Centre for Internet and Society

Lok sabha polls: Social media companies launch special pages for polls

praskrishna — 2014-04-14T11:28:54Z

Internet and social media giants such as Google and Facebook have launched special campaigns, pages and services around the Indian Lok Sabha elections to make the most of the world's largest democratic exercise that kicked off on Monday.

The article by Varuni Khosla was published in the Economic Times on April 10, 2014. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Big and small social media companies are looking to use the poll fever to augment their businesses by wooing new users and generating more traffic.

Google, for example, recently launched an election page along with a Google Hangout series and a 'Pledge to Vote' and 'Know Your Candidates' campaign that featured 97-year-old Shyam Saran Negi from Himachal Pradesh who has voted in every election in Independent India. Twitter has come up with a 'Discover' section of curated tweets while Facebook has launched an election trackers as well as a 'Facebook Talks' page.

Indian social platform Vebbler has unveiled 'Ungli' campaign while telecom operator MTS has tied up with Social Samosa for an election tracker.

"While in the short run it may just be a branding exercise, in the long run it could result in more sign-ups and convert into a wider user base for these companies," said Bhupendra Khanal, CEO and co-founder at social business intelligence company Simplify360.

"But it also shows how important India is as a market for these companies — that they are looking at generating information beyond short-term revenues," he added. Khanal said the most popular hashtags with mentions in last 30 days are #Elections2014, which got 46,000 mentions, and #Election2014:, with 36,000 mentions.

This shows that social media users are following and discussing the elections and candidates constantly. Raheel Khursheed, head of news, politics and government at Twitter India, said election candidates across political parties are using Twitter platform to break news, answer questions and post 'selfies'.

"This page lets voters see all the official Twitter feeds from political parties and candidates and will let voters make an informed choice before they go and vote," he said.

Sunil Abraham, executive director at non-profit charitable organisation Centre for Internet and Society, said social media companies are looking at earning close to 10% of the entire media spend by political parties.

"When they have election related features on their site, they can tell their advertisers (political parties) that they are a serious platform that talks politics," he said. "Also, when a user clicks on these ads that are being put up by parties, social media companies are able to gain granular information about the user's likes and dislikes and therefore figure out how to advertise to them in the future," Abraham added.

These make it doubly attractive for social media companies to have such services.

Also, experts say that it doesn't cost much at all to set up these special pages and launch campaigns. "Spends on these campaigns could cost social media companies just about Rs 10-20 lakh - including making videos and setting up pages," a social media agency head said.

This person said that about 60 million people have been discussing Indian Elections on social media, even though there are just about 40 million Twitter users in India. "So, a lot of interest has been taken in the elections from other countries," the person added.

Close to 65% of India's population is under the age of 35 and more and more young people in the country are using social media.

The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IMAI) estimates that a well-executed social media campaign can swing 3%–4% of votes. "Digital advertising in India has increased by 30% this year and around Rs 3402 crore is expected to be spent in 2014. Of this, social media spend is close to Rs 300 crore according to IMRB," says James Drake-Brockman, head of digital marketing division, DMG :: events.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/economic-times-april-10-2014-varuni-khosla-lok-sabha-polls

M'lore: Wikipedia Workshop held for Konkani writers

praskrishna — 2014-04-14T10:36:25Z

A Wikipedia Workshop for Konkani writers writing in the Kannada script, was organised by All India Konkani Writers’ Organisation (AIKWO) in association with Wikipedia, on Apr 6, 2014, at Kalaangann, Mangalore.

Read the media release published in Daijiworld on April 6 here.

Dr U. B. Pavanaja (Programme Officer – Indian Languages, Access to Knowledge Program, The Centre for Internet and Society), conducted the workshop. Harriet Vidyasagar, Wikipedian volunteer, was also present.


Above: Dr. Pavanaja felicitated at the workshop. Picture by Daijiworld.com

This one-day hands-on workshop included presentations on Wikipedia in general, and Konkani Wikipedia in particular, and the participants were taught how to add and edit Konkani articles in the Kannada script in Wikipedia.

