Centre for Internet and Society

Aadhaar Card: One Identity, Multiple Disorders

praskrishna — 2017-05-26T00:01:54Z

It is still hazy to see the desperation of the union government to imposing the Aadhaar Card mandatory when matters related to Aadhaar Card are already sub judice.

This was blog post by Gaurav Raj was published by India Saga on May 25, 2017.

The constitutionality of Aadhaar is yet to be decided by the Supreme Court, however, the enrolment of Aadhaar has reached the mark of more than one billion. Recently, the government declared Aadhaar mandatory to file Income Tax Return (ITR) while the Supreme Court is opined not to treat Aadhaar mandatory, but voluntarily. Now it is imperative of the government to confide the citizens that the Aadhaar information- demography and biometrics-are in safe hands, a debate which has been heating up, and the contempt of the court’s decision by the government is for greater good. But the uproar against the speculation of identity revelation threat and possible misuse of Aadhaar details by the government-corporate nexus, plausible reasons to doubt the security of privacy, which is a fundamental right of Indian citizen. Ironically, after the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley defended the ‘Aadhaar Money Bill controversy’ filed by former congress MP Jairam Ramesh in the court, the Supreme Court is in dilemma and yet to decide whether ‘Right to Privacy' is a fundamental right or not.

Why Aadhaar Card Mandatory?

Nandan Nilekani, the co-founder of Infosys and the ideologue of Aadhaar, said that Aadhaar will change the PDS system in India since it ensures no ghost or fake beneficiaries to avail unentitled benefits of the various welfare schemes and subsidies. Nilekani also says that there might be margin of error up to 5 per cent in distributing the subsidies or benefits of various welfare schemes to the masses. The top-honcho technocrat has also defended Aadhaar that any breach of privacy of citizens is not possible as the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is efficient to secure the public data under CIDR.

The government claims that the corruption-mounted Public Distribution System (PDS) in India is reformed due to the introduction of the 12 digit unique identification number. More than 40000 crore have been saved in the form of exchequer due to curb of fake and ghost beneficiaries in the PDS system. Now if we believe Nilekani claim of 5% error, then more than 5 crore beneficiaries would be losing their benefits due the error in the biometric identification. The Infosys co-founder later said that if there is a margin of error then ‘One Time Password’ (OTP) comes in. However, he didn’t define what if there is a congestion of network in the remotest Indian villages where phone signals are rare? Standing on the PDS shop waiting for food grains and network, is certainly not an ideal way to avail the benefits of the government welfare schemes. In 2011, activist and writer Ruchika Gupta said in an interview to Tahalka, “The UID cannot address the bulk of delivery problems in the two of the biggest social sectors programmes like MGNREGA and PDS. Linking UID with social sector legislation is completely baseless.”

PAN Card Linked with Aadhaar Card?

The government has directed the Reserve Bank of India to make Aadhaar mandatory for Income Tax Return filing. Currently, there are approximately 24.37 crores PAN holders in India, however 3.8 crore people file income tax return every year. There have been cases of people owned not more than one but 100 PAN Cards with them. PAN cards in India are mostly used by the citizens as a proof of identity. The government believes that PAN card linking with Aadhaar will curb the tax evasion.

How Safe Is Your Data In This Panopticon Model Of Mass Surveillance?

In the late 18th century, the well-known English social reformer and jurist Jeremy Bentham wanted to build a ‘panoptican’ for a mass surveillance of the prisoners in England. He advocated designing an institutional building be used to keep an eye on all the jail inmates by a single watchman. Very similarly, India is witnessing the biggest surveillance program ever under the name of single identity and availing benefits of governments’ schemes. Another logic behind enrolment of Aadhaar is the ‘national security’. National security? How can any government ensure national security backing Aadhaar, when international companies have been hired in consortium to collect residents’ biometric and demography details? In 2010, Accenture, Mahindra-Satyam Morpho and L1 identity solutions were pooled in by UIDAI for leveraging de-duplication exercise of Aadhaar and data collection. L1 Identity Solutions’ top brasses are the former Director CIA George Tenet and former Homeland Security deputy secretary Adm James. With its headquarters in Connecticut, this company is one of the biggest defence contractors specialised in facial recognition and biometrics. L1 Identity Solutions and Accenture work in a close affinity to US intelligence agencies. This is an age of information. Corporate houses and big telecom players are dying to get details of consumers. Obvious are the concerns about the safety and security of the people’s data. It is feared that the database can be used for various marketing and business purposes.

CIDR, A Single Database Of People’s Data

Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR) is a data management and storing agency in India which is initiated for the Aadhaar project. It is regulated by the statutory body of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). This centralised database is probably one of the biggest repositories on this planet.

