I read in news
that the Supreme Court chief justice recently compared unemployed youth with
“parasites”, and then a social media storm broke down. Finally, the chief
justice had to “disown” his earlier statement saying he was “misquoted”
(sounded like what politicians do daily). When I looked up the news, I found
that in his original statement, the chief justice had meant well and there was
no need to clarify or retract from his position. Here is how.
What the chief justice wanted to say
was that there are many people around us who live off other people, and instead
of contributing to society, they attack the system society is working on. The
context was a junior lawyer who was using the designation “Senior Advocate”
along with his name on social media for getting attention. The chief justice
got upset at him and perhaps blamed him for being irresponsible and wasteful
like a “cockroach”. The “cockroach” was of course a metaphor for being useless
and wasteful.
The eventual social media furore over
his comment totally justified his initial statement. The unemployed youth
wasting their time on social media went on to create numerous satirical
entities after replacing a term with “cockroach” and wasted days in the name of
humour and satire. How long can one sit over one’s high horse – finally the
horse has to take rest and fodder too, right? Eventually, the social media
uproar will end and the only effect this whole episode will have is lowering
the dignity of our justice system and making a joke of our constitution given
right of free speech.
As we have seen during many
controversies, social media platforms have shown zero control over stopping
misleading, incorrect, fake, malicious or defamatory content. At the same time,
they are earning billions of dollars every year due to the content created by
users. For how long shall we allow total “anarchy” rule and social media
content visibility policies changing the way people speak or behave on these
platforms? If we expect real world to be rule-based, and society functioning on
principles and ethical boundaries, why should we allow social media to be a
lawless, “Jungle Raaj”?
It is high time the Supreme Court of
India must look into this matter since we have seen many a time on such issues
that only the SC can help and no other institution comes up to correct the
situation. Lawless, anarchist, misleading and defamatory nature of social media
must be purged, to make it rule-based, fair, and a controlled entity. It is
very much possible to achieve, just look at how the early-days social media
platforms were designed, for clues. Along with time, “virality” was given first
priority while designing these platforms and this is the root cause of all
evils. This problem can be solved in one day, if the Supreme Court orders.
There are many other important concerns like restricting social media for
children, making content copyright compliant, stopping use of these platforms
for crime and financial fraud.
The day the Supreme Court takes up
this matter in its hands, it won’t matter how many cockroaches line up to
shout, the insecticide of law will be powerful enough to control them for the
benefit of everyone.
- Rahul
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