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For a change, it looks like, a market holiday in India when the rest of the world was working is not going to make much of a difference. Given the way the SGX Nifty is trading, Nifty futures in India should open around the same level that it closed on Monday. This is certainly good news for me because I am long and went home with a long position on Monday with a great deal of trepidation. I worried about a potential gap down which could have left me staring at a large loss. Now that it looks like this worry was unfounded (as most worries are) I can move on to finding new things to worry about.
The papers have been buzzing with news about Mr Kapil Sibal's attempt to censor content on the social networking sites. Everybody seems to be getting hot under the collar. But tell me, which government, for that matter what entity ever likes criticism against it? What entity does not make an attempt to muzzle that criticism, however justified? For eg, will a corporate let its employees write bad things about it in a social networking site? We know the answer and we also know that soon the employee will have an ex prefixed whenever we refer to him. If you do not believe me, please try an experiment and write something seriously objectionable against your own company. Does a school allow the freedom to its students to criticise its teachers? Or God forbid, the school itself, specially in an open forum? Never. Does any political party actually allow its members to criticise its leaders specially here in India? So while what Kapil Sibal is planning is questionable it is at the same time understandable. The Government is just a microcosm of the society we live in. And we as a society have become increasingly intolerant of criticism. Is it unnatural to expect the Government to behave any differently?
You might read this note and think that I am trying to justify Mr Sibals idea. I am not. I am just trying to say that his idea stems from how we as a society behave. If we as a society are more tolerant of different opinions and ideas then the government will be too. The incessant clamor for bans on movies/books/ideas that are slightly contentious are a symptom of a deeper malaise and Mr Sibals idea is just another manifestation of that malaise.
To come back to my trade, I am long but will cut my long if 4974 is broken. I will go short on the Nifty only below 4935.
There IMO is a huge difference between personal freedom when employed in a company and the overall freedom to express what you desire.
ReplyDeleteIf you are fired for writing the correct things (but wrong in the Company's point of view), you can sue the company for improper termination (I know that this is more in US than in India, but avenues does exist).
Sibal is the same guy who defended M.F.Hussain in the court of law saying that he had the freedom to paint whatever. Now if this same freedom is utilized by some one else to paint / write something else, its taken as being wrong which is a absolute hypocrisy.
In a Democracy, the government is not a "microcosm of the society we live in". While the government can frame rules, those rules are generally framed so that they do not violate the fundamental rights of the citizens.
As long as one can be legally prosecuted for what one does (right or wrong), it should be left to the courts to decide whether what the person did was right or wrong. If its discretionary, there is a huge void on what is right and what is wrong & more importantly who decides on that.