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The 'Dark Fibre' Files: Interview with Jamie King and Peter Mann
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/dark-fibre-files
<b>Film-makers Jamie King (producer/director of the 'Steal This Film' series) and Peter Mann, in conversation with Siddharth Chadha, on 'Dark Fibre', their latest production, being filmed in Bangalore</b>
<p>'Dark Fibre' is a documentary/fiction hybrid by J. J. King, producer/director of the 'Steal This Film' series, which has already reached over six million people online and is working towards achieving international television distribution, and Peter Mann, a British film-maker whose most recent work is titled 'Sargy Mann'.</p>
<p>'Dark Fibre' is set amongst the cablewallahs of Bangalore, and uses the device of cabling to traverse different aspects of informational life in the city. It follows the lives of real cablewallahs and examines the political status of their activities.The fictional elements arrive in the form of a young apprentice cablewallah who attempts to unite the disparate home-brew networks in the city into a grassroots, horizontal 'people's network'. Some support the activity and some vehemently oppose it -- but what no one expects is the emergence of a seditious, unlicensed and anonymous new channel which begins to transform people's imaginations in the city. Our young cable apprentice is tasked with tracking down the channel, as powerful political forces array themselves against it. Not only the 'security' of the city, but his own wellbeing depend on whether he finds it, and whether it proves possible to stop its distribution. Meanwhile, mysterious elements from outside India -- possibly emissaries of a still-greater power -- are appearing on the scene. This quest for the unknown channel is reminiscent of a modern-day 'Moby Dick', with the city of Bangalore as the high seas and our cable apprentice a reluctant Ahab. The action is a combination of verite, improvisation and scripted action.</p>
<h3>In conversation with Jamie and Peter in Bangalore</h3>
<p><strong>Q: How did you get the idea to make Dark Fibre, a fiction film?</strong></p>
<strong></strong>
<p><strong>Peter: </strong></p>
<strong></strong>
<p>We first met through BritDoc--British Documentary--and they run Channel 4 which is a Film Foundation. They have been good to us. They funded both Steal This Film and 'Sargy Mann'--a film on my father who is a blind man. They organised a meeting of all the directors they had funded and we met there. We were both thinking about what to do next and felt frustrated because we were making documentaries but really wanted to make fiction. We both shared the same ideas, with regard to shooting something completely as it is but presenting it in a fictional context.</p>
<p><strong>Jamie:</strong></p>
<strong></strong>
<p>And furthermore, we agreed that documentaries are not really real life. Because at the end of the day, I will keep only what I like, make you look at the way I want you to, I would cut you out of the picture if I don't agree with you. This happens even with the most worthy of the films. And you can be more truthful in fiction because its always a subjective truth. Fiction allows things to remain more real. I don't need an argument in the film. If I can just say, here is one guy's story and this is his story, then you can see the city with no bullshit. The story would allow you to look at things as they are; it's partly that idea behind Dark Fibre.</p>
<strong>Peter:<br /><br /></strong>
<p>This is in some way related to the concept of the artistic truth. You use all the tools at your disposal to tell a story, not just literal facts. This is about presenting things within an atmosphere, presenting things in a context. This then adds up to someone understanding something about the world, and I think fiction serves that better than documentary.</p>
<p><strong>Q: What brings you to India to make Dark Fibre?</strong> </p>
<strong>Jamie:<br /><br /></strong>
<p>I think the cablewallah networks are unique. I have never seen anything like this anywhere else myself. India is also in a very, very interesting time and place. The idea of information as a commodity is alive here as it isn't in many other places. The value of information is very high here. There is a western imaginary of Bangalore which is immediately fascinating. It's the place where our information is processed. This is where our credit card and our phone data goes. And it enters a weird black market that we don't understand. This is the cliché. We already have cliché films about Bombay and call centers. We do not want to put a call center into the film because that is already the imagined cliché vision of Bangalore. It is obviously far more sophisticated than that. And in some ways it is far patchier than that. Who are these information workers? What are they doing and at which level are they doing it? Are they the street workers putting cables into walls or is it the guy at Infosys who is hiring people and teaching them to fake English accents? Which is the real information worker? That variegation of information life in Bangalore is interesting, not just to us, but, I think, to everybody. Information dexterity is perceived as the signature of Northern dominance. The ability to manipulate information, to move intellectual property, to transform an idea into a product, to transform someone else's idea into your property. That kind of dexterity is seen as the keynote of western dominance. And watching a developing country transform into an information dextrous economy, seeing information dextrous people is amazing. And then there is the patchiness of it--who gets left behind? Who gets included? Whats missed out and what is added in that vision? How is it manipulated in favor of big businesses? And all of this is fascinating not only from an orientalist's point of view but from a general economic-socio-political point of view.</p>
<p><strong>Q: What is the underlying concept that brought about Dark Fibre?</strong><br /><strong><br />Jamie:</strong><br /> <br />While making 'Steal This Film' we spent a year on a 36 minute film trying to make an argument that would be staunch, impactful, and radical. What we learned is that it's very difficult to set out to argue your way to the truth. It's relatively easier to let the world itself speak and in the meanwhile observe it in detail. The kind of issues we are engaging with in Dark Fibre are around people's relationships with information and their relationship with freedom. These are very, very hard to nail down and speak about in a radical way. These are things left to the Intellectual Property lawyers, it's already happening, it's already cliché. All the arguments are already written. And even after a year of Steal This Film, it's shown in liberal universities – Wait! Liberal universities? I was supposed to be an anarchist! We want to go further. We want to tell people things through an image.</p>
<strong></strong>
<p><strong>Peter:</strong></p>
<p>Our idea of relationships is exploring the parallel physical communications networks and the virtual networks. In a city like Bangalore you see it. The traffic here is chaotic but it works. How? There is no answer to that. But it provokes questions. Through Dark Fibre, we are trying to say that there is a potential network in the city (cablewallahs) which is currently being unused and asking what it would take to unlock that potential and where would it take us if that really happens.</p>
<p><strong>Q: Why the cablewallahs? What is so fascinating about them?</strong><br /> <br /><strong>Jamie: </strong><br /> <br />Yes, we are interested in the cablewallah network and I think it's quite perverse that it makes people from around here laugh. You see cablewallahs as a fact of life, probably a mundane fact of life. Westerners, Europeans, who are used to orderly deployments of information technology are completely blown away when you tell them that this is how it works in India. Ad hoc, grassroots, messy, out of control.</p>
<strong><br />Peter:<br /><br /></strong>
<p>To the West, it is just unthinkable that the government would allow something like these networks, which supply 24 hours television. To not have these under government control is unthinkable.</p>
<strong>Jamie:<br /><br /></strong>
<p>So, obviously, we are at a point of transition where it's unthinkable to the Global North and it would become unthinkable here too. We are in the middle of that shift and thats one of the things we are trying to document; the network form, which is horizontal, ad hoc and on the street, becomes not only regulated but seditious.</p>
<strong>Q: Why would you call it seditious?</strong><strong><br /><br />Jamie: <br /><br /></strong>
<p>Because it begins to be seen as almost dangerous. As the regulators move in, they take Direct to Home control of all the deployments of their intellectual properties. The older networks start to look not only like intellectual property right infringements, but their disorder is also seen to be terrorist.</p>
<strong>Q: What is the film trying to propose through linking these cablewallah networks?</strong>
<p> </p>
<strong>Jamie:<br /><br /></strong>
<p>Our proposal in this film is - "What if instead of just dying peacefully, someone had the idea of transforming these networks that used to deliver international and local content, by connecting them together, and turning them in to massive local media networks which are used for media sharing, file sharing, your own local channel?" There is a potential because the network is already there.</p>
<strong>Peter:<br /><br /></strong>
<p>In a way, if you think about the microcosm idea of the Internet as a whole, that essentially is what our plot is. On a certain level you would say that it's just a network but then the internet is the most important driving force of the world today.</p>
<p><strong>Jamie:</strong></p>
<strong></strong>
<p>The point is that once this idea is out, we can create the infrastructure to connect the entire city, infrastructure we can all use. Everyone starts to have a stake in it, be it the newspapers, TV channels, pirate markets (they will say, "No one is buying our shit anymore because they can share it over the network"), the computer manufacturers, the importer of Chinese routers, a gangster who thinks he can advertise on the network, the intellectual property lawyer... different people start getting the idea that they might have something to do with this network. Basically this is a chaos scenario, from which arises the plot. It is a fictional scenario but is set in the reality of information sharing here today.</p>
<p><strong>Q: What is the technique you use to make the plot hybrid fictional?</strong><br /> <br /><strong>Jamie:</strong><br /><br />The main character is played by an actor and he will be an embedded actor, working with the real cablewallah. Parts of it will be documentary, seeing how the cablewallah works and the viewer, through watching this actor, will understand how the network works. We have already spoken to some cablewallahs. And they have been very happy about all this. We see this as sort of embedded journalism, where the embedded actor takes the place of an interviewer. The film is not going to be historical. The characters will have a background and the film is going to have a background, but what we are trying to do is show the 'now'. We want to make it speak about the past and speak about the future. About our future.</p>
<p><strong>Q: 'Steal This Film' was a critique of the international intellectual property regimes. Would this film also be similarly advocative?</strong><br /> <br /><strong>Jamie:</strong><br /><br />We are going to the next level from 'Steal This Film', and this is more of my argument than Peter's -- that the conversation about Intellectual Propery is over or the film is the last word at all. But I personally need to go somewhere else to say more. I am interested in information in general. And how information affects what we can think, what we can dream, what we can be, how it forms all of us -- that is what we are working on in 'Dark Fibre' and the question of intellectual property is a subset of that question. We spend a lot of time talking about ideas and that's one of the things that connects us. We want to articulate a lot of the philosophical, abstract ideas in this film. And we will see if we can manage to do it in a new context. 'Steal This Film' interested a few people and this will be the next point of departure for discussion.</p>
<p><strong>Q: Peter, do you share Jamie's passion for Intellectual Property?</strong><br /> <br /><strong>Peter:</strong><br /><br />Not in the same way. I am very interested in the subject. Anybody who creates work is interested in it. In my last film, there is a constant commentary of a test match going on and as a result of it, it is almost impossible to sell it to television; people who own the rights to the cricket say that we have to pay them thousands of pounds! I am interested in documenting the world as it is and not what is cleaned up for TV. I am interested in the specifics. If you get on a bus in London, the ringtone everyone has on a mobile phone is not a ringtone but a particular song. But you can't put that on film because Mick Jagger, or whoever the artiste is, will want ten thousand pounds for it. The frustration that I face is that it is impossible to put the world that I see in front of me on film. I used to work with TV commercials and you would never see anything in commercials that is not the product being sold. I was once working on a Coca Cola commercial in New York and there was a person who was appointed by Coca Cola to go around the whole set to ensure that no one is drinking anything that is not made by Coca Cola, whether that is water or juice. Anything. And I think all that is about creating a creased world that we don't live in. I am interested in the world, through documentaries or fiction, that we live in. And it is bits of music, it is referenced films, we reference music, we reference sport. Just because people have rights over these, you never see them on film. That is my main area of interest, more than what is happening on the legal front.</p>
<p><img class="image-inline image-inline" src="uploads/stf.jpg/image_preview" alt="stf" height="400" width="284" /> <img class="image-inline image-inline" src="uploads/copy_of_steal_this_film_2.jpg/image_preview" alt="steal this film" height="400" width="280" /></p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/dark-fibre-files'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/dark-fibre-files</a>
</p>
No publishersiddharthhistories of internet in Indiainternet and societyDigital AccessIntellectual Property RightsYouTubeart and interventionPiracyOpen Accessinnovationdigital artists2011-08-04T04:41:31ZBlog EntryRound Table on Assessing the Efficacy of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for Public Initiatives: A Report
http://editors.cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/round-table-assessing-efficacy
<b>Zainab Bawa reports on the Round Table on Assessing the Efficacy of Information and Communication Technologies for Public Initiatives, hosted by the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, on 17 June 2009, in collaboration with the Liberty Institute, New Delhi. </b>
<p></p>
<p>
In
recent times, there has been an upsurge in the use of ICTs to provide
information to people and to elicit participation. Individuals, corporate
organisations, NGOs, civil society organisations, collectives, municipalities,
political parties and politicians have been using the internet and other
mediums to communicate with people. The round table was organised primarily to
discuss two issues:</p>
<ol><li>What is the
effectiveness of the initiatives introduced in recent times?</li><li>How do we
move forward in terms of partnerships/collaborations in the areas of data
gathering, sharing, dissemination and architecture of information? </li></ol>
<p>Given
the constraints of time, however, we were only able to discuss a few issues with
respect to efficacy of initiatives, rather than come up with a concrete action
plan on how to measure effectiveness of many of the existing initiatives. This
remains an agenda for subsequent meetings.</p>
<p>This round table was the first meeting of its kind. It
brought together participants from diverse backgrounds to discuss key issues
involved in leveraging ICTs towards various ends, and to collaborate with each
other on ongoing initiatives. Participants included researchers,
persons who have developed information platforms and databases, individuals
working in the area of leveraging technology for streamlining processes in
society and people who have been studying usage patterns of social media tools.
