Centre for Internet and Society

White Phone

praskrishna — 2012-11-02T15:25:47Z

White Phone

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Whitephone.png

Whistle Blowers Protection Act, 2014

praskrishna — 2014-07-02T08:00:31Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/whistle-blowers-protection-act-2014.pdf

When the war’s on WhatsApp

praskrishna — 2016-09-25T16:36:01Z

Slick, jingoistic videos are whipping up pro-war rhetoric on social media after the Uri terror attack.

The article by Manju V was published in the Times of India on September 25, 2016. Nishant Shah was quoted.

It packs a meaner punch than any 140-character tweet. In 140 jingoistic seconds, the cleverly packaged YouTube film veers from Mohammed Rafi to Chandra Shekhar Azad drumming up pro-war rhetoric to avenge the Pathankot attack. Set to the tone of chirping crickets on a moonlit night somewhere along the western border that India shares with its neighbour, the short film has two armymen in fatigues deliberate over the absolute need to respond with a counter attack. It ends in a staccato military drumbeat with a voiceover quoting Azad: "If yet your blood does not rage, then it is water that flows in your veins."

Posted about 10 days after the Pathankot attack in January, the video was resurrected last week after the country woke up to the Uri attack that killed 18 Indian soldiers in the deadliest assault on security forces in Kashmir in over two decades. Even as photographs of a grenade smoke-filled valley, tricolour-draped coffins, grieving sons, daughters and widows made the rounds in media outlets scores of Indians marched onto social media, some armed with incendiary prose and other with slick videos that expressed more anger than anguish.

In another video doing the rounds, a jawan, or someone in uniform, sings a poem warning Pakistan. His mates join in the refrain: "Kashmir toh hoga, lekin Pakistan nahi hoga."

These videos of jawans threatening to decimate Pakistan were shared by thousands. WhatsApp profile pictures and statuses were changed, Facebook posts got longer and vitriolic, Twitter #UriAttack exploded with expletives as the enough-is-enough sentiment peaked. It heralded the beginning of an era where the dynamics of Indo-Pakistan relations will play out not just in the diplomatic corridors of Delhi and Islamabad, the valley of Kashmir or the barracks of security forces; but also on the mobile phones, tablets and laptops of millions of Indians.

When contacted for a comment, the makers of the war-mongering 'Pathankot Tolerance' video didn't endorse war outright. "My individual opinion is that war is not a solution," said producer Santosh Singh, who heads the Mumbai-based V Seven Pictures. "Before we resort to war, we have to solve our internal problems. How can we let infiltration take place so blatantly?" he asked. Why then does the video not talk about this? Singh said that when one hears about such attacks, the instant reaction is to retaliate. "The video is based on that sentiment."

An electronics engineer, Singh also owns an IT recruitment firm. His film production company, which he runs along with his friend Vivek Joshi, made the Mauka Mauka World Cup video that went viral and also produces short films and videos for clients. "We have no political affiliations, in fact we turned down a couple of political parties who approached us," says Singh, adding that his company has made 30-35 films in less than two years. "Of these, about 10 are on issues close to our heart, like those on Afzal Guru and the Pathankot attack. We upload them on YouTube, they are aired without ads. We don't earn money from them," he adds.

Ugly gets outlet

Nitin Pai, director of Takshashila Institution, an independent centre for research and education in public policy, says that social media and some television studios have enabled people to express their subconscious fears and desires. "It is not just today that the people of India have been angry with Pakistan for fomenting terrorism in our country. But it is only now that they have ways to express this anger; unfortunately, social media dynamics amplify this anger in a grotesque, distorted manner, allowing the ugly and less-sensible views to rise to the top of the public discourse," said Pai.

Tracing the many origins of this phenomenon, psychiatrist Harish Shetty says that in an angst-ridden, globalized world, we need a whipping boy. "With the Uri attacks, the entire nation had a common enemy. In expressing collective anger, there's catharsis." The current outpouring is not just over the deaths of soldiers; such an incident also opens up older wounds, he says. "For a long time, Indians have found their leaders to be helpless. It's like a family that is attacked again and again by a neighbour, but the father does nothing about it. There has been a lack of strong response from 'papa figures' across time, which has led to a sense of anger and rage. After the Uri attacks, the collective self-esteem of the country took a beating, and people felt a need to assert themselves on social media. At such times strong action is viewed as legitimate, valid and free of guilt," he adds.

Amplifying angst

If social media brought together protesters in Tunisia and Egypt during the Arab spring, in democratic India it has turned into a platform for expressing mass disenchantment with the government, especially in the wake of such attacks.

Social media plays several roles in times of crises, says Nishant Shah, professor of digital media and co-founder of the Centre for Internet & Society, Bengaluru. One, it amplifies what is already being said in friend circles and living-room conversations in front of the telly, but spreads it to a larger audience. "The second role it plays is distribution: social media allows people to inherit other people's opinions, thus exposing them to new ways of thinking but also find corroborators for their own viewpoints," he says. The third is catalysis — social media also has the capacity to generate new information. "The format creates new kinds of truths. Things that can be caught in Snapchat videos, or visuals which can be remixed, all become a part of this zeitgeist," Shah says.

Virtual wars

But in India at least, social media is no indicator of considered public opinion, points out Pai. Shah adds: "What we are seeing is a filter bubble of a privileged set of people who are engaging in this debate."

Then again, what's said on social media needn't be endorsed in real life. Vivek Joshi, who wrote and directed the Pathankot video, says nobody in the world would want a war. "But when it comes to the lives of our soldiers, an answer has to be given. If the government had taken any visible action, then there would have been no need to put out a video like this," Joshi adds. And therein probably comes the new-age heuristic of venting out on social media.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/times-of-india-september-25-2016-manju-vi-when-the-war-is-on-whatsapp

When the virtual world wakes up the real one

praskrishna — 2013-11-30T09:35:06Z

The unprecedented wave of voices speaking up against sexual harassment in recent times has as much to do with technology as the determination to seek justice. From Twitter to Tumblr, and blogs to pastebin, the internet's anonymity, reach and speed allow small, personal stories of abuse to swell into big stories.

The article by Malini Nair was published in the Times of India on November 24. Nishant Shah is quoted.

The outrage over the Tehelka case started with a post on pastebin, an anonymous document sharing site, on Wednesday evening. It contained the email managing editor Shoma Chaudhury had sent to the Tehelka staff with editor Tarun Tejpal's "atonement" letter appended below. A few hours later, the story had ballooned into a heated debate, and the outpouring forced what was being dismissed as an "internal matter" to be treated as a criminal case.

