Videos

Video

Darshana Mandrekar a participant at the Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Program speaks about her inspiration to edit Konkani Wikipedia.

Video

Darshan Kandolkar, talks about his experience with Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Process and Konkani translation sprint.

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Konkani Wikipedia Editor, Varsha Kavlekar, talks about her experience with Konkani Wikipedia Incubator.

Video

Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team was there in Goa University to conduct a four day long Konkani Wikipedia workshop for the MA Konkani students. During these days Subhashish Panigrahi of CIS-A2K caught up with Dr. Priyadarshini Tadkodkar, Head, Konkani department of Goa University and asked about the brief history of Konkani language. In this video Dr. Tadkodkar shares the origin and movements that has affected Konkani, influence of other languages on it and the documentation process of the language. The Census Department of India, 2001 figures put the number of Konkani speakers in India as 2,489,015. Out of these, around 6 lakh were in Goa, 7 lakh in Karnataka, 3 lakh in Maharashtra, 6 lakh in Kerala and rest live outside of India, either as expatriates or citizens of other countries (NRIs).

Video

Click to read more about the event on Leuphana University.

Video

The various stakeholders of the Leuphana Orientation Week 2013 allow the organisation and proceeding of this one-of-a-kind project week. A combination of lecturers, experts, tutors, mentors and a high-class panel of judges, accompany the first-year students throughout these intensive days at the Leuphana University by informing, advising and supporting them.

The 1600 newly arrived students at the University will be separated into two cohorts for the Leuphana Orientation Week, each with 60 teams. All 120 teams will each have a tutor at their disposal, who will accompany them through the project days, lead them through the tasks and help them when questions or need for clarification arise.

Additionally, the teams will be supported by a total of 50 mentors and 25 presentation experts.

Aside from tutors, mentors, lecturers and experts, there is also a team of 30 persons composed of staff and students who contribute to the Leuphana Orientation Week 2013.

“What constitutes change? What are the intentions that make change possible? Who are the actors involved?” These are the questions with which Nishant Shah opens the thought piece ‘Whose Change is it Anyway’, a series of reflections and provocations exploring the future of citizen action and digital technologies in emerging information societies. The project, in collaboration with the HIVOS Knowledge Program, begins a process of unlearning conventional understandings of ‘change’ and redefining it in the light of less visible narratives of political, social and cultural transformation. Three pivots of analysis are at the backbone of this piece. First, it locates change by looking at the historicity and stressing the role of invisible crises that lead to digital activism. Second, it moves on to unpack our definition of change and the language framing activism as system-overhaul practices rather reformative experiments. Third, it looks at the outcomes of change proposing a redefinition of failure that enables us to recognize instances of change outside of what is dubbed ‘successful’ citizen action. All in all, the piece is reflective rather than conclusive and when paired up with contemporary events of political and social change, it serves as a framework to challenge existing paradigms and overlooked narratives.

This was precisely my experience when at the end of August I came across the Paraguayan crucifix protest in the BBC News website: the story of eight bus drivers who led by union leader Juan Villalba, crucified themselves onto wooden crosses to protest against labour exploitation in Asuncion.[1] In spite of its international media coverage, the protest has to this day failed to mobilize digitally fluent Paraguayan and global netizens into joining the ranks[2] of their plea, keeping protesters at the fringes of the online sphere. This is surprising compared to other publicized Paraguayan protests, such as Pro-Ache Tribe campaigns back in 2011[3] and the anti-corruption protests earlier this year,[4] which featured politically active students mobilizing through technology to influence public policy in Paraguay.

Before jumping into deeming the crucifix protest a success or a failure, I would like to refer back to the first axis of analysis in Shah’s work and discuss the history, context and structures in which the intent for change was crafted. I will follow Anat-Ben David´s framework based on her research on the geopolitics of digital spaces, and look at how “hybrid geographical and digital spaces” intertwine with “situated knowledges and practices” in order to localize change (2011). I will first focus on the political and social context of Paraguay and how it framed two online campaigns:  the Aché Tribe campaign in 2011 and the anti-corruption campaign in June 2013. Then, I will move on to the symbolic and knowledge context in Paraguay and how it determined the outcome of the offline crucifix protest in August 2013. The objective is to identify the factors that drove the first two issues into the online sphere vis-a-vis those that impeded the latter from making that transition. This will be instrumental to understand what —and what not— activates youth mobilization and citizen action in Paraguay and how their vision of change aligns with their experience in crises.

Political and social context of Paraguay

Landlocked, Catholic and mestizo, Paraguay was under a 30 year oppressive dictatorship that finally came to an end in 1989. Since then, the succeeding thirteen years of democracy have been characterized by citizen upheavals, as younger generations are breaking the silence and conformity of older times (Zavala, 2011). Among the most pressing issues addressed by coup attempts, strikes and protests,[5] corruption remains the standing evil in the Paraguayan political system. Seventy-eight per cent of its citizens perceive the government as ineffective at fighting corruption,[6] and with good reason. Paraguay is ranked as the second most corrupt country in Latin America and 24th in the world, according to Transparency International.[7] The Paraguayan head of Seeds for Democracy, Marta Ferrara commented on corruption being absolute in the public sector due to the legacy of dictatorship, and hence called civil society groups to exert more pressure on the government to fight it.[8] This sentiment is consistent with the loss of faith in democracy in Latin America to which research has attributed the rise of the left and a growing desire for social change (Barret et al, 2008).

Another important contextual question to consider on a par is how relevant are digital technologies in Paraguay to mobilize change. The country has one of the lowest rates of internet penetration in the continent at 27.1 per cent, [9] suggesting that the remaining 70 per cent is comprised of disconnected Guarani voices whose stories remain untold. This is in a country with a 52.4 Gini coefficient, where 40 per cent of citizens live below the poverty line and 56 per cent of the income is controlled by the upper 20 per cent.[10]

Delving deeper into this divide, we can infer that the success behind the digitally enabled protests comes as a result of socioeconomic inequality and an alignment of the interests of this privileged class and the issues behind their actions. Based on this profile, my follow up questions are a) what is the common thread joining the online campaigns that is absent from the crucifix protest and b) how this digital class is defining these priorities.

The anti-corruption discourse
The legacy of the dictatorship and the anti-corruption discourse is a strong response to the first question. While the concept of corruption is severely stigmatized in society, it is also very loosely defined (Harrison, 2006), making it a versatile stimuli for change. Harrison states that in developing countries, the focus remains on the perception of the relationship between the state and those they are meant to be serving (2006), while for Haller and Shore it also refers to money transactions within power relationships that stratify and exclude in any structure (2005). In this way, the concept remains all-encompassing, perception-based and relevant to the democracy crisis in Paraguay. Hence, protesting against it is locally appropriate, and fits in the moral project Sampson dubbed the global anti-corruption industry (2010). He argues that condemning corruption is now a global trend grounded on uncontested ‘good governance´ and integrity values. Its rhetoric has been mainstreamed and infused with a “feel good character” that turns it into an appealing campaign, easy to identify with, simple to embark on and consistently present in the human-rights discourse both in the online and offline sphere.

The anti-corruption protest in June and the Pro-Aché mobilization in 2011 fit this criterion. In the first case, 3000 Paraguayans took to the streets inspired by neighbouring Brazil´s anti-corruption protests[11] to condemn a new retirement law project for parliamentarians that allowed them to retire after only ten years of public service. Framed as an indicator of state inefficiency, the online campaign PorUnParaguayMejor [For a better Paraguay] went viral compelling students to mobilize against the project in Asuncion.[12] The event was reported immediately by international media publicizing Paraguayan youth as revolutionary agents of change.[13]

	Above: "[Parlamentarians] are retiring in 10 years and demanding full pension (100% of their salaries). Paraguay, take the streets and denounce them", (pictured by Global Voices online: http://bit.ly/1aXGzA7)

The second case was also based on state inefficiency experienced by a specific community: the Aché indigenous tribe. The dispute was a consequence of the Ministry of Environment dishonouring an agreement and not granting property titles of the land Finca 470 to the tribe. As a result, a group of young Paraguayans created social media accounts to organize food and clothes drives, mobilize protests, attract further attention from the press and communicate horizontally with government authorities. Due to their extensive lobbying, the authorities acceded to declare the land an indigenous reserve for the Aché, making it another hailed example of successful technology usage by youth (Zavala, 2011).[14]

On the other hand, the second online protest had a more altruistic tone. The members of the digitally privileged 30 per cent, in spite of not being directly implicated in the conflict, took the disconnected group’s plea and mobilized support networks on their behalf. Although the Aché did not request this intervention, nor intend to utilize technology during their camped protests, the digital group’s strategy was largely more effective at bringing the issues to the attention of media and the government. The successful mainstreaming of the Aché’s story upon being digitalized questions the extent to which staged protests will remain appropriate in information societies vis-à-vis online campaigning.

These developments show how the anti-corruption discourse not only mobilizes citizens in Paraguay but also their power and resources. Therefore, if corruption is the common thread we are looking for, to what extent is it applicable to other social conflicts? Will good governance values always trump individual pursuits of assurance? In the following section I will return to the crucifix protests in the light of the aforementioned and address non-geographical spaces of knowledge and practices, as recommended by Ben-Davis. This will shed light on this question and on the spectrum of citizen motivations framing how digital actors articulate change.

Knowledge, Symbolisms and Visibility

Yochai Benkler describes our networked society as an economy centered on information, cultural production and the manipulation of symbols (2006). These contain and pertain to different ways of understanding the world. In the optimistic view of Benkler, digital technologies enable these views to circulate freely in our network; amplifying all voices, however, as seen in the case of Paraguay, information is being produced by one sector of society that determines and constrains the visibility of other worldviews; reproducing socioeconomic inequalities in the digital sphere. In this section I will look at how different articulations of the present and the conflict between spaces of knowledge and symbolisms derive into different ways of telling the same story, in the light of the extremely visual crucifix protest.

The protest had a very different impact in the national scene, as opposed to its portrayal in international media. This is because crucifixes had already been staged in the past by people of indigenous descent[15] or union workers[16] to call for the attention of the Paraguayan state. Being a predominantly Catholic country, utilizing the charged image of the crucifixion of Jesus is the equivalent of cultural bandwagoning on its symbols of self-sacrifice and martyrdom. Eric Tyler reflecting on activism martyrs in the light of the role Khalid Saed in the Arab Spring, called them “catalysts with a profound amplifying impact when combined with the viral force of technology”.[17] Amy Sample Ward added another lesson from Egypt, noting that you do not need a high penetration rate in order for massive impact to occur, “as long as the community is connected”.[18] If the digital class had taken on the bus drivers case in the same way they supported the Aché, mobilization would have been likely. However, the cause did not resonate with the Paraguayan digital public. This lack of connection did not derive from the digital divide, but instead from the long-standing conflict between the transport sector and the citizens.

There are several points to be made about this case of citizen inaction. First, the citizen-market crisis played a large role in creating apathy around the crucifix protest. Shah states that technologies of the market must “assure us of the future in terms of material resources and infrastructures upon which happiness depend” (2013), which was not being delivered by the CETRAPAM (Transport Companies of the Metropolitan Area) in the eyes of the citizen. The CETRAPAM director is perceived as corrupt and inefficient[19] and earlier that month a transportation strike left 700,000 immobilized.[20] These incidents resulted in a citizen online campaign demanding a reliable and transparent service from the companies[21] having anti-corruption, once again, at the core of their claims.

