Freedom of speech, one of the provisions made in the nation’s Constitution to its citizens, is unarguably the most enjoyed freedom, particularly by sections of society having an axe to grind as it were with the Government of the day, by delivering public speeches from various platforms using expressions generating emotions snowballing into mob fury and quite often response with violent outrages, disrupting order both locally and nationally as well as causing extensive damage to public and private property. The speakers, endowed with eloquence, commanding wide fan-following revel in liberally thrown uncomplimentary remarks on administration’s ways of functioning, often with no holds barred. The features of ubran-rural divide and gender-bias don’t seem to apply in the circles of speakers whose brand is disagreeing with any policy and measures periodically announced ostensibly for the good of the land’s masses. Not only the high-decibel dissenters are filling, euphemism for hogging, the column-space of dailies of all hues with reports based on their rhetoric but also growing in numbers in all regions across the nation, including Karnataka.
Given the land’s air dense with full-throated criticism and freely hurled brickbats at the administration, pointing the accusing finger at its selected functionaries, highlighting their poor track record of performing their duties, barring exceptions, one is driven to a dorm corner masking the country’s economic march despite growing social instability. Democracy, juxtaposed to monarchy such as it was in the erstwhile Princely State of Mysore, seems to have come a cropper.