The two women who recently spoke up against harassment at the hands of a retired Supreme Court judge also used Facebook and the blogosphere to tell their stories, ensuring that the real world was actually moved into taking action. "The social web's biggest comfort is that we are no longer alone," says Nishant Shah, director, Research at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. "No matter what has happened to us, it has happened to somebody else. The possibility of finding credulous and empathetic audiences who but share our pain, understand it, and respond to it is unprecedented." Retweets and comments have often been described as the digital equivalent of holding hands.

Shah's pick of web campaigns that highlighted the problems include Blank Noise which calls women to talk of small, everyday stories of harassment, the Pink Chaddi drive and Why We Need Feminism, a web venture across American universities.

The other reason why the net encourages victims of abuse who might otherwise have stayed quiet to speak out is its "pseudonymity", as Shah terms it. In societies where there is shame attached to talking about sexual assault, the online space saves women from having to put themselves out in the "physical space" while ensuring that the perpetrator is exposed, he points out.

A plus for social web is that it gets other victims to speak up as well, gathering force and magnitude in the process. This happened in the instance of the legal interns. Another instance that surfaced just a month ago was of two American women science bloggers Danielle Lee and Monica Byrne. When Lee refused to write a piece for free for Biology Online, she was called "urban whore" by an enraged editor. She blogged about it and the ensuing storm over social media got her huge support. After Lee's expose, Byrne blogged about an acutely sexual conversation a powerful science writer inflicted on her. The outrage this provoked abated only after he made amends.

As an article in Gender and Culture blog project puts it: "( The digital world provided) a forum for these victims to document their abuse, and a courtroom where the abusers have been judged and found guilty by public opinion".

Of course there are problems with the internet's version of justice — it tends to play judge, jury and executioner with giddy recklessness. In the Tehelka case, the first questionable moment came when the survivor's email was tweeted and re-tweeted with no concern for her requests for anonymity. "The problem with Twitter and Facebook is the incredible and gross violations of privacy of the survivor. And otherwise responsible adults join lynch mobs calling either the survivor or the accused names, making ridiculous allegations, desperately looking for an easy narrative to hang everything on," says author Nisha Susan, who led the Pink Chaddi campaign.

Commentator Santosh Desai says that it is tough to choose between an unbridled but powerful social web and one that is cautious and governed by norms. "Earlier, there were receivers and broadcasters who were few and governed by licenses and a code of behaviour. Now everyone is a broadcaster, everyone is a circulator and everyone is an aggregator. Having no oversight here could be problematic," he says.

Susan says communities need to go beyond social media in such situations. "It should also be a time for us to reflect. On what we would do in such a situation, how we could perhaps prevent it, on the sense of entitlement powerful men have all over the world, on the awful pressures young women face. We should all be reflecting. Instead we are just re-tweeting."

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/the-times-of-india-malini-nair-november-24-2013-when-the-virtual-world-wakes-up-the-real-one

When the digital spills into the physical

praskrishna — 2011-12-22T05:42:39Z

Nishant Shah, Director-Research, Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru, tells us why flash mobs are an interesting sign of our times, and not just a passing fad.

What is a flash mob?
There are many different forms of flash mobs, if you look at their content. In terms of structure, it has to do with a bunch of people, who are connected to each other by common technologies but don't necessarily know each other, and yet, come together in a public space to perform a set of pre-decided actions. Congregate, Orchestrate and Disperse -- that is the anatomy of a flash-mob. Hence it is different from other kinds of mobilisations, because it is very rare for anybody to know who is the organiser of a flash mob.

There are no long speeches, political expositions or agendas used in order to bring people together for a flash mob. Once the brief performance has been done, people don't stay back to form communities and discuss. The word 'flash' draws its inspiration both from 'flash-floods' and 'flash-in-a-pan', both referring to the immanence and suddenness of a flashmob.

What is a smart mob?
Howard Rheingold coined the term smart mob in a book by the same name. Smart mobs are a more inclusive form of digital technology-based mobilisation. Rheingold uses the term to refer to a series of sharing, collaborative, performative engagements that have emerged around the world, especially with young people using the Internet. The people don't know each other, but through different Peer-to-Peer (p2p) protocols, are able to share their resources towards a particular purpose. So it might be a group of friends who want to dance at the train station, or geeks sharing their idle computing time to search for records of UFOs, or people using location based applications to meet each other in caf ©s and form friendships. Smart mobs are essentially different from flashmobs because they have a specific agenda and are geared towards a longer, sustained and enduring practice of community belonging and building.

What role does the Internet and digital technology play in organising flash mobs?
One of the fundamental tenets of flash mobs is the condition of anonymity. The web offers the necessary condition where the intended participant does not have to disclose any personal information. They are able to interact, communicate, receive and share information while giving out nothing more than their email addresses and cellphone numbers. It would have been impossible to think of a flash mob without the use of these technologies because while the postal service would also offer similar conditions (though the physical address is more of an identifier), the flash mob also requires a speed and scale which would otherwise have been impossible in an analogue world.

What is a flash mob best suited to achieve? Is it a form of celebration, a protest, campaign, a quick way to poke fun, or be ironic?
I would say the flash mob is a tool — a process that can be deployed for anything that you want. You can use it as a form of celebration or protest. You can also use it to bully somebody, to destroy public property or create conditions of danger. However, that is true of any tool that we use. A hammer, for example, can be used to hit a nail, or hit some one. The flash mob is a symptom of how our digital and physical realities are merging. It uses the aesthetics of p2p, interaction with strangers, gaming elements with more control over the spaces that we occupy, 'avatar'ification which allows for a pseudonymous existence, etc. to organise something in the physical world. And it is these spillages of the digital into the physical (and vice versa) that make flash mobs significantly more interesting than just a passing fad.

MidDay published this interview in their newspaper on 18 December 2011. The original can be read here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/when-digital-spills-into-physical

When technology is able but the mindset is not

praskrishna — 2014-12-14T06:01:06Z

There are enough digital products and services to help people with disabilities. Widespread ignorance stands between them and digital inclusion.

The story by Geetanjali Minhas appeared in December 1-15, 2014, issue.

Twenty-four-year-old Bhavesh Patel moves around giving a demonstration of the screen reader Dolphin Supernova in such a sure-footed manner that no one can imagine he is totally blind. The device has a voiceover function that can be used on iPhone.

Not just that, Patel travels every day from his home in Vikhroli to his office in Goregaon, changing buses and trains with minimal assistance.

Patel’s colleague, Debashish, who is autistic, and no less capable, is known for his immaculate spellings within the company.

Team leader Priti Rohra, despite low vision, skillfully heads the testing team for websites and meticulously ensures that guidelines for the disabled are adhered to. Rohra works on policies and research and has prepared many reports for BarrierBreak, a company where 75 percent of the staff has disabilities like autism, inhibited vision and impaired hearing. Its unique competitive advantage has allowed the company to help develop niche products and services for converting textbooks into more disabled-friendly formats like digital talking books (Epub Conversion). Till now, it has produced 1.5 million pages of disabled-friendly textbooks.

