hungry millions persists.The contrast between the palaces of New Delhi and the
miserable hovels of the poor, labouring class cannot last one day in a free India
in which the poor will enjoy the same power as the richest in the land. A violent
and bloody revolution is certainty one day unless there is a voluntary abdication
of riches and the power that riches give and sharing them for the common good."

But, alas, even after more than half century of freedom the gulf is ever widening
and with all the glitter of globalisation hunger, starvation and suicide deaths
are increasing amidst agricultural surplus, and sometimes fifty million tonnes of
grain in godowns rots but cannot be sold at subsidised prices for fear of pushing
the market prices down. That is the harsh economic reality!

The world today is embroiled in an economic turmoil caused by the globalisation

process. It is a veritable confusion worse confounded by the North versus South
polarities of trading policies, developmental disparities and stark reality of
opulence contrasted with destitution. An unprecedented global dilemma posed by the
merciless process of globalisation with all its ostensible benefits and built-in
evils.

‘Oh, yes, the time has come, my little friends To talk of food and things Of
peppercorns and mustard ... The time has come,' as the Walrus said. Can the
world really afford to hanker after opening this Pandora’s box? Isn’t this an
appropriate time to think about the basic economic ideology of social justice?
Equality is neither outdated nor is it the enemy of freedom. The voices of the
voiceless, disadvantaged, the diseased and the destitutes, the less privileged in
large parts of the world should not be lost in the clamouring sophistry of debates
in the cloistered splendour of IMF and World Bank citadels.

Child malnutrition is rampant in Maharashtra and elsewhere in India . Not just

tribals but, 47 per cent of India’s children below the age of three are
malnourished. This is higher than in sub-Saharan Arica (30 per cent) which has a
lower per capita income. More than 10,000 children are believed to have died of
malnutrition in this State in the last couple of years. And such dehumanising
deprivation occurs in the fastest growing State of India in its very urbs prima de
Indis. What is ironical is the fact that children continue to die here not
because of scarcity of food but because of rampant corruption and theft in the
food distribution system.

The spate of farmer suicides in the State Of Maharashtra, India is a pointer.

There have been about 400 farmer suicides due to agricultural indebtedness during
the year 2005. Farmer indebtedness in Maharashtra jumped from 29% in 1991-92 to
88.97% in 2003 against the all-India average of 87.64%. The extent of indebtedness
(debt in rupees per household at 1986-87 prices) between 1991-92 and ’03
increased by 232%. All-India average rise 210%.

“The world's biggest killer and the greatest cause of ill health and suffering
across the globe is listed almost at the end of the International Classification
of Diseases. It is given Code Z59.5 -- extreme poverty. World Health Organisation
(1995)

In stark contrast to this horrendous picture of poverty and starvation is the BBC
News Published: 2006/04/15 as to how Britain is now 'eating the planet' by Mark
Kinver

“The UK is about to run out of its own natural resources and become dependent on
supplies from abroad, a report says. A study by the New Economics Foundation (Nef)
and the Open University says 16 April is the day when the nation goes into
"ecological debt" this year. It warns if annual global consumption levels matched
the UK's, it would take 3.1 Earths to meet the demand.

Does our Indian brethren groaning under the weight of centuries of utter
deprivation and want of basic needs have any freedom of choice Mr.Karan Thapar and
Mr.Editor, Hindustan Times? Mr.Thapar’s insolence may be the privilege of his
column but not so his ignorance of the negative evidence about Coca Cola, tobacco
and alcohol about which there is increasingly serious concern worldwide. If
Mr.Thapar is really sincere about his thesis of “freedom of choice” he must not
shy away from responding to this by coming out of his cocoon of pretentious
cliches.

May I draw your attention to your edit “No full stops on India’s roads” 17-6-2006
“a survey that says that nearly 70 per cent of those who obtain a driving licence
in Delhi cannot drive.”, and that ““Most of the time, drivers literally get away
with murder” and further that “Nearly 90,000 people died in road accidents last
year — most of them younger persons — and four times that number were disabled. As
a result, lakhs of people suffered the trauma of having a near and loved one
killed or injured.”
Shouldn’t driving too be a matter of freedom of individual choice in this free for
all democracy if one takes your and your columnist Karan Thapar’s arguments to
their logical conclusion? Your screaming headlines about inhuman children
malnutrition in Mumbai in the last couple of days tell a different story. You have
also not yet brought into picture the horrible state of the municipal schools and
and tried to juxtapose the same with the great debate going on about the OBC
reservations. The question at the botton of reservations is not one of
reservations for the deprived sections of the society, whether castes or
economically backward but one of educational equality at the bottom. And this
simply cannot be solved unless there is a rigorous equalisation of private and
public educational institutions.

