LUBIS

Few years ago I read Alex Haley’s ‘Root’. A story of a search of origin of an African American with its main character Kunta Kinte, a African who was abducted by slave trader and brought to America. Reading that book I wonder where is my origin.

Ethnically, I am a Mandailingnese with surname or ‘marga’ Lubis. Mandailing is a tribe in North Sumatra, Indonesia and its region situated in border area of now North Sumatra Province and West Sumatra Province. If people see my name they will not see my ‘marga’ because it had been deleted from my name. My father used to say that he did not want an ethnic name and he did not want to known as an ethnocentric perswon, he preferred to be known as an Indonesian. I respect his nationalism but still I need to know where I come from.

From my research I come across with my ancestor’s legend. It’s more like a legend rather than an actual story because his story is covered with a lot of magical story in it. However, even in a legend must have a bit of truth in it.

A long, long time ago, there was a man named Namora Pande Bosi. He was originally from Bugis in South Celebes and he went from his village to seek for knowledge and experiences. One day he arrived in Singgalang area in South Tapanuli and he recided in that place. He was know as a master blacksmith. Then he married daughter of a local king, that princess was name Nan Tuan Layan Bolan (in ‘tarombo’ or family tree of Lubis family, she was known as Boru Dalimunte Naparila or Princess Dalimunte the Shy) and they had two sons, Sutan Borayun and Sutan Bugis.

One day Namora Pande Bosi went to hunt for bird in the jungle around his village. During his hunting trip, he met a fairy princess in the jungle and her beauty staggered him. After a long day shooting bird, he thought that he already got some bird but when he came down the tree where he waited for his preys, he could not find the birds that he shot. Then he hid again on the tree and shot another bird but this time he let the bird and watch it surrounding. He saw that a girl was picking up his prey. He jumped off the tree and caught the girl on her hand. Actually, the girl was daughter of the head of ‘orang Lubu’ where in some story was said to be fairy. Later he married the girl and live with those people.

From this marriage, he had twin sons, Si Baitang and Si Langkitang. Namora Pande Bosi , later went back to his first wife in Hatongga and lived there. Not after he returned to his village, his twin sons came and live with him. Like their father, Si Baitang and Si Langkitang also a good blacksmith and their ability had made their step mother felt jealous because she was afraid that the twins will made her sons lost their dignity in front of their father and people of their village. This jealousy had create a feud in their family and Namora Pande Bosi’s wife ask him to send his twin sons away from their village.

Namora Pande Bosi asked his twin son to go to find a river junction where the water run to different direction or in Mandailing it was called muara patontang. He gave them a blowpipe and a bullhorn; inside of these items he already filled some amount of gold for them to live.
Later, they found a place as their father described and started their own village. The descendants of the twin later known with the name of Lubis.

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EDUCATION REFORMATION IN INDONESIA

If you heard someone mention Indonesia, what is the first thing pop up in your head? Maybe for the last few years it will be terrorism and natural disasters. That’s also the same idea of Indonesia to the people I know here in India where I domicile for the last couple of years. Those people could not be blamed for that because most of news in international media only covers those issues.

But there is much more that happen in Indonesia apart from those things. Well, what can we say, bad news sales! Just like sex sales! That is the main jargon and principle in commercial broadcasting. However, there are also some positive movements in Indonesia which might skip international’s eyes. Slowly but sure the economic situation getting more and more conducive for a progressive recovery from the impact of financial crisis in the late 90s. Now, Indonesia has been considered as the third largest democratic nation in the world after USA and India.
But what is the main problem that Indonesians should solve before they can assume a prestigious place in International stage? It’s not corruption, collusion or nepotism which already destruct the whole social structure of the nation.

The first thing that Indonesians should do before try to solve all those problems is to reconstruct the education system in the country. It’s a common knowledge that educational system in Indonesia is as centralized as its governance during the New Order regime. This kind of education had limited student’s ability to develop their skill in suitable manner to their own interest. Students were not judged base on their practical ability but more on their theoretical knowledge. There is nothing wrong in it but what good of a theory without any practical ability. This practice had caused most of Indonesian students had to face a different reality from what they had learnt in school with what they have to do in the real world.

A centralized education could also cause student’s inability to digest local issues logically. In most cases, educational curricula in Indonesia were constructed by central government where sometime the focus of the curricula had put aside local needs. Intolerances to local needs in educational curricula had created a situation where student could not react to local demand immediately after graduation. There should be a system adjustment where education in an agricultural region is focused on agricultural topic rather than industrial matter and vice versa. But in practice there are many mismatches where an agricultural community was given an industrial based education. As a result this kind of mismatch would push the rate urbanization because school graduates felt that they could not practice their education in rural area where they were originated.

In the recent years, Indonesian government has started to reform its educational system. However, the emphasis of this reformation mainly in cultural education where student in the region are given lesson in ethnic language. The practical necessities of education are still put aside. There should be a national enlightenment to change the whole educational system and it will take a lot of time and financial back up but Indonesia should be willing to go through this change and pay all the price needed.