“When the government provides technology to its own employees it is enhancing their productivity,” says Shilpi Kapoor, founder-director of BarrierBreak and a member of the Nasscom Disability Advisory Group. “The fundamental difference here is that internationally, disability inclusion is a mandate, whereas in India it is considered charity and therefore a challenge. As a result many disabled are denied jobs as per their calibre and given salaries as doles.”

The priority given to policies for development of disabled-friendly information technology tools and services has been relatively low in India. Usually, it stems from an inaccurate understanding that the development of such tools and services will cost more money, and there will be no opportunity to recover it from the market.

A critical component of digital inclusion is to make websites and applications disabled-friendly. Most websites are not compliant with international guidelines on disabled-friendly requirements. Developers, officials and policy makers give disability accessibility a cold shoulder, retrofitting it into existing policies and processes as an after-thought.

An attitudinal shift might come if the new national policy on universal electronic accessibility (NPUEA) notified by DeitY is implemented, resulting in nearly 7,000 government websites becoming accessible to the disabled, especially visually impaired.

Various reports, including a 2012 survey by the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), found that almost 25 percent of 7,800 government websites failed to open and the remaining had accessibility barriers. The web accessibility survey report of Indian government websites by the national centre for promotion of employment for disabled people (NCPEDP) in 2012 too revealed that of the 200 government websites tested, only two were found to be disabled-friendly. “Disability is a major social issue that India is grappling with. It needs to be addressed through not just policy, but also through assistive technology solutions,” says Prakash Kumar, CEO, Goods and Services Tax Network.

CIS executive director Sunil Abraham, who was on the committee that formulated the NPUEA, says besides non-confirmation of websites to international norms, there are many technical hurdles. Text-to-speech and speech-to-text software, mature optical character recognition systems, speech and grammar check and machine translation are some of the features that are still not available for most Indian languages, he adds. “Many government websites use font encoding for Indian languages which results in the failure of text-to-speech technologies.”

DeitY, under the ministry of communication and information technology, is supporting some technology interventions for the disabled, across different Indian languages. This also includes text-to-speech tools. “Mobile phone manufacturers should also provide in-built tools to cater to the needs of disabled people,” points out Ajay Kumar, joint secretary, DeitY. Emphasising a strong legal framework for implementation of the policy, Kumar adds that though the new policy promotes disability inclusion, the information technology ministry does not have the legal backing to enforce it. “The ministry of social justice and empowerment is creating a legal framework for the bill that is under consideration by the concerned committee to mandate some of these things, including technology assistance for the disabled,” he adds.

Abraham says besides ensuring that websites and services are accessible to the disabled, the new policy must be updated to include a mandate that all parties providing essential services to the general public must comply with accessibility standards. “Manufacturers of ICT products should provide at least one accessible model of their products within each price range that they are operating within,” he says.

Sam Taraporevala, associate professor and head of sociology department, St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai and the director of Xavier’s resource centre for the visually challenged, says with the government accepting a policy that IT tools should follow accessibility standards, it is now a question of monitoring, and, perhaps, even judicial activism. Nirmita Narasimhan, policy director, CIS, who works closely with various government departments to bring accessibility into their policies and programmes, concurs. “There must be accountability and a monitoring mechanism to check whether websites are disability compliant,” she says.

Maharashtra is the only state to make it compulsory for every department to have a scheme for procuring disability access products. Yet, compliance remains a problem. “Despite the government holding awareness camps at various districts, barriers are created for accessing government schemes. Resistance on part of government agencies to give out equipment to disabled people and lack of awareness among people about the availability of such facilities are the other stumbling blocks. Yet, there are ways for getting these products,” says Kapoor.

Experts say the needs and requirements of the disabled vary according to their disability and affordability of tools. Also, low income levels of many disabled people is a dissuading factor toprocuring equipment. “Most available tools and technologies are proprietary and, hence, costly and we are not able to scale them up in a big way,” says Kumar.

Taraporevala, born with 100% visual impairment, was instrumental in getting the guidelines for opening and operating demat accounts for visually impaired persons implemented. He also says mainstream consumer product companies are moving into touchscreen modes in mobile phones forgetting a large chunk of disabled population. “While the standards are there, implementation suffers due to lack of awareness which, in turn, leads to less demand,” he says.

The way forward
Governance Now also asked experts if corporate social responsibility (CSR) towards disability inclusion could address challenges in recruitment of disabled persons. “Instead of a hammer approach, a care approach has to be adopted,” says Rita Soni, CEO, Nasscom Foundation. According to Kumar, “Absence of commercial interest in promoting disability accessibility products has afflicted the sector with neglect.” However, Kapoor says, “This has to be an equal opportunity business. There will be differential costs, but at the same time the total number of disabled people in India is close to 70 million and a billion world over. How can you not treat them like a client?”

Speaking of the revised CSR rules under the Companies Act, Soni adds, “You can support skilling of persons with disabilities that has nothing to do with your business and have it considered as CSR expenditure. But if you make your office building or internet accessible, it does not count. Creating incentives around disability will make us a more inclusive society and make disability more amenable to office environment.”

Maharashtra IT secretary Rajesh Aggarwal adds, except for the metro, none of our public transport systems are disabled-friendly. As per national building code of India, while giving permissions for public buildings there must be a checklist to ensure that buildings and toilets are wheelchair and blind-friendly. Similarly, hotels must have few rooms which are disabled-friendly.” This awareness has not yet set in,” he says.

The Asia-Pacific region study of UNESCO global report 2013 has said many countries in the developing world are struggling to attain their millennium development goals of providing universal primary education to all by 2015. Our education system, on the other hand, has serious flaws. “We do not teach professionals about assistive technologies and for that reason an eye doctor does not know about low vision aids or a speech therapist does not know how to use communication devices,” says Kapoor.

Taraporevala is of the view that universal (architectural) design needs to be actively woven into every design curriculum across the spectrum, instead of being an optional subject. Physical infrastructure, building standards, for instance, need to reflect this and there needs to be active lobbying to ensure that certificates for public places are not given if they lack certain standards.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/news/governance-now-december-1-2014-geetanjali-minhas-when-technology-is-able-but-mindset-is-not

When technology is able but the mindset is not

praskrishna — 2014-12-19T01:33:22Z

There are enough digital products and services to help people with disabilities. But widespread ignorance stands between them and digital inclusion reports Geetanjali Minhas.

The story appeared in 1-15 December 2014 issue of Governance Now

Not just that, Patel travels every day from his home in Vikhroli to his office in Goregaon, changing buses and trains with minimal assistance.

Patel’s colleague, Debashish, who is autistic, and no less capable, is known for his immaculate spellings within the company.

