Will social media be a game changer for Indian politics?

Election fever has completely gripped the Indian media. Though general elections are scheduled for 2014, the news cycle regularly carries rumours of early elections every time another corruption scandal breaks. Pundits, analysts and party spokespersons, appearing on television every night, attempt to connect with India’s growing middle classes. And a big topic of conversation: the potential for social media to become a game changer in the next election, Mahima Kaul reports from New Delhi.

India’s large population and increasing teledensity, especially in urban pockets, has spurred an impressive jump in the number of people online. Moreover, a recent report released by the Internet and Mobile Association of India and IRIS Knowledge Foundation has revealed that of India’s 543 constituences, 160 can be termed as ‘high impact’ — that is, they will most likely be influenced by social media in the next general elections. As the report explains, high impact constituencies are those where the numbers of Facebook users are more than the margin of victory of the winner in the last Lok Sabha election, or where Facebook users account for over 10% of the voting population. The study then goes onto declare 67 constituencies as medium-impact, 60 as low-impact and 256 as no-impact constituencies.


The study certainly seems to echo the general euphoria over social networking as a political tool. However, the number of Facebook users might not translate into any change in voting patterns -– in fact, for all we know most the 78 million Facebook users in India might not be interested in politics at all. The study, however, clearly seems to signal that the ability to connect with voters through this medium indicates that political impact could be high.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been the first national political party to have embraced technology to reach out to voters, with a Twitter account, Facebook page, YouTube channel, mobile app and live streaming over the internet. Its controversial leader Narendra Modi –- who some believe could become India’s next prime minister -– has over 1,600,000 followers. Modi has also been quick to embrace digital technology including a 3D projection of an address in 53 places in the country at the same time. India’s other big national political party, the Congress Party is catching up. Media and IT cells have been set up with an eye towards elections, and one of their star politicians on social media, Shashi Tharoor, has over 1,700,000 followers.

There is some merit to this strategy, although in a nascent stage. Right now, there is a small but very active Twitter base in India that is highly political and there are constant fights between the right-wingers and the rest, which can be read as BJP-Congress fights. Major political episodes in the country become trending topics and both sides are able to make TV news headlines quite regularly. However, at this point it would be safe to assume that most middle class Indians experience political activity on Twitter through news reports on TV than actually by engaging with the medium themselves.

Even the politicians who have invested in social media are quite realistic about what it can do for them. Many of them, including Shashi Tharoor and Orissa-based politician Jay Panda admit that people from their own constituency are not following them on Twitter. Therefore, while they can reach a large number of people through the medium, as yet, they cannot swing an election based on social media.

As the middle class expands, more Indians are expected to get online. Young people are digital natives, and those who can afford smartphones are addicted to them. The general feeling is that politics needs to adapt to the habits and lifestyle of this demographic, and perhaps in that enthusiasm its real role gets overplayed in the media.

However, there is good reason to believe the future is closer than we might imagine. A recent election in the ‘modern’ city of Bangalore saw all politicians engage heavily with social media. And, India’s huge anti-corruption movement led by activist Anna Hazare and his colleague Arvind Kejriwal in April 2012 was almost entirely fuelled by media support and a very engaged online stategy. The movement led to an anti-corruption bill being tabled in Parliament. Many of the members of that movement have now formed the Aam Aadmi Party (literally translated into ‘ordinary man’ party) and rely very heavily on social media to reach their constituency – the middle class. However, Kejriwal only has just over 300,000 followers on Twitter, especially when compared to BJP’s Modi or Congress’s Tharoor. Kejriwal’s erstwhile movement, India Against Corruption has under 1,000,000 likes on Facebook. For a movement that aims to represent all of the middle class, the numbers don’t yet show their true potential.

And in the end, that might well be the final analysis of social media in India right now. The numbers, while impressive, do not yet indicate deep engagement and involvement in the political sphere. In 2014, politicians might do well to remember a computer screen is no match for campaigning in the heat and dust of the smallest corners of the country. Because, truly, that’s where their people are.

http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2013/05/will-social-media-be-a-game-changer-in-indias-2014-elections/

Saradha Group scandal exposes ties between India’s media, politicians

The discovery of a financial scam at a company in India’s West Bengal state is shining a light on the relationship between politicians and media owners, Mahima Kaul reports.