Corruption, collusion and nepotism problem will be solved when the whole Indonesian nation has been enlightened. The only way to enlighten a nation is through education.

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INDONESIA AND CENSORSHIP

From the beginning of its reign in 1966 to its fall in 1998, New Order regime had banned over 2,000 books. Under its censorship law, all works, which, in the view of the Attorney General, “could disturb public order”, are subject to censorship. Under this law, hundreds of novels, historical studies, religious tracts, and books on political and social controversies have been banned, including scholarly works on subjects from early twentieth century social movement, to liberation theology, to the rise of Asia as a center of global capitalism.


The broad censorship practiced by the Soeharto government has had a direct impact on scholarship and the academic community. The Indonesian National Library keeps copies of banned books, but such books are inaccessible without the prior approval of security authorities. Researchers and students are, in principle, able to apply for permission to use such books for academic study, but in practice they must obtain prior permission from the State Intelligence Coordinating Body (Badan Koordinasi Intelijen Negara or Bakin), the Coordinating Agency for the Maintenance of National Stability (Badan Koordinasi Bantuan Pemantapan Stabilitas Nasional or Bakorstanas), and the attorney general’s office. These authorities have untrammeled discretion to delay or refuse to issue permits for use of the books. Because of the permit requirements, the National Library is often forced to deny permission to students and others. Although many academics and intellectuals keep copies of banned books and there is an active market in photocopies of such works, they are rarely used in classrooms except by the most critical and fearless lecturers. References to banned works are absent from the works of all but a handful of scholars because publications of studies based on such sources could damage their career.

Book censorship in Indonesia did not begin with the New Order. In 1963, President Sukarno issued a decree, PP no.4/1963, requiring publishers to submit copies of all books to their local prosecutor’s office within forty-eight hours of publication. The decree vested the attorney general with broad power to criminalize possession and seize all copies of works which “could disturb public order [and] have a negative influence on efforts to achieve the goals of the [Indonesian] Revolution.” Within a month of the coup attempt, writers who belonged to the Indonesian Communist Party or its affiliates used this decree to ban all works. In 1969, the Soeharto government enacted the decree into law and subsequently built up a bureaucratic infrastructure to implement the law.

During the 1970s and 1980s, most censorship decisions were initiated by one of the New Order security and intelligence bodies. In October 1989, a “clearinghouse” was formed to study the contents of books and make censorship recommendations directly to the attorney general. The clearinghouse is composed of nineteen members, including representatives of the attorney general’s office and all of the leading intelligence agencies in the country, including the State Intelligence Coordinating Body (Badan Koordinasi Intelijen Negara or Bakin), the Coordinating Agency for the Maintenance of National Stability (Badan Koordinasi Bantuan Pemantapan Stabilitas Nasional or Bakorstanas), and the Armed Forces Intelligence Agency (Badan Inteligen ABRI or BIA), together with representatives from the ministries of information, education, and religion. Since early 1990s, the attorney general on the advice of the clearinghouse makes most censorship decisions.

A wide range of works is subject to censorship. In 1996, the Jakarta daily Kompas listed criteria used by the government in making censorship decisions. Works subject to censorship include those which: conflict with the state ideology or national constitution; contain Marxist-Leninist teachings or interpretations; destroy public faith in government leaders; are pornographic; are atheistic or insult a religion recognized in Indonesia; undermine national development; lead to ethnic, religious racial or inter-group conflict; or undermine national unity. Because there is no provision in the law for compensation for those whose books are seized, publishers and bookstores that carry controversial works take a substantial financial risk. Because banning also criminalizes possession, it can also be used to keep critics on the defensive. A prominent example occurred in 1989 when three students were arrested, convicted of subversion, and sentenced to jail terms ranging from seven to eight and a half years for, among other things, possessing and attempting to distribute copies of Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s banned novels on the rise of Indonesian nationalism.

A study of the impact of the government’s censorship on scholarly inquiry has not yet been undertaken, but previous works have noted the impact of the policy on the availability of social science texts, poetry and fiction, commentary on and analysis of contemporary political controversies, and alleged government abuses. Because Marxist-Leninist teachings are banned, professors in the social sciences can be subject to harassment. In 1988, for example, Dr. Arief Budiman, a sociologist at Satya Wacana Christian University was accused by a university alumni group of teaching Marxism to students, and the complaint was forwarded to the regional armed forces headquarters (Korem). Dr. Budiman argued that someone couldn’t know if someone else a Marxist if that person did not know what Marxism is and he taught Marxism in his class because it was part of the theoretical and ideological study of development.