Team leader Priti Rohra, despite low vision, skillfully heads the testing team for websites and meticulously ensures that guidelines for the disabled are adhered to. Rohra works on policies and research and has prepared many reports for BarrierBreak, a company where 75 percent of the staff has disabilities like autism, inhibited vision and impaired hearing.

Its unique competitive advantage has allowed the company to help develop niche products and services for converting textbooks into more disabled-friendly formats like digital talking books (Epub Conversion). Till now, it has produced 1.5 million pages of disabled-friendly textbooks.

“When the government provides technology to its own employees it is enhancing their productivity,” says Shilpi Kapoor, founder-director of BarrierBreak and a member of the Nasscom Disability Advisory Group. “The fundamental difference here is that internationally, disability inclusion is a mandate, whereas in India it is considered charity and therefore a challenge. As a result many disabled are denied jobs as per their calibre and given salaries as doles.”

The priority given to policies for development of disabled-friendly information technology tools and services has been relatively low in India. Usually, it stems from an inaccurate understanding that the development of such tools and services will cost more money, and there will be no opportunity to recover it from the market.

A critical component of digital inclusion is to make websites and applications disabled-friendly. Most websites are not compliant with international guidelines on disabled-friendly requirements. Developers, officials and policy makers give disability accessibility a cold shoulder, retrofitting it into existing policies and processes as an after-thought.

An attitudinal shift might come if the new national policy on universal electronic accessibility (NPUEA) notified by DeitY is implemented, resulting in nearly 7,000 government websites becoming accessible to the disabled, especially visually impaired.

Various reports, including a 2012 survey by the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), found that almost 25 percent of 7,800 government websites failed to open and the remaining had accessibility barriers. The web accessibility survey report of Indian government websites by the national centre for promotion of employment for disabled people (NCPEDP) in 2012 too revealed that of the 200 government websites tested, only two were found to be disabled-friendly.

“Disability is a major social issue that India is grappling with. It needs to be addressed through not just policy, but also through assistive technology solutions,” says Prakash Kumar, CEO, Goods and Services Tax Network.

CIS executive director Sunil Abraham, who was on the committee that formulated the NPUEA, says besides non-confirmation of websites to international norms, there are many technical hurdles. Text-to-speech and speech-to-text software, mature optical character recognition systems, speech and grammar check and machine translation are some of the features that are still not available for most Indian languages, he adds. “Many government websites use font encoding for Indian languages which results in the failure of text-to-speech technologies.”

DeitY, under the ministry of communication and information technology, is supporting some technology interventions for the disabled, across different Indian languages. This also includes text-to-speech tools. “Mobile phone manufacturers should also provide in-built tools to cater to the needs of disabled people,” points out Ajay Kumar, joint secretary, DeitY.

Emphasising a strong legal framework for implementation of the policy, Kumar adds that though the new policy promotes disability inclusion, the information technology ministry does not have the legal backing to enforce it. “The ministry of social justice and empowerment is creating a legal framework for the bill that is under consideration by the concerned committee to mandate some of these things, including technology assistance for the disabled,” he adds.

Abraham says besides ensuring that websites and services are accessible to the disabled, the new policy must be updated to include a mandate that all parties providing essential services to the general public must comply with accessibility standards. “Manufacturers of ICT products should provide at least one accessible model of their products within each price range that they are operating within,” he says.

Sam Taraporevala, associate professor and head of sociology department, St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai and the director of Xavier’s resource centre for the visually challenged, says with the government accepting a policy that IT tools should follow accessibility standards, it is now a question of monitoring, and, perhaps, even judicial activism.

Nirmita Narasimhan, policy director, CIS, who works closely with various government departments to bring accessibility into their policies and programmes, concurs. “There must be accountability and a monitoring mechanism to check whether websites are disability compliant,” she says.

Maharashtra is the only state to make it compulsory for every department to have a scheme for procuring disability access products. Yet, compliance remains a problem. “Despite the government holding awareness camps at various districts, barriers are created for accessing government schemes. Resistance on part of government agencies to give out equipment to disabled people and lack of awareness among people about the availability of such facilities are the other stumbling blocks. Yet, there are ways for getting these products,” says Kapoor.

Experts say the needs and requirements of the disabled vary according to their disability and affordability of tools. Also, low income levels of many disabled people is a dissuading factor toprocuring equipment. “Most available tools and technologies are proprietary and, hence, costly and we are not able to scale them up in a big way,” says Kumar.

Taraporevala, born with 100% visual impairment, was instrumental in getting the guidelines for opening and operating demat accounts for visually impaired persons implemented. He also says mainstream consumer product companies are moving into touchscreen modes in mobile phones forgetting a large chunk of disabled population. “While the standards are there, implementation suffers due to lack of awareness which, in turn, leads to less demand,” he says.

The way forward

Governance Now also asked experts if corporate social responsibility (CSR) towards disability inclusion could address challenges in recruitment of disabled persons. “Instead of a hammer approach, a care approach has to be adopted,” says Rita Soni, CEO, Nasscom Foundation. According to Kumar, “Absence of commercial interest in promoting disability accessibility products has afflicted the sector with neglect.” However, Kapoor says, “This has to be an equal opportunity business. There will be differential costs, but at the same time the total number of disabled people in India is close to 70 million and a billion world over. How can you not treat them like a client?”

Speaking of the revised CSR rules under the Companies Act, Soni adds, “You can support skilling of persons with disabilities that has nothing to do with your business and have it considered as CSR expenditure. But if you make your office building or internet accessible, it does not count. Creating incentives around disability will make us a more inclusive society and make disability more amenable to office environment.”

Maharashtra IT secretary Rajesh Aggarwal adds, except for the metro, none of our public transport systems are disabled-friendly. As per national building code of India, while giving permissions for public buildings there must be a checklist to ensure that buildings and toilets are wheelchair and blind-friendly. Similarly, hotels must have few rooms which are disabled-friendly.” This awareness has not yet set in,” he says.

The Asia-Pacific region study of UNESCO global report 2013 has said many countries in the developing world are struggling to attain their millennium development goals of providing universal primary education to all by 2015. Our education system, on the other hand, has serious flaws. “We do not teach professionals about assistive technologies and for that reason an eye doctor does not know about low vision aids or a speech therapist does not know how to use communication devices,” says Kapoor.

Taraporevala is of the view that universal (architectural) design needs to be actively woven into every design curriculum across the spectrum, instead of being an optional subject. Physical infrastructure, building standards, for instance, need to reflect this and there needs to be active lobbying to ensure that certificates for public places are not given if they lack certain standards.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/news/e-gov-reach-december-15-2014-geetanjali-minhas-when-technology-is-able-but-mindset-is-not

When revolutions go viral

praskrishna — 2011-09-01T04:46:38Z

Thanks to Facebook and Twitter, the urban Indian youth, famously detached from the goings-on in the country, came out on the streets to support the anti-corruption movement - not only here but abroad as well. TOI-Crest looks at the anatomy of a modern protest movement.