Most of the participants were using ICTs to improve information access
related to health issues, education, budgets, development of rural areas and
recently, elections and governance. In the subsequent sections, I will briefly
elaborate on some of the key themes around which discussions took place
during the round table.</p>
<p><strong>Building on Ideas:</strong> In the morning
and pre-lunch sessions, one issue that featured prominently was the importance of developing ideas rather than trying to work out a perfect model that
we believe will solve what we perceive to be people’s problems. Two of the
participants explained that they started implementing ideas as they came to
them, rather than trying to come up with a framework that they thought would
work for the masses. They worked towards evolving their ideas, exploring what
works and what does not. One of them further pointed out that such evolution
cannot be observed as it happens; it only becomes apparent in hindsight. Hence,
discussions such as the current round table are useful.</p>
<p>It is
also important to note that we are still in a nascent stage of understanding
how ICTs can impact people’s lives and deploying them accordingly. As a result, many efforts are likely to be in the stage of trial and error.</p>
<p><strong>Key areas of interest and concern:</strong> Based
on the input from participants in the morning session, we
arrived at a list of areas that require more understanding and discussion.</p>
<ol><li><u>Information gathering, dissemination, access –
including information architecture, technology design</u>:
Here, three issues were discussed:</li>
<ul><li>Who are we talking about when we refer to information
access? It was pointed out that information is crucial particularly for people
who do not have computers and for whom internet is not a priority. The intensity
with which they seek information is remarkable. One of the participants argued
that we undervalue the potential of information to make a difference to
people’s lives.</li><li>How do we deliver information? Providing information
is not enough.</li><li>Representativeness of the information for those who it
is provided for.
</li></ul>
</ol>
<p>Another issue that was referred to
was whether language is a problem, i.e., most information is available only in
English. One of the participants suggested that this is not the case because Google has found that a very small percentage of the population actually refers
to material on the web in languages other than English.</p>
<ol type="1" start="2"><li><u>Community mobilization</u>:
During the deliberations, we referred to the problem of replication of initiatives. Two observers of social media pointed
out that replication happens because people are trying to create their own
unique communities around their initiatives. This is an important insight
for future efforts and also indicates the need to share databases and
information that individuals and organisations have compiled. They also
suggested that it is important to discover existing communities and spaces
where conversations around issues of governance, education, health and
development are taking place. This helps to plug into existing resource
pools and to extend outreach. <br /></li></ol>
<ol type="1" start="3"><li><u>Citizens’ participation</u>:
Initiatives that work and why they
succeed - We briefly discussed the Jaagore campaign and India Vote Report,
which were launched before the 2009 national elections in India to enable
people to register on the electoral rolls and to report irregularities during
elections respectively. Some people found it difficult to register
themselves on the Jaagore website and some had difficulties in finding the
local offices where they needed to follow-up with the process. It was also
pointed out that Vote Report did not connect with the end user because it
would have been easier to report irregularities and anomalies via SMS
rather than trying to report them by logging on to the site. If one looks
at the case of the Online Complaint Management System (OCMS) developed by
Praja, the availability of the telephone hotline service through which
citizens could register their complaints helped in widening usage. Thus,
it appears that two issues are pertinent:</li>
<ul><li>Whether the initiative connects with the people who
are likely to use it;</li><li>Simplicity of design/system that enables more users. <br />
</li></ul>
</ol>
<p><strong>Target
Audience:</strong> One of
the participants pointed out that some initiatives do not work because they are
targeted towards the wrong audiences. For example, when it comes to voting and
elections, poor groups are the ones who go out and vote in large numbers.
Hence, information systems need to be tailored to provide them with the data
that they need most. Access also has to be configured accordingly. In some
instances, the target is too broad to reach out effectively.</p>
<p>It appears that there is a need to
develop strategies on how platforms and databases that have been created to
enhance access to information can be made known among the masses and how people
can be made aware to use them. It is equally important to understand what
constitutes ‘information’ and for whom. Here,
the other issue to explore is how information links back to the people for who
it is provided.</p>
<ol type="1" start="4"><li><u>Technology</u>: In this
area, a key concern was the high costs involved in developing technologies
and whether we could learn from each other’s experience of developing
technologies instead of reinventing the wheel. We also discussed whether
open source software helps to reduce costs of development. The other issue
with respect to open source is whether there is enough assistance and
support available to resolve problems that may crop up during use of
technology from time to time. </li></ol>
<p><strong>Sharing
of Data:</strong> Discussions also veered around the issue of whether
appropriate technology and applications could be created to help with sharing
existing databases and information pools. We did not discuss this issue
in depth, but it remains relevant for subsequent meetings.</p>
<ol type="1" start="5"><li><u>Back end integration</u>: According
to some of the participants, one of major problems is the interface
between government and citizens, which remains weak. Technology
can be used to enhance the interactions. Participants also pointed out
the difficulty in obtaining data from government bodies that is important
to create the interface between government and citizens. A participant
involved with the Jaagore campaign referred to the problem of back-end
integration during their efforts to help citizens register themselves with
the election commission (EC) offices. A participant from Google similarly
reported that they faced problems in obtaining election results from the EC’s
offices as a result of which, they had to rely on their partners for this
information. Here too, we could not deliberate on how to resolve this
problem, but this could be a major theme for a subsequent meeting. <br /></li></ol>
<ol type="1" start="6"><li><u>Performance (monitoring, evaluation)</u>:
One of the themes that participants zeroed in on was the evaluation of
the performance of elected representatives and making this evaluation available for
people to see. Here, the debate was around the problem of evaluation being carried out according to the criteria we set which may not seem relevant
to other sections of society. One of the suggestions that came up was to
develop a matrix for evaluation and put out information accordingly.
People can then use it to make their own judgments. <img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/uploads/00016.jpg/image_preview" alt="rt2" class="image-right" title="rt2" /><br /></li></ol>
<p>In
the post-lunch session, some of the participants shared their experiences with
implementation and also the work they and their organisations are currently
engaged with. Towards the end of the round table, each one of the participants
explained their respective projects and how they may wish to collaborate with
other participants (who were present) in their initiatives. An e-group called “CIS-Info-Access” has
been created to take these conversations and collaborations further. </p>
<h3><strong>Evaluation of the Round Table and Way Forward:</strong> <br /></h3>
<p>When
invitations were sent out to people to participate in the round table, many of
the invitees expressed a genuine and enthusiastic interest in being part of
this effort. As mentioned above, one of the reasons for this enthusiasm was
because this was the first meeting of its kind, bringing together
individuals from the fields of technology, research and implementation. We
invited a total of 35 people out of which 27 finally attended the meeting.
The diversity of the participants was an asset in that a variety of issues were
brought to the table. The drawback was that there was not enough time to
discuss some of the pertinent issues in depth. Future meetings can be tailored
to discuss one or two specific themes such as back-end integration and sharing
of information, technology issues, ideas for mobilising citizens and
communities, etc.</p>
<p>The
possibilities of collaboration between participants in this meeting are immense
and we hope that some of the synergies will materialise into concrete outcomes.
Further, a few participants have expressed an interest in organising similar
meetings in their cities/towns, perhaps focusing on a few issues instead of
bringing people together under a broad theme. Of some of the issues discussed,
participants have indicated that back-end integration with government and
ideating on different ways of disseminating data can be further deliberated on
in future. One of the participants also suggested that there is a need to make
‘data’ more relevant to people’s lives.</p>
<p>While
the meeting was fruitful in many respects, one issue needs to be underlined.
This concerns the imagination of internet and ICTs as mediums that can resolve all existing problems with respect to citizen-government
interface, streamlining of processes and provision of information. Such an
overarching imagination of technology overlooks the cultural, economic, social and
political specificities of communities and contexts. Technology
can also have negative implications in some circumstances. It also needs to be
reinforced that technology is embedded in society and culture. Therefore we
need to view technology as one of the avenues among others available which will
facilitate interactions between people and their governments and the state.
Democratisation is more likely to be realised through such a perspective.</p>
<p></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/round-table-assessing-efficacy'>http://editors.cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/round-table-assessing-efficacy</a>
</p>
No publishersachiaSocial mediaDigital ActivismDigital AccessPublic AccountabilityDiscussionFeaturedTransparency, Politics2011-08-20T22:28:55ZBlog EntryCPOV : Wikipedia Research Initiative
http://editors.cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/cpov
<b>The Second event, towards building the Critical Point of View Reader on Wikipedia, brings a range of scholars, practitioners, theorists and activists to critically reflect on the state of Wikipedia in our contemporary Information Societies. Organised in Amsterdam, Netherlands, by the Institute of Network Cultures, in collaboration with the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, the event builds on the debates and discussions initiated at the WikiWars that launched off the knowledge network in Bangalore in January 2010. Follow the Live Tweets at #CPOV</b>
<p>Second international conference of the <em>CPOV Wikipedia Research
Initiative</em> :: March 26-27, 2010 :: OBA (Public Library Amsterdam,
next to Amsterdam central station), Oosterdokskade 143, Amsterdam.</p>
<p>Wikipedia is at the brink of becoming the de facto global reference
of dynamic knowledge. The heated debates over its accuracy, anonymity,
trust, vandalism and expertise only seem to fuel further growth of
Wikipedia and its user base. Apart from leaving its modern counterparts
Britannica and Encarta in the dust, such scale and breadth places
Wikipedia on par with such historical milestones as Pliny the Elder’s
Naturalis Historia, the Ming Dynasty’s Wen-hsien ta- ch’ eng, and the
key work of French Enlightenment, the Encyclopedie. <span id="more-10604"></span>The multilingual Wikipedia as digital
collaborative and fluid knowledge production platform might be said to
be the most visible and successful example of the migration of FLOSS
(Free/ Libre/ Open Source Software) principles into mainstream culture.