Virtually all works by authors alleged to have been communists or communist sympathizers continue to be banned, whether those works were written before or after the 1965 coup attempt. Prominent among such authors is Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Indonesia’s best-known novelist. More than twenty works of fiction, a memoir, and a number of significant historical studies by Pramoedya, including works on the Chinese in Indonesia and on important historical figures Tirto Adhi Suriyo and Kartini, are banned. Even his edited edition of one of Indonesia’s first novels, Hikayat Siti Marijah, by Haji Mukti, is banned on the ground that the novel emphasizes “social contradictions.” Students who wish to write their theses on Pramoedya’s works have been denied permission to do so by their advisors and university administrators. Pramoedya is accused by his critics in Indonesian literary circles of having denigrated and subjected other writers to abuse when he headed the literary section of the leftist cultural organization Lekra (Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat or Institute of Peoples’ Culture) in the 1950s and early 1960s. Pramoedya was jailed for fourteen years after the 1965 coup attempt as a suspected communist based on his work for Lekra. None of these claims justify the continued censorship of his writings. Pramoedya is a prolific and respected author, and his works represent a gold mine for literary and cultural critics that were all but lost to the scholarly community as a result of the arbitrary censorship practices of the New Order government.

Publications in Chinese have been banned altogether. As described above, ethnic Chinese were made the subject of de jure as well as de facto government discrimination following the 1965 coup attempt, amid allegations that the coup plotters received support directly from Beijing through Chinese-Indonesian intermediaries. All Chinese-language schools were closed permanently in 1966. Because the closures were carried out almost overnight, many students lost the ability to continue their education. In late 1978 and 1979, a series of government decrees formally banned all imports of goods with Chinese characters, and forbade use of Chinese characters in all publications and circulation of any Chinese-language printed matter, absent the express consent of the authorities, with the exception of a government-run newspaper. Again, although there was an exception in the regulations for academic study of Chinese-language materials, the ban has had devastating consequences for the development of scholarship on China in Indonesia, and has all but closed off discussion of the status of the Chinese-Indonesian community and its role in early Indonesian history.

Historical studies have been a leading target of the censors. In almost every case, the rationale for censorship contained in the attorney general’s censorship decision is that the offending work “inverts the facts” which could “lead the public astray” and ultimately “disturb public order.” Censorship thus presupposes an official history. In at least one case, this was made explicit. In 1990, the attorney general banned Permesta: Kandasnya Sebuah Cita-Cita (Permesta, the End of Hope), by KML Tobing, an account of the Permesta Rebellion in Sulawesi during the late 1950s. According to the censorship decree, the book was banned because it “contains analyses that conflict with the work Cuplikan Sejarah Perjuangan TNI Angkatan Darat (Aspects of the History of Struggle of the National Army),” a work published by the Armed Forces.
As these censorship cases in Indonesia demonstrate, censorship played an important role in defining New Order ideological orthodoxy and frequently was used as a weapon against political opponents. Academics, students, and scholarship itself suffered as a result.

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AL JAZEERA AND FREEDOM

In a modern civil society, media has become one of the main tools of building the civil society itself. Every member of society, nowadays, has the ability to access every corner of information which by the end will create an enlightened society. With the development in media the opportunity for the subordinate group of society to emerge to the mainstream public sphere becoming more and more wide.

However, the opportunity for the subordinate group of society in some sense is still restricted either by availability of capital or by, in some case, states regulation. In Habermas bourgeois society the subordinate group’s opportunity might be eliminated by the availability of capital since media will be owned and control by the bourgeois group and in a weak society where representation of public in government is limited, state regulation will become the obstacle. But still when media become available to all member of society, it might drive perspective of its consumers/member of society toward a certain direction and with this ability, media hold an immense power to shape the public opinion toward an issue. The process of enlightening society should be preceded by freedom granted by the state to its people. This process comes parallel to Kant’s theory where he said, “If only freedom is granted, enlightenment is almost sure to follow”.

However, in most of authoritarian states, state control over news broadcast may jeopardize the forming of any civil society. Media become part of state control over its people. State will decide what and when any news can be broadcasted in media and as the result, media will lose its ability to control and criticize the state where as Habermas described in his essay ‘ The Public Sphere’, “the term ‘public opinion’ refers to the functions of criticism and control of organized state authority….”. When this ability lost, it means that state can shape public opinion in any way it wants because the state will only give one version of the news where as in a free atmosphere; people can choose their view from various sources of news.

In this background, Al Jazeera has become one of the major players in the news world especially in the Middle East. Before Al Jazeera comes, in most of Middle East countries, state control over news media was very dominant. As the result of this control most of Arab population become segmented apart from similarities in language and religion. The idea of Pan-Arab nation that had existed since the turn of 20th century seems lose its meaning because of this segmentation. The common identity and issues do not become common interest among Arab nation due to state restriction over freedom of expression. Maintaining its domination is the main aim of the state rather than enlightening its people.

However, after his bloodless coup in 1995, Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Ahmad Bin Khalifa tried to change this culture by establishing a free of state influence news station in 1996 and Al Jazeera was born. The Emirate of Qatar will fund the station but they will not make any restriction concerning news content of the station. The implication of this establishment was not only felt in Qatar but also among other Arab nations and worldwide. Al Jazeera has succeeded to keep all Arab nations in a same direction in issues concerning the region. Most of Arab people may feel that they can have valid news without any state influence in the truth of the news. In this case, it was not the member of society who made the first move to establish this tool of enlightenment but the state who took the initiative.