On behalf of Mandd Sobhann, Dr. Pratap Naik SJ handed-over three research works published by Mandd Sobhann – 1. Konkani Songs Among Mangalorean Catholics, 2. Anthology Of Konkani Literature In The Kannada Script and 3. Mandd Sobhann And Its Impact On Konkani Language And Literature – the representatives of Wikipedia – Dr. U. B. Pavanaja and Ms. Harriet Vidyasagar, to be updated in the Konkani Wikipedia. Shri Eric Ozario, Gurkar – Mandd Sobhann, Ms. Irine Rebello, Secretary – Mandd Sobhann and Dr. Edward Nazareth, General Secretary – AIKWO, were present on stage.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/daijiworld-april-6-2014-mangalore-wikipedia-workshop-held-for-konkani-writers

Odia Loves Wikipedia

praskrishna — 2014-04-14T09:56:20Z

Odia is a 2,500 year old language native to the area of Odisha (formerly known as Orissa). The language has recently gained the status of an Indian classical language.

The article by Laura Morris was published in Rising Voices on April 10, 2014. Subhashish's article on Odia Wikipedia is mentioned.

Recently, the Odia Wikimedia community met to celebrate the language's new status in Bhubaneswar.

The following is an excerpt from a recent article on the Wikimedia Foundation blog, by Subhashish Panigrahi, sharing information about the Odia WIki community:

14 copyrighted books have been re-licensed under the Creative Commons license and the digitization project on Odia WikiSource was formally initiated by an indigenous educational institute, the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) [...] KISS is going to digitize some of these books and make them available on Odia Wikisource.

An OpenType Odia Unicode font, “Odia OT Jagannatha” designed by Sujata Patel from Odialanguage.com was released under the OFL license. This is the first Odia OpenType font that the community actively tested.

A new Odia offline input tool called “TypeOdia” by Wikipedian Manoj Sahukar was also released for public distribution. DVDs containing the font, the input tool, Odia language dictionaries, offline Odia Wikipedia in Kiwix, Wikipedia editing guide, ISCII to Unicode font converter, various free and open source software packages and Ubuntu operating system [...]

A large majority of Odia publications are not available on the internet and readers are devoid of easy accessibility. [Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak] discussed the process of digitization for preserving valuable books that are out of print and the old palm leaf manuscripts [...]

The Odia fonts can be downloaded for free. The developers of the font say:

We advocate for the use of Odia language in true spirit, in the domain of day-to-day administration, justice delivery, apart from the field of teaching. Besides, we have undertaken the project for developing Odia lexicon,with inclusion of typical odia version of technical words ,so as to avoid dependence on English language.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/rising-voices-april-10-2014-odia-loves-wikipedia

Banking Guide

praskrishna — 2014-04-14T05:30:30Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/banking-policy-guide.pdf

Banking Policy Guide

praskrishna — 2014-04-14T05:29:12Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/banking-policy-guide.xlsx

No party's got a clear stand, Aadhaar's fate hangs in balance

praskrishna — 2014-05-05T06:01:08Z

A non-UPA government for sure will review the multi-crore UID programme, but none of the parties have yet talked about scrapping it.

The article by Pratap Vikram Singh was published in GovernanceNow.com on April 13, 2014. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Since inception, Aadhaar’s foundation has been shaky. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has been functioning on an executive fiat, without parliamentary ratification. When the government first came up with a bill on the UID programme, it was rejected by the parliamentary standing committee, which questioned the purpose of the programme.

Aadhaar’s acceptability as proof of residence and its issuance to the illegal immigrants too has courted controversy. The opposition and the ministry of home affairs have repeatedly flagged the issue. Recently, the supreme court (SC) instructed the government to withdraw all orders mandating Aadhaar number for service delivery. In September last year too the apex court had ruled that no one should be denied a service for want of Aadhaar.