However, such celebration should contain critical insights, informed by
the changing realities of the Internet at large and the Wikipedia
project in particular.</p>
<p>The CPOV Research Initiative was founded from the urge to stimulate
critical Wikipedia research: quantitative and qualitative research that
could benefit both the wide user-base and the active Wikipedia community
itself. On top of this, Wikipedia offers critical insights into the
contemporary status of knowledge, its organizing principles, function,
and impact; its production styles, mechanisms for conflict resolution
and power (re-)constitution. The overarching research agenda is at once a
philosophical, epistemological and theoretical investigation of
knowledge artifacts, cultural production and social relations, and an
empirical investigation of the specific phenomenon of the Wikipedia.</p>
<p>Conference Themes: Wiki Theory, Encyclopedia Histories, Wiki Art,
Wikipedia Analytics, Designing Debate and Global Issues and Outlooks.</p>
<p>Follow the live tweets on http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23CPOV</p>
<p>Confirmed speakers: Florian Cramer (DE/NL), Andrew Famiglietti (UK),
Stuart Geiger (USA), Hendrik-Jan Grievink (NL), Charles van den Heuvel
(NL), Jeanette Hofmann (DE), Athina Karatzogianni (UK), Scott Kildall
(USA), Patrick Lichty (USA), Hans Varghese Mathews (IN), Teemu Mikkonen
(FI), Mayo Fuster Morell (IT), Mathieu O’Neil (AU), Felipe Ortega (ES),
Dan O’Sullivan (UK), Joseph Reagle (USA), Ramón Reichert (AU), Richard
Rogers (USA/NL), Alan Shapiro (USA/DE), Maja van der Velden (NL/NO),
Gérard Wormser (FR).</p>
<p>Editorial team: Sabine Niederer and Geert Lovink (Amsterdam), Nishant
Shah and Sunil Abraham (Bangalore), Johanna Niesyto (Siegen), Nathaniel
Tkacz (Melbourne). Project manager CPOV Amsterdam: Margreet Riphagen.
Research intern: Juliana Brunello. Production intern: Serena Westra.</p>
<p>The CPOV conference in Amsterdam will be the second conference of the
CPOV Wikipedia Research Initiative. The launch of the initiative took
place in Bangalore India, with the conference WikiWars in January 2010.
After the first two events, the CPOV organization will work on
producing a reader, to be launched early 2011. For more information or
submitting a <a href="http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/reader">reader</a>
contribution.</p>
<p>Buy your ticket <a href="http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/practical-info/tickets/">online</a>
(with iDeal), or register by sending an email to: info (at)
networkcultures.org. One day ticket: €25, students and OBA members:
€12,50. Full conference pass (2 days): €40, students and OBA members:
25.</p>
<p>Organized by the Institute of Network Cultures Amsterdam, in
cooperation with the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore,
India.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/cpov'>http://editors.cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/cpov</a>
</p>
No publishernishantConferenceOpen StandardsDigital ActivismDigital GovernanceDigital AccessPublic AccountabilityResearchFeatured2011-08-23T02:52:25ZBlog EntryCIS Seminar Series: Information Disorder
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-seminar-series-information-disorder
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society is announcing the launch of a seminar series to showcase research around digital rights and technology policy, with a focus on the Global South.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The CIS seminar series will be a venue for researchers to share works-in-progress, exchange ideas, identify avenues for collaboration, and curate research. We also seek to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 on research exchange, and foster collaborations among researchers and academics from diverse geographies. Every quarter we will be hosting a remote seminar with presentations, discussions and debate on a thematic area.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong> </strong></p>
<h3><strong>Seminar format</strong></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong> </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">We are happy to welcome abstracts for one of two tracks:</p>
<h3>Working paper presentation</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;"> A working paper presentation would ideally involve a working draft that is presented for about 15 minutes followed by feedback from workshop participants. Abstracts for this track should be 600-800 words in length with clear research questions, methodology, and questions for discussion at the seminar. Ideally, for this track, authors should be able to submit a draft paper two weeks before the conference for circulation to participants.</p>
<h3> Coffee-shop conversations</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In contrast to the formal paper presentation format, the point of the coffee-shop conversations is to enable an informal space for presentation and discussion of ideas. Simply put, it is an opportunity for researchers to “think out loud” and get feedback on future research agendas. Provocations for this should be 100-150 words containing a short description of the idea you want to discuss.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">We will try to accommodate as many abstracts as possible given time constraints. We welcome submissions from students and early career researchers, especially those from under-represented communities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><em>All discussions will be private and conducted under the Chatham House Rule. Drafts will only be circulated among registered participants.</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Please send all abstracts to <a href="mailto:workshops@cis-india.org">workshops@cis-india.org</a>.</p>
<h3>Theme for the first seminar (to be held on an online platform)</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong> </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The first seminar will be centered around the theme of ‘Information Disorder<strong>: <em>Mis-, Dis- and Malinformation</em>.’</strong> While the issue of information disorder, colloquially termed as ‘fake news’, has been in the political forefront for the last five years, the flawed attempts at countering the ‘infodemic’ brought about by the pandemic proves that there still continues to be substantial gaps in the body-of-knowledge on this issue. This includes research that proposes empirical, replicable methods of understanding the types, forms or nature of information disorder or research that attempts to understand regulatory approaches, the layers of production and the roles played by different agents in the spread of ‘fake news’.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Accordingly, we invite submissions that address these gaps in knowledge, including those that examine the relationship between digital technology and information disorder across a spectrum of fields and disciplines. Areas of interest include but are not limited to:</p>
<ol style="text-align: justify;">
<li>Information disorders during COVID-19</li>
<li>Effects of coordinated campaigns on marginalised communities</li>
<li>Journalism, the State, and the trust in media </li>
<li>Platform responsibility in information disorder </li>
<li>Information disorder in international law/constitutional/human rights law</li>
<li>Information disorder as a geopolitical tool</li>
<li>Sociopolitical and cultural factors in user engagement</li></ol>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Timeline</strong></p>
<ol style="text-align: justify;">
<li>Abstract Submission Deadline: August 25th</li>
<li>Results of Abstract review: September 8th</li>
<li>Full submissions (of draft papers): September 30th</li>
<li>Seminar date: Tentatively October 7th</li></ol>
<div style="text-align: justify;"> </div>
<h3><strong>Contact details</strong></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">For any queries please contact us at <a href="mailto:workshops@cis-india.org">workshops@cis-india.org</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-seminar-series-information-disorder'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-seminar-series-information-disorder</a>
</p>
No publisheramanDigital EconomyDigital AccessInternet GovernanceDigital DisruptionInformation Technology2021-08-11T11:17:57ZPageComments on the Statistical Disclosure Control Report
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/comments-on-the-statistical-disclosure-control-report
<b>This submission presents comments by the Centre for Internet and Society, India (“CIS”) on the Statistical Disclosure Control Report published on March 30th by Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.
</b>
<p><strong id="docs-internal-guid-a12fe2b3-c746-4c1a-0287-1814414668af"><br /></strong></p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">1. PRELIMINARY</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">This submission presents comments by the Centre for Internet and Society, India (“CIS”) on the Statistical Disclosure Control Report published on March 30th by Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">CIS is thankful for the opportunity to put forth its views.<br class="kix-line-break" />This submission is divided into three main parts. The first part, ‘Preliminary’, introduces the document; the second part, ‘About CIS’, is an overview of the organization; and, the third part contains the ‘Comments’.<br class="kix-line-break" /><br class="kix-line-break" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">2. ABOUT CIS</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">CIS is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, freedom of speech and expression, intermediary liability, digital privacy, and cybersecurity.<br class="kix-line-break" /><br /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">CIS values the fundamental principles of justice, equality, freedom and economic development. This submission is consistent with CIS' commitment to these values, the safeguarding of general public interest and the protection of India's national interest at the international level. Accordingly, the comments in this submission aim to further these principles.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">3. Comments</h3>
<h4 style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">3.1 General Comments</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">As a non-profit organisation we recognize the importance of the efforts by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) to make the data you collect available to the public in open formats with relevant information about reliability of statistical estimates.</p>
<p><span style="text-align: justify;">We at CIS have recently released a report titled “Information Security Practices of Aadhaar (or lack thereof): A documentation of public availability of Aadhaar Numbers with sensitive personal financial information”. We encountered several central and state government departments collecting socioeconomic data from citizens, linking it with Aadhaar and even publishing them in exportable data formats like EXCEL and MS ACCESS Databases. </span><span style="text-align: justify;">While we understand this issue primarily concerns to Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the lack of standards around information/statistical disclosure are a general threat to transparency in a democracy and privacy of individuals. </span><span style="text-align: justify;">Going through the report we understand the committee is unable to prescribe a standard for other ministries and departments until they try and pilot these standards within Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. This delay in prescribing the standards can be really dangerous in the current circumstances of massive data collection by government departments and linking all the databases with a unique identifier, Aadhaar Number. </span><span style="text-align: justify;">At the same time we understand the importance of data dissemination to be carried out and we recommend the following for improving the standards around data disclosure control.</span></p>
<h4 style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">3.2 Integrity of Information and Data</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">We agree with the committee that the error rates need to be kept in mind while designing practices to convert raw data. But we request the process of changes being made be actively measured and documented. In case of errors being computed, guidelines can be made to decrease the possibilities of misinterpretation of errors causing loss of integrity of information. Statistics are important for decision making in governance, errors in computations can be biased towards millions of people. Statistical biases are important to be looked into while converting data from its raw format to make sure there are no damage caused by information.</p>
<h4 style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">3.3 Data Security</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">One of the important issues around storage and publication of Aadhaar information is the lack of masking standards. With the availability of data from multiple departments, it is possible to reconstruct identification details by linking data from multiple databases. It is recommended to bring masking standards while personally identifiable micro data is being published. There is an urgent need for departments to also look at auditing access to information and tracking sharing of information. It is recommended the department digitally signs all the information and documents being published or shared by them to keep track of who had accessed the information and verifying the authenticity of information.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">We request the department to define what exactly is “usage for statistical purposes only” and recommend standards to control and restrict usage of information for this purpose. It is important they design frameworks or mechanisms to allow others to report violations around this. This process should be transparent and documented heavily.</p>
<h4 style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">3.4 Anonymization of microdata</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">We recommend the data being collected be anonymized at source to evade the possibility of the accidental disclosure of personally identifiable information. While the current anonymization efforts have been helpful, with steady increase in data mining and classification algorithms and practices it is recommended to evolve the standards around this area.</p>
<h4 style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">3.5 Data Dissemination</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Data dissemination is an important aspect for district statistics officers, we recommend they actively communicate their work through monthly newsletters, quarterly workshops to help improve the conversations around statistics and at the same time engage with the users who would benefit from the data.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">We also recommend that data when being published includes metadata of collection, modification, storage and other important information. Also the information needs to be published in open formats which does not require proprietary software to be used to open them. At the same time data should be published in multiple formats like CSV, XLS, PDF,</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The committee also recognizes the need for having data users part of discussions around important decisions and be part of committees. We would like the department to recognize our efforts and consider us for future committee representations.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Thank you for this opportunity and we look forward to work with you in future.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/comments-on-the-statistical-disclosure-control-report'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/comments-on-the-statistical-disclosure-control-report</a>
