Abstract
ABOVE: A worker reads a newspaper in Kolkata
Credit: Parth Sanyal/Reuters
In this section
Press freedom: what is it good for? amartya sen 6
The revolution realists? Melody Patry and Rasha Mohamed 16
Changing the script Natasha Schmidt 25
Moving towards inequality Jemimah Steinfeld and Hannah Leung 29
Protesters and poorest create own news media Ronaldo Pelli 33
Pride and prejudices Natasha Joseph 37
Invisible women Shilpa Ranade, Shilpa Phadke and Sameera Khan 40
Fast forward Brian Pellot 46
Click to hear #citizenvoices? Danny Sriskandarajah 50
The sound of silence Johanna Schwartz and Fadimata Walet Oumar 56
India calling Rachael Jolley 62
Stripsearch martin rowson 68
India and its media must make better use of its democratic freedoms. Surprisingly, says Nobel Prize winner
Is free speech in conflict with the demands of economic and social development, or are they complementary? That question can be addressed at different levels of generality. It is important to understand the wide reach and pervasive relevance of this question, even when the immediate context of the discussion is a very specific comparison. The immediate reference point of this article is the comparison of China and India.
Press freedom can be most effective only when that freedom is utilised by the media fully, rather than in a biased or slanted way
A strong belief – often implicit – in the importance of good technocratic planning for successful development (no nonsense about disorderly public discussion) used to be quite dominant in economic thinking for a long time, and it received rather little challenge until late in the 20th century. Rather than encouraging public debates, the process of governmental policy-making tended, for a long time, to rely on the presumed soundness of decisions taken by “those who know best”.
That view has, however, been challenged over the last few decades, and it has been argued that press freedom is crucially important for development. Why so? The literature on the subject has highlighted, in one way or another, at least four distinct reasons in favour of encouraging and facilitating uncensored public discussion. The first reason is the intrinsic value of freedom of speech and public communication in the freedom of human beings. If it is accepted that people’s freedom to do what they have reason to value is really important, then freedom cannot but be one of the central objects of development. And given that basic recognition, it is easy to see that freedom of speech and communication must be among the constitutive ingredients of development – an important component of developmental ends.
Second, seen as an instrument, the role of a free press in disseminating knowledge and facilitating critical scrutiny is a necessary requirement of informed politics, and cannot but be important for the formulation of development policies, for the enrichment of public debates on the diagnoses of the problems to be addressed, and on the assessment of policies.
Third, the protective role of press freedom in giving voice to the neglected and the disadvantaged, and thus helping the cause of greater human security, is by now well accepted. The observation that famines do not occur in functioning democracies with freedom of the press is one testament to this protective role.
Fourth, the functioning of a free press and its contribution to open public discussion are important in generating new ideas, including the formation and scrutiny of values. Press freedom also contributes greatly to the emergence of shared public standards, which are central to discussions on social justice.
Achievements of China and India
I should admit that I have been a follower of this relatively new line of thinking about development, and have argued for the importance of press freedom, and more generally for the benefits of a functioning democracy. But that immediately raises a problem, in particular when comparing China with India. I have to argue, at the risk of sounding hopelessly self-indulgent, that the possible tension – even an apparent contradiction – in my thinking may apply to others as well, since none of my beliefs on the two subjects are particularly unique.
India has had a far less restricted press than China, and has been much more of a practising democracy. And yet in terms of the standard criteria of economic and social development, China has clearly done significantly better than India. China not only has had a faster rate of economic growth (even though India’s has been fast too) but, more significantly, it has achieved a higher life expectancy, fuller literacy, and a wider coverage of guaranteed health care than India (and here – unlike in the case of the rate of economic growth – India’s performance is very deficient). The question that immediately arises is whether this indicates that press freedom is not really that important, and whether it may even work to the detriment of development.
I would argue that the answer to what appears to be a dilemma lies in the recognition that press freedom can be most effective only when that freedom is utilised by the media fully, rather than in a biased or slanted way. Freedom is a permissive condition, and permission is not enough to make a success of the use of the opportunity available.
The achievements of a democratic system depend on what issues are brought into political engagement. Some issues are extremely easy to politicise, such as the calamity of a famine (which tends to stop abruptly with the institution of a functioning democratic political system, as has happened in several countries, including India), whereas other issues – less spectacular and less immediate – provide a much harder challenge. Using democratic means to remedy non-extreme undernourishment, or persistent gender and caste inequalities, or the absence of regular medical care for all, is much more difficult, and success or failure here depends significantly on the range and vigour of democratic practice. There has, however, been considerable progress in dealing with some of these issues, such as particular features of gender inequality, through relatively improved practice of democracy in recent years. But there is still a long way to go to take on all the social disadvantages and injustices from which many Indians persistently suffer.