While the Congress hasn’t changed its position on Aadhaar and wishes to continue with Aadhaar-linked benefits transfer, the BJP hasn’t mentioned it even once in its 52-page manifesto. On April 8, Narendra Modi, BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, in an election rally near Bangalore was quoted as saying, “I asked several questions on the Aadhaar project. I asked them questions relating to illegal migrants and national security. They (the government) did not have any answer.”

Rajendra Pratap Gupta, member of BJP’s core committee on manifesto, told Governance Now: “If we come to power we will review this in totality. There is scepticism around the whole project and even the SC has ruled against mandating it.” He called Aadhaar one of the ‘biggest scams’ of the UPA. “We have found people owning multiple Aadhaar cards. It (Aadhaar) is not a very secure system,” he added.

On the other hand, Aam Aadmi Party doesn’t oppose the idea of Aadhaar, though it is critical of its linkage to delivering food and other subsidies. Atishi Marlena, the party’s manifesto committee chief, said, “In principle, we don’t oppose the Aadhaar programme. If it’s about providing an identification proof to the poor who don’t have other documents, we certainly welcome it. But Aadhaar’s linkage with benefits-transfer needs to be questioned. Who gets what and who doesn’t should be determined by gram sabhas and mohalla sabhas. It should be done via people participation.”

The CPI(M), in its manifesto, called for halting the project unless it gets parliamentary approval. It also underlined the need for a privacy and data protection law prior to the rollout of the UID programme. “The moment Aadhaar is linked with service delivery, the scope for exclusion widens. You need to have universal coverage of Aadhaar and banking before you roll out the benefits transfer programme,” CPI(M) Rajya Sabha member Tapan Sen said.

In its manifesto, the party has talked about ‘constituting an independent high-level expert panel for an appraisal of the technology of biometrics used in the project’.

Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society said, “The centralised online authentication automatically raises issues of privacy infringement. The authentication, in a decentralised fashion, with help of smart cards, is less intrusive, as the logs are stored in a local fashion and not centralised as in the case of Aadhaar. It will be a welcome move if the next government selects resident ID (smart) card, issued by the home ministry, as proof for identification and service delivery.”

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/governance-now-april-13-2014-pratap-vikram-singh-no-party-has-got-clear-stand-aadhaar-fate-hangs-in-balance

Parties give short shrift to privacy

praskrishna — 2014-05-05T05:54:11Z

Both the Congress and BJP vision documents disappoint, but the real surprise is the CPI-M document that deals with cyber issues in a substantial manner.

The article by Pratap Vikram Singh was published in GovernanceNow.com on April 12, 2014. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

For civil rights activists in the internet and cyber space, the election manifestoes of major political parties including the Congress and the BJP have come as a disappointment. Both the parties are mute on privacy. In the recent past there has been a vociferous demand for a strong legislation on privacy. A draft bill on privacy has been making rounds of the bureaucratic circle for three years. Manifestoes are also silent on the need for correction in the information technology act, which activists say is characterised by 'arbitrariness and lack of processes'.

“A healthy democracy gives equal weightage to transparency and privacy. It’s disappointing that the two parties have overlooked these two,” says Sunil Abraham, director of the Bangalore based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS). Both Congress and BJP don’t mention about the lack of implementation of the open data policy. The policy, aka NDSAP 2012, requires all departments and ministries to put high value data sets in public domain within a few months of the policy enforcement. The parties are also silent on need for a balancing act on surveillance and civil liberty.

Nikhil Pahwa, founder of Medianama.com, a portal posting news and analysis on digital media, says “The parties could have talked about reforming the IT legislation, especially the Section 79 and IT Rules 2011 which gives the intermediaries—the ISPs, websites, and cyber cafes—the power to strike down content without even hearing the author.” The law, currently, doesn’t provide a redressal mechanism to the author.

Similarly both parties are mute on internet governance, which has become a major global issue after the US showed willingness to cede its monopolistic oversight over the body governing the internet ICANN.

