People's Democracy

Speak Out Your Tongue Is Yours Still…Faiz Ahmad Faiz

NO – Mr Prime Minister. No. It definitely does not require POTO for you or any state to arrest an Editor. The police machinery is sufficient. It also does not require POTO to put a full stop to, say Tehelka exposures. You can bleed them and their front financers balck and white. And in the interim Outlook starts exposing the government, you can even crack down by Income Tax, Enforcement Directorate raids. When anxiety neurosis grips a government on the eve of crucial elections to UP and Uttranchal, all this has started happening and since the Tehelka exposure, continues to happen.

And for newspapers who agree to do some buttering editorials can be substituted for well paid "Advertorials painting Ad-giver (states) as states of potential milk and honey? And of course now the government offers a dialogue on freedom of the Press will select chump for deletion of some POTO clauses. It is common knowledge and even editorially commented that even while POTO was not there dialogue with select ‘National’ journalists was on/ and they were rebuffed. Now as opposition to POTO increases motions of dialogue too seem to have begun with ‘genuine’ journalists and may be some organisations are to follow.

First the facts. An Editor of a small town paper Mazdoor Morcha (Faridabad) has spent around 55 days in jail. The paper without its editor shut down. When the Editor comes out he tried to bring out the paper out from Delhi and did as the Editor Mr Satish Kumar could have been arrested but he was out on a morning walk when the police made their swoop. Why was he jailed earlier. Content wise he criticised a SP of Faridabad and he had committed the cardinal sin of attacking SP who is a relative of the State Union home minister I D Swamy.

While POTO occupies centre-stage in the discussions on television and in the newspapers, while one of the major reasons for this is the perceived threat to media-persons, and while the government justifies its intent on the basis of sufficient safeguards through launching of prosecution only on the approval of the Superintendent of police, a journalist is arrested on the basis of malafide prosecution launched by the SP, detained for nearly two months, and faces another malicious case after release. This drama unfolds barely 30 kilometers from the nation’s capital.

The arrest and subsequent harassment of the editor of Mazdoor Morcha, Satish Kumar contains all the elements than can enlighten the current debate on POTO powers of arrest, bail provisions, and prudence in giving special powers to senior police officers.

Mazdoor Morcha is a daily published from Faridabad for the past five years. It was a fortnightly for eight years before that. It concerns during this period have centred around conditions of labour in the area and increasingly the widespread corruption in high places, in land deals, quarries and the daily routine of money making.

Subsequently again it is an attack on Tehelka and its partner. This is what Tarun Tejpal is to say about it. It is after the 21^st raid on First global which has 14.5 per cent equity in Tehelka. On November 24 after the recent raid by ED he said on November 27 "The whole thing is nothing but an assault on the free press – a clear message from the government to the media that you criticise us and we will make you pay for it. It is reminiscent of the Emergency, and is in the final count an assault on out already beleaguered democracy."

Today it is not a question of a few clauses here and there. POTO deserves rejection in toto. As journalists, artists, teachers and writers resolved at the Gandhi Peace Foundation on November 23. "POTO is a dangerous state weapon, to destroy the secular democratic fabric of the country. It was an act of legislative terrorism in the name of fighting terrorism."

TAIL PIECE Bad news for those looking for sound bytes during any hijack. The hijack may take place in any part of the country but the only source of information would be the Delhi-based Principal Information officers as the guidelines bar everybody in the government handling the crisis on the spot. It will be the PIO and PIO alone to do the brief. To the rest the keyword is silence paranoid is greeting the government.