The firm in question, Saradha Group, had risen to become a financial empire over the past eight years under boss and owner Sudipta Sen. The company has business interests ranging from construction to travel to exports and agriculture. When the “chit fund” scandal came to light — with an estimated loss of $4-6 billion (US) to investors — Sen fled to Jammu and Kashmir, where he was ultimately arrested.

A chit-fund scandal, or “cheat fund” as some sections of the media are calling it, operates like a ponzi scheme. Sen duped many small and middle class investors into giving him their life savings, with promises of great returns. He managed to evade the regulators by using a nexus of companies to launder the money. The money collected was used to recklessly invest in a range of industries — including a mismanaged media empire. The government of West Bengal has had to set up a $2.5 million fund to ensure that the small investors are not bankrupted.

In a letter to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Sen claims to have been misled by a group of individuals who cheated investors by using his name, unbeknownst to him. However, the letter also shows how political patronage is obtained through acquiring media houses.

Saradha Group owns 18 newspapers and TV channels in West Bengal and Assam. These include Bengal Post, Sakalbela, Kalam, Paroma, Azad Hind, Prabhat Varta, Seven Sisters Post – and the TV channels, Tara Musik, Tara Newz, South Asia TV, and Channel 10, all under the umbrella of Saradha Printing and Publishing Pvt Ltd.

As Indian media blog the Hoot reports, “many senior journalists then suspected that media ownership was a matter of business strategy to establish the company’s credentials and also a bid to emerge as the mouthpiece of the major political party and perhaps get benefits in return.”

This view is supported by BBC journalist Sudhir Bhowmik, who says he left a job with the Saradha Group after he was told to “go soft on some leaders.”

It appears that Sen bought and built a media empire, allegedly on the behest of politicians of the ruling Trinamool Congress party, to play the part of a proganda-spinning machine for the government. This is no small feat – the net worth requirement of an applicant seeking to launch a news channel had been raised by the government from approximately $555,500 to $3,703,000, ostensibly to keep away “fly by night” operators away. But since Sen had already raised his financial portfolio, by dubious financial practises as we know now, he was able to take this step to becoming a media baron.

The curious case of the Saradha Group media empire gets murkier as the story unravels. In his letter to the CBI, Sen also claims to have been regularly blackmailed by Kunal Ghosh and Srinjoy Bose — two sitting Trinamool Congress members of the Upper House — into setting up his news channels. He also says he paid Ghosh $28,000 USD a month. Ghosh, now on the back foot, claims that he was simply a “salaried employee” and that he had “no authority to sign cheques.”

Sen’s use of the media empire to build political clout and protection is now being outlined by the national media. Influential members of West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress party have been closely aligned with the media group. But some politicians are now distancing themselves from the group, despite having benefited from positive propaganda from its media outlets.

In India, which now has over 800 private satellite channels, media houses often favour particular political parties, and many are actually directed owned by politicians themselves. Amid growing unease, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has asked all channels to furnish details of their shareholding patterns and equity share. Both the ministry and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) have been looking to ways to ensure pluralism and diversity in the Indian media, and curbing monopolistic growth. They feel tracking ownership patterns might be one way of finding out which groups and individuals are involved in unethical behaviour like corporate and political lobbying, biased analysis and forecast in the political arena and sensationalism of news. The ministry has made it clear that if it finds any media group in violation of its license agreement – including shareholding patterns – it is ready to cancel licenses.

Meanwhile, another unfortunate result of the scandal is that more than 1,400 journalists are out of jobs, while some of Sen’s Channel 10 employees have filed a complaint with the police over non-payment of salaries by Sen and Ghosh.

http://uncut.indexoncensorship.org/2013/05/financial-scandal-exposes-ties-between-indias-media-politicians/

The big issues for Indian web users

Some of India’s most prominant internet writers, researchers and policy analysts came together in Bangalore on 9 April to discuss “Strengthening Freedom of Expression on the Internet in India”, organised by the Internet Democracy Project.