This background determined how national media reproduced the crucifix protest story. ABC, one of the largest news corporations in the country, covered the story portraying drivers as ‘aichinjaranga’s” (‘poor little thing’ in Guaraní), who were appealing to “wake people up through pity and pressure, not resources.[22] On the other hand, the most popular entry on the topic in Crónicas Ciudadanas (ABC’s citizen journalism forum) reads: “We [Luque citizens] are tired. These drivers waste our time and we are sick of it.”[23] The digital class, having the power and resources to mobilize, chose to remain idle in order to disempower a group that has been causing precariousness in their present and future establishing a hierarchy of citizen priorities. By withdrawing their support, the drivers are now left with offline strategies and conventional protest tools to address their demands with only the support of their immediate community.[24] It is unclear whether this will represent a disadvantage for their ability to create structural change, but it does show that internal citizen crises leads to inequality of strategies and resources for mobilization.

Second, this case also highlights the dark side of Benkler’s argument in favour of citizen information production. He claims that citizen journalism curbs the power away from mass media and hands it over to autonomous citizens who can now exchange information, making them less susceptible to manipulation by the owners of communications infrastructure and media (2006). In the case of Paraguay, this power has been handed over to the digitally fluent who are only putting forward causes aligned with their interests and value scheme.Issues of access and digital inclusion come afloat, as the disconnected status of the crucifix protesters keeps them out of social spaces of debate and political conversation. This deems social status a determining factor between “statements that are heard and those that wallow in obscurity” (Benkler, 2006) and a serious constraint for the fulfillment of the drivers’ capabilities and freedoms.

Third, the use of symbols is effective depending on the audience, as shown by the narrative of international news corporations. The use of crucifixes came across as an ancient and peculiar tool protest for western media — especially in the digital era— earning them a space in the global public’s interest eighteen days into the protest. As commented by Al Jazeera’s opinion columnist Courtney Martin, in the light of the Tibetan self-immolations in February,[25]“in a world that tends to shine new power [on] online activism only”, other people need to resort to “attention-getting schemes on the hopes of calling attention to issues that remain unresolved”.[26]

The highly visual crucifixes caught the attention of the international media, yet the focus remained on the props instead of the underlying issues around union workers’ rights. This was evident on the picture included by the CNN, showing the workers lined up on their crosses lying next to a coffin claiming that this will become their "final resting place" if their demands were not met;[27] adding to the thriller effect of what is in fact a social justice crisis.

Crucified bus drivers in Paraguay (pictured by CNN International), http://bit.ly/1fpxKvs

In regards to the audience’s response, I would dare to speculate that the absence of the “language of revolution” that surrounds hyped narratives around digital activism (such as the June anti-corruption campaign accounts) played a role in the inactivity from international human-rights activism communities. Being a global audience “engaged with a spectacle of the rise of the citizen” (Shah, 2013), information circulating through mass media is either discarding or othering the less attractive, under-the-radar citizen struggles that do not fit this sale pitch. If a show must be staged in order to attain global attention, it is only natural to wonder if this plot will require a dramatic twist to become viral, one of the key ingredients for effective information dissemination according to Mary Joyce (2010). Having the protesters reach “the end” in order to achieve attention and support, is evidence of some of the morbid criterion steering our motivations for change.

Conclusion

This analysis localized some of the invisible conflicts underpinning action for change in Paraguay. Rather than focusing on a specific cause, such as workers’ rights; through a particular method, say crucifixions; I have looked at the structures framing the understandings around citizen action. It attempted to go beyond the spectacle of digital mobilization and instead look at two spaces: the geopolitical context of Paraguay and the symbolic knowledge framing the development of the crucifix protest in Asuncion, and how the bus drivers envisioned their future before and after the protest.

The Paraguayan political and social imaginary and their understanding of change are infused with the historicity of corruption. As explored in the first section, campaigning against corruption in Paraguay has risen as a convenient check-and-balance, citizen-led strategy to demand transparency and accountability from state and market actors. It fosters values of responsible citizenship and is endorsed by the national and international community. The prevalence of this discourse, even if it worked against the crucifix protest, is an indicator that ‘making change’ is not necessarily understood as a practice of material transformation in Paraguay, but that is has been legitimized at the stage of awareness and political engagement without tying citizens into long-term advocacy efforts.

The actions and reactions around the crucifix protest varied in the online and the offline sphere. In the online realm, the story was orchestrated by the group with access to information and communication technologies. The bus drivers, having remained at the fringes of digital production, had no control whatsoever of how their narrative was shaped by citizen journalists, national or international media. This was reflected in the offline sphere, where the lack of support to the protesters was a result of market-citizen conflicts and the inability of the crucifix symbolisms to speak to an urban population. These factors also show how socioeconomic divides at the political and knowledge levels were digitalized, determining information production, dissemination and reproduction as well as responses to the protesters’ narratives in the long-run.

In conclusion, this analysis has offered a broader view of how change is understood, in terms of the socioeconomic and information constraints in the making of change in Paraguay. Altruistic activism is only possible when the cause being fought for does not jeopardize the interests and assurances of a powerful class who is in control of the resources for online mobilization, in spite of the social justice nature of the claim. Some questions remain unresolved, particularly in regards to how digital activity is overshadowing offline initiatives in a spectacle driven environment. An interesting research avenue relevant to the larger project of ‘Whose Change is it Anyway?’ would be to collect narratives and stories of change that gauge the relevance of offline protests, to understand if they can remain relevant and appropriate in information societies and whether we, as an audience and potential supporters, are only defining change and citizen action in light of its digital possibilities.

[1]. “Sacked Paraguay bus drivers stage crucifixion protest” BBC News Latin America & Caribbean. August 28, 2013, accessed August 30, 2013, http://bbc.in/17n5NSm.

[2]. “Choferes de la linea 30 en huelga” ABC Color, September 4, 2013. Accessed September 6^th, 2013, http://bit.ly/1ffyGp3.

[3]. “Indígenas Ache Acampan frente a SEAM y piden transferencia tierras ancestrales” Ultima Hora. March 14th, 2011. Accessed September 18th, http://bit.ly/15aszv5.

[4]. Agencia EFE, “Protestas contra presunta corrupción en Paraguay”, Caracol Radio Colombia. June 22, 2013, accessed August 30,2013, http://bit.ly/1aPHfEn.

[5]. BBC Timeline: Paraguay. Last modified July 3^rd, 2012, http://bbc.in/B6UFV.

[6]. Alexander E.M. Hess and Michael Sauter. “The Most Corrupt Countries in the World”, 24/7: Wall Street: Insightful Analysis and Commentary for U.S. & Global Equity Investors. July 11, 2013. Accessed August 30, 2013, http://bit.ly/16jVxrE.

[7]. Corruption Perceptions Index 2012”, http://bit.ly/TBjshd.

[8]. “Paraguay’s Cartes: The man to lead anti-corruption efforts?” Thomson Reuters Foundation, May 3^rd, 2013. Accessed: September 10, 2013, http://bit.ly/1aXTd28.

[9]. "Percentage of Individuals using the Internet 2000-2012", International Telecommunications Union (Geneva), June 2013, accessed August 30, 2013, http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/statistics/2013/Individuals_Internet_2000-2012.xls.

[10].The World Bank “Poverty Gap at the Poverty Line” Catalogue Sources: World Development Indicators. Accessed September 10, 2013 http://bit.ly/14oMRDI.

[11]. RT Actualidad, “La ola de protestas de Brasil ‘rompe fronteras’ y ya salpica a Paraguay” RT Noticias, June 22, 2013, accessed August 30,2013, http://bit.ly/1aBAqqj.

[12]. Agencia EFE, “Protestas contra presunta corrupción en Paraguay”, Caracol Radio Colombia. June 22, 2013, accessed August 30, 2013, http://bit.ly/1aPHfEn.

[13]. Gabriela Galilea “The Brazil Effect: Thousands Protest for a Better Change” Global Voices English June 26, 2013. Accessed August 30, 2013, http://bit.ly/15FKwAW.

[14]. For further information on the Pro-Aché online campaign, refer to Maria del Mar Zavala’s essay: Youth and Technology: An Unstoppable Force.

[15]. Protesters in Paraguay staged a public crucifixion in the past calling for a jailed former army general General Lino Oviedo to be set free. “Paraguay man crucified in public” BBC News November 30, 2006. Accessed on September 10, 2013, http://bbc.in/1aPI7Zq. Also see "Homeless in Paraguay protest with Crucifixion” Cleveland News. August 6^th, 2009. Accessed September 20, 2013, http://bit.ly/1gGyZHk.

[16]. A bus driver crucified himself for more than 10 hours demanding the recognition of his labor union. “Se crucifico para lograr el reconocimiento sindical” ABC Color, July 6, 2013. Accessed on September 10, 2013, http://bit.ly/1buNKiL.

[17]. Mary Joyce, January 27, 2012 comment on Arab Spring: “The Meta-Activism Community Reflects” Meta-Activism Blog, http://bit.ly/wfXhiW.

[18]. Mary Joyce, comment on Arab Spring.

[19]. 40 companies went on strike demanding further subsidies from the government, paralyzing public transport in Asuncion and leaving almost 700,000 immobilized. As a result, citizens organized a mobilization through Facebook to denounce corruption in the CETRPAM and demand an efficient transportation system, http://bit.ly/15I7Mnl.

[20]. Gabriela Galilea, “Public Transit Strike Paralyzes Paraguay” Global Voices English. Translated by Victoria Robertson. August 8, 2013. Accessed on September 10, 2013, http://bit.ly/1bdllum.

[21]. Gabriela Galilea, “Public Transit Strike Paralyzes Paraguay”.

[22]. “Huelguistas quieren despertar lástima según gerente de Línea 30”  ABC Color, September 4, 2013. Accessed on September 10, 2013, http://bit.ly/1ffyGp3.

[23]. ABC Color “Choferes de la linea 30 en Huelga”.

[24]. “Sindicalistas de Paraguay fueron recibidos por el presidente tras jornadas de protestas” Telesur, September 4, 2013. Accessed on September 10, 2013. http://bit.ly/14kntkF.

[25]. “The 100^th Self-Immolation in Tibet – A case for the world to answer” Central Tibetan Administration, February 14, 2013. Accessed on September 10, 2013, http://bit.ly/X65jvA.

[26]. Courtney E Martin “Building a slower, longer fire among the digital flares” Al Jazeera English, February 4, 2013. Accessed on August 30, 2013, http://aje.me/X9YNDj.

[27]. Rafael Romo “Fired Paraguayan bus drivers crucify themselves in protest” CNN International. August 31, 2013. Accessed August 31, 2013, http://bit.ly/1fpxKvs.

Sources

1. Ben-David, Anat “Digital Natives and the return of the local cause” Digital AlterNatives with a Cause – Book One: To Be. (2011) 10 -22.
2. Barrett, P. S., Chavez, D., & Garavito, C. A. R. The new Latin American left: utopia reborn. Pluto Press, 2008.
   Benkler, Yochai. The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. Yale University Press, 2006.
3. Harrison, Elizabeth. "Unpacking the anti-corruption agenda: dilemmas for anthropologists." Oxford Development Studies 34, no. 1 (2006): 15-29.
4. Haller, C. & Shore, C. (Eds) Corruption: Anthropological Perspectives London: Pluto Press  (2005).
5. Joyce, Mary C., ed. Digital activism decoded: the new mechanics of change. IDEA, 2010.
6. Sampson, Steven. "The anti-corruption industry: from movement to institution."Global Crime 11, no. 2 (2010): 261-278.
7. Shah, Nishant “Whose Change is it Anyways? Hivos Knowledge Program. April 30, 2013.
8. Zavala, Maria del Mar “Youth and Technology: An Unstoppable Force” Digital AlterNatives with a Cause- Book Three: To Act (2011) 46-53.