</p>
No publisherSrinivs Kodali and Amber SinhaCall for CommentsDigital AccessOpen DataOpen Government DataData ProtectionData GovernanceAadhaarDigitisationInformation SecurityOpennessInternet GovernanceData Management2019-03-13T00:28:44ZBlog EntryMedia Market Risk Ratings: India
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/gdi-and-cis-torsha-sarkar-pranav-m-bidare-and-gurshabad-grover-july-12-2021-media-market-risk-ratings-india
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) are launching a study into the risk of disinformation on digital news platforms in India, creating an index that is intended to serve donors and brands with a neutral assessment of news sites that they can utilise to defund disinformation.</b>
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The harms of disinformation are proliferating around the globe—threatening our elections, our health, and our shared sense of facts.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The infodemic laid bare by COVID-19 conspiracy theories clearly shows that disinformation costs peoples’ lives. Websites masquerading as news outlets are driving and profiting financially from the situation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The goal of the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) is to cut off the revenue streams that incentivise and sustain the spread of disinformation. Using both artificial and human intelligence, the GDI has created an assessment framework to rate the disinformation risk of news domains.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The GDI risk rating provides advertisers, ad tech companies and platforms with greater information about a range of disinformation flags related to a site’s <strong>content</strong> (i.e. reliability of content), <strong>operations</strong> (i.e. operational and editorial integrity) and <strong>context</strong> (i.e. perceptions of brand trust). The findings in this report are based on the human review of these three pillars: <strong>Content, Operations</strong>, and <strong>Context</strong>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A site’s disinformation risk level is based on that site’s aggregated score across all of the reviewed pillars and indicators. A site’s overall score ranges from zero (maximum risk level) to 100 (minimum risk level). Each indicator that is included in the framework is scored from zero to 100. The output of the index is therefore the site’s overall disinformation risk level, rather than the truthfulness or journalistic quality of the site.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Key Findings</h2>
<p>In reviewing the media landscape for India, the assessment found that:</p>
<p><strong><em>Nearly a third of the sites in our sample had a high risk of disinforming their online users.</em></strong></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Eighteen sites were found to have a high disinformation risk rating. This group includes sites that are published in all the three languages in our scope: English, Hindi and Bengali.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Around half of the websites in our sample had a ‘medium’ risk rating. No site performed exceptionally on all fronts, resulting in no sites having a minimum risk rating. On the other hand, no site performed so poorly as to earn a maximum risk rating.</li></ul>
<p><strong><em>Only a limited number of Indian sites present low levels of disinformation risks.</em></strong></p>
<ul>
<li>No website was rated as having a ‘minimum’ disinformation risk.</li>
<li>Eight sites were rated with a ‘low’ level of disinformation risk. Seven out of these websites served content primarily in English, one in Hindi.</li></ul>
<p><strong><em>The media sites assessed in India tend to perform very poorly on publishing transparent operational checks and balances.</em></strong></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Over one-third of the sites in our sample published little information about their ownership structure, and also failed to be transparent about their revenue sources.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Only ten of the sites in our sample publish any information about their policies on how they correct errors in their reporting.</li></ul>
<p><strong><em>Association with traditional media did not play a significant factor in determining risk of disinformation.</em></strong></p>
<ul>
<li>On average, websites associated with TV or print did not perform any differently when compared to websites that solely serve digital content.</li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The findings show that on the whole, Indian websites can substantially increase their trustworthiness by taking measures to address these shortfalls in their operational checks and balances. For example, they could increase transparency on the structure of their businesses and have clear policies on how they address errors in their reporting. Both of these measures are in line with universal standards of good journalistic practices, as agreed by the Journalism Trust Initiative.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;">Click to download the <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/media-market-risk-ratings.pdf" class="internal-link">full report here</a>. To read the report in Hindi, <a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/resources/media-bazaar-jokhim-rating.pdf">click here</a>. The authors extend their thanks to Anna Liz Thomas, Sanah Javed, Sagnik Chatterjee, and Raghav Ahooja for their assistance.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/gdi-and-cis-torsha-sarkar-pranav-m-bidare-and-gurshabad-grover-july-12-2021-media-market-risk-ratings-india'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/gdi-and-cis-torsha-sarkar-pranav-m-bidare-and-gurshabad-grover-july-12-2021-media-market-risk-ratings-india</a>
</p>
No publisherTorsha Sarkar, Pranav M Bidare, and Gurshabad GroverDigital NewsDigital AccessInternet GovernanceDigital IndiaHomepage2022-01-25T13:29:06ZBlog EntryComments on the Report of the Committee on Digital Payments (December 2016)
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comments-on-the-report-of-the-committee-on-digital-payments-dec-2016
<b>The Committee on Digital Payments constituted by the Ministry of Finance and chaired by Ratan P. Watal, Principal Advisor, NITI Aayog, submitted its report on the "Medium Term Recommendations to Strengthen Digital Payments Ecosystem" on December 09, 2016. The report was made public on December 27, and comments were sought from the general public. Here are the comments submitted by the Centre for Internet and Society.</b>
<p> </p>
<h3><strong>1. Preliminary</strong></h3>
<p><strong>1.1.</strong> This submission presents comments by the Centre for Internet and Society (“CIS”) <strong>[1]</strong> in response to the report of the Committee on Digital Payments, chaired by Mr. Ratan P. Watal, Principal Advisor, NITI Aayog, and constituted by the Ministry of Finance, Government of India (“the report”) <strong>[2]</strong>.</p>
<h3><strong>2. The Centre for Internet and Society</strong></h3>
<p><strong>2.1.</strong> The Centre for Internet and Society, CIS, is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, and open access), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security.</p>
<p><strong>2.2.</strong> CIS is not an expert organisation in the domain of banking in general and payments in particular. Our expertise is in matters of internet and communication governance, data privacy and security, and technology regulation. We deeply appreciate and are most inspired by the Ministry of Finance’s decision to invite entities from both the sectors of finance and information technology. This submission is consistent with CIS’ commitment to safeguarding general public interest, and the interests and rights of various stakeholders involved, especially the citizens and the users. CIS is thankful to the Ministry of Finance for this opportunity to provide a general response on the report.</p>
<h3><strong>3. Comments</strong></h3>
<p><strong>3.1.</strong> CIS observes that the decision by the Government of India to withdraw the legal tender character of the old high denomination banknotes (that is, Rs. 500 Rs. 1,000 notes), declared on November 08, 2016 <strong>[3]</strong>, have generated <strong>unprecedented data about the user base and transaction patterns of digital payments systems in India, when pushed to its extreme use due to the circumstances</strong>. The majority of this data is available with the National Payments Corporation of India and the Reserve Bank of India. CIS requests the authorities concerned to consider <strong>opening up this data for analysis and discussion by public at large and experts in particular, before any specific policy and regulatory decisions are taken</strong> towards advancing digital payments proliferation in India. This is a crucial opportunity for the Ministry of Finance to embrace (open) data-driven regulation and policy-making.</p>
<p><strong>3.2.</strong> While the report makes a reference to the European General Data Protection Directive, it does not make a reference to any substantive provisions in the Directive which may be relevant to digital payments. Aside from the recommendation that privacy protections around the purpose limitation principle be relaxed to ensure that payment service providers be allowed to process data to improve fraud monitoring and anti-money laundering services, the report is silent on significant privacy and data protection concerns posed by digital payments services. <strong>CIS strongly warns that the existing data protection and security regulations under Information Technology (Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information), Rules are woefully inadequate in their scope and application to effectively deal with potential privacy concerns posed by digital payments applications and services.</strong> Some key privacy issues that must be addressed either under a comprehensive data protection legislation or a sector specific financial regulation are listed below. The process of obtaining consent must be specific, informed and unambiguous and through a clear affirmative action by the data subject based upon a genuine choice provided along with an option to opt out at any stage. The data subjects should have clear and easily enforceable right to access and correct their data. Further, data subjects should have the right to restrict the usage of their data in circumstances such as inaccuracy of data, unlawful purpose and data no longer required in order to fulfill the original purpose.</p>
<p><strong>3.3.</strong> The initial recommendation of the report is to “[m]ake regulation of payments independent from the function of central banking” (page 22). This involves a fundamental transformation of the payment and settlement system in India and its regulation. <strong>We submit that a decision regarding transformation of such scale and implications is taken after a more comprehensive policy discussion, especially involving a wider range of stakeholders</strong>. The report itself notes that “[d]igital payments also have the potential of becoming a gateway to other financial services such as credit facilities for small businesses and low-income households” (page 32). Thus, a clear functional, and hence regulatory, separation between the (digital) payments industry and the lending/borrowing industry may be either effective or desirable. Global experience tells us that digital transactions data, along with other alternative data, are fast becoming the basis of provision of financial and other services, by both banking and non-banking (payments) companies. We appeal to the Ministry of Finance to adopt a comprehensive and concerted approach to regulating, enabling competition, and upholding consumers’ rights in the banking sector at large.</p>
<p><strong>3.4.</strong> The report recognises “banking as an activity is separate from payments, which is more of a technology business” (page 154). Contemporary banking and payment businesses are both are primarily technology businesses where information technology particularly is deployed intimately to extract, process, and drive asset management decisions using financial transaction data. Further, with payment businesses (such as, pre-paid instruments) offering return on deposited money via other means (such as, cashbacks), and potentially competing and/or collaborating with established banks to use financial transaction data to drive lending decisions, including but not limited to micro-loans, it appears unproductive to create a separation between banking as an activity and payments as an activity merely in terms of the respective technology intensity of these sectors. <strong>CIS firmly recommends that regulation of these financial services and activities be undertaken in a technology-agnostic manner, and similar regulatory regimes be deployed on those entities offering similar services irrespective of their technology intensity or choice</strong>.</p>
<p><strong>3.5.</strong> The report highlights two major shortcomings of the current regulatory regime for payments. Firstly “the law does not impose any obligation on the regulator to promote competition and innovation in the payments market” (page 153). It appears to us that the regulator’s role should not be to promote market expansion and innovation but to ensure and oversee competition. <strong>We believe that the current regulator should focus on regulating the existing market, and the work of the expansion of the digital payments market in particular and the digital financial services market in general be carried out by another government agency, as it creates conflict of interest for the regulator otherwise.</strong> Secondly, the report mentions that Payment and Settlement Systems Act does not “focus the regulatory attention on the need for consumer protection in digital payments” and then it notes that a “provision was inserted to protect funds collected from customers” in 2015 (page 153). <strong>This indicates that the regulator already has the responsibility to ensure consumer protection in digital payments. The purview and modalities of how this function of course needs discussion and changes with the growth in digital payments</strong>.</p>
<p><strong>3.6.</strong> The report identifies the high cost of cash as a key reason for the government’s policy push towards digital payments. Further, it mentions that a “sample survey conducted in 2014 across urban and rural neighbourhoods in Delhi and Meerut, shows that despite being keenly aware of the costs associated with transacting in cash, most consumers see three main benefits of cash, viz. freedom of negotiations, faster settlements, and ensuring exact payments” (page 30). It further notes that “[d]igital payments have significant dependencies upon power and telecommunications infrastructure. Therefore, the roll out of robust and user friendly digital payments solutions to unelectrified areas/areas without telecommunications network coverage, remains a challenge.” <strong>CIS much appreciates the discussion of the barriers to universal adoption and rollout of digital payments in the report, and appeals to the Ministry of Finance to undertake a more comprehensive study of the key investments required by the Government of India to ensure that digital payments become ubiquitously viable as well as satisfy the demands of a vast range of consumers that India has</strong>. The estimates about investment required to create a robust digital payment infrastructure, cited in the report, provide a great basis for undertaking studies such as these.</p>
