Re: Overlegislation ----(Was ---Not sure if this news is real, or a spoof...
Ratnendra Pandey <[email protected]>
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Folks. By mistake I clicked the send button instead of save before I was able to finish my comment on Media Ownership. So I continue here where I had left.... Media Ownership: Happiness comes from ability to do what one wants to do. Over-legislation hurts ability of a person to seek happiness. And Laws restricting access to happiness almost always invoke resistance and revolt, or resignation from the people. Unhappy people do not make a happy country. That is why I was shocked by the news of laws/regulations (one more time) on controlling who can own a media and who cannot. I become nervous when I hear about a new legislation or a new regulation or a new spending program particularly when such laws are going to curb some very important personal freedoms. A personal freedom is a personal freedom. Laws made against personal freedom are roadblock to a person to seeking happiness. Happiness cannot be legislated. Still, I would not be surprised to see a Minstry of Happiness or a Happiness Regulatory Authority of India or some other kind of Happiness bill to be discussed among Indian intellectuals most of who have been trained in schools whose curriculum is dictated by bureacrats, or informed by a media whose content is censored. Control on Media ownership is a control on the free-speech and a control on ability of a person or group of persons to make a living by gathering, selling or distributing information. But the free speech and right-to-an-occupation are not the only two personal freedoms under attack by control on Media. It is far more serious. It is a attack on another personal freedom -- right to unfettered access to information. So, we are taking about three personal freedoms: 1. Right to free speech. 2. Right to an occupation i.e. Ability to earn unlimited profits by gathering and selling information. 3. Right to learn and be informed from sources of choice. Let me elaborate the third point a little more because without the third freedom, the first two would be useless. Let me take an example. Lets say a person wants to know what happened to Subhas Chandra Bose in his final years. The curiosity may be just as innocent as the curiosity to know about the personal life of some popular film star. Let's assume that this kind of information is hard to find in India because any traces of SC Bose have been allowed to disappear. And also assume that this kind of information exist with some sources that have been banned in India. In such a situation, what happens to the third right of the person who wants to learn and be informed. When I was a undergraduate student, I was known among some of my friends for reading "foreign books" a lot. I guess it was just that I liked the style of those authors as compared to the same by the Indian authors. The thoery of electrical circuits would not change, but the way subject is discussed would vary from author to author. Anyway, had such books been banned in the college library, there was no way I could have read those books from my personal resources, and have satisfied my personal freedom. When I was a student, the conventional wisdom was to cram the lecture notes and pass the exam with flying color. Over-curiosity can be bad for academic success. That will be topic for some other day. But, at this point it will be sufficient to say that right to learn, right to earn, and right to speak are interrelated and the moment one right is curbed the the other two are adversely affected. When some government bureaucracy like TRAI or DOT asks people to provide inputs on Media Ownership, it appears to very similar to a situation where a gunman wanting to kill someone is asking the victim whether to be shot in the head or in the chest. Control on media ownership or content through legislation or regulation is wrong and a direct attack on three personal freedoms listed above. Such controls hurt the general awareness and intellectual capacity of Indian population by limiting the sources from where the information can be cheaply accessed. BJP government of 1998 made a mistake by creating the Ministry of Information Technology against opposition from some quarters. I clearly remember Late Pramod Mahajan, the first Minister of Information Technology, promising to the audience during his Silicon Valley visit that Ministry of Information Technology will not come in the way of IT or Media etc. 14 years later, I can tell that either he was delusional or he was lying. Curbs on media and internet have only gotten worse since then. The concerned people should start a discussion whether the bureaucracies like TRAI, DOT, or MIT etc are even needed. Sincerely, Ratnendra Pandey From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [india-gii] Overlegislation ----(Was ---Not sure if this news is real, or a spoof... Date: Sun, 14 Jul 2013 08:46:29 -0700 Something shocking caught my attention reading through this chain of exchanges. Thanks Sarabjit for bringing it over otherwise I would have not known about it. We do not act but we do read as much as possible. But, before I comment on it, let me address some other points raised in this discussion that seems to have become a concoction of many unlinked ideas. I will then follow it up with some rants on socialistic thought process to make a case that over-legislation is hurting ability of the Indian people to seek happiness. My post is born out of belief that happiness is attained by actions taken out of free will. Personal freedom is source of happiness and anything that curbs freedom of any kind almost always makes a person unhappy and invites unpleasant response from a person whose freedom is curtailed. A person is made unhappy when forced to do something that s/he is unwilling to do... A WORD of WARNING: Rest of my post may not be suitable for all readers. Please stop and delete if you are unsure if the following material is for you. Much of what follows in my post will be an attack on the assumptions that laws makes society safe, equal, risk free, morally sound, predictable. Religious teachings -- as that of Gita that detaches results from the actions, as well has secular theories have argued that nothing is certain in this world, and any attempt to guarantee