In 2010, experts had claimed that more than a thousand government sites and portals were attacked more than 4000 times by China alone in one year. In April 2011, 77 million Sony Playstations and digital media delivery service Qriocity were hacked which resulted into a shutdown of the network for a week. The London School of Economics also reported that a central database of vulnerable to hacking and other terrorist and cyber crime activities. Recently Wannacry Ransomware virus hits the globe. More than 99 countries were affected.

Building one single repository for billions of Aadhaar Card data seems to be a big risk in the most vulnerable country where dat breach is at most.

Data Leak Crisis

UIDAI has so far spent approximately 5982.62 crores for more than a billion enrolments of Aadhaar Cards. 1615.34 crores have been spent between the financial year 2015-2016. Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru-based organization (CIS) has learned that data of more than 130 million Aadhaar card holders has been leaked from four government websites. They are National Social Assistance Programme, National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Chandranna Bima Scheme and Daily Online Payments Reports of NREGA. It also includes Bank details and other confidential details of millions of residents.

What is Next?

The Lok Sabha has passed the Aadhaar Bill as Money Bill. Mukul Rohatgi said in the Supreme Court that according to Article 110 of the constitution, there is use of consolidated funds of India so the bill is a Money bill. Chief Justice Khehar said, “Your object might be good but whether it is a ‘Money Bill’ or not is the question.” Justice Ramana referred to a 2014 judgment passed by the Apex court that courts had no jurisdiction over procedurals matters of legislative.” In response P. Chidambram, the counsel for Jairam Ramesh said, “This petition is not about a procedural matter. There has been substantive infraction.”

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-indiasaga-may-25-2017-aadhaar-card-one-identity-multiple-disorders

Aadhaar by Numbers

praskrishna — 2016-09-11T16:36:58Z

Sunil Abraham will be addressing a public seminar at an event organized by National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) in New Delhi on Friday, April 29, 2016.

This talk will reflect on several aspects of the Aadhaar project from a technical perspective. First, there will be a reflection on biometrics as a unique, identification and authentication technology. Second, there will be a critique of open washing by the UIDAI through their adoption of free software and open standards and finally there will be an analysis of alternative technical solutions and architecture which will allow India to harvest the benefits of identity management without the harms and risks of centralized biometrics.

Sunil Abraham

Sunil Abraham (an Ashoka Fellow) is the executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore/New Delhi. CIS is a 7 year old policy and academic research organisation that focuses on accessibility, access to knowledge, internet governance and telecommunications. He is also the founder and director of Mahiti, a 17 year old social enterprise that aims to reduce the cost and complexity of ICTs for the voluntary sector by using free software. Starting 2004, for 3 years, Sunil also managed the International Open Source Network, a project of UNDP's APDIP, serving 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Sunil currently serves on the advisory boards of OSF – Information Programme, Mahiti and Samvada.

The talk reflected on several aspects of the Aadhaar project from a technical perspective. First, there is a reflection on biometrics as a unique, identification and authentication technology. Second, there is a critique of open washing by the UIDAI through their adoption of free software and open standards and finally there is an analysis of alternative technical solutions and architecture which will allow India to harvest the benefits of identity management without the harms and risks of centralized biometrics.

Video

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/aadhaar-by-numbers

Aadhaar BS

praskrishna — 2018-01-10T16:36:20Z

Aadhaar BS

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

Aadhaar assurances fail to assuage privacy concerns

praskrishna — 2017-05-20T06:23:32Z

While Aadhaar may be secure from external attacks, a failsafe system hasn’t been developed to protect it from Edward Snowden-style leakages and hacks.

The article by Anirban Sen was published by Livemint on May 5, 2017. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

As calls for a privacy and data protection law grow louder with each passing day amid reports of a central government ministry having made up to 130 million Aadhaar numbers public on its website, widespread concerns continue to emerge over loopholes in the security of the unique identification programme, though the man who created the system continues to defend the security and integrity of the system.

Most worryingly, a consensus is emerging among security and privacy experts, who have argued that while the Aadhaar system may be secure from external attacks, a failsafe system has not been developed to protect it from Edward Snowden-style internal leaks or hacks.

“(What has been suggested by the Unique Identification Authority of India and Nandan Nilekani) is that there will never be a data breach like what we saw in the US with the National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, or Office of Personnel and Management breaches (data of federal government personnel, including more than 5.6 fingerprints, was leaked), or in Mexico or Turkey, or even in India when the department of defence was breached for cyber-espionage for multiple years without detection,” said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society.

“While the system may be secure from external attacks, there is no failsafe system to make it invulnerable to Snowden-style breaches,” he added.

In an interview, former UIDAI chairman and Infosys Ltd co-founder Nandan Nilekani continued to defend the security of the system and said steps are being taken everyday to enhance the failsafe processes surrounding the system.

