Democracy in Crisis

Once upon a time, to board a domestic flight was almost as easy as getting onto a bus at a bus terminal. Global terrorism put an end to that.  Is this a reduction in freedom?  Absolutely.  The requirement of the right kind of government-issued ID to board a flight is an intrusion into individual liberty. 

 

Is it a reduction in democracy?  Absolutely not.  The people remain free to make the government change the regulations, repeal them altogether, or as is more likely, to make obtaining the required ID and the security checks less onerous.  

 

Professor Salvatore Babones, an American sociologist at the University of Sydney in Australia, uses this kind of distinction, and argues that India remains a democracy, though less free than Australia or the United States, for instance in freedom of speech.  Watch this debate between Salvatore Babones and Anand Rangarajan.  (Trigger-alert: Anand Rangarajan is boorish; and Salvatore Babones loses the audience because he acknowledges learning about India from a trio of journalists whom the audience happens to despise.)   But Babones' arguments are sound.   

 

Let's examine this further. In one of the many "India's Democracy in Crisis" panel discussions,  there is the criticism of the Modi government that it does not do enough to curb hate speech.  On the other hand, district authorities have been given the power to simply shut down the internet, and in 2022, of 187 shutdowns of the internet world-wide, 84 occurred in India, and the Modi government is criticized for this, too.

 

It does happen in India that social media is used to spread "hate-speech" and start a riot or lynching.  It may be rare on a per capita basis (1.4 billion people in the denominator!), but it does happen.  The district authorities can nip this in the bud by simply turning off the internet for a period.  "Hate speech" is poorly defined, there are no standards, and asking the district authorities to selectively censor social media will bring in their bias.  Turning off the internet makes sense.  Whether this is a good strategy requires research into its effectiveness in keeping the peace, and not some theoretical notions about freedom.

 

Regarding the disruption to life by an internet shutdown, India is prone to "rasta roko"/"rail roko" -- people block roads or railway lines - and city-wide or state-wide bandhs, where the entire area is coerced into shutting down business.  This kind of protest is part of India's political culture and has a history.  Lack of internet is yet another disruption to add to this.  

 

But it is up to the Indian people to decide whether all this is acceptable or not.   Right now, perhaps the safety of life and property, and the avoidance of disruption of life by violence outweighs the loss of the internet.   Maybe some time the balance will change and then the voters will make a political issue of it and force a change.

 

Which leads to another observation - the Indian Constitution is relatively easy to change, with the Supreme Court on guard to preserve the basis structure of the Constitution.  From January 1950 to October 2021, there have been 105 amendments.  America's Constitution has had 27 since 1789.  It is much more difficult to amend, and popular causes such as regulating money in politics, or making the Presidency be determined by the popular vote rather than the Electoral College which overweighs states with tiny populations are stuck.  That is, the American people remain free to change their Constitution, but in practice, it is very hard.  

 

Freedom of speech is virtually absolute in the United States; the restrictions that can be placed by law are very limited.  We thus get the situation where e.g., Fox News can knowingly, even maliciously, propagate a democracy-damaging falsehood, and the only recourse is for a private party who suffered economic damage by the lies to take them to court.  If the situation gets unbearable, Americans will no doubt try to change this, but the barriers to change are enormous.   

 

Does comparing among countries the ease of amending the Constitution make any sense?  I don't think it does, any more than the freedom indices and such.  India's Constitution and America's Constitution were written to meet the needs of their respective people with their histories and circumstances.  The ease or difficulty of amendment was also decided because of history and circumstances.

With any democracy, what one can meaningfully ask is, are the people free to change their laws and regulations and do the laws and regulations that get made diminish that freedom in any way?  Only in the latter case need an alarm be raised (e.g, Hungary or maybe even Israel).  

When in the debate mentioned above, Anand Rangarajan feels patronized when Babones says India is less free in some respects than Australia or America and asks why he can't be as free as an American, he is asking for India to be America; but India's history and circumstances can't be so readily erased.  Nor is less freedom necessarily bad - in aviation, it keeps terrorists at bay.  

It is up to Indians collectively whether they want a perfect Jeffersonian Republic, or whether the trade-offs to preserve their way of life are acceptable to them; and Anand Rangarajan has the freedom to try to persuade them as to which would lead to their greater flourishing.