Whatever happened to the great debate?

On 6 November 2014 BBC World invited three panellists from different sectors to debate on ‘A New India: Free, Fair and Prosperous’ as part of the World Economic Forum. Issues of content and objectivity apart, one still has high expectations of a group like BBC when it comes to setting high standards of form. But this ‘debate’ fell flat on its face on all counts.

No rules of the game

One would think that in a discussion like this all three panellists would bring in varied viewpoints due to their specialization in their individual sectors. However, if one wants to quote either the minister or the corporate voice in the debate, it would require constant rechecking to distinguish who said what. Of course businesses and governments need not always be in conflict with each other. But this smooth overlapping can be dangerous if those who are to be at the receiving end of this coalition between corporate bodies and governing bodies get completely left out. So for all practical purposes, instead of having three distinct voices, the format of the session (to keep calling it a debate would be to perpetuate technical erroneousness) was two against one. The yesmanship resulting out of this format naturally dulled the sparkling energy any debate worth its salt should have.

In terms of an outline, the talk failed to meet its own description. The issues to be discussed had been listed on the website as:

- Balancing growth with development to reduce inequality 

- Improving governance and transparency 

- Upholding political and religious rights 

Hardly any time or importance was given to the last point. Even with regard to the first two, when questions were raised by the activist, they were dismissed as non-existent issues. For instance, in response to the activist’s question about religious tensions, the minister said there is no such thing in the country, despite the very recent incidents of communal violence in Trilokpuri, Delhi. He also insisted that ‘Dalit’ is an unnecessary adjective and that the government will remove all caste divisions, at the same time refusing to recognize them. One can go on picking up several such superficial statements and proving how they do not hold water. But to question unbacked claims and probe deeper during the debate, if only through pointing the already raised rebuttals in the right direction, was the moderator’s job and he chose not to do it, except in passing.

Have we forgotten to listen as an audience?

As members of the audience, we have our task cut out for us: to listen, and when we are sure we have heard it right, to ask relevant questions. Look before you leap, think before you speak. Someone had put it that simply for us. But we manage to screw up even this simple task. The worst crime scene exhibiting the murder of articulated thought is Twitter. Stomach this excerpt from the debate and a corresponding tweet:

Aruna Roy (in the debate): ‘The other India is unhappy . . . distressed with a whole spate of promises which are being retracted . . . beginning with a promise of keeping the works programme [NREGA] . . . putting back labour laws . . .

Tweet: Nikhil Pahwa ‏@nixxin hypocritical of Aruna Roy to complain about lack of jobs & then complain about the current governments [sic] business focus.

Apples and oranges? Since when did ‘government’s business focus’ start meaning the same thing as ‘jobs for the rural poor and safeguarding of labour laws’? In fact, a ‘business focus’ means exactly the opposite.

Then there are columns where the writer gushes about how the poor of this country do not need ‘schemes’ like NREGA. But all this concern for the underprivileged is not motivation enough for her to find out the difference between a scheme and an Act in her years of writing and tweeting on the same subject while making the same point, before deciding to deprive its beneficiaries, presumably for their own good.

Stigmatization of dissent

The debate was in English for a global audience. Rural India was being discussed by a platform in which they could not participate. On an occasion like this representation of their voices becomes as important as the person in office. (With regard to the government’s work in rural India, the minister could only mention the Jan Dhan Yojna, which, one hears, isn't really in the pink.) No one activist or civil society group can claim to solely represent all of India’s poor. But those who have worked in rural India for a substantial period of time on particular issues are a more direct source of information than others.

This lack of accessibility and representation also applies to minorities or dissenting groups, increasingly being targeted. Yet if an activist working with these groups or if a member of any such group speaks out, they are instantly branded as the perpetual malcontent. The debate was a mere microcosm of how constructive critique is being illogically refuted using reductionist stereotypes. This notion of dissent as being something obstructive, as minister Piyush Goyal called it, cannot further the cause of any government that truly intends to cater to the interests of all of India. It was said that merely pointing out the problems is not enough. But legislations like RTI and NREGA were solutions envisaged by the people suffering from the lack of information and employment themselves, processes that the civil society has been an active and long-standing part of. Laws hard won after years of dialogue and persuasion cannot be sacrificed in a democracy to the caprice of changing governments. It is not a matter of changing the curtains of a newly acquired office.