“I think the Aadhaar system is extremely well-designed. It’s not an online system that is exposed to the Internet. When enrolment happens, the packet is encrypted at source and sent, so that there can’t be a man-in-the-middle attack. And when the authentication happens, that is also encrypted—not compared to the original data, but to a digital minutiae. The point is that the system is very, very secure. So, if the objection is to centralization, then you should not have clouds. Clouds are also centralized,” said Nilekani. He added that Aadhaar was also safe from internal breaches, an assumption that is being challenged by security experts all across.

“Within seven years of its launch, the Aadhaar system has made a remarkable leap in terms of its security and privacy and it will keep improving things. Technology does not come through immaculate conception, where one morning some perfect technology is born. It has to evolve. It’s called learning by doing,” added Nilekani. He added that improving the security of the system is an ongoing process and conceded that a data protection and privacy law needs to be in place to supplement the current Aadhaar law.

“I know the government has sent a notice to everyone. If somebody has done it; they ought not to have done it—there’s a law for that,” said Nilekani when asked about recent instances of Aadhaar numbers being made public by government departments.

“We should have a data protection and privacy law which is an umbrella law, which looks at all these phenomena and certainly Aadhaar should be part of that. That’s perfectly fine—but people are behaving as if Aadhaar is the only reason why we should have a privacy law,” added Nilekani.

The last few weeks and months have witnessed a steady stream of negative news surrounding Aadhaar and three main cases are currently being fought in the Supreme Court, including one challenging the government’s decision to make the 12-digit ID mandatory for filing income tax returns as well as for obtaining and retaining a PAN Card.

Meanwhile, as Mint reported in April, questions are being raised on the Aadhaar biometric authentication failure rate in the rural job guarantee scheme in areas such as Telangana.

The report of Aadhaar numbers being listed on the government ministry website has caused widespread uproar, although a lawyer pointed out that it is not due to a breach in the Aadhaar system.

“It’s a misnomer to say this a leak because this was voluntarily, very actively put up there. A leak is when some information being kept securely gets breached somehow and comes out. Now, why is this information up on government websites? This is the problem of our government’s perception of transparency...The fact that the Aadhaar numbers are on the government website is not a flaw of the Aadhaar system, but it is a flaw of the understanding of what needs to be done to demonstrate transparency,” said Rahul Matthan, partner at Trilegal.

In a column in Mint, Matthan had also pointed out that while Aadhaar has been a transformative project, there remains enough scope of misusing the database.

“There is a legitimate fear that this identity technology will open us all up to discrimination, prejudice and the risk of identity theft,” Matthan wrote. “Aadhaar has given us the tools to harness data in large volumes. If used wisely, this technology can transform the nation. If not, it can cause us untold harm. We need to be prepared for the impending flood of data—we need to build dams, sluice gates and canals in its path so that we can guide its flow to our benefit.”

Even as both sides debate the issue of Aadhaar’s security, calls are getting louder to revamp the unique identification database.

“The point is that the UIDAI knows the device ID of the machine with which the biometric transaction took place along with the time and date, which means that by just using basic data analytics, any one with access to the transaction logs from the UIDAI (which have to be kept for a period of 5 years and 6 months) can have a complete view of a person’s Aadhaar-based interactions that are increasing day by day.”

“Further, the UIDAI has built up a biometric profile of the entire country. This means that courts can order UIDAI to provide law enforcement agencies the biometrics for an entire state (as the Bombay high court did) to check if they match against the fingerprints recovered from a crime scene. This too is surveillance, since it collects biometrics of all residents in advance rather than just that of criminal suspects,” said Prakash of CIS.

“The UIDAI could have chosen to derive unique 16 digit numbers from your Aadhaar number and provide a different one to each requesting entity. That would have prevented much of these fears. But the UIDAI did not opt for that more privacy-friendly design,” he added.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-may-5-2017-anirban-sen-aadhaar-assurances-fail-to-assuage-privacy-concerns

Aadhaar

praskrishna — 2017-04-22T05:03:21Z

Aadhaar Usage

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/AadhaarMint.jpg

Aadhaar

praskrishna — 2017-02-14T14:43:54Z

Aadhaar

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/aadhaar.jpg

Aadhaar

praskrishna — 2017-04-04T15:56:51Z

Aadhaar

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

Aadhaar

praskrishna — 2016-03-16T02:27:08Z

Aadhaar

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Aadhaar1.jpg

A world apart

praskrishna — 2016-12-01T15:24:12Z

On the eve of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, we look at their legal rights relating to financial matters.

The article by Meera Siva was published in the Hindu Businessline on November 27, 2016.

Be it the right to education, rights in the work place, legal entitlements or fair compensation, people with disabilities are often left holding the short end of the stick. Sometimes, there are no specific rules or policies as in the case of providing insurance coverage. But more often, even though guidelines are laid out, they remain only in theory.