The subject has been intermittently making headlines in India, with a number of politically motivated arrests made under the Information Technology Act’s controversial Section 66a. Causing more confusion, in 2011, the Minister for Communications & Information Technology, Kapil Sibal, made headlines by asking social media intermediaries to take down “objectionable” content.

At the time, the content in question seemed to be mainly objectionable to to the government itself. The content in question seemed to be mainly objectionable to the government alone.

This caused a huge public uproar, and since then Sibal has exercised more caution, though still maintaining that “the country must have an enabling framework — rules and regulations must not come in the way of the growth of the net.”

As well as Index on Censorship, the roundtable in Bangalore brought together a number of actors, including analysts from social media giants Facebook and Google, as well as Change.org, Wikimedia India Foundation, Medianama, Digital Empowerment Foundation, Open Governance India, Knowledge Commons, Alternative Law Forum, Center for Internet and Society, Tactical Tech, researchers from IIM Bangalore and Aziz Premji University. Journalists from The Hindu, Hindustan Times, DNA and smaller media organisations like Oorvani Media, Mahiti and The Alternative also took part in the debate.

The overall discussion centered around a few key issues, the first being whether the law “protects” free speech as it stands today. Many of those present felt that while Section 66a of The Information Technology Act 2000, which protects against “annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred, or ill will…” has been misused in the past, it needs to be examined from different angles, such as protecting women from online abuse.

While some writers have outright rejected this argument, the Internet Democracy Project released a draft paper on the subject. In it, they revealed that women think of the internet — social media — as “the street” where they can be taunted and abused in a similar manner to real life. In fact, drawing on the experiences of writer Meena Kandasamy and singer Chinmayi Sripada, who have faced violent abuse on social networks, the panel discussed ways to fend off misogyny that did not involve the law. These included using humour, blocking people, ignoring the comments, and even asking or waiting for others to come to your defence.

Interestingly, many women who were questioned for the study revealed that they prefer not to go to their families to report the abuse, for fear that they would be told to stop spending so much time online. The women and their families also said they had little confidence in going to the police with the same complaints.

This led the panel to discuss beyond the validity of the law — and question the role and capacity of the police in enforcing controversial measures like Section 66a. Some felt that 95 per cent of police on the front lines were not even aware of free speech issues, or the law in question, while others believed that police reforms are the way forward.

Some were unsure if they wanted the police to be tech savvy in the future, suggesting that it could lead to more arrests than there are today. It was agreed that there needs to be more research on the law as it functions today, to understand the crucial role the police will play in upholding it, particularly regarding the role the judiciary currently plays.

The question of defamation was also raised, with some panelists believing that there needs to be a distinction between those who have a small number of followers versus those who have a large following. Can the punishment be the same, if the effect of their status update or tweet is not?

Other discussions assessed challenges to freedom of speech at state level rather than national level and whether or not the mainstream media is forcefully supportive of free speech on the internet. The panelists debated the issue of anonyminity, and whether it is the cause or the solution to some of the free speech issues we see today.

An issue was raised surrounding how internet users are not a core constituency for the government right now; a fact reflected in the budget of the Ministry of Information and Technology, which chooses to focus areas such as computer hardware.

Another question circulating the room was whether strict laws such as Section 66a were designed with the intention to shape the internet a certain way, so that future users simply fall into line. The government’s perspective on the internet’s purposes was also explored, examining whether the National Broadband Network, currently being laid out to connect rural India, was viewed simply as a delivery service platform or for two-way communication.

Two questions that prompted considerable debate were “what is the role — actual or desired — of non legal actors such as intermediaries, pressure groups; the public at large” and “what non-legal strategies can we develop to protect free speech and who should implement such strategies?”

Some suggestions were to try out a “naming and shaming” site or Tumblr account for hate speech, although there were doubts as to how effective it would be. Other panelists advised that intermediaries could reveal more data that could save the government from taking drastic measures — for example, if a certain video was not being heavily viewed from within India, then the government would not feel the need to censor/block a website as it does now.