Have you forgotten your news item Funds for Sanskriti unfair: in HT 19-5-2006?
You cannot have a three-crore grant school for the government officers with hovel-
like schools in the neighbourhood and expect equal opportunity. But all these
issues, tobacco, alcohol, soft drinks laced with pesticides, traffic moving
merrily with bogus licences and not the least malnutrition, hunger, farmer’s
suicides and obc reservations all these are parts of one mosaic: you cannot hold
the government responsible for one and get hysterical about your precious
“individual choice” and sing pedantic sirens about ‘freedom to choose”. You could
in the same strain extend your precious freedom to choose aids, and why not be
competely uninhibited in freedom of expression of which Mr.Thapar’s column appears
to be a model example.

And now your smug and sarcastic comments in your edit Remote control Ramadoss Soft
Drinks, 12-6-2006 lashing against Minister Ramadoss’s “fatwa against smoking and
drinking scenes in movies.” I am sure a leading daily of the stature of Hindustan
Times cannot be unaware of the havoc wrought worldwide by tobacco and alcohol.

Tobacco is the second major common cause of death and the fourth leading risk
factor for disease. It is responsible for the death of one in ten adults - 5
million deaths a year worldwide. (WHO) Worldwide, 1.8 million deaths in 2000 were
attributable to alcohol use causing 3.2% of all global deaths and contributing to
4% of the disease burden. (World Health Report, WHO, 2002).

Alcohol is the leading risk factor related to the major burden of disease in low
mortality developing countries and the third most prevalent risk factor for
leading diseases and injuries in developed countries (WHO, 2002). While alcohol
consumption is decreasing in some developed countries, it is on the rise in
developing nations Significant proportion of the student population drink at
hazardous level. The burden from alcohol exceeds that from tobacco because alcohol
problems tend to take their toll earlier in life. The physiological and social
consequences of alcohol use also negatively affect school performance, attendance
and productivity at work and relations within the family.

The country's road research institute estimates that 25% of road accidents were
alcohol-related, one third of the drivers on the highway were under the influence
of alcohol and 20% of accident-related head injury victims seen in emergency rooms
of hospitals have consumed alcohol prior to the accident. Alcohol involvement is
known to be present among 15% to 20% of traumatic brain injuries at the time of
injury. Alcohol-related problems made up 17.6% of the case load of psychiatric
emergencies in an Indian General Hospital.19 In a study looking at risk factors
for suicide, it was found that the prevalence of alcohol use disorders among
people who committed suicide in the city of Madras was 34%.20 (WHO Global Status
Report on Alcohol 2004)

Morbidity, health and social problems from alcohol use are rampant. Industry
association sources estimate that 15% to 20% of absenteeism and 40% of accidents
at work are due to alcohol. Alcohol use among industrial workers is increasing and
this has led to an increase in alcohol-related sickness and absenteeism. The
annual loss due to alcohol-related problems in work places is between Rs 70 000 to
80 000 million. A study looking at the prevalence and associations of hazardous
drinking in a male industrial worker population in India found that hazardous
drinking was significantly associated with severe health problems, such as head
injuries and hospitalizations.

Your editorial further speaks about “In a country that proclaims ‘social justice’
as its credo, there are enough departments where the State needs to show concern —
whether it be the state of our healthcare system or vulgar displays of
intolerance. In the end, it is about individual choice.” Can you not see the
terrible irony and devastating contradiction of your expectation of “social
justice” and bundle together “the healthcare system or vulgar displays of
intolerance” and conclude with your favourite credo of “individual choice’ your
nostrum to end all the ills India is heir to?

As for the soft drinks you are again totally ill-informed as to the havoc wrought
by the Coca Cola. Are you aware that the Indian government set up one of the
highest ranking bodies possible to be set up in India, the Joint Parliamentary
Committee (JPC), to look into the pesticides found by the original study? In
February 2004, the JPC confirmed that Coca-Cola products contained extremely high
levels of pesticides. The Parliament of India banned the sale of Coca-Cola and
Pepsico products in the parliament cafeteria, and the ban remains in effect to
this day.

In blatant disregard for lives in India, the Coca-Cola company continues to sell
products in India with high levels of pesticides even today. Coca-Cola maintains
that its products in India are completely safe. The reality, however, is very
different. On at least 10 occasions since January 2005, the US Food and Drug
Administration has rejected the shipment of Coca-Cola products made in India
coming into the US, on the grounds that they do not conform to US laws and that
they are unsafe for the US public.

Which world are you living in? You must wake up to the Indian reality. But I may
be wrong. Your edit dt.21-6-2006 you patronisingly urges to “Spare a thought
for the urban poor” and deign to note “the growth of slums, which often exist
right next to sleek malls and multiplexes. It reflects poorly on ‘India Shining’
that Mumbai, one of the most dynamic economic centres of the country, is home to
one of the largest slums in the world, which houses more people than Norway.
Studies have shown that slum-dwellers often live in worse conditions than
villagers. Lack of water, sanitation and health facilities, and exposure to
pollution makes them most susceptible to health hazards.”