The original details posted on the meta page can be viewed here.

Introduction

There are 30 lakh Konkani speakers spread across the Konkani belt of Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra. Only a few are aware of the existence of an open source project, Konkani Wikipedia, that can help them preserve their language and culture. The project has been in incubation since its inception in 2006 and had 90 articles till last week — an incomparable number in English Wikipedia, which has 4.3 million articles. However, CIS-A2K teams effort in Goa to strengthen Konkani Wikipedia project and community has finally started to show some tangible results. As a follow up to the early workshops and orientations we organized this latest programme to help the students make themselves familiar in editing and contributing articles to Konkani Wikipedia.

We started the event with a demonstration on the basics of editing the Wikipedia followed by a brief discussion about Konkani Wikipedia and the editing session. Besides these we had fun activities and wiki quiz.

Highlights of the Workshop

• A total of 38 students from the Konkani Department took part in this workshop. Forty-three new articles were created and added to Konkani Wikipedia in the 4-day event.
• During the first couple of days, 22 students generated 42 pages of print material and in the last two days, 16 students generated 56 pages of printed material.
• A total of 987 edits were made and 41 references were added on Konkani Wikipedia.
• The students added a total of 3,90,040 bytes of data; an average of 10KB data was added by each student.
• Students wrote articles on varied topics such as Goan folk dances, eminent personalities, festivals, folk music, proverbs, food items, theater, etc.

Pictured above: Participants at the Konkani Wiki editing workshop in Goa University. Picture credit: Subhashish Panigrahi

Articles and Participants

Phase 1 (Day 1 and Day 2)

Phase 2 (Day 3 and Day 4)

Media Coverage

• Wikipedia writes a new script (by Joyce Dias, The Goan, August 24, 2013)
• Konkani Wikipedia makes headway (by Diana Fernandes, OHeraldO, August 24, 2013)

Learnings

• Pre-course work : Participants were asked to do pre-course work before the actual event. This included creating Wikipedia usernames, selecting articles they wanted to edit, writing their articles in Konkani on a piece of paper and get their references too. Students were also given few pages of Wikipedia literature to read beforehand. Students did all their pre-course work with a lot of dedication and efficiency confirming their passion and interest to contribute to Wikipedia. The pre-course also helped students to come prepared and focused for the workshop.

• Limiting number of participants: We limited the number of participants to a total of 40 and further divided in two different groups with about 20 students in each. The first batch came for 2 consecutive days and the second batch came for the last two consecutive days of the event. By limiting the number of participants we were able to give individual attention to each student and closely monitor their on wiki performance.

• Longer duration workshop: Fourteen hours of training was given to each batch. It was spread over 2 days. We had sufficient time to break down the entire workshop into different sections (theoretical and practical) that could be easily followed by the participants. Those 14 hours gave us enough time to cover most of the important topics (such as teaching typing, adding reference, adding headers, wiki markup, talk page protocol, etc.) at as comfortable pace.

• Bite size chunks: The workshop was divided into different sections to give them bite size information only. Each theoretical section was followed by a practical section. For example, the first section involved teaching typing in Devanagari and then participants were given enough time to type their articles in Devanagari. In the second section we taught them how to add headers and then the participants were given sometime to add only headers to their articles. This was followed by a third section where we taught them how to add references and then giving them time to add their references. We made sure that we didn't overwhelm the students with a lot of information in one go and broke it down into simpler pieces.

• Energizers : Seven continuous hours of editing Wikipedia would have really tired the students and made them disinterested as well. To keep their energy and motivation level high, after fixed intervals we played some energizer games with them.

• Student co-ordinators: A total of 4 students were selected (2 from each batch) to act as student co-ordinators. These co-ordinators acted as a communication bridge between A2K members and the participants. For example, these co-ordinators would help students take a unanimous decision about what are the next dates for a follow up session, what timings would work for everyone, etc.

• Varied sources of information: We used different sources and means to educate students about Wikipedia and Wikipedia editing. We definitely didn't want it to be a 14-hour long discourse and hence used different tools such as (Netha's, Poongothai's, Sriket and Noopur's, and Ganesh's videos talking about their personal experiences in the Wikipedia world), along with handouts, presentations, cheat sheets for typing, etc. We also invited Harriet for a video conference to speak with students in Konkani and share with them some inspirational stories.

Challenges

• Most students didn't know typing in Devanagari and had to be taught during the workshops. It took them a little while to practice and get comfortable with the typing tool.
• We wanted to make sure that along with quantity, students are also producing good quality articles. Non-existance of active Konkani Wikipedia editors makes it a little tough to keep control on the quality. Hence, we reached out to Madhavi Sardesai and Priyadarshani Tadkodkar professors from the Konkani Department at Goa University to assess the quality and ask students to make required changes.
• Since Konkani Wikipedia is in incubation students had to do some additional work such as:
  • Browse through incubator.wikimedia.org to find about Konkani Wikipedia. Many wanted to know why Konkani Wikipedia doesn't have an independent link just as en.wikipedia.org.
  • Add Category:Wp/gom to every new article that was created. Many found this as extra work.
  • Searching for existing articles on incubation was difficult for participants.
• During the workshop all students added huge amount of information but only a handful of them continued editing once they left the computer lab. This brings us to our all time biggest challenge: How do we keep their motivation and interest levels high for them to continue writing on Wikipedia beyond these workshops?

Seen above: Konkani Wikipedia editing session in progress. Picture credit: Subhashish Panigrahi

Acknowledgements

This event and future events at Goa University would not have been possible without the committed support CIS-A2K has got from the Goa University and Wikipedians. CIS-A2K is very thankful to Dr. Satish Shetye (Vice-Chancellor, Goa University) — for seeing the significance of growing open knowledge movement in Goa and Konkani and encouraging Konkani Wikipedia activities at GU. Thanks are due to the GU faculty, specifically Prof. Alito Sequeira; Prof. Madhavi Sardesai; Prof. Priyadarshini Tadkodkar; and Dr. Gopa Kumar. Wikipedians Harriet Vidyasagar and Frederick Nooronha. Last but not the least the enthusiastic students of Goa University who are integral to this event.

What's Next?

A2K team is organizing a follow-up session with the same set of students on Sept 6 and 7, 2013. This session will aim to clear any confusions/doubts that participants may have about Wikipedia editing and also to give them a brief about Wikimedia Commons. In this session, students will also decide how they would want to continue with this project with an aim to bring Konkani Wikipedia as a live project.

Additional Info:

1. Konkani Department, Goa University: http://bit.ly/14S87Ci
2. Central State Library, Goa: http://bit.ly/1dzHmao
3. Konkani Wikipedia: http://bit.ly/1dGOFOL

A modified version of this was published in DNA on September 6, 2013. This was re-posted in Fitness Foundation website on October 9, 2013.

Incubation

Before any language Wikipedia shapes up as a live project an incubation process is involved. A community of volunteers (known as Wikipedians) gradually grow to sustain this Wikipedia in incubation with active contribution. Konkani Wikipedia incubator began way back in 2006. However, due to many reasons it could not take off and is still in incubation. One of the major reasons has been the issue with multiple script usage. Due to political and religious reasons Konkani has multiple writing and verbal standards and is also written in multiple script. These include Devanagari and Roman (also known as Romi) in Goa where Devanagari is the official script, Kannada in the Konkani speaking regions of Karnataka (Mangalore region primarily), Malayalam in Kerala (Kochi region) and in Perso-Arabic script by part of the Konkani speaking population. The largest script usage for Konkani is in Devanagari. Goa University is world's first university to have a masters programme in Konkani language where the writing standard is in Goan Konkani (Language code: Gom) which is written in Devanagari. During the interaction with the faculty members; Prof. Madhavi Sardesai and Head of the department Dr. Priyadarshini Tadkodar we found that the students are very enthusiastic to contribute to their language. We met the students and introduced Konkani Wikipedia to them and they showed interest to take part in a workshop to learn Wikipedia editing. This was the beginning of something new after a long time. Four out of the 38 students volunteered to coordinate the workshop on the ground. They discussed about the workshop and the prerequisites; going through the list of articles on Konkani Wikipedia, and writing a unique article by collecting resources and creating their usernames on Wikipedia before attending the workshop. To our surprise, all of the students including the four coordinators came out with at least two pages of written content before the workshop.

Day 1: Building the Blocks

It was 10 in the morning. A big LED panel in the audio visual room of the Krishnadas Shama State Central Library, Goa was displaying the word cloud containing words like Wikipedia, Openness, Education, Open Knowledge, Global Collaboration, etc. Soon the room was filled with 20 M.A. students from the Konkani Department of Goa University. Prior to the workshop we had interacted with the students in the presence of Head of the department Dr. Priyadarshini and Prof. Madhavi Sardesai and from the Konkani department. Four of the students, Supriya Kankumbikar, Fr. Luis Gomes, Vaishali Parab and John Noronha volunteered to coordinate for the workshops. With the help of them we managed to get a majority of the students to sign up and create their user accounts before the first workshop. We had to do some rough work to plan for a whole day workshop. The word "workshop" has been always boring for the students and our biggest worry was how we would keep this boredom at bay and make Wikipedia editing a fun.

Intro Yourself

To start with the first day we had an "Adjective Name" activity. It was fun to know how people judge themselves with adjective. Myself turned out to be "Sub-Hashish" and Nitika turned out to be "Naughty-Nitika"! Then we had a discussion about articles that students planned to write. A few of them were not sure if articles like social issues and biography of a writer could fit into Wikipedia framework.

Editing Time

Article titles were decided. Everyone was ready with their homework write-ups and books for adding sources. The next big thing was typing in Devanagari. Only four-five of them knew typing. Students came forward for trying their hands in typing. For the first time some of them typed a few words and they typed it correctly. We could see the glow of triumph after they typed correctly using “Transliteration” layout. The editing session began. Our experience with majority of the Indian language outreach participants had been more or the less the same; most new Wikipedians struggle to type. This time we printed some handouts with the layout for typing help. It worked well. Students managed to type albeit small little typos.

Game Time

We had to cut the session for an activity break and invited them to play “Tumi Kashi Asat” (means How are you doing in Konkani). This is a game I learned from my colleague Vishnu. To make it more interesting we got it translated to Konkani by our coordinator Supriya. The host has to make some body movements and ask “Tumi Kashi Asat” and bending forward. The participants have to move their body in the reverse way and answer “Ami bari ashat” (I’m doing good). This replaced the caffeine intake for the four days and kept all of us alive.

Day 2: Climbing up the Ladder

This was the day to tell the students about the advanced options and ensure addition of more citations. Citations on Wikipedia are very essential for readers to validate the facts. But bringing this to the students who just had started learning typing in their language a day before was not that easy. The second day was spent giving small breaks during the editing session for small activities. Running, jumping and shouting fueled the students to be happy editors and not burdened. We managed to teach them the advanced options for proper wiki-formatting (Bold, Italics, Heading and Category), and citations. By the end of the first two days 22 students created 24 articles (about 42 pages of written content). Everyone clapped for their friends. We welcomed them to Konkani Wikipedia community, left our contacts to contact further and showed them the Facebook group that they could join and be more connected before thanking and saying bye for the day with the promise of more fun for the next workshop.

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start

Sixteen new students from the M.A. course were welcomed. Four student-coordinators and one from the first batch of students joined the "funday". The entire day was spent with lots of fun, creating articles and learning about the basic know how about Wiki-codes. Half the students in this batch knew typing in Devanagari Inscript. Our first and second day taught us how students ask their fellow students more than they ask us for small little help. Nitika and myself being Inscript noobs made it tough. We then paired these students with those who knew Inscript, thanks to the Fedora Devanagari keyboard layout. It helped us to look and guide the students. All of the students created their first articles. John, Supriya and Vaishali (from first batch) were giving final touches to their second articles.