This can be understood because even in Qatar as a monarch country state control must be so strong that it must be the government takes the initiative or no one will. However, this circumstance should be judge carefully where since its government fund institution, obviously, more or less state influence will stir the direction of the news, at least news concerning the state itself. Some critics argue that Al Jazeera coverage about Qatar is limited to insignificant news. Outside Qatar Al Jazeera might play an important role in the changing of the society but inside Qatar it seems that the role is not significant enough. This phenomenon creates a pseudo-enlighten society in Qatar where the freedom only granted when it deals with issues outside Qatar, however, in Qatar itself the freedom simply not exists.

Since its establishment, Al Jazeera, has given an alternative source of news and information to the Arab world, which before much more relied on western news stations to get news from outside their area. Not only as an alternative source but Al Jazeera also become the media to amplify the Arabs’ aspirations toward issues in their region, especially when the issues that make them face the western civilization. In the case of Intifada in Palestine or Iraq war, Al Jazeera uses terms which might strange to western people. Al Jazeera uses term such as ‘martyr’ rather than ‘terrorist’, ‘assassination’ rather than ‘targeted killing’ which more familiar to western people since those terms used by western news media such as CNN, BBC, AP, etc. Although the terms seem strange for western’s ear but in Arab world terms which are used by Al Jazeera are more common. The uses of these terms, as the result, create the sense of commonness among the Arabs. The stress of common interests not only the main reason for Al Jazeera to grab its viewer. The uses of a variant of Arabic language that can be understood regardless dialect also enable Al Jazeera to unite its viewers. It makes not only Arabs in Qatar will understand Al Jazeera but Arabs in Yemen also able to comprehend their news.

Al Jazeera effort to give an alternative side of news during Iraq war can be seen in Jehane Noujim’s documentary film ‘Control Room’. This documentary tries to show Al JAzeera coverage of Iraq war with side story of other journalists in Iraq. The documentary shows how Al Jazeera was critized by both the American, in this film shown by Donald Rumsfeld complaining that Al Jazeera become propaganda tool for the insurgents and in the other side the Iraqis also accuse Al Jazeera as the mouthpiece of American propaganda. It also focusing on the bombing of Al Jazeera headquarter in Baghdad by the United State army. The film shows footage of the attack, including the firing of a missile by an American A-10 'tankbuster'; the film reports that the alleged target was a group of insurgents who opened fire on coalition forces from within the Al Jazeera building, thus justifying retaliatory fire. As a documentary film, Control Room, tries as much as possible to take a neutral side of any factions in the war although it is rather hard for the producer to maintain the neutrality of the film.

Al Jazeera’s political talk show programs enable its viewers to bring about their personal view to public where before they do not have any mean to do such a thing due to lack of opportunity. The Arabs can express their dissatisfaction to their government in this kind of program. They also could bring out their view directly to their government without any necessity of formal constitutional medium. However, this situation could also create a ‘street court’ where public could judge their government’s actions or policies. Their thoughts where previously only exist in their private chamber now have the way to emerge to more than private discussion. Not only the emerging of private opinion to public space but also now their viewers are able to see any uprising or movement in other place where as before such news will surely banned by their government. As the result, Arab viewers are becoming more and more critical toward their own government.

The unbiased point of view of Al Jazeera which become the main concern of its critics especially from the west can not be separated from Al Jazeera’s effort to create justice for the Arabs when they face the west. The United State official in few occasion accuse Al Jazeera as pro-Iraqi bias in their reportages. The notion of justice was lost when the Arabs deal with their regional issues such as conflict between Palestine and Israel or war against terrorism. Most of the Arabs feel that they are treated badly by the west and also they feel that not only their government restricts their knowledge of the world development but also they feel that western media always treat them badly with their news manipulation. The way Al Jazeera puts them in their news is able to bring back their self-esteem.

Although most of Arab populations embrace Al Jazeera with great joy, different greetings come from their government since government power of censorship has been eliminated by Al Jazeera’s satellite broadcast. Arab governments try to apply different kind of censorship when they deal with Al Jazeera; either by shutting down Al Jazeera office in their territory or making a formal complaint to Qatar government. Algerian government even went further by cutting down their cities power supply during Al Jazeera’ program dealing with massacre committed by their military. Even the champion of freedom of speech like United State of America accuses Al Jazeera as not fair in their coverage. In some occasions, American army in Iraq bombards and although the Americans say that it was a mistake but some critics consider it as a deliberate bombing.