Efficiency and fragility of authoritarianism
In contrast, in China the process of decision-making depends largely on decisions at the top, taken by political leaders, with relatively little scope for democratic pressure from below. The spectacular fact that the Chinese leaders, despite their scepticism of the values of democracy and liberty, have been strongly committed to eliminating hunger and illiteracy has certainly helped China’s economic and social advancement. That deserves huge applause.
ABOVE: Chinese Premier Li Keqiang speaks with Sonia Gandhi during a meeting in May this year
Credit: Adnan1 Abidi/Reuters
And yet there is an inescapable fragility in any authoritarian system, since there is little remedy when the government leaders change their priority in a counterproductive direction. The reality of that danger revealed itself in catastrophic form in the Chinese famine of 1959–62, which killed at least 30 million people, when the regime failed to understand what was going on and there was no public pressure against its policies, as would have arisen in a functioning democracy. The policy mistakes continued throughout these three years of devastating famine. There was not only no politically significant opposition (and no criticism of the disastrous policies pursued by the government) but the information blackout was so complete with censorship and control of the state media that government itself came to be deceived by its own propaganda and believed that the country had 100 million more metric tons of rice than it actually had. Eventually, Chairman Mao himself made a famous speech, in 1962, lamenting the “lack of democracy” because it led to mistakes in centralised planning thanks to informational deficiency.
India has to make much greater use of the freedom of the media, and more generally of its democratic system, than it has done in the past
The fragility was seen again with the economic reforms of 1979, when China took the intelligent decision of removing its huge antipathy to the market economy, and this greatly improved the efficiency of Chinese agriculture and industry. But wholesale marketisation also involved a huge retreat from the principle of universal health care coverage for all. As the axe fell on the “rural cooperative medical system”, the proportion of the rural population universally covered by free or heavily subsidised health care crashed to 10 per cent or so within a few years.
Such fragilities are hard to eliminate in an authoritarian system where supportive and protective policies can suddenly change, depending on power politics at the top. An established right to health care could not have been so easily – and so swiftly – withdrawn in a functioning democracy. The withdrawal of universal entitlement to health care sharply reduced the progress of longevity in China, and China’s large lead over India in life expectancy dwindled over the following two decades – falling from a 14-year lead to one of just seven years. However, the Chinese authorities did eventually come to recognise the value of what had been lost, and reversed their direction of thinking again – this time with very positive results. The reintroduction of social health insurance on a large scale (under new arrangements, including the “new cooperative medical scheme”) from around 2004 helped China to have a much higher proportion of people with guaranteed health care (more than 90 per cent) than does India. The gap in life expectancy in China’s favour has been rising again, and is now about 10 years. The reach of health coverage is clearly central to this trend.
To make use of press freedom and democracy
Given India’s multiparty democratic practice, it has to cultivate democratic engagement in demanding universal health care and addressing long-standing neglects. This means putting pressure on the government in office but also making these priorities a part of the political demands of the opposition, since governments, especially coalition governments such as the present one in New Delhi, have to respond to the priorities set by political pressures and public demands, which can take widely diverse forms and which all compete for governmental attention and resources. Cultivating democratic engagement can be a harder task than convincing a handful of political leaders of the need for a policy change. On the other hand, if a norm of this kind is democratically established, it is less subject to the fragility to which all authoritarian decisions remain vulnerable. In order to match China in health coverage and surpass it in resilience, India has to make much greater use of the freedom of the media, and more generally of its democratic system, than it has done in the past. The same can be said for the priority of basic education for all.
That this can be done has already been shown in India, in the use of democratic freedoms in particular states, through prioritizing public services, also allowing the pursuit of inclusive economic growth. Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh have combined the pursuit of social welfare with the cultivation of fast economic growth. Indeed, the fact that an educated and healthy labour force has not only enjoyed enhanced living standards but that it has also helped these states to quickly ascend the ladder of per-capita incomes, thanks to rapid economic growth, illustrates this point with much clarity. Even at the national level there have been many successes, for example in addressing the AIDS epidemic (it had been predicted that India would be the country most severely affected by this global epidemic, but that outcome was prevented by swift public policies responses with wide reach). There has also been impressively fast legal reform to help provide more security and safety for women, which followed the public agitations after a terrible case of gang rape in mid-December 2012. The legal amendments were not as strong as some wanted, but much stronger than the previous system of laxity and inefficiency, and the amendments were enacted by the Indian Parliament within three months of the agitations.