The Congress manifesto is also blank on making websites and systems accessible for specially-abled population, also called as e-accessibility. While the BJP too doesn’t talk about making government portals e-accessible, it speaks about the use of technology to deliver low cost quality education to specially-abled students. Issuance of universal identity cards for all applicable government benefits and disabled friendly access to public facilities are two other things which the party promises to implement if voted in power.

Both election manifestoes don’t mention concerns related to telecommunication sector. Broadband is the only term that appears in the two manifestoes. The Congress promises to bring high speed Internet to every village panchayat. This is not a new initiative; a project under DoT called national optical fibre network, NOFN, proposes to do the same. The BJP’s manifesto says, “Deployment of broadband in every village would be a thrust area.”

Both parties also talk about putting public services online. There is also nothing concrete about promotion of indigenous manufacturing in electronics and IT hardware. While there are serious omissions in the two manifestoes, the manifesto of the CPI-M surprises many, highlighting key issues concerning civil rights and liberty.

The manifesto talks about ‘demilitarisation of cyber space’ and ‘protecting Internet and telecommunications networks from cyber attacks and surveillance by building indigenous capability’. Edward Snowden’s revelation of the PRISM programme seems to be the context. It also talks about promoting ‘free software and other such new technologies which are free from monopoly ownership through copyrights or patents; knowledge commons should be promoted across disciplines, like biotechnology and drug discovery’.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/governance-now-april-12-2014-pratap-vikram-singh-parties-give-short-shrift-to-privacy

El idioma oriya ama a Wikipedia

praskrishna — 2014-05-05T05:14:26Z

Este post es de Rising Voices, un proyecto de Global Voices que ayuda a difundir los medios ciudadanos en lugares que normalmente no tienen acceso a ellos.

The following is a Spanish version of the news that was already published in English on Rising Voices. The Russian version can be read here.

El oriya (odia) es una lengua con una antigüedad de 2,500 años nativa de la región de Odisha (antes conocida como Orissa). La lengua obtuvo recientemente el estatus de lengua clásica de la India.

Recientemente, la comunidad Wikimedia Oriya se reunió para celebrar el nuevo estatus de la lengua en Bhubaneswar.

A continuación un extracto de un artículo [en] reciente en el blog de la Fundación Wikimedia, por Subhashish Panigrahi [en], compartiendo información sobre la comunidad Wiki en Oriya:

14 libros con derechos de autor se han relicenciado bajo la licencia Creative Commons y el proyecto de digitalización en Odia WikiSource [or] fue formalmente iniciado por una institución educacional indígena, la Institución Kalinga de Ciencias Sociales (KISS por sus siglas en inglés) [...] La KISS digitalizará algunos de estos libros y los pondrá a disposición en Odia Wikisource.

Una fuente OpenType Unicode en oriya, “Odia OT Jagannatha [en]” diseñada por Sujata Patel de Odialanguage.com [en] fue publicada bajo la licencia OFL. Es la primera fuente OpenType para oriya que la comunidad ha probado activamente.

Una nueva herramienta para la escritura en oriya sin necesidad de estar en línea llamada “TypeOdia” [en], por el wikipedista Manoj Sahukar [or] también se publicó para su distribución. DVD's con la fuente, la herramienta de escritura, diccionarios en la lengua oriya, la Wikipedia oriya fuera de línea en Kiwix, la guía de edición de Wikipedia [en], un convertidor de fuentes ISCII a Unicode, varias paquetes de software libre y de fuente abierta y el sistema operativo Ubuntu [...]

Una gran mayoría de las publicaciones en oriya no se encuentran en Internet y los usuarios carecen de fácil acceso. (El dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak) discutió el proceso de digitalización para preservar libros valiosos que ya no se imprimen y viejos manuscritos en hoja de palma [...]