During Iraq war, Al Jazeera shows a different side of the war to its viewers. Different from most of western media which mostly show the Coalition Armies as the victor of the war, Al Jazeera shows the opposition images. And these images create empathy and gain more interest from its Arab viewers but in the other hand a contrast reaction come from the western viewers and from the United State government, in their consideration, this reaction equals to black campaign against their policies in Iraq. Cabinet members and Pentagon officials critize and condemn Al Jazeera for frequently broadcasting civilian casualties as well as footage of American POWs where with this activities, Al Jazeera has revealed and shown to its viewers and the world everything about Iraq that the Bush administration did not want them to see. Even member of United State field army in Iraq may react in strong manner. This reaction shown dramatically in “Control Room” in a scene where a Marine officer was interviewed and mentioned his contrast feeling when he watched footage of Iraq war in CNN and Al Jazeera.

In comparison to other independent news media, the nature of Al Jazeera's independency, in the surface its government control does not so obvious but from its reportage performance toward Qatar, the control can be seen.

In this case, discourse of both stations is about government and private enterprise. In one hand, government control becoming lesser in private enterprise but the capital requirement will also create a restriction to what issue might interest its viewers rather than what issue might become important to its viewers. The choice of topic become restricted in profitable or not. This restriction will create a situation where an issue which concerning a subordinate group of society will not come into ‘spot light’ if the station consider its as unprofitable. On the other hand, when a station is funded by a government, although the control might be not so obvious, the opportunity for the subordinate issue is getting smaller because the consideration is not only concerning business decision but also whether it will offend the government or not.

In the era of capitalism as in the present, this dilema could not be avoided. The capital demand always haunt any news station to operate. The phenomena of industrialisation has come not only in consumer good products industry but it also come face to face to ideal discourse where the opportunity to present an idea to public space become restricted due to the availability of capital power.

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Summary and Analysis of Beyond the Nationalist Panopticon: the Experience of Cyberpublics in India By Ravi Sundaram

In this essay, Ravi Sundaram talked about the concept of modernism in post-independence India and its relation with cyber activity. The concept of modernism had been changed over the last century where the concept of border and sovereignty over it had shifted by the advance of technology development.


He assumed that West’s possession over modernity had come to an end and the power would shift to Asia in which it would most probably be China since the old state-system of modernity which is based on borders and sovereignty has collapsed. Through this shifting, the third world countries, India in particular, had seen the opportunity to gain its role in the process of modernity through the media of cyberspace. This new mode of space had enabled the Third World countries to travel without restriction of borders and sovereignty to the new area. The collapse of Western modernity and its products had given India the opportunity to move toward this new electronic space.

Sundaram proposed that to adopt a certain diffusionary model of the spread of cyberpractices in India, there are two things we have to consider which are a) The simple fact of India being a peripheral society in the capitalist world-economy: with one of the lowest saturation rate of telephones in the world; only a small minority of the population has electricity, b) India has no tradition of cyberpunk, in fact there is no indigenous science fiction tradition. Most existing cultural communities have remained ambivalent about technology. Historically, representations of science and technology have been state-sponsored and social-realist in form. Despite of these facts, the number of people linked to electronic network is getting larger every time and the term ‘cyberspace’ has become a significant term in public discourse in India. He further divided the user of this new public space in three categories which are those of the nationalist state, the transnational elite, and that of the space between the market and the state occupied by various bulletin boards, and social movement networks.

Ever since the anti-colonial movement in India, some visions of nation and nationalism had been contested. After independent in 1947, Jawahral Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, lead a new turn of acceleration process of modernization through the building of rational institution of state order. However, Nehru policies denied the previous concept of development in India which was laid by Gandhi where he took village as the starting point of his struggle against British imperialism or other development in India where he also stressed the necessity of cultural heritage. The post-independence nationalists incorporate the growing discourse of development into state policies and later this incorporation would play an important role in the development of cyberpublic.

The focus of these post-independence national was to represent economic development as part of the national identity. However, economic development became accessible only to a certain class of privileged and enlightened modernizers. This development also acted as the mean to achieve order in society by eliminating poverty and cultural ambivalence. And the result came similar to Bentham’s Panopticon where Panopticon was conceived as a prison where ‘rational’ methods of confinement were deployed to ensure the visibility of all the prisoners to the warden’s gaze, while he himself remained out of their sight. In this Panopticon the oppressed would not be able to visualized heir power and order would be achieved. In relation to India, Nehruvian’s modernism focused its goal in temporal acceleration, development and order.

In Nehruvian’s modernity, ‘Dam’ along with steel and electricity production was the symbol of development as opposed to Gandhian movement where village would become the symbol. The state policies over economic development became highly centralized and repressive state policies which resulted in loss of power for Congress party in the 1970’s but they regained power in the 80’s when Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister with similar policies but in different territory. The first was to ensure temporal acceleration while at the same time perform the task of emancipating the state-managers from the everyday, the interaction with place. In other words the annihilation of space through time would obtain without the messy political problems that spatiality and its associated politics produced. Further in these policies ‘development’ remained an issue but was reconstituted as a problem of communication. Government tried to promote and simulate this project via public lectures, television programs and press campaigns. The notion of nation had transformed from the problems of borders and sovereignty to the problems of speed accessibility and information.