Take the case of Nagarjuna Akula, a Chartered Accountant working in a public sector company in Maharashtra. “I applied for a home loan in 2014 and it was approved. They wanted me to take a standard insurance with a one-time premium of about ₹38,000. But it was rejected by SBI Life Insurance. I did not protest this issue, but often think about the repercussions to the family in the long term, in case of an eventuality,” he says.

Akula also had to battle to get special conveyance allowance given to disabled people. “I have been working here for nearly four years but was not given the higher rate of conveyance allowance. The reason given was that I do not require physical assistance,” he says. The issue is finally sorted out now, but he lost the allowance for earlier periods.

Akula says that in some cases rules may need to be changed to accommodate persons with disabilities. “The CA Institute exempts members with disabilities from meeting continuing education credit requirements. But I wish the ICWA Institute would also consider the issue, as classes may be held in higher floors without lift facility in some places,” he says. He notes, happily, that the Institute heeded his request to give additional time during exams for persons with disability.

Compensation, an uphill battle

Fighting cases in courts, not easy for anyone, is particularly daunting for those with disabilities. And often, due to lack of rules, they end up having to fight long legal battles to get any form of compensation to cover their huge medical expenses. Ketna Mehta, Management editor, educationalist and Founder Trustee of Nina Foundation, Mumbai, gives many examples. “Many spinal injuries happen due to accidents. One young person we helped was having food after college at a small eatery under a tree. The tree branch broke and hit his head and he suffered spinal cord injury. There is no way for the victim to get any payment from the Brihanmumbai Metropolitan Corporation for the surgery and rehabilitation,” she laments.

Likewise with Martin Tharail, a 25-year old from Kerala who worked at a BPO in Mumbai. He met with a bike accident and become a quadriplegic; his parents were retired and the family was unable to get the ₹15-20 lakh compensation from the truck owner. “The case is still pending, though he is no more,” says Mehta. She also narrates the woes of a 26-year old paraplegic girl who lost her parents and lives with her younger brother who is in college. She is fighting a court battle to inherit her parent’s property. “She goes to the court for the hearings with support from our volunteers. There are no proper wash-rooms for the disabled and it costs money to make travel arrangements, get a helper to be with her in the court,” says Mehta.

Triple whammy

The state of women with disability needs special attention as they suffer from discrimination due to three reasons — gender, disability and poverty. Abha Khetarpal, President, Cross the Hurdles, a non-profit that works for rights of persons with disabilities, notes that most Indians consider disability as “karma of past life.” She says that women with disabilities need provisions with regard

to their rights over their own bodies. “They are at much greater risk of violence, often by their caregivers; provisions are needed to ensure ways to seek redressal without fear,” she says.

“Sometimes women are cheated in marriages — an already married man marries a woman with disability. He abandons her due to fear of punishment for bigamy and adultery when the truth comes to light,” she explains. Since the second marriage is considered null and void by law, the woman is left all alone and faces society’s stigma; she has to survive without much support. Khetarpal suggests that the law should consider the whole scenario before giving any judgement.

Mehta notes that persons with disabilities, mainly women, are divorced after an accident that leads to a permanent disability. “The reason is not stated explicitly and the disabled person often accepts the fate without fighting. The sad part is that they are not given fair financial compensation, given the extra expenses they have to incur throughout their life,” she notes.

Need changes

Initiatives such as the “Accessible India” campaign do not deliver impactful results. The “Persons with Disability Act” of 1995 does not have punitive measures if there is failure in compliance. The National Trust Act of 1999 and The Mental Health Act of 1987 have not been able to bring about meaningful sensitisation. A new Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill has been pending for many years now.

A study conducted by the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a Bengaluru based non-profit think tank, found that 97 per cent of over 5,800 government websites tested have at least one known accessibility issue and can be said to be inaccessible. Government schemes, even when they exist, are for name-sake only, says Mehta. “The government provides a disability pension of ₹800 per month, which is not given in a timely way. In Mumbai, what can you cover with this amount?” she asks.

Mehta suggests that there must be a separate department to handle all aspects — education, scholarship, loans, insurance and availing benefits — rather than having to run helter-skelter to many departments. “There must be one agency and one file for a person with disability,” she insists. Also, the disabled are not aware of what they are entitled to. “Why not give information in a simple format when someone gets a disability certificate?” she suggests.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/news/hindu-businessline-november-27-2016-meera-siva-a-world-apart

A Workshop on Editing Wikipedia in Mumbai

praskrishna — 2013-08-23T16:00:46Z

The Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS-A2K) is holding a workshop on Wikipedia editing at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai on August 24, 10.00 a.m. to 4.30 p.m.

The morning session will be having a discussion and demonstration on Wikipedia (10.00 a.m. to 1.00 p.m.), which will be followed by a practical session (2.00 p.m. to 4.30 p.m.).

