Indian government orders Twitter to remove contents related to farmers protest
ndtv.com
ndtv.com
Let politics happen in the voting booth and parliament.
Ofcourse Narendra Momeme and his fan club owe their rise to social medias algo amplification design, as much as anything else, so its going to be interesting to see where the story goes.
In short, the bills aim to deregulate farming, which is good for the consumer, but a mixed bag for farmers, particularly those who are beneficiaries of current subsidies and competition restrictions.
In any case, I hope its not true that they are asking twitter to remove content - free speech is free speech.
Edit: Looks like Twitter went against a legal order, so they are the offending party here:
The social media giant "cannot assume the role of (a) court and justify non-compliance," the government said today in a statement. "Twitter being an intermediary is obliged to obey the directions as per satisfaction of authorities as to which inflammatory content will arouse passion and impact public order. Twitter cannot sit as an appellate authority over the satisfaction of the authorities about its potential impact on derailing public order," the statement read.
https://scroll.in/article/832961/finance-bill-in-one-stroke-...
Either you don't know what you're talking about, or you're consciously lying.
If this govt was "as totalitarian as it gets", we would be seeing Tiananmen Square kind of things happening. We would see gulags. Opposition parties would be banned, and all opposition leaders jailed / killed.
India is a thriving democracy. It's not perfect, or even well functioning, but it is most certainly democratic.
Let's check Wikipedia:
> Totalitarian regimes are often characterized by extensive political repression, a complete lack of democracy, widespread personality cultism, absolute control over the economy, massive censorship, mass surveillance, limited freedom of movement (most notably freedom to leave the country) and widespread use of state terrorism. Other aspects of a totalitarian regime include the use of concentration camps, repressive secret police, religious persecution or state atheism, the common practice of executions, fraudulent elections (if they take place), possible possession of weapons of mass destruction and potentially state-sponsored mass murder and genocides. Historian Robert Conquest describes a totalitarian state as one which recognizes no limit on its authority in any sphere of public or private life and it extends that authority to whatever length is feasible.
Yep, the incumbent Indian government sounds, looks, feels, acts like totalitarian to me.
- The new farm bills is absolutely a disaster for indian agriculture as it it tilts the balance of negotiating power completely in favour of the corporates by dergulating the marketplace and making the laws on corporate farming in favour of the corporates.
- In a democratic country, even with an undemocratic government in power like the current one, social media platforms (especially foreign ones), should comply with indian rules and laws.
It is decidedly not beneficial for farmers with small land holdings, and most farmers in India are such farmers. The new laws remove legal protection when companies fail to honour farming contracts; the only option now is to approach the Sub-Divisional Magistrates for arbitration, a class of government official that is known primarily for being corrupt. The new laws also remove stockholding limits for private companies (except in the event of an official famine, etc). Incidentally new private godowns came up everywhere months before the laws were passed, almost as if these companies could predict the future.
If you want to talk about unethical acts, the laws were steamrolled through parliament. It was beyond farcical. Have a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5s4quyO2W0
And propaganda? The Centre spent a fortune on propaganda justifying the new laws. It even showed pictures of "farmers" said to be in support of the new laws who now claim their pictures were used without their consent. Far from being in favour of the bills, they are part of the protests against them. Here: https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/protesting-farmer-film...
The Centre claims the laws will give farmers the opportunity to shop around for a better price. The reality is that most Indian farmers are in debt, and can barely afford to transport their produce to the nearest wholesale markets. They can't afford multiple trips. They can't afford to go to a neighbouring state. They have no storage facilities. Their goods are highly perishable. They have to take the price traders will offer, and collusion among traders is extremely common. This is the kind of fortune farmers can expect to make selling to private traders: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bareilly/angry-farm...
All those farmers who are protesting are not doing it out of ideological opposition to the Modi government. They have mostly refused to allow any political party to become part of the protests. They are protesting because they are aware that these laws will result in the government phasing out existing government-run wholesale markets, and then it will be curtains for them.
Edit: now the Government has barricaded in the protestors, cut off their water and food, cut off their Internet and barred any journalists from meeting them.
I quite closely followed the deregulation of the Australian dairy industry (had worked in the industry and still with friends who do) and the outcome 20 years later has not been entirely beneficial for farmers and one might even say only beneficial for the supermarkets. Maybe there's a direct consumer benefit initially through lower prices, but then if the volume of milk production drops, the prices will then likely increase due to lack of supply.
Some articles:
What Has Happened to Australian Milk Since Deregulation?: https://www.themilkhouse.org/a-look-back-at-australian-dereg...
The summary of this one is that Australian milk production and exports have stagnated rather than grown.
A Look Back at Australian Deregulation: https://www.themilkhouse.org/a-look-back-at-australian-dereg...
This one claims a 60% reduction of dairy farmers in some regions.
20 years after dairy deregulation, Australia faces lowest level of milk production in decades: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYanQoLKXOA
Push for milk levy to right deregulation wrongs: https://www.farmonline.com.au/story/6749486/push-for-milk-le...