<p><strong>3.7.</strong> CIS is very encouraged to see the report highlighting that “[w]ith the rising number of users of digital payment services, it is absolutely necessary to develop consumer confidence on digital payments. Therefore, it is essential to have legislative safeguards to protect such consumers in-built into the primary law.” <strong>We second this recommendation and would like to add further that financial transaction data is governed under a common data protection and privacy regime, without making any differences between data collected by banking and non-banking entities</strong>.</p>
<p><strong>3.8.</strong> We are, however, very discouraged to see the overtly incorrect use of the word “Open Access” in this report in the context of a payment system disallowing service when the client wants to transact money with a specific entity <strong>[4]</strong>. This is not an uncommon anti-competitive measure adopted by various platform players and services providers so as to disallow users from using competing products (such as, not allowing competing apps in the app store controlled by one software company). <strong>The term “Open Access” is not only the appropriate word to describe the negation of such anti-competitive behaviour, its usage in this context undermines its accepted meaning and creates confusion regarding the recommendation being proposed by the report.</strong> The closest analogy to the recommendation of the report would perhaps be with the principle of “network neutrality” that stands for the network provider not discriminating between data packets being processed by them, either in terms of price or speed.</p>
<p><strong>3.9.</strong> A major recommendation by the report involves creation of “a fund from savings generated from cash-less transactions … by the Central Government,” which will use “the trinity of JAM (Jan Dhan, Adhaar, Mobile) [to] link financial inclusion with social protection, contributing to improved Social and Financial Security and Inclusion of vulnerable groups/ communities” (page 160-161). <strong>This amounts to making Aadhaar a mandatory ID for financial inclusion of citizens, especially the marginal and vulnerable ones, and is in direct contradiction to the government’s statements regarding the optional nature of the Aadhaar ID, as well as the orders by the Supreme Court on this topic</strong>.</p>
<p><strong>3.10.</strong> The report recommends that “Aadhaar should be made the primary identification for KYC with the option of using other IDs for people who have not yet obtained Aadhaar” (page 163) and further that “Aadhaar eKYC and eSign should be a replacement for paper based, costly, and shared central KYC registries” (page 162). <strong>Not only these measures would imply making Aadhaar a mandatory ID for undertaking any legal activity in the country, they assume that the UIDAI has verified and audited the personal documents submitted by Aadhaar number holders during enrollment.</strong> A mandate for <em>replacement</em> of the paper-based central KYC agencies will only remove a much needed redundancy in the the identity verification infrastructure of the government.</p>
<p><strong>3.11.</strong> The report suggests that “[t]ransactions which are permitted in cash without KYC should also be permitted on prepaid wallets without KYC” (page 164-165). This seems to negate the reality that physical verification of a person remains one of the most authoritative identity verification process for a natural person, apart from DNA testing perhaps. <strong>Thus, establishing full equivalency of procedure between a presence-less transaction and one involving a physically present person making the payment will only amount to removal of relatively greater security precautions for the former, and will lead to possibilities of fraud</strong>.</p>
<p><strong>3.12.</strong> In continuation with the previous point, the report recommends promotion of “Aadhaar based KYC where PAN has not been obtained” and making of “quoting Aadhaar compulsory in income tax return for natural persons” (page 163). Both these measures imply a replacement of the PAN by Aadhaar in the long term, and a sharp reduction in growth of new PAN holders in the short term. <strong>We appeal for this recommendation to be reconsidered as integration of all functionally separate national critical information infrastructures (such as PAN and Aadhaar) into a single unified and centralised system (such as Aadhaar) engenders massive national and personal security threats</strong>.</p>
<p><strong>3.13.</strong> The report suggest the establishment of “a ranking and reward framework” to recognise and encourage for the best performing state/district/agency in the proliferation of digital payments. <strong>It appears to us that creation of such a framework will only lead to making of an environment of competition among these entities concerned, which apart from its benefits may also have its costs. For example, the incentivisation of quick rollout of digital payment avenues by state government and various government agencies may lead to implementation without sufficient planning, coordination with stakeholders, and precautions regarding data security and privacy</strong>. The provision of central support for digital payments should be carried out in an environment of cooperation and not competition.</p>
<p><strong>3.14.</strong> CIS welcomes the recommendation by the report to generate greater awareness about cost of cash, including by ensuring that “large merchants including government agencies should account and disclose the cost of cash collection and cash payments incurred by them periodically” (page 164). It, however, is not clear to whom such periodic disclosures should be made. <strong>We would like to add here that the awareness building must simultaneously focus on making public how different entities shoulder these costs. Further, for reasons of comparison and evidence-driven policy making, it is necessary that data for equivalent variables are also made open for digital payments - the total and disaggregate cost, and what proportion of these costs are shouldered by which entities</strong>.</p>
<p><strong>3.15.</strong> The report acknowledges that “[t]oday, most merchants do not accept digital payments” and it goes on to recommend “that the Government should seize the initiative and require all government agencies and merchants where contracts are awarded by the government to provide at-least one suitable digital payment option to its consumers and vendors” (page 165). This requirement for offering digital payment option will only introduce an additional economic barrier for merchants bidding for government contracts. <strong>We appeal to the Ministry of Finance to reconsider this approach of raising the costs of non-digital payments to incentivise proliferation of digital payments, and instead lower the existing economic and other barriers to digital payments that keep the merchants away</strong>. The adoption of digital payments must not lead to increasing costs for merchants and end-users, but must decrease the same instead.</p>
<p><strong>3.16.</strong> As the report was submitted on December 09, 2016, and was made public only on December 27, 2016, <strong>it would have been much appreciated if at least a month-long window was provided to study and comment on the report, instead of fifteen days</strong>. This is especially crucial as the recently implemented demonetisation and the subsequent banking and fiscal policy decisions taken by the government have rapidly transformed the state and dynamics of the payments system landscape in India in general, and digital payments in particular.</p>
<h3><strong>Endnotes</strong></h3>
<p><strong>[1]</strong> See: <a href="http://cis-india.org/">http://cis-india.org/</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[2]</strong> See: <a href="http://finmin.nic.in/reports/Note-watal-report.pdf">http://finmin.nic.in/reports/Note-watal-report.pdf</a> and <a href="http://finmin.nic.in/reports/watal_report271216.pdf">http://finmin.nic.in/reports/watal_report271216.pdf</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[3]</strong> See: <a href="http://finmin.nic.in/cancellation_high_denomination_notes.pdf">http://finmin.nic.in/cancellation_high_denomination_notes.pdf</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[4]</strong> Open Access refers to “free and unrestricted online availability” of scientific and non-scientific literature. See: <a href="http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read">http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read</a>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comments-on-the-report-of-the-committee-on-digital-payments-dec-2016'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comments-on-the-report-of-the-committee-on-digital-payments-dec-2016</a>
</p>
No publisherSumandro Chattapadhyay and Amber SinhaUIDDigital IDBig DataDigital EconomyDigital AccessPrivacyDigital SecurityData RevolutionDigital PaymentInternet GovernanceDigital IndiaData ProtectionDemonetisationHomepageFeaturedAadhaar2017-01-12T12:32:22ZBlog Entry Use of mobile phones by vulnerable communities: A survey of sex workers and gay men in Karnataka
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/use-of-mobile-phones-by-vulnerable-communities-a-survey-of-sex-workers-and-gay-men-in-karnataka
<b>This report has been authored by Megha Malnad, Parimala, Nagina, and Tasneem Mewa, and edited by Ambika Tandon, Gurshabad Grover and Rajesh Srinivas. </b>
<p> </p>
<p>This report is part two of a two-part series studying the impact of data
systems and digital technology on the lives of sexual minorities and
sex workers. This project has been jointly conducted by CIS and <a class="external-link" href="http://sangama.org/">Sangama</a>.</p>
<p><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p><strong>Abstract</strong><br /><span id="docs-internal-guid-a708e31b-7fff-34b4-1cc7-e2b2c7af9eef"> </span></p>
<p><span id="docs-internal-guid-a708e31b-7fff-34b4-1cc7-e2b2c7af9eef">This
report discusses social media and mobile phone usage by gay men, and
women sex workers in Karnataka. Using primary data collected in 2018, we
conclude that phones and social media can be used as a tool to protect
oneself from certain kinds of violence, but also enables the
perpetuation of other forms of violence. On one hand, mobile phones and
social media provide new spaces and avenues to connect with personal and
professional contacts; and can afford greater anonymity to vulnerable
communities facing stigmatisation. On the other hand, phones and social
media apps are another mechanism through which sex workers and gay men
face violence and abuse. <br /></span></p>
<p><span id="docs-internal-guid-a708e31b-7fff-34b4-1cc7-e2b2c7af9eef"></span><br /><span id="docs-internal-guid-a708e31b-7fff-34b4-1cc7-e2b2c7af9eef"><strong>The full report can be accessed <a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/MobilePhones_GayMen_SexWorkers_Karnataka">here</a>.</strong></span></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/use-of-mobile-phones-by-vulnerable-communities-a-survey-of-sex-workers-and-gay-men-in-karnataka'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/use-of-mobile-phones-by-vulnerable-communities-a-survey-of-sex-workers-and-gay-men-in-karnataka</a>
</p>
No publisherMegha Malnad, Parimala, Nagina, and Tasneem MewaDigital AccessGenderOnline Harassment2020-07-14T06:32:18ZBlog EntryOpenness, Videos, Impressions
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/OVSreport
<b>The one day Open Video Summit organised by the Centre for Internet & Society, iCommons, Open Video Alliance, and Magic Lantern, to bring together a range of stakeholders to discuss the possibilities, potentials, mechanics and politics of Open Video. Nishant Shah, who participated in the conversations, was invited to summarise the impressions and ideas that ensued in the day.</b>
<p></p>
<p>The notion of free and open is under great debate even under
that, and I think even when you side with a camp, there are going to be further
splinters. There are many ways of defining the free and open, and I think that the
tension, rather than being resolved, needs to be sustained and creatively
perpetrated to keep an internal checks and balances on not getting carried away
with it. All the groups did indeed circle around this in different,
often tangential ways – that there is need to define, variously and almost
endlessly, in defining the context of the free that we are dealing with.</p>
<p>Open video, in that matter, has gone through different
iterations, and I think it is nice that different stakeholders have defined it
variously, and also looked at the problems that it might lead to. However, for
the sake of synthesis, I am going to let you have your own idea of free and
open but instead look at five key words which have emerged, in my selective
hearing, through the day: <strong>Access, Archive,
Share, Remix, Repurpose</strong>. And it is these five that we need to now
imbricate these concepts across different thematic that emerged in the groups
today.</p>
<p><strong>Access</strong> has been one primary question that almost everybody
dealt with; Access has its legacies in the Open and Free culture movements,
where technological access, dealing with questions of open standards and
content, of bandwidth and infrastructure. More interestingly, in an emerging
information society like India, there are other concerns of language, access,
privilege, bandwidth, education etc. To
contextualise access and to put it into different perspectives is something
that different participants have voiced the need for.</p>
<p><strong>Archive</strong> is a preoccupation with most people because
archiving has close relationships with knowledge and subsequently retrieval and
usage. If knowledge is being digitised so that it is made accessible to
different people, there are older questions of representation, voice,
empowerment, participation, ethics, privacy, ownership etc. Crop up. In
education archiving has to do with the curricula building and knowledge
production. In networking, collaboration and film making, it is the kind of
issues that pad.ma is trying to tackle with. It also leads to notions of
access, distribution etc.</p>
<p><strong>Sharing </strong>is what is almost defining the spirit of the Open
and Free culture movements. There is a need to understand and explore what
sharing means. When does it infringe laws and what kind of regulation needs to
be advocated so that sharing becomes possible. How does one overcome questions
of piracy, stealing, IPR etc? More interestingly, what do we share and who do
we share it with? Tools by which sharing
leads to innovation? How does it lead to new participation and learning
practices and pedagogies? What kind of open distribution models and networks
can be built up?</p>
<p><strong>Remix</strong> has been of great value because it means that you are
being converted into some sort of a stakeholder or a contributor to the
process. Networking and nodes, network-actor, collaborator , peer 2 peer – the
possibility of looking at questions of internet and digital traces is
interesting. Or imagine that the act of sharing is also a remix. Sometimes just
putting it into new contexts, making it available to newer constituencies, etc.