As part of the run-up to the Indian Languages Mela (planned for September 20-21, 2013), CILHE will conduct a workshop for those who would like create new articles in any Indian Language Wikipedia. The workshop is organized in collaboration with the Centre for Internet and Society’s Access to Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K) and the Wikipedia Hyderabad community. The objective of the workshop is to train students to edit Wikipedia. Participants are encouraged to work with Telugu, Hindi, Marathi, Urdu or any other language of their choice. Although the workshop is mainly intended for potential competitors for the Mela awards for Best New Article in an Indian Language Wikipedia, anyone interested in Wikipedia is welcome.

As you may know, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, and is the 5th most-visited website in the world! It's completely free to use and re-use, it has no advertising, and is available in more than 286 different languages - including 20+ Indian languages. Wikipedia articles are written by ordinary people who volunteer to share their knowledge with the world.

The CILHE is committed to producing material in Indian languages for higher education, and is partnering Wikipedia in drawing new editors to the Indian language Wikipedias so that they become an important knowledge resource.

What students gain from Wikipedia editing:

It improves writing skills. Wikipedia provides students a platform to hone their writing skills. Writing on Wikipedia enhances critical thinking and the ability to see all sides of a story. Students will find this incredibility useful in both their personal and professional lives while evaluating the pros and cons of different situations, projects, assignments etc. Wikipedia editing also strengthens research skills. A Wikipedia editor has to provide credible references by looking up books, journals and online materials. Writing on Wikipedia is good practice for those who will also work on a thesis or a research project.

Your articles will be read by thousands of people across the globe. If you edit a Wikipedia article, it is there *forever* and the audience can be any number from the 500 million who read Wikipedia every month!

It'll boost your chances in admissions or scholarships or placements.

It teaches students how to collaborate! Editing Wikipedia is magical. You add some content and someone from some other part of the class or school or town or country or somewhere else in the world adds a little bit more and makes the contribution that much better. Wikipedia helps one learn how to work productively with other people, even those you don’t know and may never actually meet.

The workshop will cover the following:

What exactly is Wikipedia and how does it work?
Who edits Wikipedia?
How do I edit Wikipedia?
What can I edit?
How can I input text in Indian languages?
How do I insert images?
How do I find and add references?
Do’s and Don’ts

Participants are required to register at least by August 23, 2013. Send your names to Ritesh Khunyakari riteshpk@gmail.com.

Important Instructions

Each student attending the Wikipedia Training programme should register themselves on Wikipedia. Please note that once you register on a Wikipedia project, you can use that 'Username' (i.e. same log-in details) across all Wikipedias and Wikimedia platforms. This should be done by August 23, 2013. Please note that you will not be able to register more than 5 Usernames from a single IP address within 24 hours (a security feature of Wikipedia). This tutorial will help you with Registration on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial/Registration
Once registered the students must furnish their details on the google doc. I have already entered my data just as sample. Please circulate this link to all the students at the earliest. This should be done by August 24, 2013 before the commencement of the Workshop https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AshSF7ZKRBR5dFBfM2lTaExINTZodVZ4ejd3VURzMEE&usp=sharing
All the students are expected to do editing on Wikipedia. We will choose Telugu Wikipedia (www.te.wikipedia) as a site to do some editing. Please be assured that we will also show how to use English and other language Wikipedias. For this workshop each student should come up with one article at least in an Indian language. This should be typed and be available in a soft copy form and could be carried in a thumb drive or any other storage media which should be easily accessible to them during the training programme.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/workshop-on-editing-wikipedia-in-mumbai

A Wikipedia Workshop at IISC

praskrishna — 2013-12-31T03:38:30Z

Along with Wikipedian Shiju Alex we supported the Assamese Wikipedians to organize a workshop at IISC.

Assamese Wikipedian Gitartha Bordoloi took a session explaining about Wikipedia. Almost 13 scholars from Assam who are currently researching at IISC took part in this workshop. This also opened a new avenue for us to start an Assamese Wiki community in Bangalore.

Click to download the original published by Amarasom Gl Publications. The link to the original is here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/wikipedia-workshop-iisc

A Wikipedia Editing Workshop in Goa

praskrishna — 2013-03-05T09:10:24Z

On the occasion of International Women's Day, the Access to Knowledge team from the Centre for Internet & Society is organizing a wikipedia editing workshop on March 8, 2013 at Nirmala Institute of Education, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., followed by an offline and online editathon.

The online editathon is a month-long affair, which will be held every weekend starting with the weekend after March 8. The goal of the month-long event is to encourage more women to contribute to Wikipedia and increase representation of articles related to women in Wikipedia.