Las fuentes en oriya pueden ser descargadas gratuitamente [en]. Los desarroladores de la fuente dicen [en]:

Abogamos por el uso de la lengua oriya de verdadero espíritu, en el campo de la administración diaria, en la justicia, además del campo de la educación. Además, hemos tomado el proyecto para desarrollar un léxico en oriyia, incluyendo versiones en oriya típicas de palabras técnicas, para evitar la dependencia de la lengua inglesa.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/rising-voices-april-12-2014-el-idioma-oriya-ama-a-wikipedia

The Critical Life of Information

praskrishna — 2014-05-05T04:41:08Z

Nishant Shah and Malavika Jayaram will be speaking at the event organized by Yale University on April 11, 2014.

The immensity of the proliferation of bits of raw information that is fundamental to current digital environments is at a scale that in earlier eras would have been characterized as sublime. Big Data also corresponds to scales of globalization with its heretofore unthinkable geographical expanses and inequalities, suddenly crystallized in local crises. Scholars have argued that the geographical scale of accumulation has been changing and that hierarchies of scale are appearing that reveal the specificity of capital at the present time. This, in turn, requires a re-scaling and re-conceptualization of life. The workshop will address how new notions of information as property, and its harvesting from people in contexts ranging from shopping to health care to social media, condition humanistic inquiry and its concepts of the individual and the collective.

Nishant Shah spoke in the panel on Big Data and Governance. Malavika Jayaram spoke in the panel on Big Data and the Arts. Click to read the original published on Yale University site.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/critical-life-of-information

Enabling Elections: (Coverage in Vijay Karnataka)

praskrishna — 2014-04-09T14:37:40Z

Vijay Karnataka published about the Enabling Elections report from CIS. Nirmita Narasimhan is quoted.


Above: A scanned version of the article in Kannada (published by Vijay Karnataka).

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/vijay-karnataka-april-9-2014-enabling-elections

Are Elections Fair to People With Special Needs?

praskrishna — 2014-04-09T06:37:14Z

City-based think tanks have submitted a report to the Election Commission saying elections in India are unfriendly to people with disabilities.

The article by Papiya Bhattacharya was published in the New Indian Express on April 8, 2014. Dr. Nirmita Narasimhan is quoted.

The report, by the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and Centre for Law and Policy Research (CLPR), says there are several legal barriers that hinder the involvement of people with disabilities in elections.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that India is home to 150 million people with disabilities. While the Constitution of India and the Representation of People Act, 1951, gives people with disabilities the right to vote, the report says the community remains excluded from polling largely because of the inaccessibility of the physical environment of polling and lack of easily-available electoral information.

Dr. Nirmita Narasimhan, policy director of CIS and one of the authors of the study, says, “The report is based on feedback from the disabled. It would be nice if the Election Commission makes it easy for them to vote.”
She said registration of voters with disabilities has not been completed because there have been too few attempts to reach out to them.

The report concludes with recommendations to make the electoral process more inclusive. The suggestions include ensuring complete registration of voters with disabilities, use of technology to this end, training and sensitising voters with disabilities and improving information accessibility and election monitoring.

The report also inludes the results of a test conducted on the information accessibility in websites of EC and major political parties. The test revealed that most of the websites don’t conform to standards of web accessibility and are not disabled-friendly.

Steps Taken for Fair Polling: JHA

Chief Electoral Officer Anil Kumar Jha told Express that the Election Commission has instructed polling officers to ensure fair treatment to people with special needs. He said, “We have instructed polling officers to provide entry to specially-challenged people on priority. The visually-impaired can take a companion above the age of 18 to the polling booth for help. The electronic voting machines have Braille stickers on their side. If the voters know the serial number of the candidate, they can vote on their own.” He added that a ramp will be set up wherever feasible.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/new-indian-express-april-8-2014-papiya-bhattacharya-are-elections-fair-to-people-with-special-needs

HLAC on National Electronic Accessibility Policy

praskrishna — 2014-04-09T01:35:54Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/hlac-on-national-electronic-accessibility-policy.pdf

NASA International Space Apps Challenge 2014

praskrishna — 2014-04-08T16:49:48Z

As part of the NASA Open Government Plan , the NASA International Space Apps Challenge have brought together citizen scientists, FOSS enthusiasts , Data Scientists, Open Hardware hackers and students throughout the world for collaborative problem solving with a goal of producing relevant open-source solutions to address global needs applicable to both life on Earth and life in Space.