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

This was the day to do two very important things: clap for their contribution on the first day and tell about contribution of their friends, teach about the advanced options and extend further support. Seeing the newspaper coverage about the workshop featuring some of their friends was a delight for our new wikipedians after two long days. Few of them came forward to share their experience about the workshop and their vision for Konkani language.

At the end of four days all of them bid us farewell. It felt like saying bye to good old friends. These were the foundation days and the biggest editing rally Konkani Wikipedia Incubator has seen in the last seven years with this milestone that the students had created. Happy faces of our new found friends is going to be a great piece of memory in this  journey.

Media Coverage

• Wikipedia writes a new script (by Joyce Dias, The Goan, August 24, 2013)
• Konkani Wikipedia makes headway (by Diana Fernandes, OHeraldO, August 24, 2013)

Video

Why do you [edit] Wikipedia?

Wikipedia editors are always volunteers which translates to “Anyone and everyone can contribute to Wikipedia”. What is that brings people in today’s date to write articles on Wikipedia. This is a question we are not sure at times. You get up late in the night and check how many times your article has been edited and feel excited. This happens to many of the wikipedians including myself. It has been a personal journey to ask Wikipedians about the same. While conducting this workshop along with my colleague Nitika, I spent some time with the students asking about their experience of Wikipedia editing. We found that many of them were shy enough to sound low and we could not take the videos. This particular video features Frania Pereira, an MA student from Konkani department of Goa University. She attended the Wikipedia workshop we organized at the Central Library at Panaji for two days and edited articles on Bebinca (Konkani article here) and Colvá fama (Konkani article here), a local festival celebrated by the Colvá Catholics. Frania is worried how people stereotype Goa to be the just land of enjoyment and not look at the diverse culture, its ethnic food and festivals. Even the Konkani speaking population in other regions (Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala and abroad) don’t know much about this socio-language-cultural diversity. No other language than her mother-toungue Konkani could tell about these. And that is why she edits Wikipedia.

Watch the Video below

The following panelists participated in the hangout. Sunil Abraham was one of them:

• Danny Butt, Research Fellow in Participatory Public Space, University of Melbourne, Australia
• Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society, India
• Venkatesh Hariharan, Director, Knowledge Commons, India (previously, Head of Public Policy at Google India)
• Maryati Abdullah, National Coordinator, Publish What You Pay, Indonesia (also Steering Committee Member of Open Government Partnership)
• Yanuar Nugroho, Director and Expert Adviser to the Head of the President's Delivery Unit for Development Monitoring and Oversight (UKP4), Indonesia -- to be confirmed
• Tomoaki Watanabe, Executive Research Fellow, Centre for Global Communications, International University of Japan (also Executive Director of Common Sphere - the host of Creative Commons Japan, and Co-founder of Open Knowledge Foundation Japan)
• Shita Laksmi, Program Manager, Southeast Asia Technology and Transparency Initiative, Hivos Regional Office Southeast Asia
• Alvin B. Marcelo, Co-chair, Asia eHealth Information Network

• Moderator: Khairil Yusof, Co-founder, Sinar Project, Malaysia (also e-DIRAP team member)
• e-DIRAP Hangout Coordinator: Christine Apikul

Video

Some months ago, I got a phone call from Chinmaya M Rao from Sagara, Shimoga District requesting me to conduct a Kannada Wikipedia workshop at Sagara. He informed me that there are quite a good number of writers in that area who are interested in adding content to Kannada Wikipedia but don't know how to. Many telephonic discussions followed, many dates were considered, changed, iterated and finally the workshop was organised on Sunday, July 28, 2013. The programme was inaugurated by Shri Kagodu Thimmappa, Speaker of the current Legislative Assembly of Karnataka. Famous Kannada writer Naa D'Souza was the chief guest. Shri G.T. Shridhar Sharma, President of Kannada Times Media World, presided over the function. The programme was jointly organised  by CIS and Kannada Times Media World, Sagara.

I then gave a brief introduction to Wikipedia and Kannada Wikipedia. There are many encylopaedias in Kannada but very few are regularly updated. They are seldom digitised. People who add content to Kannada Wikipedia are in search of authentic information. These are available in many encylopaedias brought in by various academies, associations and universities funded by the Government of Karnataka. People of the state have a right on these content. I requested Shri Kagodu Thimmappa to bring them under the Creative Commons License so that the active Kannada Wikipedians can make use of them to add content into Kannada Wikipedia. Shri Kagodu Thimmappa promised to look into this.

An active Kannada Wikipedian, B S Chandrashekhar from Sagara, who has more than 4500 edits on Kannada Wikipedia to his credit was felicitated during the inauguration function. He is 79 years old. Despite his old age, he actively paticipated in the workshop till the end and learnt many intricacies which he was otherwise unaware of.

In the end, I would like to personally thank Chinmay Rao and G. T. Shridhar Sharma of Kannada Times who toiled a lot in organising the wokrshop. Also thanks to B. V. Ravindranath, CA, who provided the venue for the hands-on workshop.

A total of 20 participants spent the seven days in a residential institute, learning about the fundamental technologies of the Internet and topics on which CIS has expertise on such as Accessibility, Openness, Privacy, Digital Natives and Internet Governance.

The participants belonged to various stakeholder groups and it provided a common forum (first of its kind in India) to discuss and share ideas. Twenty-four expert speakers from various domains came to share their knowledge and speak about their work, so as to encourage activity in the field and supply resources from which participants could learn to increase their accessibility, range and funding possibilities, as well as network with the speakers and amongst themselves.

The Institute has triggered a  number of follow-up events — those that the participants organized themselves with the help of CIS staff, including Crypto Parties in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai, that taught netizens to keep their online communication private. In addition to that, the CIS Access2Knowledge (A2K) team could rope in eight new Wikipedians who will contribute to Wikipedia in Indic languages.

The day wise talks and activities that took place are listed below:

Day 1: June 8, 2013

The seven day residential Institute began on Saturday, the 8th of June with a warm welcome by Dr. Ravina Aggarwal and Dr. Nirmita Narasimhan. They outlined the purpose of the residential institute and briefly went over the topics which would get covered over the week long duration. This was followed by each of the participants introducing themselves briefly and also stating their expectations from the Institute, why they were attending the same and what they hope to get at the end.

Session 1: History of the Internet

(by Pranesh Prakash and Bernadette Längle)

After the Network Control Protocol (NCP, later replaced by the TCP/IP) was invented in 1970, the first applications were made: email (connecting people), telnet (connecting computers) and the file transport protocol (FTP) (connecting information) — all of these are still in use today. Participants were surprised to learn that the Web, most commonly used today, known to be invented by one single person in the 90's, actually existed for a long time prior to the '90s.

VIDEO

Session 2: Domestic Bodies and Mechanisms

(by Pranesh Prakash)
After lunch, Pranesh Prakash led the second session about Domestic Bodies and Mechanisms and he started with some of the problems associated with the Domestic Regulatory Bodies:

1. Lack of coherence and consistency in Internet related policies
2. Rather than co-operating, the different agencies compete with each other.
3. Communication with the public is of different degrees and openness of different agencies varies.

• Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEITY), is one of the most important public agencies & the CERT-in focuses on issues like malware and content regulation. There is also the STQC (Standard Setting and Quality Setting Body).
• The work of these organizations is to govern the Internet, bring about better privacy policies and ensure freedom of speech.
• Other governing bodies include DOT (Department of Telecommunications) which governs the telecom and internet policies of India. In India, certain content regulation takes place under a notification as part of the IT Act, 2003.
• TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) also looks into the tariff, interconnections and quality of telecom sector, spectrum regulation and so on.
• The USOF (Universal Service Obligation Fund) seeks to provide funds for setting up telecom services in rural areas.
• Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) has been extending copyright restrictions to online publications.

     VIDEO

Session 3: Emerging trends in Internet usage in India

(by Nandini C and Vir Kamal Chopra)
Emerging Trends in Internet Usage with specific focus on BSNL offerings (by Vir Kamal Chopra)
Some of the salient points discussed were:

• In 1995, the VSNL provided internet in 4 metros of India, by 1998 DOT had provided internet in 42 cities.
• Some of the facilities internet provides include Tele-education, Tele-medicine, mobile banking, payment of bills via mobile internet, etc.
• BSNL has got maximum broadband market share in India.
• Present Scenario, there are 900 million mobiles in India, 430 million wireless connections with capability to access data.
• The total broadband connections are 15 million in country, 10 million provided by BSNL.
• Total internet users are 120 million with a growth rate of 30%.
• Public access is not only about network intermediaries but about info-mediaries who understand internet.
• BSNL lost Rs 18,000 crores from 3G license.
• 2G to 3G shifting is not seamless and leads to lot of packet loss, and 3G coverage is not as extensive as 2G. Thus 3G is not efficient however; the government has made a lot of money from selling 3G licenses.
• Future trends include technology trends for internet access, optical fiber technologies, fiber to the curb, fibre to the home, metro Ethernet, etc.
• Internet has created an online Public sphere.
• In 2000 Parliament passed the Information Technology Act 2000 and the dot.com boom is seen.

Making internet access meaningful in the Indian Context (by Nandini.C)
(Click to see the presentation slides)
Some of the salient points discussed were:

• Status of internet access today sees low level of overall penetration of internet, high rate of household mobile penetration and huge rural-urban divide in internet access.
• Relationship b/w women and internet in India
• 8.4% of women in India have access to internet in India and 43% of women using internet in India perceived it as being an important part of their life.
• Some area of concerns include ensuring adequate access of internet for the women, entrenched patriarchies, contextual relevance, the imaginary of ‘public access’.
• The importance of an existing strong social support network, ITC itself cannot open up economic/social empowerment opportunities for women
• ICT-enabled micro-enterprises may also force the burden of double work on women, who undertake both productive activities for the micro-enterprise and re/productive activities for the household.
• The Internet today has created an online public sphere.
• Countering the threat of online violence.
• Censorship and content regulation.
• Women’s rights and the spaces of internet governance.
• Arbitrary censorship and self-regulation by the corporate and slide towards an illusory freedom; state is used as a bogeyman by corporate to create an online culture that is suitable to the corporate values.

 VIDEO

Day 2: June 9, 2013

The focus of the second day was more on the nuts and bolts behind the working of the Internet by Dr. Nadeem Akhtar, Wireless Technologies and a case-study in Air Jaldi by Michael Ginguld, Collaborative Knowledge base building by Vishnu Vardhan and Affordable Devices on the Internet by Ravikiran Annaswamy.

The salient points of each of the talks are listed below.

Session 1: How Internet Works

(by Nadeem Akhtar)
Click to read the presentation slides

• Internet structure and hierarchy:
  
  1. Data Networks comprise of set of nodes, connected by transmission links, for exchange of data between nodes.
  2. Some of the key principles which underpin data networks include digital transmission, multiplexing and data forwarding/routing.
• Data networks through ownership include public and private networks.
• Data networks through coverage include local area networks (small area), metro area networks (may comprise of a city) and wide area networks (wide geographic area across cities).
• Protocols include:
  
  1. Open systems interconnection (OSI) model divides a communication system into smaller parts. Each part is referred to as a layer. Similar communication functions are grouped into logical layers.
  2. OSI model defines the different stages that data must go through to travel from one device to another over a network & this enables a modular approach towards developing complex system functionality i.e. functionality at layer X does not depend on how layer Y is implemented.