The event aims at creating new articles, expanding the existing stubs and translating English articles to various Indian languages. Members are requested to start edithons in regional language Wikipedias.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/wikipedia-editing-workshop-in-goa

A Tweet and a poke from the CEO

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T01:30:17Z

The official grapevine has moved online, and Twitter is the new water-cooler.

The office grapevine has moved online, and Twitter is the new water cooler. Social media may be all the rage, and every company may want in, but for the majority of Indian companies grappling with the phenomenon, it is proving too tempestuous a beast to control.

From India alone, for instance, 18 million unique visitors logged on to Facebook in May, each of them posting multiple status messages that often dealt with their places of work. Ban these practices all you like, experts say, but employees will still find ways to log on to social media. Better, then, to ride the wave rather than risk going down with it.

Some Indian companies have already begun to learn this the hard way. When Infosys Technologies Ltd announced its IRace (Infosys Role and Career Enchancement) programme in April, changing the company’s hierarchy drastically, disgruntled employees lashed out at their company on blogs and Facebook.

“The company couldn’t do much then, because they didn’t have a social media policy in place,” says Mahesh Murthy, CEO of Pinstorm Consulting and a social media expert. Murthy mentions another large financial services firm that fired employees for commenting on Orkut about internal incentive programmes.

The time has arrived, then, for companies to institute social media policies—to define, in a sense, what sort of tweet is appropriate and what will earn a black mark. But Indian firms trying to do just this are emerging with very mixed results.

There are, on the one hand, the fast adopters. Technology and media companies that were the first to run head-on into social media were also, not surprisingly, the first to put basic guidelines in place.

Wipro Ltd and HCL Technologies Ltd not only have social media policies, they also promote communication and events for their employees on these media. A couple of months ago, the Spirit of Wipro run was promoted in real-time on Twitter and on its official Facebook page. “Wipro became one of the first companies to hold a Twitter conference, for our joint CEO to discuss our diversity initiatives,” says Rajan Kohli, Wipro’s chief marketing officer.

Also Read The Future of the Internet (Complete Series)

HCL has named digital ambassadors who use their social networks and online personas to share ideas and help the company reach out. In HCL’s annual exercise to articulate the company’s vision, employees communicate with the CEO through Facebook. Infosys has formulated its own social media policy now, and is preparing to roll it out over the next six months.

The other early adopter has been the media sector. As traditional media houses have started to build digital presences, conglomerates such as HT Media Ltd and Bennet, Coleman and Co. Ltd specify what a journalist’s digital avatar can and cannot say online. (Mint has an extensive social media policy for its employees.) Print journalists typically cannot reveal their employer on their Facebook or Twitter pages, or post original opinions.

But here’s the catch with such a strategy: The Internet is a hard place to be anonymous. “If you are a well-known writer, even if you don’t identify yourself, people can easily put two and two together,” says Nishant Shah, of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS). “Policies like that are hard to implement and don’t really make sense.”

To be sure, there are exceptions; Open, the weekly magazine, looks at Facebook and Twitter as channels to direct traffic to its online content. “We have no policy of employees not identifying themselves on social media or associating themselves with the magazine,” says Rajesh Jha, a deputy editor at Open.

Another surprisingly prompt responder to social media trends has been the education sector. While most institutions don’t have restrictive policies for public platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs, some have gone in a different direction and created closed networks. Shah argues that a closed network has the same features—and issues—as open social media.

“These are again peer-to-peer platforms, where teachers and students interact with each other, and any communication has a large audience and gets recorded for posterity,” he says. “This makes it as much of a social medium as Facebook or Twitter.”

Bangalore’s Christ University has created an institutional repository for every single submission made by students and faculty. Test grades and lesson plans are posted online, and students and teachers communicate through the system. The Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, has completely digitized its classrooms, so that write-ups on every lesson are available online. Students and teachers co-develop curricula through its platform as well.

One sector that has been slow to respond to these trends is the outsourcing sector. With annual attrition rates of 50-60%, these firms focus more on turnaround than on investment. Social media websites are typically banned altogether in call centres.

As social media evolves, ways to leverage it do as well. Large telecom firms such as Bharti Airtel Ltd, Tata Teleservices Ltd and Alcatel-Lucent use Facebook for research and development. Supriya Dhanda, Alcatel-Lucent’s head of human resources, says that her firm encourages “senior leaders...to keep blogs active and use them to promote key messages on strategy, people and operating mechanisms”.

In the US, a couple of smaller firms have been able to harness social media in innovative ways. Best Buy, an electronics retail chain, aggregates employee activity online, whether on blogs or Twitter, onto a platform called Best Buy Connect. Zappos, which sells shoes and bags online, has a similar Twitter aggregation tool that pulls any tweet mentioning the company. Employees are encouraged to post on the firm’s Facebook and YouTube pages, and its CEO, Tony Hsieh, has at least a million followers on Twitter.