It was clear that civil society members and even the intermediaries are grappling with the same questions as the government. While a section of Indian society is firmly opposed to laws like Section 66a, there are discussion platforms to help understand how to operate within the constraints of the law.

 http://uncut.indexoncensorship.org/2013/04/the-big-issues-for-indian-web-users/

India: Kumar versus the censor

Despite making two award-winning documentaries, filmmaker Ashvin Kumar has faced difficulty having his films shown. Mahima Kaul reports on his battle with India’s Censor Board

Indian filmmaker Ashvin Kumar is in a curious position. His documentary, Inshallah Kashmir, recently won this year’s India’s National Award for “Best Investigative Film”. Kumar also won the 2012 National Award for “Best Film on Social Issues”, for his documentary Inshallah Football. Despite the press and adulation he has received, Kumar is still struggling to have his films screened on TV. Even the public service broadcaster refuses to air his films as they have received an “A” (Adult) certificate — a “polite” form of censorship, as Kumar told Index.

Kumar’s story begins in Kashmir, the backdrop for both of his films. His first film, tracking the journey of young footballers trying to arrange visas to attend a tournament in Spain, exposed raw nerves within Kashmiri society. What should be a simple process for any talented footballer became an ordeal for one young boy, who was refused a visa for having a surrendered militant for a father. Out of this story came Kumar’s next documentary, a raw and in-depth look at the Kashmiri people, including those who participated in militancy against the Indian government in the 1990s.

When Kumar applied to the Censor Board to approve Inshallah Football in 2010, his application got rejected outright, despite an early indication that he would get approval. This, after he had been assured by the Board that certification was only a formality at this point. In 2011, the Censor Board eventually awarded Kumar’s film Adult (A) certification. Confused, Kumar filed a RTI (Right to Information) request and was told that the Board felt the characters were not authentic. The board also felt Kumar’s film was too critical of the government.

What bothers Kumar is the “quasi ban” that results from the A-certificate, a decision normally reserved for feature films with gross violence and nudity. The film, which amazingly went from censored by the government to being honoured by it, can’t be shown on TV because of its alleged adult content. At the time Kumar stated in an extremely frank interview:

“The cynical view is that they are now trying to come across as more equal and liberal than they are. Some other filmmakers I’ve spoken to said this is exactly what they do. They first ban it, and then when they see that public opinion is not working in favour, they give it a National Award. I hope we got the National Award on the merit of the film and not because of political reasons.”

Worried that his next venture would be met with the same fate, especially since Inshallah Kashmir deals directly with militancy and its fallouts in Kashmir, Kumar decided to release it online for one day, 26 January 2012, India’s Republic Day. At the moment, the film has both an “A” certification and despite its honour from the government, it still cannot be aired on TV. Kumar has now put the film online for free.

The exchanges with the Censor Board has made Kumar and others question both its role and its intentions. Many filmmakers feel that the censor board’s excessive and unnecessary interference has resulted in “pre-censorship” for filmmakers. Kumar told Index that, as a result, he feels like movies from this generation will not reflect today’s realities, and because of censorship “we are losing precious documentation of where we are as a civilisation.”

An online petition to “Save Indie Cinema” is challenging this status quo. The petition, which includes some of India’s most respected names in film, is trying to draw attention to the fact that indie cinema is being marginalised by both the government and distributors. They feel the government should budget for exhibition space for smaller movies, and even A-rated movies should be screened by the public broadcaster, albeit at a later time at night. The other complaint is that some of India’s biggest blockbusters, shown freely on both state and private channels, get “U” (universal) ratings by the Censor Board, despite containing violence and vulgarity. And distributors often relegate indie films to awkward showtimes, therefore sidelining them.

Perhaps as a response to this, the government has recently announced that  National Award winning films will be broadcast on Doordarshan, an Indian public broadcaster. They also added that they will consider screening them in commercial theaters.

