Starvation in Africa, terrorism in Asia, drug peddling in Latin America… have you ever wondered why BBC and CNN devote so much of their time to all the problems of the non-western world and so little time to their own problems back home? One working hypothesis is that it makes all those middle class families watching the telly feel happy they live where they do and not in that godawful place being shown in the news!
So, what does a liberal journalist like John Kampfner do when he finds old fashioned democratic values and liberal practices coming under attack at home, thanks to the fight against terrorism and other threats to the “western way of life”? Go around the world and write a book to say: it’s-bad-at-home-but-BAD-around-the-world!
How else can one explain the time and effort going into a book that laments lack of “participatory democracy”, whatever that means (since the term is not defined), in half the countries chosen for this volume, like China, Singapore, United Arab Emirates and, even, Russia? Have the people in these countries “willingly” given up freedom? Most of them have not even tasted it to give it up.
In Britain, Italy, the United States and, yes, India, people have lived through many political cycles of giving up and taking back for anyone to worry that one downturn marks a journey downhill. Kampfner has forgotten the McCarthyism of the 1950s, just as he has forgotten the English acquiescence in the ascent of Adolf Hitler in Europe. And India had its “emergency” too. Liberal democracy has had its trysts with unfreedom, when joblessness or consumerism have reigned, and the cycle turns again.
If in post-9/11 US, people worried more about terrorism than freedom of expression, it was a natural social reaction. In time people make sure they get back what they cherish. In Singapore there is no market for the kind of democracy Kampfner would like, but so much of its social life is indeed participatory. The West doesn’t feel comfortable with Singapore’s rise simply because it cannot come to terms with the miracle the city-state has wrought.
In judging books that offer “fast-food for thought” based on “helicopter-journalism” and written after travelling “around-the-world-in-80-days”, with quotes and anecdotes picked up like a butterfly’s meal, it is best to look closely at that part of the world that one is familiar with and ask how useful the book is to a balanced understanding of what is going on. So, consider the India chapter.
Kampfner has read eight books (including Gurcharan Das, Ramachandra Guha, Arundhati Roy and Pavan Varma), four essays (including TN Ninan), visited two cities (New Delhi and Mumbai) and met about a dozen people (including Shobha De, Swapan Dasgupta, Teesta Setalvad, Tarun Tejpal and Barkha Dutt) to write 28 pages on how Indians are selling their freedoms for material gain! Go tell that to the information commissioners!
More From This Section
It is astounding that neither Kampfner nor any of his angst-ridden interlocutors make any reference to either voter turnout at elections or, more importantly, the epidemic of Right-to-Information (RTI) applications. If RTI filing is not participatory democracy, what is?
To be fair, the India chapter ends with a brief reference to the cornerstone of “participatory democracy” in India, namely the non-governmental organisations (NGOs). India is the NGO capital of the world. And I am not at all surprised that the “optimism” about Indian democracy comes from Kampfner’s unnamed NGO interlocutors, rather than a Shobha De or a Tarun Tejpal!
Pity, Kampfner did not stretch his one para of NGO optimism into at least a couple of pages of some good journalism. It is true that most political parties shut shop the minute ballot boxes are sealed and get active again when election dates are announced. But in the interregnum, it is civil society that keeps India’s democracy throbbing, and NGOs are the lifeblood of that activity.
Kampfner goes along with the western media’s recently fashionable bashing of the Indian media. For all its foibles and failings, and there are many, for all the corruption and cronyism, and it is rising, the Indian media remains an important pillar of participatory democracy.
All this criticism does not mean Kampfner’s making much of a muchness. He has a point about most societies placing greater value on prosperity and security than on freedom. But history tells us that each of the three follows a cycle and the three cycles need not always be in sync. A large part of eastern Europe valued freedom over security, and in some cases even prosperity, barely two decades ago. Today’s Indonesia is a good example of a country that is celebrating its new freedoms, not envying too much its neighbour’s prosperity or its own lack of security. Britons and Americans may worry more about prosperity and security than freedom right now, but the cycles will turn.
FREEDOM FOR SALE
How we made money and lost our liberty
John Kampfner
Simon & Schuster, 2009
294 pages; Price £18.99