I try to change my display picture, update my BBM status and send out a tweet as often as possible. I feel like I really need to do my bit for the country, " a college student was overheard saying outside Mumbai's Azad Maidan where protests against the anti-corruption movement are still under way. Once used to reconnect with long-lost school friends or to post vacation pictures, social networking sites have surfaced as the new forum for political activism. The world's attention is now on the potential of the digital sphere in historical revolutions as witnessed in Egypt and Tunisia. Though set in a vastly different political context, and used to different ends, the power of social media to drive citizen action in India has become apparent as Team Anna's call to action resonates through the Internet.

From earlier this year at Jantar Mantar to the culmination of the protests when Anna Hazare became a household name, the anti-corruption movement has harnessed technology and social media tools to engineer large-scale protests. Not only has the movement deviated from traditional methods of mass mobilisation, but it has also brought young urban India into the fold of political activism. Ritesh Singh, a third-year computer science student at IIT Khargapur, created the 'India Against Corruption' Facebook page in December last year. Since then, the page has gathered more than four lakh supporters. There are also several regional chapters and over 150 unofficial Facebook pages devoted to Anna Hazare and India Against Corruption.

The 'Students Against Corruption' group has been encouraging students to use social media for the cause by sending out messages such as "Students should share and promote this page for the goodness (sic) of the nation . . . This is the thing dat we can do for our nation. . . This is wat India needs. . . Promote it, share it, blog it, discuss it . . . then feel the change. " Petitions, calls to action and encouragement to join Hazare's fast also became commonplace in the last three months. The blog post '10 Ways to Support Anna Hazare on Social Media' by social media manager Sorav Jain has been shared 256 times on Facebook.

Relying on symbolism such as Gandhian photographs and references to the freedom struggle, Team Anna has created a media phenomenon. Text messages such as 'Behri sarkar ko janta ki aawaz sunai nahi de rahi hain! Lets show ppls anger!' and 'ANNA ki aag shuru ho gayi hai, Inquilab Zindabad' have helped in creating mass support. Meanwhile twitter has been abuzz with dialogue, support and reactions to the protests, as Anna Hazare's campaign became the top trending topic in India over the past few weeks. While the image of Hazare meditating at Raj Ghat became iconic on August 15, 2011, Team Anna's voice was heard on the TV, on mobile phones, YouTube and even on T-shirts. Developers are in the process of launching an India Against Corruption game, India Against Corruption mobile applications, India Against Corruption browser toolbars and more.

Though digital activism is often criticised as passive armchair activism or slacktivism, the use of technology in organising social protests has brought a different kind of activist on the street: young, urban India. "It's not as if what is happening is new, but it is happening on an unprecedented scale, " says Nishant Shah, research director for the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. "Traditional media has also done this in different ways, but in the past the protesters have been the disenfranchised. The use of social media has mobilised a new constituency - it has brought the urban middle class to the street. However, the use of such tools is producing a different kind of exclusion. There is a noticeable lack of poor urban people in the protests. This is not the representation of 1. 2 billion Indians as it is being made out to be. "

The use of social media has garnered support for Team Anna from the unlikeliest parts, catapulting 'India Against Corruption' (IAC) into a global phenomenon. Young Indians living in places like New York, Singapore, London and Hong Kong are tweeting, facebooking, organising and gathering to talk about Hazare and his cause. Some young professionals have even taken time off from their careers to fly down to India and physically support the cause.

Sunil Khaitan, an investment banker working with Deutsche Bank in Hong Kong flew down last Friday to attend the protests at the Ramlila ground and address the crowd at Mumbai's Azad Maidan. Khaitan, 28, is originally from Kolkata and graduated from IIM Bangalore in 2006. "I was involved in the Right to Information movement in 2005, have been in touch with Professor Trilochan Sastry at IIM Bangalore, and have been tracking this movement from the days of Jantar Mantar, " he says.

Khaitan is also active in the Hong Kong chapter of IAC, which organised a meeting on August 21, 2011, attended by over 300 people. "There is a clearly outlined process on the IAC website which tells you how to conduct a meeting, " says Khaitan. "As the news channels are not available in HK, so many people are not aware of the real cause. So we talked about the points of contention and showed videos with Arvind Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi and Hazare addressing the crowd. " He argues that harnessing social media has helped get people from different walks of life involved with the Hazare movement.

Social networking sites have also helped create a close-knit Indian community in Hong Kong. "Anna has also made a big point about the youth being present in the protests, and it is easier to connect with the youth through social media, " says Khaitan.

"Peer pressure also comes into the picture in that age group - people want to get involved to appear impressive to their friends. " But though technology has brought a new demographic of Indians into the realm of protest, it manifests its power through the oldest form of networking - word of mouth.

This article was published in the Times of India (Crescent Edition) on 27 August 2011, read the original story here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/revolutions-viral

When politics gets social

praskrishna — 2014-04-04T07:52:46Z

In the run-up to the general election, social media companies explain how the political campaigns this time are very different from what they were five years ago.

The article by Chanpreet Khurana was published in Livemint on March 11, 2014. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

“Okay, I didn’t gain anything. I lost,” Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)’s Arvind Kejriwal conceded disarmingly during a town hall meeting on Facebook last week. He was responding to a question from Candidates 2014 host Madhu Trehan on his much critiqued dharna (sit-in protest) during his 49-day chief ministership of Delhi.

Even as elections to 543 constituencies approach, political parties and politicians are putting their online campaigns in top gear. Sample some of the activity in just the last week. On Sunday, the Indian National Congress party asked voters to share their thoughts on what to include in the party’s Lok Sabha election manifesto—on Twitter. On 8 March, Narendra Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate, held the second session in his Chai Pe Charcha with NaMo series—this time on women’s empowerment. And All India Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee’s “Girls are our assets” post on Facebook was liked more than 22,000 times.

	Recognizing the high level of engagement around politics on social media, companies like Facebook and Google are driving initiatives on this theme in peak election season—polling starts on 7 April. The Facebook Talks Live’s Candidates 2014 series (also broadcast on NDTV), which in its first week featured Kejriwal, Banerjee, Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad and the Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav, is one example. There are many new services being launched online in the run-up to the Lok Sabha election.

Recognizing the high level of engagement around politics on social media, companies like Facebook and Google are driving initiatives on this theme in peak election season—polling starts on 7 April. The Facebook Talks Live’s Candidates 2014 series (also broadcast on NDTV), which in its first week featured Kejriwal, Banerjee, Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad and the Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav, is one example.

There are many new services being launched online in the run-up to the Lok Sabha election.