can also be looked upon as remixing. Remix as a knowledge production aesthetic
and mechanics seems to have emerged.</p>
<p><strong>Repurpose </strong>is my additional reading of something that perhaps
needs no mention to this group, but nonetheless needs flagging. The fact
remains, that the technology is not a solution in itself. It is a tool that
enables the solutions which one is seeking for. The processes, paradigms,
protocols and practices are indeed shaped and mediated by technologies and
there are new solution possibilities which are produced. However, there still
seem to be anxieties, concerns, questions and problems which are cropping up
and need to be addressed outside of technology but within technology ecologies.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/OVSreport'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/OVSreport</a>
</p>
No publishernishantConferenceOpen StandardsArtWorkshopDigital AccessFLOSSOpen ContentArchivesOpennessOpen InnovationMeetingOpen Access2011-09-22T12:23:13ZBlog EntryEngaging on the Digital Commons
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/digital-commons
<b>We at the Centre for Internet and Society are very glad to be able to participate in the 13th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC). Our interest in the conference arises mainly from our work in the areas of intellectual property rights reform and promotion of different forms of ‘opennesses’ that have cropped up as a response to perceived problems with our present-day regime of intellectual property rights, including open content, open standards, free and open source software, open government data, open access to scholarly research and data, open access to law, etc., our emerging work on telecom policy with respect to open/shared spectrum, and the very important questions around Internet governance. The article by Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash was published in the journal Common Voices, Issue 4.</b>
<p>Our work on intellectual property reform are proactive measures at effecting policy change that go towards protecting and preserving an intellectual, intangible commons. We have opposed the Protection and Utilization of the Public-funded Intellectual Property Bill (an Indian version of the American Bayh-Dole Act) which sought to privatise the fruits of publicfunded research by mandating patents on them. We are working towards reform of copyright law which we believe is lopsided in its lack of concern for consumers and that its current march towards greater enclosure of the public domain is unsustainable. Believing that not all areas of industry and technology are equal, and that patent protection is ill-suited for the software industry, we have worked to ensure that the current prohibitions against patenting of software are effectively followed.</p>
<p>Defensively—that is working within the existing framework of intellectual property law—we seek to promote the various forms of copyright and patent licensing that have arisen as reactions to restrictive IP laws. Free/open source software and open content have arisen as a reaction to the restrictive nature of copyright law, such as the presumption under copyright law that a work is copyrighted by the mere fact of it coming into existence. (for instance, this was not so in the United States until 1989, till when a copyright notice was required to assert copyright). While earlier the presumption was that a work was to belong to the public domain, after the Berne Convention, that presumption was reversed. This led to the creation of the idea of special licences, by using which one could allow all others to share his/her work and reuse it. This innovation in using the law to promote, rather than restrict, what others could do with one’s works has enabled the creation and sharing of everything from Wikipedia, to Linux (which powers more than 85 percent of the world’s top 500 supercomputers) and Apache HTTP server (more than 60 percent of all websites). The advent of the Internet has allowed the creation of intangible digital commons.</p>
<p>We are also starting to engage with the question of telecom policy around spectrum allocation, and believe that promotion of a shared spectrum would help make telecom services, including broadband Internet, available to people at reasonable prices. We also believe that Internet governance should not be the prerogative of governments, and should not happen in a top-down fashion.</p>
<p>Comparisons between tangible commons and intangible commons have been made by people like Elinor and Vincent Ostrom, who in 1977 contributed to our understanding of subtractability and public goods. James Boyle has written about the expansion of copyright law as “the second enclosure movement”, following in the footsteps of the first enclosure movement against the take-over of common land which stretched from the fifteenth century till the nineteenth. Yochai Benkler, has written extensively on commons in information and communication systems as well as on spectrum commons. Just as Elinor Ostrom’s work shows how Garrett Hardin’s evocative ‘tragedy of the commons’ and the problems of free-riding are very often avoided in practice, Michael Heller’s equally evocative phrase ‘gridlock economy’ shows that ‘over-propertisation’ of knowledge can lead to a ‘tragedy of the anti-commons’.</p>
<p>Through this conference we wish to learn of the lessons that academic writings on tangible commons have to impart to intangible commons which are configured very differently (in terms of subtractability, for instance). Ostrom’s work shows how individuals can, in a variety of settings, work to find institutional solutions that promote social cooperation and human betterment. As part of her nine design principles of stable local common pool resource management, she lists clearly defined boundaries for effective exclusion of external unentitled parties. How does that work, when even the existing mechanisms of boundary-definition in intellectual property, such as patent claims, are often decried as being ambiguous thanks to the legalese they are written in? What of traditional knowledge for which defining the community holding ownership rights becomes very difficult? As Ostrom and Hess note, “the rules and flow patterns are different with digital information”, but how do these differences affect the lessons learned from CPR studies? How do Ostrom’s pronouncements against uniform top-down approaches to resource management affect the way that copyright and patents seek to establish a uniform system across multiple areas of art, science and industry (musical recordings and paintings, pharmaceuticals and software)? And how can Ostrom’s work on management of natural resources inform us about the management of resources such as spectrum or the Internet itself? These are all very interesting and important questions that need to be explored, and we are glad that this conference will help us understand these issues better.</p>
<p>Please read the article in Common Voices Issue 4 <a class="external-link" href="http://iasc2011.fes.org.in/common-voices-4.pdf">here</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/digital-commons'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/digital-commons</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshDigital AccessOpennessCommonsDigital Governance2011-08-20T12:56:26ZBlog EntryCelebrating the success of Wikipedia in Wikipedia Summit Pune 2013
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/celebrating-the-success-of-wikipedia-in-wikipedia-summit-pune-2013
<b>Wikipedia Club Pune, a local community based outreach user group in Pune has recently organized Wikipedia Summit Pune 2013 to spread words about “Spoken Wikipedia”, a project to add recorded audio for Indic language Wikipedia articles which will help the disabled to access Wikipedia and “Bridging Editor Gender Gap.”</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On January 12 and 13, 2013, I was in Pune to participate in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Summit_Pune">Wikipedia Summit Pune 2013</a>, a two day event organized by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Pune">Wikipedia Club Pune</a> to promote Wikipedia as an effective means of education, to empower and reach out to India, to bring the country under a spotlight through <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spoken_Wikipedia/Indic_Languages">Spoken Wikipedia</a>, and to bridge the <a href="http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/04/27/nine-out-of-ten-wikipedians-continue-to-be-men/">gender gap</a> of Wikipedia editors. Here is a summary of the activities.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Day 1</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On the first day, January 12, more than 100 people including students from almost 10 different schools, housewives, working professionals and free and open source activists participated. The opening ceremony began with talks from Abhishek Suryawanshi, founder member of Wikipedia Club Pune, Sudhanwa Jogelkar, President of Wikimedia India Chapter, Rishi Aacharya, Principal, PAI International Learning Solutions, and social activist Ms. Vibha.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Before the formal opening Abhishek spoke for a while about the Spoken Wikipedia project which is one main agenda of the two days event. He explained about the need of spoken wikipedia, especially for people with disabilities and how effective it would be when it spreads in 20 Indic languages. In the past wikipedians in Pune gathered and recorded articles in various Indian and international languages.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Sudhanwa Jogelkar, President, Wikimedia India Chapter introduced the chapter's role for Wikimedia movement to the audience. He spoke about the chapters' in few of the national events/projects like Wiki Loves Monument, GLAM project in Crafts Museum, Delhi and many other outreach events. There were few announcements about the chapter on the MoU to be signed from the chapter with district collector of Kanyakumari, the India Chapter being partner to Springfest, IIT, Kharagpur, Commons day celebration in February and GNUnify 2013, Pune.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Vibha, a social activist based in Delhi spoke about gender discrimination in many aspects of our social and professional life. Access to knowledge for free could bridge this and Wikipedia, being so known universally and accessed by millions of people every day could be the best platform for this.' says Vibha.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Rishi Aacharya, Principal of PAI International brought the vedic saying "Ya vidya sa vimuktaye" to explain the real meaning of knowledge which is free of its existence in an Indian context. He spoke about open source movement and Wikipedia's part in it.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">After the formal opening there was a Q&A session for the participants to clarify various questions they had about Wikipedia. Then they were explained about the three parallel sessions: An Open Discussion about Gender Gap, Workshop for Indic Languages, and Spoken Wikipedia. The session on gender gap was attended by many school students. Vibha and some activists coordinated this event. In the Workshop for Indic languages and Spoken Wikipedia, wikipedians helped participants for the workshop with basic editing and the participants edited Marathi and Hindi Wikipedia. Articles from various medical subjects of common interest were chosen. There were three medical professionals to support with the medical terminologies for editors contributing to Marathi and Hindi Wikipedia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">At the end of the day there were separate wrap up tracks to summarize the learning of whole session. All of the participants gathered together to educate each other about the work they have done. Many of the participants spoke about their experience and learnings. Plans for the next day was announced. Wikipedians gathered for a group photo and socialized after the closing talks.</p>
<h3>Day 2</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The second day, January 13, of the Wikipedia Summit in Pune was a sequel of the activities which happened on the first day. More than 40 students took part in this session. Vibha, Srishti and team were coordinating the gender gap track. Many topics related to Gender Gap, gender based discrimination, Role of gender gap in occupation, Gender gap in Wikipedia, Participation of Woman editors on Wikipedia were discussed.</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>
<p><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/IMG_4124.jpg/@@images/31ee6a90-3009-45fa-8166-6a30bbf5d590.jpeg" style="float: left; " title="A participant records his voice for an article on Marathi Wikipedia" class="image-inline" alt="A participant records his voice for an article on Marathi Wikipedia" /></p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>One of the participating Wikipedians recording his voice for a Marathi article</p>
</th>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">
<p style="text-align: justify; "> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Spoken Wikipedia is a project to bring out editors who are willing to contribute to Wikipedia by reading the Wikipedia articles, recording them and the uploading them to <a class="external-link" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org">WikiCommons</a>. These recorded audio could be used for articles on various Indic Wikipedias and would be really useful for users with disabilities. The first workshop was aimed for contribution for articles related to common diseases.</p>
<br />"Those who are blind and unable to read can listen to the articles and get information. This will be beneficial to a lot of people", says Atharva, a school student who has contributed to an article about Rabies on <a class="external-link" href="http://mr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%AC%E0%A5%80%E0%A4%9C">Marathi Wikipedia.</a>
<p> </p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Participants of the Spoken Wikipedia session worked on the articles on Hindi and Marathi Wikipedia and moved them from sandboxes to article namespaces. After all of the articles were created they recorded them. They formed groups of 3-4 members and worked together. One of them would search information mainly from the English Wikipedia articles and some of the available Marathi (or Hindi), some others would translate and the other member would record it using a mobile phone. That was a great team effort.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Over 25 voluntary organizers joined hands for making this a success. There were about 120 participants. At the end of the day participants from both the sessions gathered. Many of the participants and organizers shared their experiences and learnings. The program was concluded with socializing, taking group pictures, promises to stay in touch and taking active part in more Wikipedia activities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This event was co-hosted by Centre for Internet and Society with a financial support of ₹ 21,600 granted by Kusuma Foundation.</p>