This deliberate dismissal of strong factual and on-ground evidence, much of which often comes from the government’s own records, is irrational and prejudiced. The concern of grassroots workers is conveniently dismissed as emotion and rhetoric, though to be completely dispassionate about the issues you are invested in shouldn't really add to your credibility. If representation is an issue, the government is welcome to take the debate to ground zero: to the rural workers who fear unemployment; to the victims of riots; to the villages whose land was forcibly acquired; to the women forcibly separated from their interreligious partners.

India did not get independent for a section of the people. These voices being snuffed out will lead to extreme distress and its consequences. If we go on dismissing their pleas, and demand a sacrifice of their lives, even the so-called development would not take place. We need a peaceful society for progress. The persistence that they must pay the cost of ‘development’, whose rewards others reap, cannot be heard in passivity in the era of mobile phones and TVs. People hear election promises and read manifestos. Their articulation is vital. They should be able to decide how much time they want to give to the government, to articulate whether these five months of governance have been too short or too long for them.

Deprivation and injustice are suffered, not taught. Hunger, unemployment, displacement, unfair indictment, communal, casteist and gender-based violence are felt and lived by people everyday. The repeated accusation that civil society is stirring discontent underestimates the power of these unheard voices. It is a negation of the ordinary Indian’s intelligence and sensitivity.

First published in Kafila, 14 November 2014.

Of Mice and Men

The secrecy surrounding science has often been expected to be forgiven and forgotten. It is assumed that the relevant observations and inferences derived would be too much for an untrained mind to handle. Accordingly, we are encouraged to gratefully acknowledge the conclusions beginning with, ‘In simple terms . . .’ The activities that would have appeared clandestine in one context thus often appear merely Byzantine here, convoluted when it comes to comprehension but otherwise innocuous.

There was a time when activists dealing with issues of science and technology were seen as inhabiting a different category than those working on subjects more widely understood. But we soon realized that even ‘technical’ issues greatly impact the most basic of people’s concerns. We have learnt to develop a broader understanding of our problems in an age when even global warming has been known to be most damaging for the economically backward classes.

With people finding themselves the biggest stakeholders in the government’s decision making, the layman decided to lay down the rules this time. The Right to Information (RTI) Act, proudly and endearingly addressed as the ‘People’s Act’, came into being. The Act strengthened the common man’s ‘audacity’ as an outraged ‘govern-mentality’ looked on. The demand that followed, that of having a say in the decision-making process, was here to stay.

On more than one occasion, the Indian government has earned approving nods from giant corporations for its ‘no nonsense’ approach when it comes to talking business. Environment waivers have been awarded to several such groups with the benign generosity of a Eucharist priest. True to our reputation, we leave no stone unturned in being the hospitable host. We encourage our foreign friends to protract and perpetuate their stay here, often at the cost of the very household that accommodates them. Regulations, laws, rules, guidelines, strictures, all are dismissed with the wave of a hand. If we cannot bend, we shall amend.

Relatively, when it comes to giving information to its own people, we see the same government practising remarkable parsimony. When genetically modified (GM) foods came to be known as bad news, Monsanto-Mahyco’s anxiety over their consumers getting ‘out of the market’ was only expected. But what to make of a situation in which the Review Committee for Genetic Manipulation (RCGM) has been petulantly guarding the meeting minutes close to its chest? Those who were supposed to be our knowledge providers found it difficult to transcend their sympathy for (the imagined) ‘competitive position of the third party’. With even the Ministry of Environment and Forests clearly expressing its reservations about the competence of a court of law to rule on science and technology issues, where do the consumers go? Do they wait for the much touted ‘third party verifiable information’ by disinterested groups (if any such exist) to surface? Or do they take the declaration of pro-GM parties as a word of honour? Even if the latter is to be so, and if pleasant surprises are all that these groups have got to unravel, why not make their data public, clear the mist of suspicion generated by ‘environment groups’ and let GM foods be welcomed by the people in a warm embrace?