Know your candidate

On 20 April 2011, US President Barack Obama appeared on Facebook Talks Live, opening the floodgates for a new kind of engagement between political leaders and the electorate. Cut to almost three years later, and the Facebook-led “town hall” meeting has come to India. On 4 March, Candidates 2014 launched with Kejriwal taking questions on issues like women’s safety, reservation for the backward classes and the plight of contractual workers, and detailing his vision for the country. A video of the town hall is available on Facebook and YouTube and has been viewed at least 30,000 times. As part of the format of the town hall, the questions came in equal parts from the live audience, Trehan and from a pool of questions submitted on the Facebook India page.

To the agile leader then, social media can be more than just another pulpit to broadcast views and give a speech from. It’s something Sunil Abraham, executive director of The Centre for Internet And Society, a non-profit research organization, can’t stress enough. “Social media provides unmediated access; in that sense it is a tremendously effective tool,” says Bangalore-based Abraham in a phone interview. “The question is, are political parties agile enough to take advantage of it?”

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/livemint-march-11-2014-chanpreet-khurana-when-politics-gets-social

When Netas Network

praskrishna — 2013-06-19T06:19:00Z

In September 2009, a freshly re-elected Congress took exception to a light-hearted tweet by its newly inducted minister Shashi Tharoor, chastising him not only for causing offence but also for being too quick to air his views on social media.

This article by Rukmini Shrinivasan was published in the Times of India on April 27, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

So much can change in less than four years.

Rocked by allegations of corruption, and with anti-incumbency firmly setting in, the Congress is struggling to reconnect with voters, and is belatedly embracing social media. Tharoor has had the last laugh;his social media activity has earned him praise and is being emulated by others in his cabinet.

As political discussion spills over from the neighbourhood tea shop and coffee house to Facebook and Twitter, their potential impact on electoral politics is something that those in power and those hoping to get there are taking very, very seriously.

The BJP runs its social media operation out of its headquarters in Delhi. Most of the party's top leaders have an official Facebook page and a verified Twitter handle, while others, including octogenarian L K Advani, blog.

The Congress is late to the party;it does not have an official Twitter account and has such a halfhearted Facebook presence that it isn't immediately clear that it's official. But it seems to be waking up - young leaders including Deepender Hooda are now part of a social media strategy team, and the younger cabinet ministers are enthusiastic social media adopters.

Rural India Logs On

Despite representing a largely rural, relatively impoverished constituency, 48-year-old Biju Janata Dal MP Baijayant Panda is a Twitter natural. "Rural Indians are slowly beginning to get more active online and I am beginning to interact more often with my constituents there. In fact, particularly on Facebook, there are already a significant number of Odia users, from all around the world, but also those living in my constituency, " Panda says.

Simultaneously, social media entrepreneurs are responding to what they see as an area of huge growth. The Australian web-based citizen-politician interaction platform OurSay has just come to India (see interview on page 5). In the run-up to the elections, Twitter and Google are both reaching out to politicians and civil society organisations in the citizen engagement game and have pitched town-hall style interactions to several politicians, including union cabinet members and state governments.

Social media entrepreneur and analyst Mahesh Murthy believes that Indian social media users have discovered the wonders of political engagement online. "Only now are they figuring out that the real news doesn't seem to get out on traditional media - and more importantly, that their response on traditional media (at best, a letter to the editor) is puny in comparison to the impact they can have via social, " he says. Moreover, says Murthy, the impact is not online alone. "The Nirbhaya case, the Palghar case, the recent child rape case - all would have gone generally unnoticed a few years ago. Each of them, thanks to social media, became a cause to rally around. Add to this disclosures under RTI, NGOs becoming more transparent, online petitions and more - the staid and set political world of India is undergoing the first wave of massive, irreversible change. "

Such evangelism about the potentially transformational impact of social media was echoed in a recent study which claimed that Facebook users could swing elections in 150 constituencies in the next Lok Sabha election. Apart from being statistically flawed, the study also failed to look beyond the number of people on social media, to the kinds of conversations they are actually having.

A Broadcast Medium?

With some exceptions, the majority of politicians on Twitter and Facebook use it as yet another broadcast medium for purely one-way traffic, a rare few respond to the hundreds who leave comments on their Facebook and Twitter posts. So while Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi might have asked the FICCI ladies to get in touch with him on social media, what he omitted to mention was that he never responds.

Most politicians and parties are not doing a good job of engaging with citizens through social media, agrees Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society. "Most of them are still outsourcing this function completely. This reminds me of the early days of email in large corporations and government offices when every email was printed before it was read by its recipient and the response dictated and recorded using shorthand before it was entered into the computer. This approach will not work with social media users. Personal involvement will be one way to improve results, " says Abraham.

Arvind Gupta, who sold off his analytics firm to run the BJP's IT cell from its Lutyens' Delhi headquarters, disagrees. "The volume of responses on Twitter or Facebook make it impossible for Sushmaji [Swaraj] or Modiji to respond to them all, but they often meet online supporters offline too, or highlight insightful comments on their blogs, " says Gupta.
Younger leaders tend to be better at online interaction. So while 89-year-old Karunanidhi of the DMK has a Twitter account but follows no one, the party's youngest MLA, TRB Rajaa, has five Facebook pages and a Twitter handle, and replies personally. "I get several hundred messages on Facebook in a day, but I try to respond to at least half, especially those who are raising grievances, " he says.

Some times, the proximity of a politician to the blaze of online outrage can force action. "When (IIPM director) Arindam Choudhary got a remote district court to ban a UGC web page, social media turmoil spurred first Shashi Tharoor and then [minister of state for information technology] Milind Deora and then the government into action - and the case was challenged and the ban was overturned, " says Murthy.

Influencing First-time Voters

But the big question remains - in a country where the internet is for a privileged few, is it too early to start talking of social media playing a role in electoral politics?

Sanjay Jha who runs the website Hamara-Congress. com and is a member of the party's social media strategy team, believes the impact will largely be on youngt voters. "It will have an impact on first time voters of urban India as also on voters who are unsure about their political leanings, " he says.

"Social media like mainstream media will influence its users. Internet users are still roughly around 10% of the population. However, they are elites and can influence wider offline discourse. Social media may have other benefits as it would help make the elections more transparent and free from manipulation, " says Abraham.

"One has to be careful - we don't know yet how many people on Facebook are registered to vote, and how many more will do so in time. We also need to understand better the ability of a youth on Facebook to influence his parents' and family's voting choices, " says Murthy.

In number terms, Murthy believes that social media will have some impact on 8-15 % of the electorate come 2014. "The 2014 elections will be a turning point. But I sense the 8% to 15% will more than double by 2019 elections - and that will be a moment when social media is far, far more important. The smarter parties and politicians will realise this and start making investments and efforts right away, " says Murthy.

Gupta strongly believes that a segment of the population that is politically engaged online but will not come to dharnas nevertheless votes, and should not be dismissed. "You often see people who make "I voted today" their Facebook status, " he says. Moreover, citizens politically engaged online are influencing each other and changing minds, he says.