"What nobody foresaw in the lead-up to deregulation was $1-a-litre supermarket milk."
I find it impressive when they maintain character all the way through the committee hearings. Nobody is going to do anything about very cheap milk.
In both the US and Europe, contract farming has seen the consolidation of farms under few corporates.
- 1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/24/farmland...
- Contract farming as a means of ushering in corporatisation in agriculture: https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/fast-forward-to-co...
> In short, the bills aim to deregulate farming, which is good for the consumer,
Not necessarily. Corporates are not known to be benevolent and will act like cartels to dictate the market price. This bill will endanger India's food security for the poor as deregulation means that corporates will now increasingly dictate the price.
Farmers will suffer because this bill is a huge push to corporatise agriculture through contract farming, in the guise of "reforms".
Repeating what I said elsewhere - In both the US and Europe, contract farming has seen the consolidation of farms under few corporates. Many indian political parties understandably do not want that to happen in india too.
- 1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/24/farmland
- Contract farming as a means of ushering in corporatisation in agriculture: https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/fast-forward-to-co...
The new farm bills have now opened the gateway to corporates to take over indian farmlands, which will in time, invariably allow foreign corporates to take over them and control India's food security.
>> Lack of statutory support in the bills for the MSP is a major point of concern, especially for farmers from Punjab and Haryana, where 65% of wheat (2019) is procured at MSP by the Food Corporation of India and state agencies.[30] The deregulation of the sugar industry in 1998, which paved the way for private establishments, did not result in a significant improvement in farmers' productivity or incomes.
There are other points of contention per the article as well.
My partner comes from a country with a dictatorship so I see first hand how bad it is to live in an environment where the de facto ruler has full say on everything. You can and will be killed as per their request.
Democracies are bad and the US, India, Europe are all struggling with them, but there are essential for basic rights. Without politicising this thread, one can look at some of the other countries and see how bad life would be in a dictatorship.
Currently dictatorship's are not THAT bad, but that's because they are still competing with democracies. Imagine the whole world under one ruler - they would likely kill large parts of the population. Just as one good ruler can do many good things fast, one bad ruler can do many bad things fast.
India is not really in that category since they've been a democracy for a while, but still not long enough to be ingrained in their psyche. They have ethnical and other social issues that few other countries have (at least when it comes to scale).
Wouldn't be surprised if you are part of the 80%.
While authoritarianism is organized in the short run, but collapse in the long run as no one person lives forever.
There are 1000s of problems in India, but democracy is not one.
There were widespread allegations that the EVM machines were rigged.
https://twitter.com/bhupenderc19/status/1356910861848305664?...
As an indian, I am still optimistic. As these farm protests shows, our democracy still has life despite a government that has scant regard for it.
Despite the hiccups in the past (dismissing of an elected communist government in a state and a short emergency that suspended elections and most democratic rights), democracy has thrived till the last 6 years.
What this government has done is exposed all the huge shortcomings in our democratic institutions that has allowed it to control and dominate it, thus weakening our democracy. As long as we don't allow the current party in power to totally subjugate our democracy (like Hitler did with Germany), we can still repair our democracy.
(As the right-wing in power in US and India showed, democracy in the US is more resilient than India's because the democratic institutions of the US were stronger. This is where India needs to focus. Also note that one of the propaganda of the party in power is to show that democracy is totally dysfunctional in India, because that is the only way they can find support to change the constitution to "fix" it.)
Again, if it were up to me, I wouldn't censor a word. But Twitter did huge amounts of banning and censoring in the Capitol's case, so it makes sense for them to do it here. Otherwise this exposes Twitter's behaviour to be nothing but a cover for supporting the owner's politics.
The HN thread title "Indian government orders Twitter to remove contents related to farmers protest" suggests it is an Indian government order to remove all content regarding the protests.
Dishonest.
And it's deliberately titled to make it sound worse than it is (at the moment at least).
I'm not sure how one requests a title change on HN, but that would help here.
"#ModiPlanningFarmerGenocide"
So this is the government tamping down language which they deem destructive to them, particularly, one individual i.e. Modi.
It remains to be seen if 'genocide' used in any other context would elicit a take-down order.
But it's not the government "ordering" anything, it's the court. That's the inaccuracy. Court is totally separate from the government.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on Sunday had sought "emergency blocking of 257 URLs and 1 Hashtag under section 69 A of the Information Technology Act," as per an official statement,"Government asks Twitter to comply with orders to remove content/accounts related to farmers protests"
I added 'Indian' to provide context. And had to remove words to comply with HN's character count rule.
You can see what the original title was in the slug:
government-notice-asks-twitter-to-comply-with-order-to-remove-contents-accounts-related-to-hashtags-linked-to-farmers-protest-2362377
The original title definitely sounds more inflammatory than the one they changed it to later.
Thanks for clarifying!
Its very different to order twitter to remove something vs. ordering them to COMPLY to a court order
I cannot believe nothing is being done about this and inflammatory and misleading titles are accepted on HackerNews.