anything by making laws (and spending other peoples money) always results in a unpleasant shock. Only thing that can be said to be absolutely certain is the uncertainty. So, in India and elsewhere in the world, the bad things will still happen. People will kill people, women will be abused and assaulted sexually, unborn babies will be killed in the name of women's rights (as it happens in US ) and by parents worried of another girl child ( as it happens in India). Thousands years of lawmaking has failed in giving us a certain and predictable world. Making laws on the top of existing laws, regulation, bureaucracy, regulatory authority, or spending program will not make it any better. So, let me share my views on some of the matter that came up for discussion here: Teenage Pregnancies: Yours truly, that is me, was born out of teenager. My mother was less than twenty at the time of my birth. Early marriage was a norm when my parents married, but do not mistake my parents marriage for a child marriage. My mother said a long time ago, if you marry early, you will have children early, and you will be able to raise your children while you are still working, healthy, mentally alert, and physically fit. If you marry late, that seems to becoming more common these days because of economic reasons, you will have to worry about your still small children when you are past over the peak of your life and entering into retirement. Anyway, demographics and population theory aside, making laws in India against child marriage was mistake for two reasons. First of all it is not business of government to tell a person when to marry. A person should be free to decide when to marry. Second, There is nothing un-biological about teen pregnancies. Actually, congenital problems are more likely in babies when mother is over 30. Just out of curiosity, I checked what is position of American legal system on child marriages. I found that all states all of them allow child marriage with parental consent required in some states. My curiosity did not stop there. I can go into more details later but from the point of the view that we are discussing in this thread, it will be sufficient to stick to the point that fundamentally and biologically there is nothing wrong with the teen pregnancies. Only the pregnancies that happen happen outside a marriage or parental consent are bad for both mother and the child. That will almost always result in the child being denied the utmost parental care. Or being labeled as illegitimate child for the rest of the life. Not a easy burden to carry, either for the person or for the society. So, it looks to me that the petitioner requesting ban on port is concern about the pregnancies outside a marriage. I will consider it as a valid concern that needs some attention. I am not sure banning porn will stop girls from getting pregnant before twenties. Sexual consciousness of a person arises from the hormonal and biological changes that happen inside the body and the mind. External factors, like access to sexually explicit text, images, or videos are only the reminder of that sexuality. Look animals around you, like dogs, bulls, cows, or cats, they do not watch sexually explicit material yet they are active in open. So, to attack the problem that petitioner is trying to address -- the pregnancies outside marriage-- we should decriminalize child marriage and let parents be their own judge on what is an appropriate time for their children to get marriage. Population control, sterilization (Nasbandi in Hindi, a program started by Indira Gandhi in mid seventies that met a fierce public opposition.) , Eugenics, Euthanasia etc are product of socialistic thinking, particularly like National Socialist Program in force during NAZI Germany, driven by a notion of making a pure race of equal people etc. I will leave it up to readers to use their research skills to get some more information on words like Eugenics and Euthanasia. Anyway, I will end this with note that I cannot see how banning internet and curbing other people's freedom of speech will reduce pregnancies outside the marriage. Media Ownership: Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2013 21:57:34 +0530 From: [email protected] To: [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: Re: [india-gii] Not sure if this news is real, or a spoof... We haven't seen GII (as a group) in action for quite some time :-( For examples of engagement. "IAC submissions to TRAI on Media Ownership" "IAC submission to Verma committee" "IAC demands prosecution of "electricity thief" Arvind Kejriwal (Aam Aadmi Party)" DERC special hearing on Kejriwal electricity theft issue. On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 9:08 PM, Manu Awasthi <[email protected]> wrote: Does India-Gii wish to engage ?? CAN India-Gii engage ? If people have been involved in such engagements before, I would very much like to know how to proceed. Thanks! On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 9:30 AM, Sarbajit Roy <[email protected]> wrote: There was a public notice today in some leading newspapers from Rajya Sabha. Persons watching cyber porn will be severely published. Law being put in place, objections/suggestions are invited from public to Amend IT Act. http://164.100.47.5/newcommittee/press_release/Press/Committee%20on%20Petitions/Cyber.pdf Does India-Gii wish to engage ?? CAN India-Gii engage ? On 7/11/13, Srini RamaKrishnan <[email protected]> wrote: > I'd like to remind the list that the honorable minister insisted not > too long back that every Facebook and Orkut post and youtube video had > to be reviewed by a FB / Google employee before posting it to the web > to produce a safer web. > > He is a crusader par excellence for the safety of the web; his record > speaks volumes for how safe he has made the web. Without his earnest > efforts the web would have been a hive of filth and immorality. > > > > _______________________________________________ India-gii mailing list [email protected] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/india-gii _______________________________________________ India-gii mailing list [email protected] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/india-gii _______________________________________________ India-gii mailing list [email protected] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/india-gii