Party Time

Many in politics also believe that besides the voter - who makes his or her decision based on a complex matrix of reasons - social media plays an important role in helping the leadership of parties connect with and energise their cadre and supporters.

"At the very least, social media will bring interested volunteers and party-workers closer to public representatives by making direct interaction possible. Certain candidates, even independent and otherwise lesser fancied ones, will have a shot at mobilising supporters at rallies, even though they have far fewer traditional resources to do so, " says Panda.
Rajaa agrees. "Not just voters, many motivated cadre also use social media to keep in touch with our youth wing and with the second-rung leadership, " he says.

With additional reporting by Kim Arora.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-crest-edition-april-27-2013-rukmini-shrinivasan-when-netas-network

When Knowledge Isn’t Written, Does It Still Count?

praskrishna — 2011-08-09T08:53:23Z

“MAKING fun of Wikipedia is so 2007,” a French journalist said recently to Sue Gardner, the executive director of the foundation that runs the Wikipedia project.

And so Ms. Gardner, in turn, told an auditorium full of Wikipedia contributors and supporters on Thursday in Haifa, Israel, the host city for the seventh annual Wikimania conference, where meetings and presentations focus on the world’s most used, and perhaps least understood, online reference work.

Once routinely questioned about its reliability — what do you mean, anyone can edit it? — the site is now used every month by upwards of 400 million people worldwide. But with influence and respect come responsibility, and lately Wikipedia has been criticized from without and within for reflecting a Western, male-dominated mindset similar to the perspective behind the encyclopedias it has replaced.

Seeing Wikipedia as The Man, in so many words, is so 2011.

And that’s a problem for an encyclopedia that wants to grow. Some critics of Wikipedia believe that the whole Western tradition of footnotes and sourced articles needs to be rethought if Wikipedia is going to continue to gather converts beyond its current borders. And that, in turn, invites an entirely new debate about what constitutes knowledge in different parts of the world and how a Western institution like Wikipedia can capitalize on it.

Achal Prabhala, an adviser to Ms. Gardner’s Wikimedia Foundation who lives and writes in Bangalore, India, has made perhaps the most trenchant criticism in a video project, “People are Knowledge,” that he presented in Haifa (along with its clunky subtitle, “Exploring alternative methods of citation for Wikipedia”).

The film, which was made largely with a $20,000 grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, spends time showing what has been lost to Wikipedia because of stickling rules of citation and verification. If Wikipedia purports to collect the “sum of all human knowledge,” in the words of one of its founders, Jimmy Wales, that, by definition, means more than printed knowledge, Mr. Prabhala said.

In the case of dabba kali, a children’s game played in the Kerala state of India, there was a Wikipedia article in the local language, Malayalam, that included photos, a drawing and a detailed description of the rules, but no sources to back up what was written. Other than, of course, the 40 million people who played it as children.

There is no doubt, he said, that the article would have been deleted from English Wikipedia if it didn’t have any sources to cite. Those are the rules of the game, and those are the rules he would like to change, or at least bend, or, if all else fails, work around.

“There is this desire to grow Wikipedia in parts of the world,” he said, adding that “if we don’t have a more generous and expansive citation policy, the current one will prove to be a massive roadblock that you literally can’t get past. There is a very finite amount of citable material, which means a very finite number of articles, and there will be no more.”

Mr. Prabhala, 38, who grew up in India and then attended American universities, has been an activist on issues of intellectual property, starting with the efforts in South Africa to free up drugs that treat H.I.V. In the film, he gives other examples of subjects — an alcohol produced in a village, Ga-Sabotlane, in Limpopo, South Africa, and a popular hopscotch-type children’s game, tshere-tshere — beyond print documentation and therefore beyond Wikipedia’s true-and-tried method.

There are whole cultures, he said, that have little to no printed material to cite as proof about the way life is lived.

“Publishing is a system of power and I mean that in a completely pleasant, accepting sense,” he said mischievously. “But it leaves out people.”

But Mr. Prabhala offers a solution: he and the video’s directors, Priya Sen and Zen Marie, spoke with people in African and Indian villages either in person or over the phone and had them describe basic activities. These recordings were then uploaded and linked to the article as sources, and suddenly an article that seems like it could be a personal riff looks a bit more academic.

For example, in his interview with a South African villager who explained how to make the alcoholic drink, morula, she repeatedly says that it is best if she demonstrates the process. When the fruit is ready, said the villager, Philipine Moremi, according to the project’s transcript of her phone conversation, “we pry them open. We are going to show you how it is done. Once they are peeled, we seal them to ferment and then we drink.” The idea of treating personal testimony as a source for Wikipedia is still controversial, and reflects the concerns that dominated the encyclopedia project six years ago, when arguably its very existence was threatened.

After a series of hoaxes, culminating in a Wikipedia article in 2005 that maligned the newspaper editor John Seigenthaler for no discernible reason other than because a Wikipedia contributor could, the site tried to ensure that every statement could be traced to a source.

Then there is the rule “no original research,” which was meant to say that Wikipedia doesn’t care if you are writing about the subway station you visit every day, find someone who has written reliably on the color of the walls there.

"The natural thing is getting more and more accurate, locking down articles, raising the bar on sources," said Andrew Lih, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Southern California, who was an early contributor to Wikipedia and has written a history of its rise. “Isn’t it great we have so many texts online?"

But what works for the most developed societies, he said, won’t necessarily work for others. “Lots of knowledge is not Googleable,” he said, “and is not in a digital form.”

Mr. Lih said that he could see the Wikipedia project suddenly becoming energized by the process of documenting cultural practices around the world, or down the street.

Perhaps Mr. Prabhala’s most challenging argument is that by being text-focused, and being locked into the Encyclopedia Britannica model, Wikipedia risks being behind the times.

An 18-year-old is comfortable using “objects of trust that have been created on the Internet," he said, and "Wikipedia isn’t taking advantage of that." And, he added, "it is quite possible that for the 18-year-old of today that Wikipedia looks like his father’s project. Or the kind of thing his father might be interested in."

Ouch.

A version of this article appeared in print on August 8, 2011, on page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: When Knowledge Isn’t Written, Does It Still Count?.

This article by Noam Cohen was published in the New York Times on August 7, 2011, the original can be read here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/knowledge-isnt-written

When Copyright Goes Bad

praskrishna — 2011-08-04T04:37:21Z

A part of the Access to Knowledge Project, this short film by Consumers International is available on DVD and online at A2Knetwork.org/film.

For centuries, copyright law has existed to protect creative production whilst promoting public access. But the digital age is challenging this balance and fundamentally changing how we produce, access and distribute content. Suddenly, copyright rules no longer do what they are supposed to do. They have gone bad.