It is precisely because such disclosures were not initiated by either the companies or our own regulatory boards that groups like Greenpeace decided to take up the issue. A need for participatory consumerism was felt and one of the longest RTI battles to be began in 2005. Random, unofficial and, at times, irrelevant, information was fed to the people in crumbs and the farce is being played out till the time of writing this piece. For instance, in response to an RTI filed by a Greenpeace activist, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) put forth the argument that the requested data on toxicity and allergenicity on mustard, okra and rice cannot be provided as it is under generation and has not been submitted to the RCGM. Contrarily, the DBT Appellate authority went on to put on record that the same data is under the RCGM’S consideration.

In an ideal situation, all such knowledge should have been accessible in the public domain, as it is one of the many ‘obligations of public authorities’ under Section 4 of the RTI Act: 'It shall be a constant endeavour of every public authority to take steps . . . to provide as much information suo motu to the public at regular intervals.'

The failure is all the more flagrant when seen in the light of Section 4(c), under which a public authority is required to 'publish all relevant facts while formulating important policies or announcing the decisions which affect public'.

Again, in Section 4 (3) it is made clear that 'every information shall be disseminated widely and in such form and manner which is easily accessible to the public'.

While all these provisions have been passed over, there is Mahyco on the other hand that presented a harried application to the Central Information Commission complaining that Section 2(n) of the Act has been violated because Mahyco’s submissions as the ‘third party’ were never invited. The company never chose to enlighten anyone on how information about whether they were manufacturing something toxic and allergenic would ruin their ‘competitive advantage’. Even if reason is thrown to the winds and it is assumed for a moment that such a thing were to happen, this case should be treated as the quintessential representative of the spirit of the Act, which mandates that ‘larger public interest warrants the disclosure of such information’. In the same application, Mahyco pleads that its arguments be considered in favour of ‘the principles of natural justice’. It is most intriguing to discover that those who do not flinch from putting the lives of millions at stake subscribe to such humanitarian philosophies.

The DBT insists on becoming the sentinel to Monsanto-Mahyco’s commercial interests instead of the health and survival issues of the citizens of India. Activists accused of keeping their fingers glued to the panic button have been facing the exasperation that comes from stating the obvious over and over again. Something like the 2006 field trials should have cautioned the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee suitably, when not just the farmers and the village panchayats but also the usually in-the-know state governments were clueless about the presence of transgenic crops in their fields. But the fact that field trials of GM crops are still on at the time of writing this is a distinct indicator of the seriousness, or the lack thereof, with which public health is treated in this country.

Foucault was right in believing that it is through discourse, or knowledge, that we are created. But if discourse is perpetuated by those in power, how does one know what kind of counter-discursive elements need to be generated to resist that imposition if the powerful keep knowledge locked in their sanctum sanctorum? Groups like Toxics Link have already used the RTI to uncover alarming data on bio-medical waste and import waste. The GM foods debate is yet another case where the direct co-relation between the right to know and the right to live rings true. It is precisely to uncover such vital information that the Act was designed. By turning its back to people’s Right to Information, the government is only lending certitude to the suspicion that it has something to hide. Even if we accept the government’s assurance that it is worthy of its people’s confidence, it is all the more perplexing to witness the government’s camouflage tactics in relation to its professed commitment to transparency. In a country where mice and men are made equally vulnerable subjects of experiment and people’s representatives turn into indifferent kings, the fates of its people can easily be shoved into dark grottos by alien pied pipers.

In fact, this case highlights what might well become one of the main challenges to the transparency regime in the years to come. The world is becoming more and more specialized and information is being expressed increasingly in a language that the layperson cannot understand. Therefore, even if people can exercise their right to information, it is not much use unless they can comprehend the information they get, and that too, in the correct context.

Perhaps the best example is the arena of medical sciences where more and more patients are unable to understand the prognosis, the treatment or even the nature of their diseases. And this is not because the whole matter is too complicated but because professionals have adopted the habit of talking in a language and using terms that only fellow professionals can understand.

In such a scenario, it is incumbent on governments to take an initiative in demystifying all these ‘technologies’ which critically affect the lives of people. It is the concurrent responsibility of people’s groups to develop information-clearing houses where such mystified information can be accessed from governments and other ‘technical’ institutions and made available to the people in simple terms and in a relevant context. It is admirable that Greenpeace has started doing this about many of the issues they work on, including the whole area of GMOs.

With Shekhar Singh. First published in Genetic Gamble: Safe Food-The End of Choice? Greenpeace, 14 October 2008.