A sad admission, yet true because perhaps the very concept of liberty, "that universally seamless idea", is not really cherished by us. We are informed, somewhat smugly, that India remains amongst that group of countries in the world where press is free; 'Indeed more free than it ought it to be' says Rajiv Gandhi with unctuous bias; or that 'Indians are not mature enough yet for a free television, as he said Insultingly, on another. The apologists inform us that all this has really got nothing to do with 'totalitarian despotism' , or with 'facism', that it is just the 'security of the State' (for which read ruling coterie), and the welfare of the people, that motivates our government. May be. We also accept that the "process of balancing", in society "requires constraints to be imposed", but what our government is doing is not that, it is demonstrating, in Ronald Dworkin's words, a "corrupting insensitivity to the very concept of liberty, a failure to grasp its force and place in modern democratic" societies: an inability to comprehend the very 'culture of liberty'.

To my mind, there are two absolute irreducibles for all civilised governments; that the concepts of liberty of speech, faith, conviction, and right to know (information) are amongst fundamental human rights, and that this is possible only when there is acceptance of a set of working assumptions about how these rights are to be protected; assumptions which we might term as the very basis for the creation of a culture of liberty'. In our case, because the government denies the original principle, therefore when the working assumptions are also taken away from us, alarm bells do not immediately ring. The Defamation Bill, and its demise, is by now part of the current history of our times. Not so, the sacking of the Director-General of Door Darahan, or the banning of Salman Rushdie's book. It is impossible to tell as to why the DG, of CO was sacked. Personally, accounts of shabby court intrigues accompanying this sordid tale are not of any interest to me. Not so the aspect of an undeniable principle, a question that will just not go away: Is broadcasting over radio and TV to be a controlled activity? Or ought it to be governed by self-restraint. The only, and true litmus test of civilised societies. And if we are not this last, ought not we to at least aspire and work for attaining that status? My dismay is at our near supine acceptance of a total contravention of the principles of liberty, the fundamental right to know, and all because of the "interfering bossism" of our government which does not show the slightest concern at the loss that our nation suffers in consequence. The harm that our government causes to the intellectual integrity of our country is then the other great loss; yet, all along propaganda is let loose that all this actually amounts to an improvement in the 'moral health' of our country: Under the maladninistration of this corrupt and puerile government?