Event Flier

And once again on April 12th and 13th, 2014, the event will be organized by the Centre for Internet and Society, with a special focus on Open Data, Open Science and Citizen Science, in collaboration with Team Indus, one of 3 teams to be selected globally amidst thousands, to launch a moon rover for the Google Lunar X-Prize 2015.

The event shall start on Saturday, 12th of April, with the following morning talks:

Keynote Speaker: Dr.Jayant Murthy, Professor, Indian Institute of Astrophysics, will be addressing the gathering on Open Science, Open Data and Computing within the Indian context.
Title of Talk : Open Data , Open Science and Computing in the Indian Context: 10:30 a.m.
Abstract: As Big Science gets bigger and yields massive amounts of data, we are left with a host of insurmountable problems from the physical - How do we store and access so much data? - to the computational - How do we process the data with increasingly complex models? - to the sociological - How do we change our paradigm so that we efficiently use the data with a limited pool of skilled manpower. I will also touch on some philosophical aspects of this problem - Should all data be free and what are the implications of this on policy and on individuals.
Speaker : Narayan Prasad, Co-Founder, Dhruva Space: 11:30 a.m.
Abstract: Narayan will talk about issues surrounding Open Data, Citizen Science and Governance whilst taking us on a journey of Bangalore based Dhruva Space, one of the world's few start-ups, looking at solutions ranging from small satellite development (CUBESAT, ARDUSAT), near space environmental design, high altitude balloon imaging and internet -- many of these using open source hardware devices like the Arduino.

We will then get into break out sessions to review and sign-up for existing challenges or propose new ones amongst those listed at : https://2014.spaceappschallenge.org/challenge/

The hackathon will end on Sunday, April 13, 2014 by 6 p.m.

Registration is free and you are requested to confirm your participation for the event here : https://2014.spaceappschallenge.org/location/bangalore/

Participants are requested to bring their own laptops.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/nasa-international-space-apps-challenge-2014

NASA International Space Apps Challenge 2014 (Hackathon)

praskrishna — 2014-04-08T06:42:08Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/nasa-open-hackathon.pdf

AIKWO Holds Wikipedia Workshop for Konkani Writers

praskrishna — 2014-05-05T04:22:10Z

A Wikipedia Workshop for Konkani writers writing in the Kannada script, was organised by All India Konkani Writers’ Organisation (AIKWO) in association with Wikipedia at Kalaangann Shaktinagar here on April 6.

Read the original published in Mangalorean.com here

Dr U B Pavanaja (Programme Officer – Indian Languages, Access to Knowledge Program, The Centre for Internet and Society), conducted the workshop. Harriet Vidyasagar, Wikipedian volunteer, was also present.

The one-day hands-on workshop included presentations on Wikipedia in general, and Konkani Wikipedia in particular, and the participants were taught how to add and edit Konkani articles in the Kannada script in Wikipedia.

On behalf of Mandd Sobhann, Dr Pratap Naik SJ handed-over three research works published by Mandd Sobhann – 1. Konkani Songs Among Mangalorean Catholics, 2. Anthology Of Konkani Literature In The Kannada Script and 3. Mandd Sobhann And Its Impact On Konkani Language And Literature – the representatives of Wikipedia – Dr. U. B. Pavanaja and Ms. Harriet Vidyasagar, to be updated in the Konkani Wikipedia. Shri Eric Ozario, Gurkar – Mandd Sobhann, Ms. Irine Rebello, Secretary – Mandd Sobhann and Dr. Edward Nazareth, General Secretary – AIKWO, were also present.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/mangalorean-april-6-2014-aikwo-holds-wikipedia-workshop-for-konkani-writers