For Kumar, this is a moment for cautious joy. “I hope this is true,” he wrote on Facebook about the news.

http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2013/04/award-winning-indian-filmmaker-fights-back-against-censorship/

India has an internet problem

In a discussion on withdrawing the controversial Section 66A of the Information Technology Act 2000, member of parliament from Karnataka, M. Rama Jois, proclaimed that, “this law was passed in a hurry and we are worrying at leisure!” Hurry is putting it loosely. On the last day of the Winter Session of the Lok Sabha (India’s lower house of Parliament) in December 2008, seven bills were passed in seven minutes, without any discussion on them.

Section 66A, as has been widely reported, allows for “punishment for sending offensive messages through communication service”, which include messages that cause annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred and even ill will. As a result, there have been arrests across India on the basis of a Facebook update, tweet and even sharing a cartoon online. Experts have panned Section 66A across India, and student led Public Interest Litigation (PIL) challenged its constitutionality in the Supreme Court stating that Section 66A curbs freedom of speech and expression and violates Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution. In response, the government issued an advisory asking state governments not to allow police to make arrests using this section unless authorized by a senior officer, both at city and district levels.

The court of public opinion has been firmly against the government’s position that the enforcement agencies are to blame for misuse of Section 66A, not the wording of the IT Act. In an interview in November 2012, the Minister for Information and Technology, Kapil Sibal categorically stated, “there is nothing unconstitutional about the Section.”

However, a host of civil society actors and politicians have continued to challenge this school of thought. In his Private Members Bill in the Lok Sabha, Member of Parliament Jay Panda has stated that within Section 66A, “clause (a) of Section 66A uses expressions such as ‘grossly offensive’ and ‘menacing’ which are not only impossible to define but also highly subjective by individual standards. Clause (b) prescribes penalties for offences such as ‘annoyance’, ‘criminal intimidation’, ‘insult’ and promoting ‘hatred’ or ‘ill- will’ between groups. Prescribing the same punishment for ‘annoyance’, as well as ‘criminal intimidation, by bundling of disparate terms within the same clause is bound to lead to confusion and misuse.”

Similarly, Pranesh Prakash of the Center for Internet and Society called Section 66A “patently in violation of Art. 19(1)(a) of our Constitution.” In a detailed note, he explains that the origin of Section 66 A(c) –“for the purpose of causing annoyance or inconvenience or to deceive or to mislead the addressee or recipient about the origin of such messages” -- can be found in the then Minister A. Raja’s desire to respond to an observation by the Standing Committee on Information Technology that the Act in its current state did not have any provisions for spam. If this is indeed the case, as was suggested during an Index event in New Delhi by panelist Ajit Balakrishnan, founder of web portal rediff.com and part of an expert committee that worked on the Information Technology Bill, when he said, “government officials have genuine problems with phrasing,” then clearly the problem with the Bill lies in its language. However, he has also reasoned that the Bill was passed without debate as it was in Parliament only a month after the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, because it gave the state “requisite power” to deal with Information Age challenges.

This March, the discussion in the Rajya Sabha (Upper House) of Minister of Parliament, P. Rajeev’s Private Member Bill to withdraw Section 66A revealed very interesting aspects of both sides of this debate. One of the main criticisms this section has faced is that it puts harsher punishments for the same crime committed offline. For example, under the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the charge of defamation carries a maximum jail sentence of two years in contrast to the three years Section 66A carries for the same offence. There are other examples. However, in his rebuttal, Information and Technology Minister, Kapil Sibal, stated in the house that, “the print media gets extinguished. You read the newspaper the next day, and it is over. The social media is a continuing process. You will have that byte on the site for months. In a sense, it is a continuing offence, not so in the print media. It has a life of its own, not so in the print media. So, should the same norm be applied to the social media as we do in the real world?”

Taking on the government’s suggestion that the main problem with Section 66A lies in its proper implementation, MP R. Chadrasekhar told the House, “to say that it is only a law enforcement implementation problem, is mischaracterizing the problem. Of course, there is the issue of abuse by agencies, as recent incidents have shown. The police machinery is not equipped with legal tools to interpret the statutes in online speech cases and cave in to political pressure often.” However, Vice Chairman Dr. E.M. Sudarsana Natchiappan, countered this thought with his defence of the Section, saying that misuse of all laws take place and “therefore, what one can do is, one can, somehow, rectify the approach of those who execute the law rather than deleting those Sections from the Statute Book.”

