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Journalism of Courage
Arun Shourie has made remarkable contributions to democracy. He championed press freedom under very difficult conditions. In his public career,he has single-handedly been an accountability machine. His grasp of statutes,policies,legislation,reports,budgets and court judgments is formidable and he reads documents like a forensic detective,spotting inconsistencies,evasions,fudging and statistical obfuscations. Governments evade accountability by overwhelming citizens with words and detail. Shourie counters this with even more detailed cross-examination. Many essays and speeches in this fine collection exemplify the point that to produce accountability,you have to grapple with detail. Shourie also has two other democratic virtues. He believes in individuality: saying what he thinks,without second-guessing political correctness,fashion,or even his own party. He is also an exemplar of public reason. Whether you agree or disagree,the argument is clearly laid out and can be engaged with.
This collection has three broad themes: security,domestic policy,and the travails of the BJP. Almost all the essays repay close reading. There is a wonderful essay on Indias climate change position. Not only is our negotiating position untenable,but it has also become an alibi for not tackling serious environmental questions on the domestic front. Shourie sees more opportunity than cost in tackling our environmental challenges and the essay has several concrete suggestions. There is another splendid essay on the crisis in Indian higher education and the perversity of our regulatory structure. But it is also an anticipatory expose of some misguided assumptions on how to build universities and the feasibility of foreign universities that seem to underlie current thinking as well. There is another essay on freedom of expression,occasioned by the attempted ban on Jaswant Singhs book on Mohammed Ali Jinnah,which has all the hallmarks of Shouries scholarship and style.
There is also Shouries oft-repeated position that we should take a tough stand on China and use the Tibet card. Even if you were to accept Shouries argument,there is no analysis of what instruments we have to take action against the Chinese. Indeed,the paradox of his position is that having shown how incapable the state is,his policy prescriptions depend on assuming a power the Indian state cannot have. As the American example has shown,the so-called realism of the tough-minded security state is hoist on its own petard because it often overestimates the power of power. Yes,India needs to make sure it has adequate defences against a growing Chinese power. But the machismo and shrillness of our discourse on China is more a case of us trying to pick a fight for the sake of it,rather than a case of wise strategy. It is in danger of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The sarcasm in Shouries analysis of the BJP is biting. But one would have hoped for a more historically nuanced,psychologically subtle illumination of how the party he has so assiduously legitimised came to this pass. His engagement with his partys history would be more interesting if he were not so busy trying to distance himself from it. The problem with an unalloyed sense of virtue,that Shourie deservedly has,is that it is better at expressing anger at vice than in clarifying how we all are implicated in it.
