When govt becomes the judge, jury and executioner
Not so long ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his speech to the Lok Sabha sought to dissuade fellow parliamentarians and through them the people at large on the pitfalls of leaving all levers of governance, including the running of enterprises, to those who happen to clear the Indian Civil Services.
He was warning us against our over-dependence on the old babu culture. But just weeks later, his own government has notified a bureaucracy-driven digital regulation framework — the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. Yes, quite a mouthful. And yes, regulation of some sort was required, no two ways about it. But what we seem to have got in our quest to rid ourselves of fake news, trolls, incendiary content and hate mail is a rather cumbersome, three-tier control mechanism.
Who would the final adjudicator be in this overarching structure? Who else but a committee of babus! This is the grievance redressal part. Who can grieve? Just about anybody. Despite our usually nice sounding IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad’s suave assurances, this could easily become an institutionalised way to outrage, rather than regulate. Forget self-regulation, the so-called norm till now. The government will be the jury and judge.
In which democracy does the government assign itself this role? Where does that leave our freedoms — of the press, of expression itself? With ‘compliance officers’ entrenched with law enforcement agencies becoming the order of the day, it’s curtains on your end-to-end encryption on WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram — those fancy messaging apps that suddenly made local very vocal, and threatened to go global. Or your ‘only for friends’ videos on Facebook or Instagram.
Better think twice before putting out a tweet. If anyone decides to be offended or hurt, now a new framework will kick in, along with the old book. For digital news media and OTT (over-the-top), the freedom to explore is over. Look over your shoulder, between the lines.