The robust debate led to P. Rajeev withdrawing his Resolution as Minister Kapil Sibal assured the House that the resolution will be taken up after the Supreme Court of India rules on the Public Interest Litigation currently challenging the Section 66A.

Over four years after the Act was passed, and countless arrests and misguided blocking of websites later, Section 66A lies firmly in place in India law. If the government holds its position that Section 66A is constitutional and needs only proper enforcement, then there is something to worry about. Some experts, like Ajit Balakrishnan, believe it takes 25 years for the police at the lowest level to understand the workings of any law, and according to the Indian government itself, the entire country will be connected to the internet well before then. Perhaps, the Supreme Court really is the last hope; else this debate can be expected to snowball in the coming years.

Edited version at:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/openindia/mahima-kaul/india-has-internet-problem

Will new plans for a digital rural India hit or miss?

Since the internet was introduced  in 1995 in India’s major cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkatta, it has steadly grown in urban areas. By 1998, India has its first Internet Service Provider, Sify (later sold for $155 million). By 2001, India has its first crime branch. By 2005, the country had over 200,000 internet cafes. Facebook arrived in 2006, and in 2009, the government drafted policy on Indian language internet domain names.

As individuals in cities stock up on phones, laptops and tablets, accessing free wifi at more and more public places, the question of digital access in rural India still remains. Over the last decade, The National e-Governance Plan sought to bridge this gap by establishing a Common Service Center in each village. A CSC, as it is known, is a public-private partnership and operates as a one-stop hub for online government services (e-delivery) such as payment of certain utility bills, birth and death certificates, university exam results and such.

However, the overall experiment has revealed that the CSCs do not function equally. People do not need to use these government facilities more than once a month (if that), so unless the private entrepreneur is savvy enough to generate other income from the hub, it is not profitable to run. As well as this, irregular electricity supplies often restrict the timings of the CSC. And finally, while a public office with computers serves some purpose, it cannot substitute having personal connections in people’s homes.

This is why the government of India proposed a National Broadband Network, which will essentially lay out a fibre-optic cable across the country to achieve last mile connectivity. The idea behind this is simply that the network, like roads, will be provided by the government to then encourage private operations to start services those previously untouched areas. The government has committed about $4 billion to build the network that is projected to connect 250,000 village headquarters. One can only hope that it does not become mired in allegations of corruption, like so many other government projects in India.

To understand India, you first need to look at some numbers. As of September 2012, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India revealed that in a country of 1.24 billion people, there are a total of 937.70 million telecom subscribers, including both wireless and wireline. Of these, 595.69 million or 63.5 per cent are from urban areas, while the rest, 342.01 million or 36.47 per cent are from the rural areas. The overall teledensity of the country is 77.04 per cent, with urban pockets at a whopping 161.13 per cent compared to 40.36 per cent in rural areas. Finally, the total number of internet subscribers in India (excluding those who use it on their mobile phones) is 24.01 million, a 5.97 per cent jump from the previous quarter. Some studies put mobile 3G subscriptions at 30 million, as of late 2011.

The figures reveal two important details. The first is that while there are many subscribers for telecom, that does not translate to each citizen owning a phone. In fact, the discrepancy between urban and rural teledensity, compounded by the very low broadband penetration in the country all point to the woefully inadequate job by both government and markets to connect much of rural India.
The solution to digital constraints in rural India has been one of hits and misses in the recent past. In terms of policy, India’s objectives have remained to some degree, quite ambitious. The 2012 Telecom Policy aims to take rural teledensity to 60 per cent by 2017 and one hundred per cent by 2020. The methods, however, are being changed as we speak.

In 2002, the government had constituted a Universal Service Obligation Fund, with the overall intention of encouraging private telecom operators to service remote and less lucrative markets. It did not work, as many service operations opted to pay a penalty instead of rolling out service in commercially unviable regions. For example, villages in India can often have only 500 residents, or be so poor that companies cannot even be guaranteed a minimum number of subscribers to justify their spending on infrastructure. At the same time, the high volume of mobile phones and internet subscriptions in the urban areas suggest that the market has successfully serviced cities, but is not incentivised enough to reach the deepest pockets of India.