<h3>Also see:</h3>
<ul>
<li>Wikipedia Summit Pune: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Summit_Pune">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Summit_Pune</a></li>
<li>Wikipedia Club Pune: <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Pune">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Pune</a></li>
<li>Pictures: <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_Summit_Pune">http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_Summit_Pune</a></li>
<li>Spoken Wikipedia Project: <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Spoken_Wikipedia_-_India">http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Spoken_Wikipedia_-_India</a></li>
<li>Pune Club facebook page: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/WikipediaClubPune">https://www.facebook.com/groups/WikipediaClubPune</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Video</h3>
<ul>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: center; ">
<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" height="371" width="450">
<param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/uGlU94o-388&feature"><embed height="371" width="450" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/uGlU94o-388&feature" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"> </embed>
</object>
</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/celebrating-the-success-of-wikipedia-in-wikipedia-summit-pune-2013'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/celebrating-the-success-of-wikipedia-in-wikipedia-summit-pune-2013</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaDigital ActivismAccess to KnowledgeDigital AccessWikimediaWikipediaYouthVideoOpen AccessOpennessEvent2013-04-16T12:48:40ZBlog EntryWikipedia Introductory Session organized for Data and India portal consultants
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-introductory-session
<b>On May 13, 2013, the Access to Knowledge team led by Subhashish Panigrahi conducted a Wikipedia Introductory Session at the National Informatics Centre in New Delhi for the consultants working for Data and India portal. This session was aimed to emphasize how these portals and their useful data could be used on Wikipedia to create good quality articles.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Recently <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/" class="external-link">Centre for Internet and Society</a>'s <a class="external-link" href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge">Access To Knowledge</a> team was invited to demonstrate the usefulness of Wikipedia for the consultants of <a class="external-link" href="http://www.nic.in/">National Informatics Centre</a> (NIC) working for the <a class="external-link" href="http://data.gov.in/">Data.gov.in</a> and the <a class="external-link" href="http://india.gov.in/">National Portal of India</a> at NIC's New Delhi office. Data portal being one of the very important open data portal of the Government of India has worked immensely to populate over 2400 datasets from 32 departments participating in it.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="#sdfootnote1sym" name="sdfootnote1anc"><sup>1</sup></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Many of the data need to be transcribed in popular medias especially on web. Wikipedia being world's largest online encyclopedia could be one such primary platform to use these useful data. <a class="external-link" href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Psubhashish">Subhashish</a> from A2K team explained the usefulness of Wikipedia for the people associated with this project. The session went with discussing about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_policies">policies</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style">Manual of style</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars">Five pillars of Wikipedia</a> followed by a demonstration of editing articles on English Wikipedia. Post editing session there was a discussion session about the notability and how to check accuracy of articles by using valid references.</p>
<hr />
<div id="sdfootnote1">
<p class="sdfootnote"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="#sdfootnote1anc" name="sdfootnote1sym">1</a> <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/11DMH5w">http://bit.ly/11DMH5w</a></p>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-introductory-session'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-introductory-session</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaOpen StandardsDigital GovernanceDigital AccessOpen DataOpen ContentOpen AccessOpennessOpen Innovation2013-07-17T06:33:20ZBlog EntryMy First Wikipedia Training Workshop – Theatre Outreach Unit, University of Hyderabad
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/my-first-wikipedia-training-workshop
<b>On March 8, 2013, a day-long Telugu Wikipedia training workshop was organized by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team at the Golden Threshold, Nampally, Hyderabad in collaboration with Theatre Outreach Unit, University of Hyderabad. This blog post gives a concise account of the event.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b><a class="external-link" href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge">CIS-A2K</a></b> had planned a day long <a class="external-link" href="http://te.wikipedia.org">Telugu Wikipedia</a> training workshop in collaboration with Telugu Wikipedians at the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.efluniversity.ac.in/">English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU)</a>, Hyderabad on March 8, 2013. The intention was to target research students at EFLU who are using Telugu material or working on topics related to Telugu and Andhra Pradesh. This event was also to be part of the Wiki Women’s month events across India. However, this event had to be cancelled in the last minute as a Research Student of EFLU committed suicide on the campus and there was major unrest. The faculty from EFLU though had informed of the possible cancellation of the event earlier, had only confirmed it on March 7, 2013. <b><a class="external-link" href="http://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B0%B5%E0%B0%BE%E0%B0%A1%E0%B1%81%E0%B0%95%E0%B0%B0%E0%B0%BF:%E0%B0%B0%E0%B0%B9%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%AE%E0%B0%BE%E0%B0%A8%E0%B1%81%E0%B0%A6%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%A6%E0%B1%80%E0%B0%A8%E0%B1%8D">Rahmanuddin Shaik</a></b> (Telugu SIG, <a class="external-link" href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India_chapter">Wikimedia India Chapter</a>) and <a class="external-link" href="http://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B0%B5%E0%B0%BE%E0%B0%A1%E0%B1%81%E0%B0%95%E0%B0%B0%E0%B0%BF:Rajasekhar1961"><b>Dr. Rajasekhar</b> </a>(Telugu Wikipedia Administrator) had already blocked an entire day for this training workshop. In fact a lot of background work was already done for the EFLU event.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">When I got the news of cancellation of the workshop, initially I was very dejected at the thought of informing the two active Telugu Wikipedians about it, which I had to do. As my tickets were anyhow booked to Hyderabad and there was no point cancelling them, as I was already on my way to catch the flight, I decided to go ahead with my journey. I made some couple of quick calls and with some effort managed to organize a Wikipedia Training Workshop in collaboration with the <a class="external-link" href="http://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B0%A5%E0%B0%BF%E0%B0%AF%E0%B1%87%E0%B0%9F%E0%B0%B0%E0%B1%8D_%E0%B0%94%E0%B0%9F%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%B0%E0%B1%80%E0%B0%9A%E0%B1%8D_%E0%B0%AF%E0%B1%82%E0%B0%A8%E0%B0%BF%E0%B0%9F%E0%B1%8D_%28%E0%B0%9F%E0%B0%BF.%E0%B0%93.%E0%B0%AF%E0%B1%81%29">Theatre Outreach Unit (TOU)</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.uohyd.ac.in/">University of Hyderabad (UoH)</a>. I was anyhow planning on visiting them to explore an institutional collaboration. The Project Director of TOU Dr. Peddi Ramarao, though agreed to spread the word about the workshop, yet was not sure how many would turn up at such a short notice of one night.</p>
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<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/TOUphoto2forCIS.png" title="TOU Training photo 2" height="364" width="486" alt="null" class="image-inline" /></th> <th>
<p>Rahmanuddin and Dr. Rajasekhar giving hands-on training to edit Telugu Wikipedia at Golden Threshold, Hyderabad</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">So on March 8, 2013 Rahmanuddin, Dr. Rajasekhar and I landed at the <a class="external-link" href="http://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B0%97%E0%B1%8B%E0%B0%B2%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%A1%E0%B1%86%E0%B0%A8%E0%B1%8D_%E0%B0%A4%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%B0%E0%B1%86%E0%B0%B7%E0%B1%8B%E0%B0%B2%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%A1%E0%B1%8D">Golden Threshold</a> hoping against hope to see at least 3 or 4 participants. But alas there were only 2 people when we reached the venue by 10 a.m.. By 10.25 a.m. we had 9 participants, which excited us all. The training workshop began with an introduction of all the participants. Following this a presentation was made on the significance of Wikipedia in the digital era and how Indian language-Wikipedias are pivotal in preserving the vernacular language and culture. This session was interactive with participants asking many questions. Dr. Peddi Ramarao, later, spoke about his experience of using Wikipedia as a reference tool and how he got introduced to contributing Wikipedia. Further, the discussion went on to the poor quality of articles on Telugu Wikipedia and how the participants can take part in improving the existing articles and contribute new articles. Rahmanuddin and Rajasekhar practically demonstrated the process of editing on <a class="external-link" href="http://te.wikipedia.org">Telugu Wikipedia</a>. This was followed by a hands-on session where the participants actively participated in creating their Wikipedia User name on Telugu Wikipedia and did editing of few articles. The training programme was to officially end at Lunch time but even post lunch some of the participants were enthusiastic about learning more nuances of contributing on Telugu Wikipedia. The hands-on session thus continued until 4 p.m.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Post the Wikipedia training programme, I have had interactions with the Project Director of TOU to explore possible future collaborations. TOU, UoH agreed to offer space to host all Telugu Wikipedia meet-ups. As the Golden Threshold space was in the central part of the city, having this infrastructure accessible was a major boost for the Telugu Wikipedia community in Hyderabad. Further, in the discussions we have agreed to collaborate with TOU, UoH in hosting the first mega Telugu Wikipedia community event <i>Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam 2013</i>.</p>
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<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/TOUphoto3forCIS.png" title="TOU Training photo 3" height="261" width="348" alt="null" class="image-inline" /></th>
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<td><b>Telugu Wikipedia Orientation in progress</b></td>
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<h3><b>Outcomes and Impact:</b></h3>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Out of the 9 new Users, who were trained during this workshop, 5 people have done more than 5 edits.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">One person has become a very active editor on Telugu Wikipedia with more than 1000 edits in 3 months. A detailed account of this event was put up by this user on Telugu Wikipedia here <a href="#fn*" name="fr*">[*]</a></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Because of CIS-A2K’s efforts, Telugu Wikipedians in Hyderabad now have a good meeting space.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The availability of this space has also encouraged the Telugu Wikipedians to meet more often than before. Since March 8, 2013 Telugu Wikipedians had a total of 6 meet-ups, and all these were held at Golden Threshold.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Golden Threshold also became a venue for hosting <i>Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam 2013</i>.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">This visit to Hyderabad triggered a discussion about organizing <i>Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam</i>, which was successfully organized in a month’s time.</li>
</ol>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Looking back, though this event was done as a last minute measure without many expectations, yet it turned out to be a lucky break! Especially, because this was my first ever event as the CIS-A2K Programme Director. It will remain a very memorable one. More so because it was done in collaboration with two of the active Telugu Wikipedians. Even more so because it has created some positive energy for the Telugu Wikipedia community, which has since then become a home turf.</p>
<hr />
<p>[<a href="#fr*" name="fn*">*</a>]. <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/17WYq7X">http://bit.ly/17WYq7X</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/my-first-wikipedia-training-workshop'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/my-first-wikipedia-training-workshop</a>
</p>
No publishervishnuDigital ActivismArtAccess to KnowledgeDigital AccessWikimediaWikipediaCyberculturesTelugu WikipediaOpen ContentCommunitiesOpennessMeetingEvent2013-08-19T06:51:16ZBlog EntryArchive and Access: The Delhi State Archives
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/the-cyborgs/the-delhi-state-archives
<b>In this, the fifth entry in a series on the CIS-RAW Archive and Access project, Aparna Balachandran reports on two state archives located in Delhi, the National Archives of India, and the Delhi Archives. </b>