In terms of the standard criteria of economic and social development, China has clearly done significantly better than India
To conclude, press freedom and democratic guarantees are necessary for making a high-performing development path secure and stable, rather than fragile, even if such reforms can be more quickly ushered in in the absence of democratic freedoms. An authoritarian country could go the way of North Korea or of South Korea, or experience varying performance of the kind China has historically had, depending on factors other than democratic social choice. There are many things of great importance that India, including its media, can learn from China, but to make use of these lessons India needs to make more, rather than less, use of its democratic freedoms and uncensored media.
As one of the principal architects of India’s democratic constitution, B R Ambedkar, said with deep insight: in order to make a success of its democracy, India needs to continue and vastly expand its efforts to “educate, agitate and organise”. That call to action remains substantially unfulfilled. A free press has to be more than its own reward.
Talk back
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At two titles I’ve edited, we have faced gags or attempted gags more than 10 times in 10 years. This pre-publication censorship (through attempted court interdict) is the most severe form. It has been attempted by multi-national corporations, a corrupt but popular youth leader, our version of the FBI, companies linked to the governing African National Congress and others of the motley crew who do not know the South African constitution.
Our constitution explicitly protects free speech and thus a free media. It has saved my bacon many times and held the censors at bay when gags have failed in court. I have often been surprised by the people we’ve found ourselves sitting opposite in court. There have been good democrats among them and people who helped draft the Constitution and birthed the new democracy of Nelson Mandela.
Is it as simple as them not having read the ground law or forgotten it? Not at all. It is that media freedom is great in philosophy when you are in revolutionary trenches, but very hard to stay true to when you are in power. Because power, I’ve seen in the past 19 years, does corrupt as money and influence are as seductive here as they are anywhere. Mandela’s generation of political leaders, who lived for a larger goal and were “servant leaders” before the term was even coined, have been replaced by a generation driven instead by self-interest.
Corruption is a growing cancer. To illustrate: President Jacob Zuma has made R250 million (US$24.5 million) worth of renovations on his private estate drawing on the public purse, when the rule-books allow only R100,000 (US$9,790) for security enhancements. Relationships between the presidency and titles like City Press are brittle because public interest has clashed loudly with self-interest on this and other instances.
In addition to the gags, the South African media and its allied freedom of expression organisations have had to fight off efforts at greater state regulation and less transparency as the pace of investigative journalism has been cranked up.
Journalism in a new democracy, in which I feel myself personally invested, is a constant balance between being a critic and a patriot (the US PATRIOT Act notwithstanding, I am patriotic). We walk a tightrope between being a watchdog and recognising the role of the media to help shape society by being useful and constructive. What does this mean? It means ensuring that our coverage of health, of education and of the often arcane processes of development (bringing water, toilets, housing and broadband access to a majority of people and, in South Africa’s case, dealing with a cruel AIDS pandemic) is as sexy and as omnipresent as the coverage of celebrities, powerful people and corruption.
This is not always easy as a nation turns its attention to play, sex and scandal after so many years of struggle. The country would rather not be distracted by “development journalism”, choosing instead to pay attention to the seduction of the Kardashians or the next hot reality show. But covering development is a core part of our responsibility, as is ensuring that we give adequate exposure to the things government gets right.
In our case, this includes reporting on the extension of a substantial social safety net to a majority of South Africans (no other African country has such a comforting net), electricity connections, housing, and the government managing the economy fairly well through two recessions. In my case (and I can’t speak for colleagues), it is also ensuring that I always refer to South Africa as “our country” and not “this country”, for I am not alien to the place I was born in and where I now practise and enjoy a healthy media freedom.
With its constitutional umbrella, South Africa has developed a feisty and free media that is invested in the country’s success. We are not perfect, but we are a decent fourth estate that enjoys good levels of trust from our different reading publics.
In this, we have learnt well from Amartya Sen’s seminal philosophy of development as freedom. As a child who grew up under apartheid and then a woman who benefited enormously from the freedom years and the ANC’s policies, my journalism is not particularly geared toward the “Gotcha” mode of investigative work. It is not focused on up-ending governments or claiming scalps, though it is good when bad leaders are called to account.
My working thesis is that corruption and poor government practice and policy impact on the extension of freedom. They sap the dream of freedom and make a beloved country less than it can be. So, every time we take on a large investigation, we try to show what has been squandered or stolen in houses we could have built and identify entrepreneurs we could have encouraged and children who could have been given a better education.
Media freedom and the possibilities of democracy, I’ve learnt in South Africa’s free years, are totally indivisible.