While the government will be watched closely to see if it can deliver the network infrastructure it has promised to rural India on time, another facet of an inclusive digital development needs to be kept in mind. Right now, the internet in India serves populations who can read and write in some of the dominant languages including English, Hindi and some prominent state languages. However, as homes in smaller corners of the country get connected, everything from keyboards to content will have to cater to local dialects.

At the same time, outside of big e-commerce portals, projects that serve the smallest customer will be the only way the internet becomes relevant and constructive to rural India. Else, it will solely become a vehicle to youtube videos, Bollywood and cricket updates and let’s face it, porn.

When the final tabulation is done, it seems the government of India has understood all too well that leaving last mile of internet connectivity to commercial companies is not a viable strategy. Another reason they are taking up the challenge with a degree of renewed vigor is that they have pinned high hopes on their ability to deliver government services and crucial information in a more efficient manner through the net. To that end, the information highway needs to be established, so that the distance between the digital haves and digital have-nots does not increase any further.

The recent $1 million TED prize-winning education researcher Dr Sugata Mitra’s ground-breaking project, Hole in the Wall, demonstrates that all that is really needed to spur learning is access to information. In this case, Dr Mishra left an internet connected PC in a hole in a wall, and left to their own devices, slum children quickly learned how to use the computer and go online. Imagine the possibilities if they can grow up as digital natives.

http://uncut.indexoncensorship.org/2013/03/will-new-plans-for-a-digital-rural-india-hit-or-miss/

How India censored one of its own websites

India’s University Grants Commission (UGC), amongst its other responsibilities, determines and maintains the standards of institutions of higher education in India. As a part of this duty, it had warned students that an institution called IIPM (Indian Institute of Planning and Management) is not a recognised university and does not have the right to issue certificates. The message on the commission’s website has now been blocked, following an interim court order by the Gwalior High Court in relation to a case filed by one of the companies owned by IIPM’s head — Arindam Chaudhuri — seeking to block defamatory content against his institution. The UGC site is not the only website affected by the order. On 15 February, the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) requested Internet Service Licensees to block 73 URLs carrying content criticising IIPM. The sites included news websites such as The Times of India, Wall Street Journal, The Indian Express, Firstpost, Outlook magazine, Economic Times, Caravan magazine, the popular blog Kafila, and even some satirical websites like Faking News and The UnReal Times. The court blocked a total of 61 URLs.

The court did not inform affected parties of the block order. The founder of Kafila, Shivam Vij gave a statement to Firstpost on the matter saying that the move was “against the principle of natural justice. The court blocked the URL of my blog without giving me a chance to defend myself.”

Indian news agencies and think-tanks have been questioning the method and the necessity of such an order by the court, and whether or not it opened the door to censorship. Noting the value given to free speech by courts in democracies, experts at the Center for Internet and Society has expressed fears that “the court order has moved away from the settled principles of law while awarding an interim injunction for blocking of content related to IIPM”. The hurry in which the court ordered websites’ blocking is worrying, and even India’s government is planning to challenge the court order, as it involved one of its own sites (UGC).

The lack of transparency in this action also points to two facets of the fight for online freedom in India. The first is that internet service providers are the vehicle through which sites can be blocked when specific sites do not comply. In an interview with Firstpost, Chaudhuri claimed that Google had failed to comply with a previous court order to remove “defamatory” content about his business. The other is that despite the length to which Chaudhuri has gone to curb any criticism of his institution, in a wired world it is next to impossible. Hackers have not only crashed his website, but social media users have also slammed Chaudhuri’s move to censor the web, and #IIPM trended on Twitter for days following the incident. They have, in turn, been copying the blocked text of censored articles online.
In the meantime, it has now been revealed that IIPM is actually licensed under the Shops and Establishments Act, rather than the UGC. It will be tough to stop this information from going viral, but Chaudhuri can certainly try.

http://uncut.indexoncensorship.org/2013/02/india-iipm-ugc/