For once you appear close to discovering the crux of the Indian problem
concurrently with the affluent tsunami of the globalisation the most blatant
symbol of which are the sprawling malls which are at the same time an insult to
the Indian reality of poverty, hunger, malnutrition. Since you have noted the
“sleek malls and multiplexes” right next to Asia’s biggest slum these brilliant
symbols of “India Shining” I take it you must be aware what is happening to
Walmart the mother of all malls.

A glance at the devastating retail havoc let loose by the Wal-Mart and its
decimation of the American manufacturing jobs and enslavement of the labour abroad
is enough to show how as a result of the Wal-Mart model, combined with the
depression, more than 1 million manufacturing production jobs producing consumer
goods have been lost since July 2000 alone.
“Wal-Mart Is Not a Business, It's an Economic Disease” by Richard Freeman and
Arthur Ticknor the Nov. 14 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. “The Wal-Mart
department store chain, ...is levelling economies of the U.S., industrial nations,
and the Third World...Not since the days of the British East India Company as the
cornerstone of the British imperial system, has one single corporate entity been
responsible for so much misery “Wal-Mart imports 10% of all America's total
imports from China. If Wal-Mart were a country, it would rank ahead of Great
Britain and Russia in total imports." Which reminds one of British East India
Company as the cornerstone of the British imperial system, as one single corporate
entity responsible for so much misery.

On Nov. 18-19 2003, the City of London's mouthpiece, the Financial Times, ran
four articles on Wal-Mart, centered on Wal-Mart's practices of hiring and
directing cleaning companies that employed foreign illegal workers who cleaned
Wal-Mart stores, seven nights a week, under hideous conditions.

Remember the Opium war of 1839-1842, the first of Chinese conflict with the West
precipitated by the Chinese Government’s efforts to stall the British traders from
selling opium to the Chinese people? In this unconscionable trade Britain was the
major foreign dealer but Americans, French and others also participated. This
eventually culimnated in war between China and England.

The Chinese Commissioner Lin Tse-hsu vainly appealed to Queen Victoria: “Let us
ask, where is your conscience. I have heard that the smoking of opium is very
strictly forbidden by your country;… Since it is not permitted to do harm to your
own country, then even less should you let it be passed on to other countries-
much less to China!..Is there a single article from China which has done any harm
to foreign countries?”

Queen Victoria was unmoved. The war ended with the Nanking Treaty of 1842 forcing
China to cede Hong Kong and among other humiliating terms pay an indemnity to
compensate the British for lost opium and for expenses incurred in the war!!
You have referred to UN Human Habitat report. The report, from the UN human
settlements programme, UN-habitat, Nairobi, also found that urban slums were
growing faster than expected, and that the balance of global poverty was shifting
rapidly from the countryside to cities.
The report found that some slums were now as large as cities. The Kibera district
in Nairobi, classed as the largest slum in the world, has as many as 600,000
people. The Dharavi area of Mumbai and the Orangi district of Karachi have only
slightly fewer people, while the Ashaiman slum is now larger than the city of Tema
in Ghana, around which it grew.
But the authors roundly blamed laissez-faire globalisation and "neo-liberal"
economic policies imposed on poor countries by global institutions such as the
International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation for much of the
damage caused to cities over the past 20 years. The authors conclude that as
"cities have become a dumping ground for people working in unskilled, unprotected
and low-wage industries and trades... the slums of the developing world swell".
Is this globalisation a mad rush to serfdom? In his “Development as Freedom”,
1999, Amarya Sen sees development "as a process of expanding the real freedoms
that people enjoy." Hence, "development requires the removal of major sources of
unfreedom: poverty as well as tyranny, poor economic opportunities as well as
systematic social deprivation, neglect of public facilities as well as intolerance
or overactivity of repressive states."
This perspective leads Sen to place special emphasis on basic health care,
especially for children, and basic education, especially for women. Such economic
vision has an unmistakeable Rawlsian perspective of the maximisation of the well-
being of the poorest member of a community subject to the preservation of liberty.
I think the theme of globalisation has a weird air about it of a new-fangled
economic voodoo, just as there has been for long in operation in America of what
Senator Fulbright called in his Arrogance of Power “That there is a kind of voodoo
about American foreign policy. Certain drums have to be beaten regularly to ward
off evil spirits-for example, the maledictions regularly uttered against North
Vietnamese aggression” (p.32) In place of ‘North Vietnamese aggression’ one can
replace WMDs of Iraq and international terrorism. And there is no doubt that this
too would prove in course of time a Bushgate
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