Auberon Waugh was once invited to a Francophone West African country to give a talk on 'Breast feeding'. On researching the subject, he found that it was indeed the case that breast milk had many great advantages over the 'formula' which Agribusiness was touting. He painstakingly wrote out a speech in simple French on this important topic. Sadly, his speech was met with disapproval. It turned out, the topic of the Conference was 'Press Freedom' which, as Waugh well knew, was whatever some crooked billionaire could bully or buy for his rag. Genuine investigative journalism could be easily throttled with libel suits. Meanwhile, the Murdochs and Maxwells brain washed the masses using 'Page Three' pictures of young girls showing off their beautiful breasts.
Where in the world today could you find a 'public intellectual' stupid enough to gas on about, not something important, like breast feeding, but some thing useless like Press Freedom?
The answer, of course is Amartya Sen who will babble stupid shit on any and all occasions.
The plain fact is, India has a Free Press. China doesn't. Which country has done better? China. But the China doesn't have Press Freedom only because its Government is very good at killing and incarcerating people. This is also the reason it has done so much better than India- at least once it took the World Bank's advise. Thus, State capacity and power is what matters, not Freedom per se. Writing almost 10 years ago, Amartya Sen, with typical fatuity, argued that India could learn from China how to do Press Freedom better though China doesn't have the thing at all. But the only lesson China teaches is- keep killing and incarcerating people till Press Freedom either doesn't matter or doesn't exist.
A strong belief – often implicit – in the importance of good technocratic planning
which ceased to exist in India sixty years ago. It was obvious that Mahalanobis was a fucking cretin. India went down a Socialist path because its politicians were corrupt, stupid and power hungry. Its Press was shit but that didn't matter. So was its Academy. So were its writers. Why learn to read when there was only crap to be read?
for successful development (no nonsense about disorderly public discussion) used to be quite dominant in economic thinking for a long time,
But everybody thought economic thinking was shit by the Seventies. In the West, economists disagreed with each other in a way that engineers or doctors or businessmen did not. One might as well listen to astrologers.
and it received rather little challenge until late in the 20th century.
After economists had lost all prestige. Billionaires made decisions and brought cool new tech to market. Economists wrote op-ed columns of startling silliness.
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”.
But the economy tanked. Politicians who believed in 'Voodoo economics' came to power and freer markets did the rest. Some kids who studied econ could make good money working for billionaires. The rest stagnated in bureaucracies or the Academy.
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?
Because stupid people make stupid arguments. If they are brown, they may get a bit of intellectual affirmative action if they are saying what Whitey wants them to say. America had money and could influence 'Free Presses' which weren't free at all. They had an insatiable appetite for money. Let Rupert Murdoch control the Press of a developing country and it might do less stupid shite than it had before. Murdoch even married a Chinese wife to further his ambition to control Chinese media. He hired sons of prominent Indian civil servants with a similar objective in India. But it was only in America that he repeated the success he had had in Australia and Britain.
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.
Which has nothing to do with News Media which, because of economies of scope and scale, tend to be oligopolistic and which are driven by advertising revenue and thus beholden to Corporate interests.
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.
Though development is about giving up freedom.
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.
Except this simply isn't true. You can have freedom without development. You can't have development with freedom of Sen's sort- i.e. endless public discussion and no decisions being taken.
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.
But the free press has to make money to survive. It can't disseminate knowledge. It can only disseminate what it is paid to disseminate.
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.
By cretins. There have been famines and ethnic cleansings and wars and economic collapse where there is press freedom and also where there is no fucking press because nobody can afford to pay for it.
The observation that famines do not occur in functioning democracies with freedom of the press is
contradicted by the Bangladesh famine. On the other hand, a free press can promote the fuck out of war and ethnic cleansing. Indeed, the Media may prefer to become a featherbedded monopoly protected by a Dictator.
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.
Fuck off! Journalists don't have 'new ideas'. They just plagiarize each other or concoct fake news.
Press freedom also contributes greatly to the emergence of shared public standards, which are central to discussions on social justice.
Very true. That's what happened in Thatcher and Reagan's America. Fox News and Donald Trump are Social Justice warriors.
India has had a far less restricted press than China, and has been much more of a practising democracy.
Because it is overwhelmingly Hindu. The plain fact is Hindus think killing people is wrong.
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).
In China, a rural Doctor or Teacher who refuses to show up for work will be beaten or shot. A country which can enforce a one child policy can also ensure that teachers actually teach.
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.
It is obvious that press freedom is irrelevant. There were plenty of political pamphlets before there were any newspapers.
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.