<p>Less visible than the National Archives of India is Delhi’s other state archive, the Delhi Archives. Unlike the NAI, which is located in Janpath at the heart of Lutyen’s Delhi, the Delhi Archives share a dilapidated building with the Delhi Institute of Heritage Research and Management, in a corner of the Qutub Institutional Area. The Delhi Archives were set up in 1972 to house documents and other material pertaining to the city of Delhi from as early as 1785, consisting mainly of the records of the Delhi Resident, and post 1857, the Commissioners’ Office. The collection is certainly not vast, but includes gems like the Mutiny Papers, the 600 page document on the trial of Bahadur Shah Zafar, papers on the post-rebellion demolition of Chandi Chowk and records on the setting up of Imperial Delhi.</p>
<p>Like the NAI, the Delhi archives are presently suffering from a lack of both funds and staff; the library, for instance, is in a state of complete disrepair. But we were assured by Sanjay Garg, who is in charge of the research room, that the archive itself is in good functioning order. The process of cataloguing its scattered Persian and Urdu records is underway, as are efforts to digitise the entire collection, about which I shall presently say more. From the very beginning, one of the important mandates for the setting up of the Delhi Archives was the acquisition of material “of interest” to Delhi (although the grounds for adjudgement seem fairly unclear) from other archival collections. We were told that records are regularly acquired from the Haryana and Punjab State Archives, and from the NAI; in addition, when funds allow, a historian is dispatched to the British Library to decide on what should be acquired from there. The Acquisitions Department also sends out a call in the papers at intervals for information about personal and family collections; sadly, we could not glean more information about this process because the person in charge was away on vacation.</p>
<p>In 2006, the Delhi archives launched an ambitious and much heralded project to digitise its entire collection; the process was still underway in early 2009. Documents, maps and photographs are being scanned and the visitor can access these on the two or three computers that are available for the purpose. Unfortunately, the computers are equipped with a search engine that is both difficult and cumbersome to use as well as being excruciatingly slow. This technology was developed by and borrowed from the NAI, where the online index is so ridden with misleading spellings as to make it practically unusable. Our brief use of the search engine at the Delhi Archives did not seem to throw up any glaring mistakes here at least – or perhaps we were dazzled by the visual materials now available online. Maps, the earliest going back to 1803; photographs including those of nationalist leaders; landscapes, cityscapes and monuments shot by colonial photographers; and hilariously, photos of the archive staff posing in the library stacks and offices are now all there to view with a mere click of the mouse. For a hundred rupees apiece moreover, the user can go home with the images of her choice on a pen-drive or a CD. </p>
<p>It is notable that the users that the Delhi State Archives and the NAI get are extremely different, a fact that impacts the way the two places function, particularly in terms of access. We were told at the research room at the NAI that the variety of users it gets has increased both in numbers and in diversity, so much so that a few years ago, archive officials decided that the category of “bonafide” user had to be expanded to include the non-academic user. Previously, access to the NAI was largely restricted to scholars armed with documentation proving their credentials; now, any citizen with some form of state identification is allowed access. While the bulk of users are still most certainly academics, the archive, or the idea of the archive, looms large in the public imagination. There are for instance, many novelists and film-makers who use the NAI. Not all are happy with their experience; some leave disappointed because the dry colonial records do not reveal, or immediately reveal the stories and detail they seek. The launching of state schemes - like the extension of martyrs pensions - that require written evidence from the archive also triggers off an increase in users. As more people and events are defined as part of, and co-opted into the National Movement, claimants to familial connections soar. We were told for example, that there was an influx of enquirers from certain villages in Haryana after a few families were able to substantiate their claims of being descendents of INA soldiers. Last year, the government agreed to grant the status of freedom fighters to the victims of the Jalliawala Bagh massacre in 1919 resulting in the arrival of those claiming to be descendents seeking evidence for the same (a complicated situation because of the vast discrepancies between the reported numbers of those killed in the British and Indian lists).</p>
<p>Interestingly, one case had a direct impact on the archival policy on access to documents. In the 1990s, with the increase in the number of heritage hotels in areas that included the former Princely States, claimants to land soared, with the NAI and the Home Ministry being dragged to court in several cases. As a result, the Accession Papers of the Princely States were made unviewable (a mystery was thereby solved when I repeated this information to a historian friend, frustrated that she was not allowed access to Dewas records from the '50s for some unknown reason). Interestingly, the largest category of new users consist of descendents of indentured labourers who left India in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to places like Mauritius, Jamaica, British Guiana, Trinidad and Fiji who want to trace their family histories. This is no easy task – these migrants appear in the lists that the colonial state kept of passages, medical examinations, births, deaths and marriages but were referred to by their first names only. </p>
<p> </p>
<p><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/the-cyborgs/uploads/BOOKPARTII14.jpg/image_preview" alt="border map delhi archives" class="image-inline image-inline" title="border map delhi archives" /><br /><br />The profile of users at the Delhi Archives is quite different; most are non-academic and the number of scholars there could be as small as one or two a month. The non-academic user is also of a particular kind. Employees from various Delhi government departments are occasionally dispatched to the archive to refer to old files. But more importantly, the Delhi Archives are home to Delhi’s muncipal land records. A fifty to a hundred people a day arrive to look at, and make photo-copies of land records in order to settle disputes, make claims etc. The process is simple and routine and perhaps it is the fact of its being an everyday legal office that makes the Delhi Archives far simpler to access than a scholarly archive like the NAI. Entry to the NAI for instance, involves an arduous process of registration and verification; there is no such scrutiny at the Delhi Archives. Materials like border maps that are deemed as posing a threat to national security cannot be accessed at the NAI. Browsing through the maps at the Delhi Archives, we came across several border maps, a few of which we bought copies of that we can now presumably reproduce, disseminate or enlarge to hang on a wall.</p>
<p> <img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/the-cyborgs/uploads/MEMORANDA_2.jpg/image_preview" alt="border map two delhi archives" class="image-inline image-inline" title="border map two delhi archives" /></p>
<p>We asked Sanjay Garg whether there was a policy at the Delhi to disallow the viewing of any of its records. Yes, he said, if the material was a threat to the nation’s safety. Had such a restriction ever been imposed? No, he answered.<br /><br /><br /></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/the-cyborgs/the-delhi-state-archives'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/the-cyborgs/the-delhi-state-archives</a>
</p>
No publisheraparnaDigital AccessArchives2011-08-23T04:43:39ZBlog EntryArchive and Access: Documents in the Time of Democracy
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/the-cyborgs/documents-in-the-time-of-democracy
<b>This is the seventh in a series of blog posts documenting Aparna Balachandran, Rochelle Pinto, and Abhijeet Bhattacharya's CIS-RAW project, Archive and Access. In this entry, Rochelle Pinto introduces a sub-set of posts that will look at the political significance of public access to official documents on the internet. </b>
<p></p>
<p>Contemporary conflict over land brings
together issues of land ownership, legal documents and technology in ways that
make us examine the circulation and political significance of documents and
information. If we assess the relevance of documents as evidence or as
verifiers of truth in the midst of political battles over land, we are led to
doubt the apparently inherent democratic promise of digital technology. Even
where internet technology is accessible, for instance in the modernised
villages of Goa, our belief that public access to official documents through
the internet is a democratic gesture can be questioned. It would appear that
this form of circulation or display need not have great political significance
for contemporary movements, let alone the question of whether it has the potential to function as a politically liberating force. This implies that while there is a fulfilment of
democracy in a technical sense, the political significance of a particular
document and of the public domain in which it circulates can only be gauged
from the way in which a dispute over land or over ownership of property, or
about membership within a village, foregrounds one kind of document over
another and constructs different kinds of public. In the case of current
disputes in Goa around land that is, or was held by village level communidades
or gaunkarias, there is not even a stable or singular legal meaning attached to
the range of documents that circulate among the competing authorities and
parties to these disputes. In fact, tracing the life and path of the different
legal documents that are necessary to argue a case involving communidade land
involves a tangle of authorities, repositories and disputing groups. The sense
of publicness that is raised by internet technology requires us to question the
kind of politics that endows the document and its publicness with political
meaning.</p>
<p> In a national and possibly international
situation where anti-state claims on land are often non-legal (whether in the
form of ethical arguments or armed rebellion) the current conflicts over land in Goa are
local in the sense of having specific attributes. Special Economic Zones (as
also other prior forms of transnational economic flows) propagate a delinking of life, labour, and capital from
any fixed political entity, in as far as they claim immunity from national
laws. Against this, the diverse claims on land in Goa (whether as familial disputes,
environmental conflicts, livelihood arguments, belongingness and historical
claims of being indigenous), raise overlapping claims and arguments
about the relation between legality and politics, the use of internet
technology within resistance movements and rights over land that are outside the
domain of private property. All of these resonate with similar conflicts
ongoing in other parts of the country, with some differences in the kinds of
opposition generated. </p>
<p style="text-align: left;">The overall thrust of the argument made here is that
movements that are pitted against the state or the multinational entities it
supports straddle various forms of state power. Currently, we tend to see these
divided into the formal exercise of power through law, regulation, and systematization,
and the exercise of power through non-legal and non-state entities and means.
The widely perceived illegitimacy of the state requires it to engage in two
forms of political representation – the one consolidating its use of
governmentality through law, the other effecting its sovereignty through a
substantive exercise and demonstration of power. The appearance of legality and
the lacing through of all political processes with due procedure and due
documents is important to sustain some measure of governmentality, while the
domain of substantive politics requires that rule be maintained through overt
coercion and expropriation. The two domains are not disconnected. The ability
to amend laws by an act of government, without due discussion or consensus
gives the state infinite licence to bolster its acts of violence with legality.
The gap between these two domains provides an element of unpredictability and
turbulence that generates the frisson of excitement for viewers (as against the
sufferers) of Indian state politics. For, the sheer existence of forms of
governmentality implies that those equipped to do so will demand the fulfillment of the liberal project
that the state claims to be bound by. The Right to Information movement and the
innumerable human rights reports and people’s courts are instances of the state
being called to order within its own terms. If these calls threaten to
jeopardise interests beyond a certain threshold, then substantive violence is
enacted, more often than not exceeding the bounds of legality. Those who oppose
the state but whose opposition is articulated within the terms of
governmentality find themselves condemned to demanding justice or the restitution of truth
over decades. The success of the state
however lies in its ability to negotiate both these forms of power, allowing it
to insert itself into dominant global currents in politics and economy, while
keeping its house in order at home. This gap and its bridging is made visible
through a range of events, patterns and pronouncements. The unstable status of the
document as the locus of truth and evidence, in the context of legal and political conflicts
reveals this gap. Differing forms of punishment and justice are not the only markers of ill-fitting forms of power. Ethically admissible claims that are not based on rights, made by non-state entities that have no legal recognition are also caught on the side of all that lies outside the domain of modern statecraft. Internet technologies that work to make what was hitherto hidden or inaccessible more 'public' are necessarily inscribed within this network of quasi-legal, legitimate, illegal and illegitimate entities and practices.The working of technology then has
to be understood through the idea of governmentality as a language of control and
subversion. This is further qualified by the fact that the discourse around
writing and regulation has always been viewed with suspicion by those who stand
outside its circle of power.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/the-cyborgs/documents-in-the-time-of-democracy'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/the-cyborgs/documents-in-the-time-of-democracy</a>
</p>
No publisherrochelleDigital AccessArchives2011-08-02T05:45:44ZBlog Entry