This is a film about how copyright has become one of the most important consumer issues of the digital age; why corporate lobbying risks criminalising the actions of hundreds of thousands of people; and what the future holds for the fight for fairer copyright laws.

When Copyright Goes Bad is an introduction to the renegotiation of copyright and is for anyone interested in how copyright is affecting consumers. It features some of the key players in the copyright debate, including: Fred Von Lohmann - Electronic Frontier Foundation; Michael Geist - University of Ottawa Law School; Jim Killock - Open Rights Group; and Hank Shocklee - Co-founder of Public Enemy.

Quotes from When Copyright Goes Bad

“People have realised that copyright affects them every day and the direction that we’ve seen over the last few years really troubles them. That’s why so many people are speaking out.” Michael Geist

“In the U.S, over 35,000 Americans were targeted for lawsuits for downloading music. In ten years time, everyone will look back at that as incredibly unjust and ridiculous. No-one thinks that suing music fans one at a time is the business model of the future.” Fred Von Lohmann

“The industry is trying to demonise consumer behaviour. They’re trying to create the idea that it’s a moral debate: is downloading something wrong or right? Is it theft or not? These are the wrong questions and they will only ever produce the wrong answers.” Jim Killock

Making copyright, right

When Copyright Goes Bad is being released under a Creative Commons (CC) licence, which means it’s free to copy and adapt, as long as content is attributed and the same CC licence is used.
We will also be making available extended interviews with all the contributors, as well as with other experts not featured in the film, under the same CC licence at A2Knetwork.org/film. By providing access in this way we are allowing others to go on and create further work around the issue.

View it on youtube

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/when-copyright-goes-bad

When #GOIBlocks, twitterati fly off their ‘handles’

praskrishna — 2012-08-26T05:56:19Z

Ever since the news broke mid-week that some genuine Twitter accounts and six spoof accounts were blocked, the social networking platform has been in a tizzy.

Published in the Hindustan Times on August 26, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Hashtags like #GOIblocks and variations on the same theme began “trending” and the twitterati, functioning like a virtual democracy, have been bombarding the world in real time with posts about the issue. 16 accounts of the 15 million twitter users in India, among them those of a few journalists, spoof accounts like @PM0India, a right-wing parody of @PMOIndia, the official twitter account of the Prime Minister’s office, and a few anonymous accounts like Barbarian Indian (@barbarindian) and Dosabandit (@dosabandit) were blocked.

While Narendra Modi turned his twitter display picture black in solidarity with the idea of freedom of speech (and was promptly termed a hypocrite with many like @JagPaws, who has 641 followers, tweeting, “Whoa!! Is he supporting Jihadi sites?”), Pankaj Pachauri, (49,827 followers) Communications Adviser to the Prime Minister’s office, has put up twitter rules and the National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon’s ominously pro-surveillance keynote address at the release of the IDSA report on “India’s Cyber Security Challenge”.

Many like Nitin Pai @acorn, with 16,988 followers, founder of Takshashila Institute, a public policy think tank, tweeted that “under extraordinary circumstances, the govt must do whatever it can under the constitution to prevent loss of life” and added that targeted and temporary blocks of sites, facebook pages and twitter handles that spewed hate were acceptable. Others like film maker Harini Calamur (@calamur) (11,277 followers) who says she is against censorship tweeted that “Blocking internet handles & sites is silly” and “the Govt’s job is to uphold the constitution & protect our fundamental rights. Not make value judgements.” Much of the debate has led to a genuine exchange, sometimes making comrades of people from opposing camps. Kanchan Gupta, a journalist known for his pro-Hindutva views, whose twitter handle @KanchanGupta (26,424 followers) was among those blocked, accepted on TV that scores of “people from all communities” many of whom “disagreed violently” with him had extended their support on twitter.

Others like writer Shivam Vij (@Dilidurast), who has 3,296 followers, whom Hindutvawadis has often branded ‘pseudo sickular’, surprised baiters by speaking against the ban.

Many were strident in their criticism of the arbitrary nature of the blocks and tweeted that it was indicative of authoritarianism. “Internet blocks in India have been increasing in frequency&intensity. I wouldn't put this down to knee-jerk/foolishness.There is *intent*,” tweeted Nikhil Pahwa (@nixxin), founder and editor of @medianama. Others like business journalist Samidha Sharma @samidhas worried that the government’s frequent attacks on freedom of expression shows that it is “following china in all the wrong things”.

While Pranesh Prakash (@pranesh_prakash) of the Centre for Internet and Society tweeted, “They've blocked sites from all parts of the spectrum: Muslim right-wing, Hindu right-wing, neutral news sites, etc. No politics”, many others saw the move as a “self-serving” one. “Dear GoI: why not be honest enough to say that this web censorship has NOTHING to do with security+ all to do with your own arrogance” tweeted Sunny Singh (@sunnysingh_nw3).

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-hindustan-times-aug-26-2012-when-goi-blocks-twitterati-fly-off-their-handles

wheel

praskrishna — 2012-10-18T06:00:42Z

wheel

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/wheel.png

WhatsApp ruling: Experts seek privacy law

praskrishna — 2016-09-27T02:35:06Z

On August 25, Whatsapp updated its policy to share user content with social network; the decision opened new monetisation models for the messaging app.

The article by Apurva Venkat and Moulishree Srivastava quoted Sunil Abraham. It was published in the Business Standard on September 24, 2016.

The recent Delhi High Court ruling that messaging app Whatsapp cannot share user data highlights the need for legislation on privacy, according to experts.

On August 25, Whatsapp, a platform with 70 million users in India that was acquired by Facebook in 2014, updated its policy to share user content with the social network. The decision opened new monetisation models for the messaging app.

In response to a PIL, the court ordered WhatsApp to delete data of users who chose to opt out of its policy changes before September 25. It also orderedWhatsApp not to share data collected before September 25 with Facebook for users who had not opted out.

"The decision makes a strong statement on privacy," said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet Society. According to him, a user trusts a platform and provides access to his data. As another firm acquires the platform, it gains access to the data.

"Facebook owns Whatsapp. It has to look at ways of monetising it," said Nikhil Pahwa, co-founder of SavetheInternet.in.

"With so much digital data being generated, there is a need for a privacy law in the country," said Pahwa.

"Facebook's consent interface is confusing. It can make a person who wants to opt out let the company access his data," said Abraham, adding a law would take care of such intricacies. The government is working on a privacy bill.

Saroj Kumar Jha, partner, SRGR Law Offices, said there were few judgments on privacy in India based on constitutional rights.

"While the Information Technology Act enables courts to pass judgments on global companies on privacy, enforcing the orders is difficult," he said.

"What is required is a privacy law that can protect user data and uphold the individual's right to privacy," he added.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-september-24-apurva-venkat-and-moulishree-srivastava-whasapp-ruling-experts-seek-privacy-law