But Murthy doesn’t necessarily think that Indian firms need to follow in the wake of US firms such as Intel, IBM and CNN, which have clearly defined social media policies. “First, the US is a litigious country and most social media policies there are circumscribed by what corporate lawyers allow employees to say and not say,” he says. “Two, Indian firms can actively use social media as a global marketing tool, especially because it involves no media costs. In the US, firms still look at it largely as a...customer-service function.”

Shah adds that India doesn’t have a clearly installed legal privacy framework, unlike the US or Australia. “What is public space and what is private is still largely a subject of interpretation,” Shah says. “So we will evolve our own path.”

Read the original in Livemint here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/tweet-and-poke

A Treat for the Blind

praskrishna — 2013-07-11T06:02:27Z

The WIPO treaty will provide copyright exceptions on books making them available to blind people in formats they can use.

The article by Chitra Narayanan was published in Business World on June 26, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

For millions of visually impaired people around the globe, it’s a landmark treaty that could open up the kingdom of books for them. After days of intense deliberations at Marrakesh in Morrocco, about 600 World Intellectual Property Organisation (Wipo) negotiators, including delegates from India, reached a consensus on a treaty that will provide copyright exceptions on books making them available to blind people in formats they can use.

Wipo, a United Nations agency, is dedicated to the use of intellectual property as a means of stimulating innovation and creativity. The agency has 186 member states.

Sure, content is king. But for the visually impaired, the right platform for accessing content is what makes the difference. Thanks to audio books, a host of apps, and digital platforms such as Bookshare, which provides content in accessible formats, the technology is already there to bring the rich world of 'hardcovers' and 'paperbacks' alive for those who cannot see. What’s more, these books are compatible with all kinds of devices from mobile phones to tablets to PCs.

Now, at last, there is legal sanction as well to content that was not being made available in accessible formats by the copyrights holders. For the 15 million people who are blind in India, the treaty is expected to open education doors as well as provide entertainment needs. India has the world’s largest number of blind people.

Bangalore-based Centre for Internet Society, a policy research organisation, has been at the forefront of negotiations at WIPO to get the treaty through. Minutes after the session concluded, Pranesh Prakash, policy Director at CIS and his colleague Sunil Abraham were tweeting ecstatically about the “win”.

For five long years, this Wipo treaty has witnessed contentious discussions on issues such as including exports of copyrighted works, translations of copyrighted works and so on. According to Prakash, who responded over twitter, “On Exports we won, but re-exports which was earlier permitted has become much more difficult.”

There are also other grainy areas such as commercial availability of the books. According to a post on the Intellectual Property Watch website, soon after the agreement was reached, commercial availability still stands under Article 4 (National Law Limitations and Exceptions on Accessible Format Copies) but has disappeared from Article 5 (cross border exchange of accessible format copies).

Although blind music legend Stevie Wonder, one of the most ardent supporters of the treaty, must be crooning Signed, Sealed, Delivered... it’s early days yet. The draft of the treaty has to be ratified by governments before being adopted.

But for five long years, it has been a long hard battle between copyright owners and those fighting for human rights of the visually impaired. Finally, as one observer, put it: 'a rare victory is in sight for human rights'.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/business-world-june-26-2013-chitra-narayanan-a-treat-for-the-blind

A Three-Way Race Draws Delhi’s Young, and Everyone Else, Out to Vote

praskrishna — 2013-12-26T07:03:54Z

The polling stations were supposed to close at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, just after sunset. But with thousands still waiting in the dark to cast their vote in the state assembly elections, the Delhi Election Commission decided to extend the voting until 6:30 p.m. Then to 7:30 p.m.

The article by Betwa Sharma was published in the New York Times on December 4, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Finally, the Election Commission said it would wait until 9:30 p.m. to close the polls. At the polling station in the New Delhi district, those waiting in line agreed that a relatively warm winter evening was helping to draw people out to vote.

Though no official data on voter turnout had been released by 9 p.m., it was clear that voters were coming out in unprecedented numbers for this year’s Delhi state elections. Analysts were predicting that this election would break the previous voter turnout record of 61.75 percent in 1993.

Unlike in the past, this year’s contest featured a potential spoiler in the Aam Aadmi, or Common Man, Party. Its leader, the firebrand anticorruption activist Arvind Kejriwal, was battling to dethrone the state’s longtime chief minister, Sheila Dikshit of the Congress Party, and siphon votes from the other establishment choice, the Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P. (Exit polls by the local media on Wednesday night were showing that the B.J.P. was likely to win the most seats in the state assembly.)

The prospect of upending the political status quo brought out young voters like 23-year-old Hina Kousar, although she had to put up a fight with her family to cast her vote for the Aam Aadmi Party. Her mother lectured her on how governments don’t care about people, but that didn’t deter Ms. Kousar.