  Above is a picture of Dr. Nadeem Akhtar speaking on the working of the internet on Day 2

• Internet networks or connections.
• Internet backbone refers to the principal data routes between large, strategically interconnected networks and core routers on the internet and these data routes are hosted by commercial, government, academic and other high-capacity network centers, the internet exchange points and network access points. The internet back bone is decentralized.
• Transit Service - Passing information from small ISP to large ISP.
• Peering Service - The passing of information between two similar ISP’s os similar size to let network traffic pass.
• Three levels of network Tier1, Tier2 and Tier 3. TATA Company is the only Tier 1 Indian Company.
• Backhaul- Transport Links which connects access edge networks with the ‘core’ network. The transmitters have to be mounted on a high level.

      VIDEO

Session 2: Wireless Technologies

(by Michael Ginguld)
Click to read the presentation slides

• We are surrounded by electromagnetic radiation
• All about transmission waves and there are both advantages and disadvantages of the same:
  
  1. Pros: higher reach for lower price, overcomes topographic challenges, lower maintenance, less to damage/lose
  2. Cons: limited resources, maintenance (energy), physical limitations to transfer rates.
• Satellite/VSAT is a very small aperture tech: a small satellite dish that connects to a geo-static satellite.
• Strength: globally usable, can connect from anywhere.
• Weakness: signal problems, relatively high installation charge, upstream connection is lower than the downstream, transmitter on satellite is extremely expensive, hence limitation on transmission capacity of the satellite.
• VSATs are not scalable. It is a dead-end tech for usages where data transmission volume is expected to grow.
• 2G Technology for mobile connection.
• Limitation in transfer of data, due to technology and encryption limitations but great availability and reasonable price.
• 3G Technology has a problem in India; low uptake, leading to low investment, leading to low speed, leading to low uptake. The technology allows for high-speed data transfer but the market condition in India still does not make adequate infrastructural support feasible.
• 4G license auction.
• A company bought the country-wide 4G license in the auction. Mukesh Ambani bought the company after some days.
• The present legislation does not allow for VoIP-based Telco operation but that is expected to change soon.
• Wifi technology is wireless technology. It is low cost wireless transfer of data.  The Public dissemination of the ranges in which data transfer using the WiFi protocol can take place.  It was made public in India in January 2005.
  
  1. Limitations: needs line of sight, limit to data transfer.
  2. Strength: cheap, de-licensed spectrum usage, easily deployable.
• 2G spectrum, 3G spectrum and now 4G spectrum all are part of the wireless technology.
• Air Jaldi started in Dharamshala; building wifi connection spanning campuses.
• Three types of consumer categories: (1) no coverage, (2) under-served, and (3) ‘deserving clients’. #2 is the most common group. #3 are people who should be served but cannot pay fully for the service, hence are cross-subsidised by group #2.
• Deployed and managed by local staff, trained by AirJaldi.
• Customer premise equipment: Rs. 3-4k.
• User charges: Rs 975 per month for 512 kbps, Rs 1500 per month for 1 mbps.
• Content: by and large, AirJaldi brings infrastructure on which content can ride on, teams with various content providers (like e-learning, rural BPOs, local e-banking etc) for the content side. The biggest drivers are local BPO, banking and retail. The next big driver coming up is entertainment.
• WiMax includes 4g spectrum.

        VIDEO

Session 3: Building Knowledge Bases and Platform via Mass Collaboration on the Internet

Click to read the presentation slides

The session started off with some physical activity in the form of "Kasa Kasa Warte, Chan Chan Warte" to break off the lunch induced sleep and a mental activity where the participants were divided into two groups and both the groups were asked to collect information on "Water". One group was left to itself while the other had some expert inputs from Vishnu Vardhan on how to collaborate and organize the data. After the activity, both teams presented the information that they had collected on "Water". The benefits of collaborative authoring such as "everyone's voice is heard", "various inputs leading to a multi-dimensional thinking" etc were evident as against a single dimensional thought process that was seen from the group that was un-assisted.

Given above is a picture of the participants involved in a group activity

Salient points discussed during the presentation:

• The Concept of Knowledge today is not something of modern phenomena, but it is something which has been existent since print culture was developed.  Print technology shapes what we consider as knowledge, and hence as knowledge platform
• Techno-sociality of knowledge production
• The Concept of Knowledge today is not something of modern phenomena, but it is something which has been existent since print culture was developed.  Print technology shapes what we consider as knowledge, and hence as knowledge platform
• Techno-sociality of knowledge production
  Examples of knowledge platforms:
  
  1. Baidu baike
  2. English wikipedia
  3. Hudong
  4. Catawiki
  5. Wikieducator
  6. Open street map
  7. Pad.ma
  8. Sahapedia
  9. Internet archive
  10. Jstor
  11. Dsal
  12. Dli
• In 1994 Cunningham developed the ‘Wiki Wiki Web’ also known as the ‘Ward Wiki’. Basically it is a knowledge platform.
• Internet since then has been used for dissemination of information especially in the education sector. Digital Archived have developed over the years which provide information across various platforms like Wikipedia.
• The spread of the internet has made possible the building of knowledge bases by seamless and mass collaboration.

Generic challenges for Wikipedia

• Quality, relevance, consistency of knowledge
• Suitable motivation of the contributors
• Another issue is the scalability

Some of the problems faced by Indian Wikipedian pages:

• Technical infrastructure for Indian languages
• Typing in the regional language
• OCR: complexity of Indian language scripts
• Various other technical troubles like browser compatibility, font display, etc., which deter new users
• Dearth of quality content available in digital format
• Different standards/formats/generations (gov.in/DLI)
• Relative lack of research/academic standards, which is transferred on to Indic wikipedias.
• Lack of knowledge sharing culture.
• Building a mass knowledge platform is the need of the hour.
• The platform should be user friendly, easily available and adoptable; offline outreach is key to effective use of online platforms.
• The programme  should have feedback loop key, behavior statistics data, reinvent and replicate the programme, multi-channel awareness, ‘user connect’ programmes.
• The people should communicate knowledge sharing objectives, make knowledge sharing fun, appoint ambassadors; virtual volunteer community building looks simple but its complex and leads to failure.

      VIDEO

Session: 4 Affordable Devices to access the Internet

(by Ravikiran Annaswamy)
Click to read the presentation slides

Given above is a picture of the speaker Ravikiran Annaswamy giving a demo of the low cost Akash tablet.

• Overview of Affordable Mobile Phones such as Lava Iris, Karbonn A1, Nokia Asha, etc.
• Overview of Affordable Tablets such as Aakash, Ubislate, Karbonn Smart A34, etc.
• The number of Internet users in India is expected to nearly triple from 125 million in 2011 to 330 million by 2016, says a report by Boston Consulting Group.
• How Internet Penetration impacts society.
• Demo of the devices.
• Need for Mobile Internet
• Sugata Mitra & Arvind Eye Care examples.

       VIDEO

Day 3: June 10, 2013

The third day of the Institute focussed on Wired means of accessing the Internet, the technology involved followed by an assignment time where the participants were introduced to 2 topics and asked to work on an assignment. This was followed by a site visit in the afternoon to MapUnity. MapUnity develops technology to tackle social problems and development challenges. Their GIS, MIS and mobile technologies are used mostly by government departments and civil society  organisations and in the R&D initiatives of commercial ventures.

Session 1: Wired Access Technology

(by Dr. Nadeem Akhtar)
Click to read the presentation slides

Some of the salient points discussed were:

Wired and Wireless

Wired:

• Separate communication channel for each users
• Low signal attenuation
• No interference
• Fixed point-of-attachment

Wireless:

• Shared medium of communication
• Signal is attenuated by a number of factors
• Interference between adjacent channels
• Points-of-attachment can be changed on-the-fly

Ethernet:

• A family of computer networking technologies for LANs which was Invented in 1973 and commercially introduced in 1980.  The systems communicating over ethernet divide a stream o data into individual packets called frames. Each frame contains source and destination addresses and error-checking data so that damaged data can be detected and re-transmitted.
• Ethernet, by definition, is a broadcast protocol
• Any signal can be received by all hosts
• Switching enables individual hosts to communicate

Digital subscriber line (DSL):

• DSL uses existing telephone lines to transport data to internet subscribers and the term xDSL is used to refer to a number of similar yet competing forms of DSL technologies which includes ADSL, SDSL, HDSL, HDSL-2, G.SHDL, IDSL, and VDSL.  DSL service is delivered simultaneously with wired telephone service on the same telephone line and this is possible because DSL uses higher frequency bands for data.

Asymmetric DSL (ADSL):

• ADSL is the most commonly installed technology and an ADSL tech can provide maximum downstream speeds of up to 8 mbps.

Modem and router:

• Modem is specific to a technology
• Modem is de/modulator, it takes bits coming from one protocol/technology, demodulates it (converts it into original data), and re-modulated the original data to another protocol/technology.
• Router allows creation of a local area network, allowing multiple devices to connect to the network and access internet together through the router. It has very high bitrate DSL (VDSL) and goes up to 52 mbps downstream and 16 mbps upstream. The length of the physical connection is limited to 300 meters and the second generation VDSL (CDSL2) provides data rates up to 100 mbps simultaneously in both direction, but maximum available bit rate is still achieved about 300 meters.

Cable:

• Cable broadband uses existing CATV infrastructure to provide high-access internet access; uses channels specifically reserved for data transfer
• Support simultaneous access to broadband and TV programs
• Cable access tech is built for one-way transmission; hence some congestion takes place for bi-way data transfer, leading to much lower upstream connection relative to downstream connection for data.

Fiber:

• It is a generic term for any broadband network architecture using optical fiber; fiber to the neighborhood; fiber to the curb;  the street cabinet is much closer to the user’s premises, typically within 300m, thus allowing ethernet or radio-based connection to the final users; fiber to the basement; fiber to the home (BSNL already providing); fiber to the desktop
• Passive optical networks (PON)

Advantages of fiber:

• Immunity to electromagnetic interference.
• Provides very high data rates at long distances.
• When network links run over several 1000s of meters (e.g., metro area networks), fiber significantly outperforms copper.
• Replacing at least part of these links with fiber shortens the remaining copper segments and allows them to run much faster.
• The data rate of a fiber link is typically limited by the terminal equipment rather than the fiber itself.

Assignment
Participants were given two options for an assignment to work on in the coming days and they could choose either one.

Assignment A
The Universal Service Obligation Fund of India has put out a Call for Proposals under two schemes:

• Mobile Connectivity and ICT related livelihood skills for womens’ SHGs (http://www.usof.gov.in/usof-cms/pdf21may/Concept_Paper.pdf), and

• Access to ICTs and ICT enabled services for persons with disabilities in rural India. (http://www.usof.gov.in/usof-cms/usofsub/Concept%20paper_USOF%20Scheme_PwDs_A.G.Gulati.pdf)

Your NGO is committed to the task of facilitating access to the Internet for women/ persons with disabilities in rural parts of Kerala and wishes to submit a proposal/ project idea in partnership with a service provider to the USOF.

Assignment B
You are a member of the ancient tribe of Meithis residing in Manipur. Over the years, there is a strong feeling in your community that although the Government has rolled out projects to connect the rural areas throughout India, these have not been successful for your tribe and there is still even a lack of basic fixed telephony, let alone mobile and broadband services. You have hence come to the conclusion that there is a need for focused efforts to target such communities as yours and have decided to submit a concept note to the USOF requesting that ‘ethnic and rural tribal communities’ be specifically included within the mandate of the USOF’s activities by defining them as an ‘underserved community’.

Given above is a picture of the participants engaged in a discussion.