The government introduced National Informatics Center (NIC) in the mid 1970’s to promote computerization in administration but it became an important project in the 80’s when it launched satellite linked network: NICNET. It links up all district, state and national centers, runs large databases on social science, medicine and law; it works all state research institutes in the country. It provided its users with web and internet access. The very goal of NICNET was to form a new public space not merely provided a new media of administration and education. The NICNET experiment tried to enhance the old grid of Nehruvianism which based on representational realism. Obviously, NICNET’s working scheme has similarity with the earlier panoptic where each district connected to state capital and state capital connected to the national capital.

In recent development of cyber public the idea of the Journey had changed where during anti-colonial agitation, Gandhi invented the idea of nationalist journey. This journey signified human interaction where only through walking that human came into interaction with different cultures and people. Gandhi transformed the journey as a vehicle to politically re-map the nation. This journey was also as dialogue, with conventions of public interaction, anti-colonial agitation and spectacle. Moreover, the journey also acted as a public journey with the attendant modes of representation constructing an imaginary community of nationalism. However, borders and sovereignty limited this kind of physical journey. In the era of cyber space the physical boundary had been eliminated since the notion of border which played an important role in the idea of state-nationalism becoming blurred. The virtual journey would create the state of de-stability in the hardening of national identity as what James Clifford described. The old landscape of nationalism underwent a double process. The first process was a certain de-territorialisation of the old nationalist space which was restrained by border and the other process was he process of trans-national territorialisation where in this process, a section of non-resident Indian tried to rediscover India in virtual space. The Indian state actively promoted this process. The state actively pushed a new category of identity in cultural/political discourse - the figure of the diasporic citizens, also known as the NRI or non-resident Indian. This new category of identity in result pushed the border outside the nation sovereignty. For NRI, the virtual journey to India could satisfy the need to return to their native land.

Although numbers of users in India kept on growing, but statistically the group of users dominated by male users from the middle and upper strata both in economic and social terms of community and caste and also a large numbers of network users still worked from offices, research institutions and from public terminals. In term of economic development, Indian company could take these borderless advantages in their expansions. In the Indian case, the commercial message was clear: to be a genuine ‘national” capitalist, you should transcend the border and enter virtual space because it was here that the peripheral status in real-time will be transcended. Since the 1980’s, the oppressed caste had emerged the composition of India’s political sphere and the effect of this emerging is the challenge to the old panoptic of the state which was predicated on a homogeneous legislative modernity, led by an elite of modernizers. In the event, the social landscape had undergone an effective Haussmanisation which was marked by upper-caste retreated from the old grid of politics and abstract nationalist identity. Later Sundaram argued that the change in large metropolitan to accommodate the development had caused the old journey was being transcended for the old elite.

The new landscape acquired new technologies of representation in its center which could disturb the old tropes of anti-colonialism and Nehruvian nationalism. Despite all the effort to limit direct foreign influence in India, the new technology of representation had crossed all of physical boundary and sovereignty where now foreign satellites beamed image into India territory. In the result the new cultural space was crowded with the fluidity of national, regional, and global culture which was mediated by the recognition of a new agent, the consumer subject. In this context, the web provided the imaginary possibility of playing with identity that recognized displacement beyond any physical boundaries. There is a certain experience of web travel when logging on from the Third World that almost evokes Benjamin’s analysis of Baudelaire’s flaneur, or the stroller in Second Empire Paris. The web-traveler in the elite cyberpublic seeks out the virtual space of the web to experience the “shock of the new”, which Benjamin calls the distinctive feature of modernity. The flaneur would hide behind the crowd from its imaginary space. Web strolling from India is an entry into a space whose virtuality enhances the feeling of being in the “West” or they tried to reach out for the new.

The third cyber public was relatively different from the other two, it constantly shifted from the zone of activist network, small bulletin boards and dissident scientists but still without any fix borders. For instant, bulletin board (BBS) had an important role in the opening up of electronic space beyond the frontiers of the state/ market dichotomy. At the beginning most of this kind of bulletin board only discuss issues related to their necessity but by time issues were getting broader toward issues concerning public in general. Bulletin boards or BBS existed between the space of state control and the power of global capital and further it offered a new form of agency within the discourse of virtuality. For some part of society whom disembedded by globalization and subject to the shock-like experience of the new Haussmanised city, bulletin boards offered an important zone of engagement and the possibility of a new performative space. The oppressed classes of society also had a new mean to express their thought in bulletin boards.
As before when the state treated dam, steel mill, and electricity as the icon of modernization and they were some groups in society who opposed this thing. The introduction of computer in the 1980’s also had almost similar rejection from some part of society the critique that generally echoed then prevalent notions of utility, sustainability and concerns about workforce cutbacks and the fact that computer was introduced with almost similar rhetoric with the old-style rhetoric made the movements even more suspicious. However, in the 1990’s most of groups in society had accept the existence of computer and its creative possibility of networking. Not like previous developmental project which caused natural destruction and displacement, cyber space development did not cause any such destruction. A certain aesthetics of experimentation had already been experienced by activists in their search for alternatives to developmentalist disasters. With the coming of e-mail, the Internet, and later bulletin boards a liminal space emerged, where utopian desires for modernity, the possibility of experimentation “without destruction”, overlapped with the pleasures of initiation rituals into techno culture.