Hilarious! If you don't have freedom, you can't be biased or slanted. So slavery is true freedom. Why not simply say 'freedom is good if freedom is used to do good things' ? But why stop there? Why not say 'It is nice to be nice. Don't be nasty.' ?
Freedom is a permissive condition,
No it isn't. There aint anybody who is in a position to grant freedom. An absolute monarch or dictator may grant permission for this or that 'free expression'. But where Freedom abides no such monarch or dictator exists.
and permission is not enough to make a success of the use of the opportunity available.
It is irrelevant. I often go up to hot chicks and say 'I permit you to give me a beejay.' Sadly, they don't make a success of this opportunity I make available to them. They kick me in the balls.
The achievements of a democratic system depend on
the achievements of its people.
what issues are brought into political engagement.
is totally irrelevant. Political engagement can be over stupid, meaningless, shite. So long as only stupid and useless people do it, the country can achieve a lot. But that depends on endowments and technology and the wider geopolitical and economic environment.
Some issues are extremely easy to politicise, such as the calamity of a famine
Which was not politicized at all during the two big famines East Bengal suffered during Sen's life time. True, in the late Fifties and Sixties the Commies tried to make famine their own issue. Then they remembered that Stalin and Mao had created very big famines so as to destroy the 'kulak' class and concentrate power in their own hands. It was bourgeois liberals who got worked up about famine- but only because there's good money in agrobusiness.
(which tends to stop abruptly with the institution of a functioning democratic political system, as has happened in several countries, including India),
Only if Uncle Sam sends PL480 shipments. That's what stopped the Bihar famine in its tracks. But America refused to help Bangladesh because they were selling jute to Cuba. Still, if Mujib hadn't been assassinated, he'd have remained in power.
Consider the Tigray famine. Ethiopia is a democracy, Eritrea isn't. But it appears that the 100,000 or so famine deaths occurred on Ethiopian soil. Democracy simply isn't a panacea. Often, it is the only way a country can be governed. But there may be fault-lines such that parts of it are ungovernable.
whereas other issues – less spectacular and less immediate – provide a much harder challenge.
If you have to rely on your own resources and don't have much in that department- sure. But famine is only solvable by foreigners sending food and organizing its distribution.
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.
This is nonsense. India had a lot of 'range and vigor' and demo-fucking-cratic practice. But it couldn't sack teachers who refused to teach or doctors who refused to turn up for work in rural shit-holes. Why? The answer is that teachers count the votes during election time. Doctors have powerful political allies. The countervailing power of the Unions and pro-Labor Employment laws makes it very difficult to get rid of corrupt or crazy employees at all levels of the Public Sector.
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.
No. All that matters is getting rural girls into factory dormitories. That's what Bangladesh did which is why it has had demographic transition and has risen above Pakistan and much of India.
But there is still a long way to go to take on all the social disadvantages and injustices from which many Indians persistently suffer.
About which the Indian Media does not give two shits. Cricket and Bollwood Khans are what we want to hear about.
In contrast, in China the process of decisionmaking depends largely on decisions at the top,
That was also true of Nehru's Planning Commission. The problem was that Mao and Stalin shot dudes wot didn't overfulfill their targets. India penalized you for this. If you didn't produce at all, you were fine. Bajaj was threatened with jail by a bureaucrat because he had made more scooters than his quota!
taken by political leaders, with relatively little scope for democratic pressure from below.
Pressure from below exists under Dictatorships. Indeed, the smart dictator tends to keep tabs on such things and to take pre-emptive action. In a Democracy, leaders can afford to be more complacent. They just need to be better than their rival- who tends to be even more stupid and useless. True, they may have to spend a bit of time on the Opposition benches, but that allows them leisure to travel abroad to spend more time with their money. Then they return to office and are forced to spend more time with their family.
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.
The fact is that China wants to eliminate hunger and illiteracy so as to grow stronger and more capable of defeating the West militarily. Democracy and Liberty and stupid shite which Uncle Sam spends a little money on promoting. Sen and his ilk get a bit of that money for pretending that Democracy will make your dick bigger. But, when the chips are down, Biden has to go running to fist bump the Saudi Crown Prince.
That deserves huge applause.
Why should Indians applaud a country which is continually encroaching on our territory? I suppose, ten years ago, Sen may have thought Obama Mama would give the Chinese a stern talking to if they tried such monkey tricks. But China had already sent a strong signal that it had pumped the West hard enough and would soon be able to dump on it big time.
It should be remembered that back then, Sen's main enemy in India was his old pal Manmohan Singh. He used to praise Modi though, to be fair, he assumed that he couldn't win because Hindus lurve terrorists and get very angry with any Hindu who punishes them.
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