Field Trip - Destination: MapUnity.
MapUnity develops technology to tackle social problems and development challenges. Their GIS, MIS and mobile technologies are used mostly by government departments and civil society organisations, and in the R&D initiatives of commercial ventures. MapUnity presented their product offerings to the participants.

VIDEO

Day 4: June 11, 2013

Session 1: Universal Access

(by Archana Gulati)
Click to read the presentation slides

Given above is a picture of Archana Gulati speaking on Universal Access.

Tuesday revolved around questions of access and openness. The day kicked off with Archana Gulati, a policy expert in access to ICTs for people with disabilities talking on Universal Access. Ms. Gulati stressed the importance of ICTs for social development. ICTs are a necessary aid in development structures including education, health and increased citizen participation in national affairs & they provide crucial knowledge inputs into productive activities. However, even with the Telecom boom, there still exists an access gap in India, which cannot be covered by commercially viable systems.

This 'actual access gap' exists because of geographic (scattered population, low income, low perceived utility of service, lack of commercial/industrial customers, lack of roads, power, difficult terrain, insurgency), economic (urban poor) and social inequality (gender, disabilities) differences. To achieve Universal Access or Universal Service, additional efforts must be made, so as to include these groups. However, Universal Access and Universal Service, while they may imply the same thing, are very different approaches to deal with the problematic access gap.

Universal service, a term coined by Theodore Vail, president of AT&T in 1906, argued that the government should enforce the usage of only one network. This approach suggests a monopolization of the market and goes against the liberal market principle.

Universal access on the other hand suggests cross-subsidizing the low and no profit service areas by high profit service areas. However, this results in the urban population to get over-charged while the rich rural areas benefit from rural subsidizing.

So how do we enable a fair and inexpensive network to be able to create access for a large number of people equally?
Ms. Archana Gulati went on to introduce the Sanchar Shakti scheme as a contribution to national access in India. It was initiated with the objective of improving rural SHG access skills, knowledge, financial services and markets through mobile connections and involved several stakeholders like NABARD, handset/modem manufacturers, DoT USOF, Mobile VAS Providers, Lead NGOs, Mobile Service Providers.

This scheme shows how important is, for the commercial, private and public sector to work together on obtaining accessibility to ITCs.

Session 2: Free and Open Internet

(by Pranesh Prakash)
The following session by Pranesh Prakash on Free and Open Internet showed how the internet can still be a restrictive place which does not allow for internet equality. His talk focussed on the concepts of free and open Internet. Prakash started by stating the Freedom of Speech and Expression Article of the Indian Constitution and in an interactive round it was discussed, how these articles are fundamental for securing other basic human rights. This was demonstrated by an example in which the distribution of food did not proceed equally, as misinformation and restrictions led to an inappropriate hoarding of goods. Therefore, it is important for everyone to have that right. In fact, the Indian constitution formulates Article 19 in a positive way, implying not only everyone should have that right, but that the government must promote the upholding of these rights.

However, in the case of Article 66a, the law actually caused a problem with freedom of speech in itself, as it penalizes sending false and offensive messages through communication services. This is a massive impediment on free speech, as outsiders decide upon what is offensive and what is false.

The other side of freedom of speech and expression is censorship. Online, the removal of websites and editing of content often happens quietly and obscures the fact that someone or something is being censored. Unlike book burnings in the past, which were always made a big political spectacle, often websites are simply removed without a trace, or one is faced with a 404 error, when trying to access it. Because of the offensive content law, journals and magazines are quick to remove supposedly offensive content, as it seems more difficult to engage in argument with the people claiming offense. The CIS proposed a counter-law to secure for this to happen less, as freedom of speech includes the freedom to receive that speech.

VIDEO

Session 3: Openness

(by Sunil Abraham)

Next to ensuring freedom of speech and access, the third session of the day focussed on Openness in terms of Open Source software. Sunil Abraham, CIS executive director, stated the importance of free software and open access of data, as they ensure what he called the four freedoms of internet usage, namely the freedom to use for any purpose, the freedom to study, to modify and to share (freely or for a fee). Proprietary software imposes on these freedoms, as it only has restrictive use and a strong copyright. However, there are alternatives that have moderate copyrights, or so-called copy centred perspectives, or even copyleft, including the above mentioned rights into the terms of the software usage.

Above is a picture of Sunil Abraham speaking on Openness

In alignment with Sunil Abraham’s talk Pranesh Prakash criticized copyright law cutting into accessibility rights, as copyright infringements include translation into other languages, audio versions and also integral parts of education. The key is not to have a "one size fits all" copyright solution, as it is impossible to treat twitter content the same as a blockbuster movie. However, the government of India is doing exactly that and needs to interlink questions of access with copyright law.

VIDEO

Session 4: Open Content

(by Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam)
Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, who led the next session, discussed Open Content. He had seen during the course of his experience India's poor performance in Science & Technology and outlined the reasons for the same. The lack of access to information essential in scientific research and knowledge production, he said, was the major limiting cause.

VIDEO

Session 5: Quick Talk on Copyright Law and Access

This short session dealt with implications of copyright law on internet access.

Activity

The participants were divided into two groups, and they were asked build as huge a network as possible with their personal belongings and present their creations. The participants had good ideas. One group placed their mobiles and laptops into the network to have them as nodes. The other group implemented the re-routing around censorship.

VIDEO

Given above is a picture of the participants in an activity making the longest network possible with their personal belongings.

Day 5: (June 12, 2013)

Session 1: Privacy on the Internet in India

(by Sunil Abraham and Elonnai Hickok)

Click to view the presentation slides

Some of the salient points discussed were:

• Off-the Air Interception
• Possible to set up active or passive cell phone tower.
• The signal strength will be strong and everyone looks for it.
• Capacity to identify itself as a service provider.
• Interception can begin with encryption Technology today used by security agencies.
• NTRO- national technical Research Org and Outlook

     VIDEO

Session 2: E-Accessibility

(by Nirmita Narasimhan)
Click to view the presentation slides

Given above is a picture of Dr. Nirmita Narasimhan speaking on e-accessibility

The second session was on “E-Accessibility” led by Dr. Nirmita Narasimhan. Some of the salient points discussed were:

• Problems arising out of disability
• Accessibility-Infrastructure and ICT
• Assistive technologies for PWD’s.
• Reasonable accommodation (not available or cannot be and requires extra effort and putting up an accessible copy up) and universal Design (for both for PWD’s and non-PWD’s).
• Web Content Accessibility is operable and easily understandable.
• Accessibility standards include; Daisy (6 types of books including audio and text books) is all about marking up the documents. Really a good way to read but is expensive and time consuming, also need Daisy tools and player to make it work.
• In 1808 the first typewriter was developed to help the blind.
• Considerations involved in Web Accessibility
• Overlap b/w mobile accessibility and web accessibility.
• Example- Raku Raku phone captured 60% of market share in Japan. It has many assistive features.
• Relay Services has a middle man who passes on the message b/w different PWD’s in many countries, but it is not yet available in India.
• PWD’s communicating with customer care – the issues involved.
• Accessibility Policy- very few people are adopting accessible technologies. There is a need to have a strong policy. U.K. and U.S. already have strong policies related to accessible and assistive technology for PWD’s.

    Video

Session 3: International Bodies and Mechanisms

(by Tulika Pandey and Gaurab Raj Upadhyay)
Activity
Gaurab incorporated an Activity into his talk to enable the students to have a clearer understanding of International Bodies and Mechanisms.

Given above is a picture of the speaker Gaurab Raj Upadhaya explaining the International Bodies and Mechanisms

Some of the salient points discussed during his talk were:

• Definition: “Internet Governance is the development and application by Govt., the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures and programmes which shape the evolution and use of internet.”
• It should be multilateral, transparent and democratic
• Enhanced cooperation means to enable govt…

Technical issues to keep in mind while talking about internet:

1. Critical internet resources
2. Root server locations
3. Open Standards (CIS leads the initiative)
4. Interoperability
5. Search Engines
6. Internationalized Domain names (in own script & language)
7. Content

• Virtual yet real space and most important question to be understood is that whether, the governance of internet is possible?
• Public Policy- to monitor cross-border data flow, Openness vs Privacy
• India’s Outlook in internet policies-Pillars of Internet which is not fully addressed by the Indian government today.
• Established an Inter- Ministerial Group by including various government departments into the arena.
• Layer 0-7 Names and Numbers
• Layer 8 and above
• Applications and Usage
• Legal business, policy, etc.

Session-4: E-Governance

(by Tulika Pandey and Sunil Abraham)

Given above is a picture of the speaker Tulika Pandey speaking about e-Governance

Some of the salient points discussed were:

• Making policies in India is difficult because the population is huge and implementation at rural level is difficult.
• Bombarded by Techno utopians- who believe in technology’s ability to change lives.
• Techno determinants- Corruption solved through technology through open government data. More technology is better, the most sophisticated ones are the best are gross misconceptions.
• Bhoomi project tried to deal with corruption at village level. Important policy change made all paper work illegal and digitized the land records etc. every action and request will be logged. But this led to creation of new corruption. Bribes were taken even before data was logged!
• UID Project (Cobra Post Scam) around 20 public sector and 30 private banks were involved in money laundering scams.
• People who design the systems in Delhi prepare sub-contracts.

       VIDEO

Day 6: (June 13, 2013)

Session 1: Critical Perspectives of the Internet

(by Dr. Nishant Shah)
Click to view the presentation slides

The sixth day of the Institute kicked off with Nishant Shah, director of research at CIS, looking into Critical Perspectives of the Internet.  Nishant made a very important distinction between the internet as infrastructure and as social network constructing alternative universes. Nonetheless it was important to stress that technology should not be alienated in the process of this separation but seen as an integral part of it, as the digital is as much part of reality as any other technology and has become essential as a technology of change that it brings about not only in scientific but also in social development. Quoting Michel Foucault, Shah argued that technology becomes influential when it changes life, labour and language, which is why research in the field should involve critical ways of thinking about body, space and community.

Above is a picture of Dr. Nishant Shah speaking on Critical Perspectives of the Internet.

The body perception can be perceived through the way bodily agencies change through technology. Technology does not necessarily taint or corrupt the body, but can also be a way to escape its confines. To put it to a point, we are all born into technology and cannot free ourselves from them, as for example pregnancy already starts with nutritional supplements, regulatory diets and exercise and essentially ends with birth technologies that do not necessarily involve only the digital - we must remember, speech is one of the oldest technologies available today.

VIDEO

Session 2: Strategies for Policy Intervention

(by Chakshu Roy)
The second session on “Strategies for Policy Intervention” was led by Chakshu Roy. This session dealt with various ways in which policy intervention can be made and the various factors necessary to successfully engage in policy forums.

VIDEO

Session 3: Profile of Internet Service Providers

(by Satyen Gupta)
Click to view the presentation slides

Given above is a picture of Satyen Gupta speaking about Internet Service Providers

Satyen Gupta during his talk on “Profile of Internet Service Providers” discussed the nature, offerings and profile of various ISPs in India, their market share and dynamics.