In the Third World the mode of developmental modernism was similar to what Foucault called as the black mail of Enlightenment in his essay on Kant’s “ What is Enlightenment”. However, in Indian case, the situation was not as great as that. It operated within the rather simplistic oppositions of development/science/progress versus tradition/reaction/stasis. Although the state plan of operating ERNET would increased the accessibility of this third cyber public with all of its richness and potentials to negotiate a space between the market and the state, the access to virtual space still remained a privilege for a certain group of society. So, in a country such as India where the income gap relatively high, it is necessary for the state to fund this kind of developmental project since it would be hard to expect private sector to fund this project.

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INDIA ECONOMIC POLICY

For many ‘old economic powers’, India along with China is considered as threat for their economic hegemony. In the past decade, both countries have shown an incredible economic growth of over 8 % annually. In 1991, India Prime Minister Narasima Rao liberated Indian market by reducing government control and regulation especially in Foreign Trade segment.

This liberation in turn pushed Indian economic growth far outreaching of most of other countries. Before the 1990’s liberation, India adopted socialist market policies where government applied a strict control over any economic activity. Till the early 1990s, India was a closed economy: average tariffs exceeded 200 percent, quantitative restrictions on imports were extensive, and there were rigid restrictions on foreign investment.

India began to cautiously reform in the 1990s, liberalizing only under conditions of extreme necessity. Although India has steadily opened up its economy, its tariffs continue to be high when compared with other countries, and its investment norms are still restrictive. This leads some to see India as a ‘rapid globalizer’ while others still see it as a ‘highly protectionist’ economy. In its study, World bank concluded that to sustain the dynamism of India’s services sector, the country must address two critical challenges: externally, the problem of actual and potential protectionism; and domestically, the persistence of restrictions on trade and investment, as well as weaknesses in the regulatory environment. To support its economic reformation, India has undergone several economic agreement with various contries and regional organization such asIndia-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement, Trade Agreements with Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Maldives, China, and South Korea, India-Nepal Trade Treaty, Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) with Singapore, Framework Agreements with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Thailand and Chile.

In 1999, Goldman Sachs has predicted that India's GDP in current prices will overtake France and Italy by 2020, Germany, UK and Russia by 2025 and Japan by 2035. By 2035 it is expected to reach as 3rd largest economy of the world behind US and China. Goldman Sachs has made these predictions based on India's expected growth rate of 5.3 to 6.1% in various periods,whereas India is registering more than 8% growth rate for the last 3 years. According to some experts, the share of the US in world GDP is expected to fall (from 21 per cent to 18 per cent) and that of India to rise (from 6 per cent to 11 per cent in 2025), and hence the latter will emerge as the third pole in the global economy after the US and China.The basic idea is that income per capita was roughly similar prio to the industrial revolution with the regions that make up the boundaries of modern day China and India each had much larger economies than the west.

Now with rapid growth in the developping world (except sub saharan africa) developed countries are again going to have a situation of roughly similar standard of living in most of the world possibly within the next 50 years and China and India being over 3 times the size of any other country are probably going to be the world's largest economy based on a average growth of 5% and a currency appreciation of 2% per annum vis a vis the USD. India faces a burgeoning population and the challenge of reducing economic and social inequality. Despite its enourmous economic growth, poverty remains a serious problem, although it has declined significantly since independence, mainly due to the green revolution and economic reforms.

However, in comparison with Chinese foreign trade and investment atmosphere, most of foreign investors feel more secure to invest their capital in China. The main reason of this outcome is the availability of infrastructure. The frequent shortage of electric power and availability of decent road infrastructure have made foreign investors to think twice to invest in India. Power shortage and lack of decent road infrastructures may effects their production liability and also increase production cost. But India posses something which China does not have, English. Although in industrial sector, India is behind China but in service sector India move faster than China. As Chinese Prime Minister stated in his recent visit to India that in the future, India would become the front office and China would be the factory.

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COMMENT ON NANCY FRASER’S ‘RETHINKING THE PUBLIC SPHERE’

Nancy Fraser tries to re-analyze Habermas’ conception of public sphere in this essay for she considers that Habermas has not provided the concrete form of public sphere in his theory which is distinct from the bourgeois conception of public sphere.

Later in this essay, she critizes the bourgeois conception of public sphere itself. She argues that in bourgeois’ conception which stresses the necessity of full accessibility, the subordinated class could not gain such kind of accessibility because of gender, ethnicities or even property qualifications. The ideal public sphere in her opinion is an arena in which all the interlocutors should be included regardless of birth and fortune. However, in this conception, inequalities are not deleted but bracketed. Although the idea of bracketing the inequalities has a good aim to create an arena of dialog and discourse in equal basis but in reality this process is used in the benefit of the dominant group.

