by GARGA CHATTERJEE
Bigmother has not been around for 28 years now. But she sure is watching over us. She died before the internet happened, yet her devotees celebrate her by blocking websites.
That is some legacy. Seminars about the contemporary relevance of India’s holiest cows are rampant. Banalities are timeless, and hence ever relevant. When a pre-internet disease infects the web, it is a sure sign of a living ideology. In a throwback to times when Bigmother would lock some of us up and tell the world that this is for our own good, her devotees in charge of the Government of India have tried the same. But they lack Bigmother’s courage — she used to be rather public about her harsh dealing and silencing of her wayward children. They have secretly blocked certain webpages. The irony is that the ‘blocked’ website list stands ‘leaked’. Does right to information extend to right to information that the state wants to hide but has been leaked? Let’s not go there.
Transparency and freedom are fundamental to the health of this democratic organism. Without them, it is like a life-size sex doll, which can be inflated, paraded and used at will, only to be deflated till next time. This is why we need to look very seriously at the quivering wizards of Oz at the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology who blocked internet content without explanation.
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