The salient points discussed were:

• National Broadband Plans
• Spectrum Issues “Management”
• Reality check of Indian ISPs
• Broadband Definition & Penetration
• Roadblocks for Broadband in India, Governments Role, Regulation
• Institutional Framework for the Indian Telecom
• Broadband Access in India- Technology-Neutrality
• Satellite based DTH Services offer alternate for the Broadband via Receive Only Internet Service (ROIS)
• Broadband using DTH for Receive-only Internet
• VSAT has the potential for significant impact on Broadband Penetration in Remote Areas
• Fixed Wireless Access- an important access technology
• Facilitating Radio Spectrum for Broadband Access
• Fiscal measures to reduce the cost of access devices, infrastructure and broadband service
• Reduction in the cost of connectivity
• National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) -National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) has been set up on recommendation of TRAI by DIT, Government of India to ensure that Internet traffic, originating and destined for India, should be routed within India.
• Emerging Broadband Services
• Broadband Commission for Digital Development (BCDD)-UN Targets for Universal Broadband,2015
• NOFN India-Existing Fiber Infrastructure and Coverage by Various Service Providers
• National Telecom Policy (NTP) 2012- Salient Features
• State of Internet Services and ISPs in India:
  
  1. India’s Ranking on Key Broadband Indicators
  2. Regulator’s Report – Growth of Internet in India
  3. Internet Subscribers Base & Market share of top 10 ISPs
  4. Technology trends for Internet/Broadband Access
  5. Internet/broadband Subscribers for top 10 states
  6. Tariff Plans for USO funded Broadband
  7. Contribution of Telcos in Development of Internet Services
  8. Incumbent’s Role in Growth of Broadband
  9. Plugging rural missing link- BBNL
• Internet Subscribers Base & Market share of top 10 ISPs

        VIDEO

Session 4: Competition in the Market by Helani Galpaya

Helani Galpaya during her talk on “Competition in the Market” discussed about what competition meant, Herfindahl–Hirschman Index to measure how competitive a market is, what are the dangers of monopoly markets and the landscape of the Telecom market in India.

Above is a picture of Helani Galpaya speaking about Competition in the Market

Day 7: (June 14, 2013)

The final day of the Institute focussed on how the Internet can be used to effect change on society – Activism was the theme.

Session 1: Leveraging Internet for activism

(by Ananth Guruswamy)
Click to read the presentation slides

Above is a picture of Ananth Guruswamy speaking during the session on leveraging internet for activism

Some of the salient points discussed were:

• Digital Activism
• Target Omar Abdullah. It is about an act called Administrative detention Act. One can be detained without act i.e. The Preventive Detention Act. He directly responded to the threat.
• Twitter seems to be a place where the political leaders are actually accessible. This kind of access was not possible in day to day life earlier if one was a common man. This phenomenon is developing. Even in Corporate setup writing a mail directly to the CEO seems possible.
• Strengths: Wide reach, Freedom of speech, Data collection is made easy, Issues can be tackled swiftly, Global communities, singular identities have lot of power. Eg: 190 Million people stood up against Poverty; this kind of mobilization impossible without internet.
• Besides local issues even Global issues are addressed an collection of funds becomes easy. Onion.com once a struggling publication in U.S., but now with a global audience it is thriving and it has a healthy reader base today.
• The Earth Hour helps people connect across space and time.
• Weakness: More popularity, more attention; Traditional/Real Protest has become rare and a threat; There is no real action beyond internet, threat of movement is low, there is no real commitment involved in digital activism and just one click is enough to make one ‘feel good’.
• Opportunities: Recruitment of protestors for real protests. Diff. b/w real and virtual blurred; anything that affects the mind space is real. The intersection is interesting.
• Threats: Total removal of privacy, Government intervention in private issues and there could be misinterpretation of people’s thoughts by certain people.
• Traditional vs Digital activism: Traditional fails to provide results whereas clicking a button is as easy as wearing a badge.
• Facebook activism: ‘Like Buttons’, People moving away from reading emails, a shift towards use of facebook; creates a sense of belongingness which the traditional activism failed to achieve.
• India against Corruption: used mobile phone effectively.
• Social Media has changed the way protests happen globally and in India, one example is Twitter. Change.org is a website which gives freedom to anybody to start a petition without any external source; Awaaz.org another such petition website.
• Green Peace launched a Green peace X which was a runaway success. YouTube is another platform for the masses. People today are more interested in watching rather than reading.
• Pakistan in 2007: “Flash protests”; Free Fraizan Movement on Twitter.
• Something to keep in mind regarding while launching a campaign online is to think who the audience is and what we want them to do and how will the campaign help our objectives?
• How to measure success of a social media campaign?
• Reach
• Engagement- likes, tweets, comments, etc.
• Influence
• Attrition Score

       VIDEO

Session 2: Internet Access Activism

(by Parminder Jeet Singh)
The next session on “INTERNET ACCESS” ACTIVISM by Parminder Jeet Singh dealt with how people can contribute to initiatives for improving internet access amongst masses.

VIDEO

Session 3: Ensuring Access to the Internet

(by A.K. Bhargava)
Click to view the presentation
The last session on “Ensuring Access to the Internet” by A.K. Bhargava discussed strategies to enhance access to the Internet in India with special focus on National Optical Fibre Network.

The salient points discussed were:

-    Role of Broadband in Nation Building
-    Policy Aspiration of Broadband - How do we meet aspiration?
-    Telecom Network Layers‐Gaps in OFC Reach
-    BBNL Interconnection
-    NOFN - Bridging The Gap
-    Digital Knowledge Centres (DKCs)
-    Architecture of BBNL
-    NOFN Impact

1. Societal
   
   • Bridging the digital divide
2. Business
   
   • Job creation, indigenous industry growth
3. Sectoral
   
   • Improved connectivity, data growth
4. Technological
   
   • Differentiators

   VIDEO

Speaker Presentation Slides
All the presentation aids/slide shows barring a few have been uploaded to the website at http://internet-institute.in/repository

Presentation of Assignments
The participants presented their assignments which were given to them to work on the 3rd day. The participants were presented with Wikipedia T-Shirts as a token of appreciation.

Given above is a picture of the participants presenting their assignments

Participant Feedback
All participants were asked to fill a "Session Feedback Form" for each of the sessions and also an "Overall Feedback Form". They were also constantly encouraged to come up with suggestions and inputs on how to make the Institute more interesting.

The key findings from the Quantitative Feedback provided are:
(The figures below are averaged scores (out of 5) provided by participants in the Overall Feedback Forms)

The key findings from the Qualitative Feedback provided are:

Other Feedback:

1. The food and the facilities were enjoyed and appreciated by all.
2. The remote location of the Golden Palms Resort was a concern for most of the participants.

Participation Certificates
Participation Certificates (template shown below) have been mailed to all the participants in the third week of July 2013.

Given above is the certificate declaring the successful completion of the event

Institute Expenses

A total of Rs. 19, 91,889 (Rupees nineteen lakhs ninety one thousand eight hundred and eighty nine only) was spent towards organizing and conducting the Internet Institute. A breakup of the Institute Expenditures is given below:

What the participants had to say

Sangh Priya Rahul – “One of my organisation's work is more or less related to empowerment of rural areas so knowledge about USOF will be useful there.” (On USOF)

Rashmi. M – “Makes me more sensitized towards the disabled people.” (On e-Accessibility)

Preethi Ayyaluswamy – “Would help me in strategically planning for an online campaign” (On digital activism).

Conclusion

The Institute was highly engaging and enabled the participants to explore the various facets of Internet & Society. As was evident from the feedback forms, participants had given thought to contributing to Wikipedia in their mother tongue, take the knowledge to the field work that they are associated with, continue with their research, change their Internet connections, help file RTIs, adopt more open source software, sharing with students, advocacy efforts etc. There was a very high level of expertise amongst speakers at the Institute which was apparent from the participatory discussions and a lot of insightful perspectives were brought forth. There was a common consensus amongst all participants that inclusive growth across all dimensions would take efforts from all stakeholders.

We hope to learn from the findings of this Institute and work towards a better second Institute.

Above is a group picture of all the participants and the organizers

Hosted by HEIRA, CSCS, Tumkur University, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai the Center for Cultural Studies (CCS) and Access To Knowledge Programme of Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), the consultation addressed what it meant to be a Digital Humanities researcher and how to curricularize something that refuses to confine itself to disciplinary boundaries. The introduction note had Tejaswini Niranjana of HEIRA-CSCS & TISS speak of the promise of free and democratic education on the Internet, which had so far failed in a sense that scholarship was having difficulties with justifying work produced online. Especially in India the question of integrating scientific work in local languages was of importance, as mainly research is happening in and for the English-speaking world.

However, as Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, Access to Knowledge at CIS pointed out when taking over the second part of the introduction, projects like the Indian language Wikipedia project are making an attempt to fill that gap. One of the key aspects to digital humanities is that knowledge should be free and open source and providing Wikipedia in Indian languages is a step towards more accessibility. Of course the field is not easy to define. The digital humanities embrace everything technological, which means that often one could be doing digital humanities work without actually realizing it, as Vishnu Vardhan exemplified with the media archive work he had been doing before the term "digital humanities" was properly coined.

This example serves for one of the many ways in which digital humanities is work that involves not just reading theory but actually "building", as Stephen Ramsay had called it. As has been hinted at in the previous blog posts on digital humanities, this calls for a new set of tools and skill sets for students entering the "field". Again, there is little clarity on whether or not the digital humanities can be seen as a field, however, for the sake of simplicity, I address it as one. It should be stated, though, that this field does not have the classical confines and closed boundaries of disciplines, but is conceived as an open, ever-changing space in which work is being done in a trans-disciplinarily way. Within this field, new questions arise: What exactly is this producing? Is the archive the number one research output? And if yes, what does that mean for the humanities field? As the way archives are produced influences the very content of knowledge, digital technologies being implemented must have an impact on today's knowledge inventory. Passing knowledge and improving scholarship is therefore an important factor for accessibility and an equalizing societal factor.

In the first session of the day Amlan Dasgupta from Jadavpur University, Kolkata addressed the problems of curricularising digital humanities. As it is a field that deals with contemporary social factors, which are ever-changing, it is difficult to set up a course much in advance, which will match the expectations it produces. Nonetheless, the instability of digital platforms is not only negative. While a course should have a certainty about what it needs to deliver, the openness of digital humanities seminars enable venturing into unknown research territory with possibly unpredictable and therefore fruitful outcome. While the internet suggests a world wide collaboration possibility, little research is being done in local Indian languages, as optical character recognition is a problem online. Which is why India has experienced what Dasgupta calls an 'archiving moment', several older texts and research work are being digitally archived so as to make them more accessible and increase the native language portfolio. This is part of what can be called the first wave of digital humanities, where mainly non-digital material are transferred into a field of digital operability.

The so-called second wave of digital humanities focused on things "born" digital, inherently digital experiences, like computer games, 3D modeling, GIS mapping and digital surrogates. In the digital age, all cultural experiences have a digital part. While aforementioned categories are purely digital, cultural and societal objects are not necessarily that easily defined. We are experiencing the merge of the digital and analog, it is impossible to think the one without the other. This is where the digital humanities step in, as they are not only about using these experiences, but actually about making them. Therefore, the field could be about evolving tools, free and open-source tools, which ensure access, build databases and create metadata. It is essential that one develops ones own methods and tools to do digital humanities work. Metadata should be community held and a collaborative process, not only to include many voices but also because authorship is evolving and there is no one single heroic individual who processes data.

Ravi Sundaram from Sarai programme at the Centre for the Study of Devloping Society added to that in his talk about intimating the archives by expressing the importance of digitizing the Indian labour archive, calling it one of the important 'doings' of digital humanities. The so-called third wave of digital humanities takes the computational turn for granted and makes big data the rhetoric of the present. Within the digital, a post-device landscape has evolved, which means that objects are dematerialized. The unanswered question is what exactly that means for the user. Squndaram introduces a Sarai-CSDS project, in which the job was not providing access, but publishing online without copyright and

therefore generating knowledge, which could be used and transformed according to will and purpose. This happened via bilingual mailinglists even before a designed and visual interface was possible online. In this way, there was a world-wide connection of people doing research work. The information was curated via a peer-review system, which, too, has become an important methodology for digital humanities work. The Sarai archive project has taken it upon itself to curate live digital humanities projects, allowing anyone to post online, from the working class to academic people, in English and Hindi. As publications are more and more taking place online, languages are formed by the gadgets and media that are used to produce them. The digital, as well as literature are being inhabited by multiple authorships and scholarly activity must develop to accommodate these circumstances. Text is being produced on mobile phones and no longer necessarily conforms to classroom rules. Therefore, being a digital humanist includes the attempt to overcome the crisis traditional humanities encounter in the classroom.