In a stratified society the subordinated groups of society tend to develop unequally valued cultural style and it marginalize the contributions of members of subordinated groups. The informal pressure power from the subordinated groups’ cultural style later amplified by the peculiar political economy of the bourgeois public sphere. The media to circulate public view usually owned or affiliated to the bourgeois group which in result would create limitation of accessibility for the subordinated groups. The political autonomy is under question in this concept. Liberalism stresses the important of a very strong political autonomy to organize a democratic form of political life in the basis of socio-economic and socio-sexual structures that generate systemic inequalities and then try to find a way to separate political institutions that are supposed to instantiate relations of equality from economic, cultural, and socio-sexual institutions that are premised on systemic relations of inequality.

Nancy Fraser argues that the ideal of participatory parity is better achieved by a multiplicity of publics rather than by a single public. In stratified society, it would be much better to accommodate plural participation in contestation for public space rather than a singular participation because in singular public, the right of the subordinated group most likely would be put aside. As the result of this disadvantageous treatment to the subordinated group, in some cases they constitute alternative publics to formulae their oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs. Nancy Fraser calls this public as subaltern counterpublic. However, sometimes these subaltern counterpublics become anti-democracy and anti-egalitarian but still they help to create and expand discursive space. Subaltern counterpublic has two functions in stratified society. It would act as spaces of withdrawal and regroupment, and it also functions as bases and training grounds for agitational activities directed toward wider publics. As Habermas said in his book that however limited a public may be in its empirical manifestation at any given time, its members understand themselves as part of a potentially wider public. In egalitarian public still it cannot consist of a single, comprehensive public sphere. Egalitarian public would only exist with the participation of groups with diverse values and rhetoric to create plurality in public arenas. In principle, coexistence of social equality and cultural diversity is possible.

In Habermas theory, public could mean as (1) state-related, (2) accessible to everyone, (3) of concern of everyone, and (4) pertaining to a common good or shared interest. And Nancy Fraser proposes two more notion of public which are (5) pertaining to private property in a market economy, and (6) pertaining to intimate domestic or personal life, including sexual life. The matter which concern of everyone as a notion of public sphere may not be the same in outsider’s perspective and the participant’s and only participant could determine which will become their concerns. However, boundaries between which is a matter of common concern and which is not are not given. The boundaries are set out by discursive contestation in regard that no topics should be ruled off limits in advance of such contestation. Civic-republican is a view in which the discussion is restricted to the ‘common good’ and in which discussion of ‘private interest’ is ruled out. By ruling out ‘private interest’, it is limiting deliberation to talk framed from the standpoint of a single, all-encompassing ‘we’, thereby ruling claims of self-interest and group interest out of order. Without knowing in advance whether the outcome of a deliberative process, it would be no warrant fro putting any strictures on what sorts of topics, interests, and views are admissible in deliberation. Nancy Fraser suggested suspecting the consensuses come out of this process since the process is tainted by the effects of dominance and subordination. In the last two sense of public, the participation of the subordinated group could be easily oppressed by labeling them as private matter rather than as public matter without any discursive contestation.

Nancy Fraser considers bourgeois model of publics as weak publics since its deliberative practice consists exclusively in opinion formation rather than decision-making. Also bourgeois could transform publics into state by threatening the autonomy of publics. Under this condition, the possibility of a critical discursive check on state would be lost. Sovereign parliament is the example she gives as strong publics where as sovereign parliament acts as a public sphere within state and it could encompasses both opinion and decision making. In strong publics, public opinion could be transform into authoritative decision since it is strengthen by the capability of it representing body. The problem aroused from this condition is the relation between strong and weak publics. There is no certainty of the accountability where an institutional arrangement should be established to ensure the accountability of democratic decision-making bodies to weaker publics.

Again as Habermas suggests in his theory, Fraser also deals with a hypothetic society. Although she predicts that a stratified society where openness and full accessibility will be achieved with regard of existence of multiculturalism and multi-identities will exist in short time but at this moment such society does not exist. The contestation of public sphere in reality has existed for a long time. In my point of view, she only focuses her theory in the example of modern western society. If she conducts a comprehensive research among traditional society, she might find a form of society where gender equality exists. In many paternal system of traditional society, women have relatively equal right either in material possession or expression.

I would like to give example of traditional society of Angkola in Indonesia. Angkola is a paternal society, however, to reach any decision or consensus among members of society it should be decide in a kind of advisory institution, Dalihan Na Tolu, which consists of three elements of society, men, women, and youth. Every member in the assembly has equal right to express their opinion to encompass the decision. In this society, women also have the right of material possession and heritage of family wealth.

In modern capitalist society, segregation of class obviously observed since wealth increased power and possibility to reach the media of expression. Fraser also states that media might encompass public opinion but we cannot put aside the fact that in some cases many public members may neglect this kind of influence when it concern of public matters. Also most of people will pick information from any given medias, according to their suitability and believe. It is important for state to acquire the right to relatively restrict matters which emerge from ‘private room’ into public space. Because some issue might cause more chaos rather than benefits in term of common good.

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