“They have the wrong mentality, and young people should change it,” she said. “My granny is 70 years old and I told her to vote.”

Many of the youthful voters turned voting into a social activity, both in person and online. At one polling station, most people cast their votes quietly and left, but many of the young voters came with their friends. They talked animatedly about their choices while leaving the polling stations.

Others called their families to say they had voted. Some clicked photos of each other on their smartphones and posted the images on their Facebook pages.

In less than a year, Mr. Kejriwal, 45, and his party has pasted itself quite literally on city’s consciousness with aggressive campaigns and posters of brooms, symbolizing sweeping away the old order. And that’s why he got Ms. Kousar’s vote.

“The most important thing is that he has promised to remove corruption. The money that is going into Swiss banks is our money. The rising market prices are because of it,” she said.

Several voters between the ages of 20 to 25 who were interviewed by India Ink said they were backing Mr. Kejriwal, who represented a change from the three-term winner Ms. Dikshit. The B.J.P. had no star state candidate that appealed to them, even though its prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, engaged with students at Delhi University earlier this year and is extremely active on social media.

Besides corruption, several young voters, both male and female, said that ensuring women’s safety had to be a priority for any Delhi government.

Another Kejriwal voter, Kavita, a 27-year-old teacher who goes by one name, said that Ms. Dikshit’s government hadn’t effectively improved women’s safety after the gang rape of a physiotherapy student one year ago. “I don’t feel the difference,” she said. “I still feel unsafe on the streets, so let’s see what some new leaders can do to change this.”

Abhilash Sasidharan, 26, after he cast his vote at a polling booth in New Delhi on Wednesday.Betwa Sharma Abhilash Sasidharan, 26, after he cast his vote at a polling booth in New Delhi on Wednesday.

Another Kejriwal supporter, Abhilash Sasidharan, 27, said a safe environment for women is “absolutely” the most important thing to him, but the software engineer also was moved that Mr. Kejriwal had left his lucrative job as a revenue service officer to join politics.

Kavita, 27, after she cast her vote at a polling booth in New Delhi on Wednesday.

“I don’t have the courage to step into dirty politics, but he does and I want to support that,” he said. “Look, Congress has had 15 years, so why not see if someone can do better, and all these parties should feel a threat to do better.”

But not all young people are buying Mr. Kejriwal’s promises of sweeping change. Shiv Raj Syal, 20, called them “flowery and too good to believe,” as he cast his vote for Ms. Dikshit. “He is just very new at this and I don’t think it’s wise to hand over the running of a national capital to a party with no experience,” he said.

The chief minister had focused on development, the college student said, making Delhi a hub for foreign brands and corporates, and transforming it into an international city.

Abhilash Sasidharan, 26, after he cast his vote at a polling booth in New Delhi on Wednesday.

Despite the appearance of a robust youth presence at the polls on Wednesday, analysts are waiting on the Election Commission’s numbers before declaring this election cycle the year of the youth vote.

Sanjay Kumar, an election analyst from the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, said that as of July, only 68 percent of eligible voters between the ages of 18 and 21 had registered to vote, far lower than the 86 percent average of other demographics.

V.S. Sampath, the chief election commissioner in India, said that youth participation in the electoral process had been a priority in recent years, and several efforts including visiting universities and colleges had been made to register them, which had resulted in a “significant increase.”

In 2011, Mr. Sampath said, 119,000 voters between the ages of 18 and 19 were on the electoral rolls in Delhi, which accounted for 0.93 percent of total Delhi voters, but now the numbers had gone up to 405,000, or 3.4 percent.

Election observers have also pointed out that the hype about social media, especially Twitter, becoming a tool for political expression and organization for the youth has not necessarily translated into a surge in voting in that demographic of users.

The political debates on social media could translate into votes by the next elections, according to Sunil Abraham from the Centere of Internet and Society in Bangalore, who describes the Internet penetration as “limited,” and social media use even smaller and dominated by the economic elite.

Mr. Abraham, however, said social media is influencing the political discourse, not by motivating voters, but by influencing the coverage in mainstream media.

Relative to the country’s population, he added, social media users had a “disproportionate influence on discourse.”

But the young voters who spoke to India Ink said that at least for them, social media did play a role in drawing them into politics this year. Mr. Syal, the Congress voter, for instance, said that he had posted a message on his Facebook wall criticizing some of Mr. Kejriwal’s claims, which drew 50 comments.

And Mr. Sasidharan, the Aam Aadmi Party supporter, posted on Facebook a photo of him holding up his finger stained with ink, showing that he voted, immediately after coming out of the polling station. “I hope that it inspires more people to come and vote,” he said.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/nytimes-december-4-2013-betwa-sharma-a-three-way-race-draws-delhis-young-and-everyone-else-out-to-vote