Nishant Shah, joining in on Skype in digital humanities manner, explained his first encounter with digital humanities arising the hopes of his science fiction dreams finally coming true. The encountered reality, however, faces many challenges amidst the number of possibilities it brings. Digital humanities are complex as the field incorporates the object of study, just as it uses it as a methodology. As it uses the very tools and methods which define its existence, questions of humanities scholarship are getting reframed. Digital humanities rephrase questions of the social, cultural and political, making them more and more about infrastructure, turning the information society mainly into a data society. The critical skills of human intervention are now being replaced by new skills required in the time of data. This leads to a naturalization of data, which carries the danger of seeing knowledge once again as a given. As was explained in the last blog post, data is just as subjective as information and hiding this factor by neutralization and naturalization is a concern digital humanities need to address, as data has now become a structural component of being. When it was just information we were talking about, it was easy to distinguish between information and reality, as information was about reality. With data, however, this distinction is no longer possible as the data produces a reality. Therefore, data is a metaphor, which stands for the structure of our experiences. The problem is that most of the data being created is invisible to the human. What we post, blog or tweet creates a lot more behind the surface of computer interfaces. Facebook is not information technology like cinema was. It produces data which is not for human consumption, namely algorithms, which are read only by artificial computer programs. We are in the service of producing data which cannot be neutral as we can not read it. In this way data dislocates the human and traditional humanities work is no longer sufficient. So in digital humanities work we need to see what it cannot reflect. How do we translate humanities political idea to data management? This implies that digital humanities are not a continuum from traditional humanities, as digital humanities challenges aspects of humanities skills and beliefs. However, this does not mean that humanities have become dispensable. In fact humanities and digital humanities should not compete with, but add to each other. So the thought process should not be what the digital can do for the humanities, but what the two fields could do for each other.

Returning to scholarship, Tanveer Hasan and Sneha PP introduced the Pathways to Higher Education project they had been working on, which focuses on language and technology in the undergraduate space. The aim of the project is to improve the quality of access in higher education and focused on the linguistic and digital divide in India. Workshops were organized on social change and collaborative learning, in which students could look at technology not just as a tool but also as a form of political and critical engagement, raising the question of how that defines the way someone looks at a project. As students are stakeholders in knowledge production, their input is much required and forms academia. There seems to be the perception that the digital is only for a certain group of people and predominantly produced in english. However, the course of the project showed that the digital can be produced in alternative, non-hegemonial spaces and realities. Digital platforms join debates based on global and local knowledges, so it is vital to employ them so as to strengthen community knowledge. However, digital debates are not easily accepted in the classroom, as social media platforms like Facebook are frowned upon by teachers, who see them only as a socializing tool. One of the challenges digital humanities face therefore surely is the skepticism it receives upon trying to produce knowledge outside of classical academic institutions. Related to this the question arose on how this 'doing' in digital spaces translates into 'learning' in an academic sense. Many of the scholars in the project were very happy to produce visual material. However, when they were asked to write in their local languages, text production was reluctant or not happening at all. One suggestion the project made to this was to stop devaluating Wikipedia as a source and scholarly tool, and instead to get students to contribute to its knowledge repositories as it is included in academia.

Video

In a session of participants responding to the presentations, many anxieties in doing digital humanities was addressed. A fear was voiced that digitization might be destroying archives, just as it attempted to reconfigure them. The relationship with text was becoming more difficult, as digital humanities tend to reject written work, feeling it was becoming more and more of just an add-on, which felt artificial. This could result in an analytic vs. artistic divide and the question formed was how to play with text in digital humanities work in a less frontal and confrontational manner.

It was noted that even as data is becoming synonymous with reality, interpretational challenges persevere. Entering a google search query can generate meaning, however its outcome is obscured by algorithms. A difficulty, especially in India, is that databases are only being implemented in a low percentage, once they are produced. So creating data is not enough to overcome knowledge gaps. Digital humanities are faced with the challenge of making information and data literacy increase. This needs to happen in collaboration with governmental organs, as India's government has difficulties with patent licenses and digital rights. As the perception remains that the digital is natively english-speaking, less value is given to resource material in local languages. As all computer updates, etc., run in english language, the fact that knowledge can and should be produced in one's own native language is obscured.

The expressive potential of these minority languages is therefore decreasing, a matter of concern for Indian academia. Knowledge production of educational material must be included into scholarly work, to work against this decline. In this sense, the importance of the community was addressed. When experimenting with tools and technology, it is vital to exchange experiences and build a communal exchange. However, it was lamented that often ICT courses remain at a basic office-tools level. The content of digital humanities work cannot remain at a simplistic level but must include values and methods which go into greater detail and implement guerrilla methods. If we are not able to articulate a way of understanding the problem through these contexts, what is the good in sources of voices? The fear is that digital humanities is undergoing a shift from representation to segregation of knowledge repositories.

The digital age does not only influence knowledge repositories in the academic sense. In his talk, Ashish Rajadhyaksha describes the political perspective of digital humanities by the example of the UID project in India as something that has inhabited the digital ecosystem. Within the digital, what used to be public space is now perceived more as public domain – a trend towards making data compulsory. As one can see with UID and the condition of transfer from a state to an e-state in which India seems to find itself, forced digitization can increase the digital divide and marginalize certain groups of people. Rajadhyaksha's "Identity Project" looks at what it means to have a digital identity and how it can occupy space within digital ecosystems. This project is transparently documented under Pad.ma, encouraging alternative publishing methods, such as QR-codes in text sequences leading to the video interviews they refer to. With this explosion of data being created, it should be considered that it impacts on personal views of privacy. One theory is that the anonymity rises in the sea of data, another could be that personal inhibition thresholds are lowered. It also gives rise to the question, what it means to have free digitization. As we can see with the example of google's data mining, free internet does not mean you are not paying in some way. Apart from the data you provide in exchange for online services, these are of course always gadget-based, forcing users to invest in new appliances. If digital humanities relies on the hardware and software of mainstream corporations, can it express capitalistic critique?

In several ways the answer to that question remains unclear. While traditional humanities addressed social inequalities and expressed critique, a technologized humanities concept has different aims, as Arun Menon of CSCS explains. Digital humanities has a scientific approach which does not reflect in humanities work. The computational turn has taken scientific work towards an affirmative and essentialist perception of truth, which claims to be exact and precise. This is the crisis the humanities are facing and that require a reshaping of the new arising field that is the digital humanities in India. Menon believes that digital humanities does not have content per se, but works along the boundaries of the humanities and the sciences. In this sense it cannot be a discipline or a field of its own, but can address the gray areas being left out by other disciplines and create new research paradigms by co-opting humanities with sciences.

James Nye addressed the materiality of digital humanities by discussing what it meant to have and to hold them – materially and physically, as well as virtually. Physical resources are not enough but must be provided in local languages and virtual spaces. Good dictionaries are important resources for language knowledges not only on the basis of the commonest meaning but also its social connotations. The need is for librarianship to change to accommodate these diverse features.

The last presentation of the day had Souvik Mukherjee addressing the non-boundaries of digital humanities again, stressing the fact that the digital humanities did not exist. Rather, a multiplicity of digital humanities had arisen to incorporate topics like data mining, games studies, software studies and digital cultures. These study areas, rather than disciplines, are not always connected with concerns of humanities, but still make up a large part of digital humanities work. They, too, produce narratives as does any other research, however, often these narratives can be completely fictional and take place in digital realms. Facebook micro story telling serves as an example, just as gaming narratives do. While involved in gameplay, users create, read and write narratives as they play. At the same time they create identity and involvement, which can be diverse according to the digital space that identity is occupying. Therefore it definitely plays a part in deconstructing rigid ideas of identities. Tools like Poll Everywhere, Zotero or Posterous make academic work just as playful in a digital realm and create narratives similar to the ones in videogames as they construct an informational cloud on a discourse, which is not limited to ones immediate peers but invites a collaborative process. The suggestion is that discussions and research will remain fertile as long as they are not limited. Therefore digital humanities should be seen as an emerging field of enquiry rather than a discipline or even a non-discipline, embracing the intellectual culture of convergence that is happening online.

Summarizing the consultation, Ashwin Kumar articulated four rubrics under which the single presentations could be grouped. A large part of the presentations discussed digital humanities for and in pedagogy. These talks discussed what digital humanities was doing for the classroom, for teachers and teaching situations and academia in general. A second module saw digital humanities as a research modality and a tool developing discipline. The third rubric formed around seeing digital humanities as a new social skill, which enables a new way of sociality and mirrors society for it to be open for scrutiny. Another fourth rubric was around seeing the digital humanities as a new way of archiving, of storytelling and transmitting knowledge.

The question now is how to collaborate so as to take each of these areas forward and to evolve in the digital humanities under its redefined premisses. The data being produced cannot just be categorized and put on an x/y axis. So when humanities seems to have the systematic problem that it struggles to find the technology to accompany its work, for the digital humanities it seems to be the other way around. This implies a certain lack of content in digital humanities and it is a necessity to look beyond algorithms. The questions of digital humanities cannot simply be how many times a word comes up in a text. Digital humanities will generate this kind of enormous data which in itself is meaningless but will push us to ask the right questions. It will strengthen research by adding a new dimension to data. So anxieties about what it will do to the field are misplaced. Much more, the hope is that it will introduce new objects in questions on the paths we take to find new tools.

Vera Franz praises Rahul Cherian of Inclusive Planet while talking about her work. Watch the video below:

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The interview conducted by Tehelka can be seen here

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Dr. Rajasekar, Administrator on Telugu Wikipedia; Malladi Kameshwararao, Journalist and Telugu Wikipedian;  Rahimanuddin Shaik, Telugu SIG, Wikimedia India Chapter; and T. Vishnu Vardhan Programme Director, CIS-A2K  participated in a one-hour live phone-in programme on Telugu Wikipedia broadcast by HMTV (a Telugu News Channel) on June 1, 2013. This is probably for the first time a television news channel in India has done a live phone-in programme on Wikipedia. HMTV had also done a half-an-hour feature on Wikipedia which was broadcast on May 30 and May 31, 2013.

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This was published by NDTV on April 11, 2013.

NDTV aired a discussion by Ashwin S Kumar, Co-editor, Columnist, The Unreal Times; Kunal Majumder, Assitant Editor, Tehelka.com and Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director, Centre for Internet and Society on April 11, 2013 in response to Justice Katju's comments on bringing 'social media' under the Press Council of India.

Pranesh Prakash laid out four brief points:

1. 'Social media' allows coffee house discussion and toilet wall scrawls to seem like print publications, but it's a mistake to treat it the same way we do print publications. The UK is now planning on using prosecutorial flexibility to refrain from prosecuting simple offensive speech on social media.
2. The same laws should apply online as they do offline (but how the apply, can differ), and that is currently the case. Most content-related offences in the IPC, etc., are offences online as well as offline.
3. Editors and journalists exist for most print publications and broadcast programmes, while that isn't true for most 'social media'. So guidelines applicable to the press mostly won't be applicable online.
4. Electronic publications (like Medianama, The Daily Dish, Huffington Post) which consider themselves engaged in a journalistic venture present a special problem that we do need to have a public conversation about.

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