DATELINE: HONG KONG
The poorest of the poor need freedom of
the press: B.G. Verghese, Chairman Commonwealth Human Rights
Institute.
"Freedom of the press is one of the fundamental human rights. Therefore it is of the most utmost importance to the disadvantaged and the dispossessed. It is the basis on which they can assert their other rights, their economic and social rights and civil rights. We had a good example of this in the emergency we had in India in 1975 and 1976 where many fundamental rights were slashed. The ordinary people felt that their rights of assemly, their trade union rights were beinbg destroyed.
Knight: In practical terms how is freedom of the press important to poor people?
"It gives them leverage to aquire that which they do not have; that is employment food, clothing, and shelter. If you have nothing all you can do is ask for it, to protest, to shame the other party into making it available.
Knight: I heard you say it is one way that spending on poverty is allocated fairly.
"That's right. In the Indian case a lot of programs are taken up by the central, state and local governments in the name of the poor, again for employment and drinking water supplies, for shleter, primary health, medicines, whatever. But there are a lot of leakagages on the way and funding does not always go to the most neglected area it goes instead to favoured electors and constituencies. People start asking,'What is happened to all this money? We have heard about these goodies but we have not seen them. If it is in the name of the poor, we are the poor. We don't see these goodies. Where are they?'
Knight: What of the argument that economic development should come first and democracy later?
"Well that is the way it has happend in the West, in Britian, the United States and Japan. India is unique. In 1947, we decided to put it the other way around. We made full fledged democracy and human rights not the end product of a social and economic revolution but the instrument of that revolution. We are still at it.