Access To Knowledge (A2K)

Digital Rights and ISP Accountability in India: An Analysis of Policies and Practices

Anubha Sinha, Yesha Tshering Paul, and Sherina Poyyail — 2025-01-23T10:04:44Z

This report presents a comprehensive evaluation of India's four largest Internet Service Providers (ISPs)—Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone-Idea (Vi), and BSNL—examining their commitment to digital rights and transparency.

Read the full report here.

India's four largest Internet Service Providers (ISPs)—Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone-Idea (Vi), and BSNL collectively serve 98% of India's internet subscribers, with Jio and Airtel commanding a dominant market share of 80.87%. The assessment comes at a critical juncture in India's digital landscape, marked by a 279.34% increase in internet subscribers from 2014 to 2024, alongside issues such as proliferation of internet shutdowns.

Adapting the Ranking Digital Rights' (RDR) 2022 methodology framework for its 2022 Telco Giants Scorecard, our analysis reveals significant disparities in governance structures and commitment to digital rights across these providers. Bharti Airtel emerges as the leader in governance framework implementation, maintaining dedicated human rights policies and board-level oversight. In contrast, Vi and Jio demonstrate mixed results with limited explicit human rights commitments, while BSNL exhibits the weakest governance structure with minimal human rights considerations. Notably, all ISPs lack comprehensive human rights impact assessments for their advertising and algorithmic systems.

The evaluation of freedom of expression commitments reveals systematic inadequacies across all providers. Terms and conditions are frequently fragmented and difficult to access, while providers maintain broad discretionary powers for account suspension or termination without clear appeal processes. There is limited transparency regarding content moderation practices and government takedown requests, coupled with insufficient disclosure about algorithmic decision-making systems that affect user experiences.

Privacy practices among these ISPs show minimal evolution since previous assessments, with persistent concerns about policy accessibility and comprehension. The investigation reveals limited transparency regarding algorithmic processing of personal data, widespread sharing of user data with third parties and government agencies, and inadequate user control over personal information. None of the evaluated ISPs maintain clear data breach notification policies, raising significant concerns about user data protection.

The concentrated market power of Jio and Airtel, combined with weak digital rights commitments across the sector, raises substantial concerns about the state of user privacy and freedom of expression in India's digital landscape. The lack of transparency in website blocking and censorship, inconsistent implementation of blocking orders, limited accountability in handling government requests, insufficient protection of user rights, and inadequate grievance redressal mechanisms emerge as critical areas requiring immediate attention.

As India continues its rapid digital transformation, our findings underscore the urgent need for both regulatory intervention and voluntary industry reforms. The development of standardised transparency reporting, strengthened user rights protections, and robust accountability mechanisms will be crucial in ensuring that India's digital growth aligns with fundamental rights and democratic values.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/digital-rights-and-isp-accountability-in-india-an-analysis-of-policies-and-practices

Digital Native: The bigger picture

nishant — 2018-08-01T00:11:57Z

For all our sleek machines, we are slaves to the much larger Internet of Things.

The article was published in Indian Express on July 1, 2018.

There was a time, at the turn of the millennium, when we were trying to cope with the fact that we live with sapient technologies. It was new, to be thinking of cohabitation with things that speak, interact, listen, and act in tandem with us. I still remember the time when the first pagers and cellphones arrived — how difficult it was for people to figure out the social etiquette for living with these devices.

From those early days, we have come a long way. Digital things are everywhere — and we talk to them everywhere and everywhen. On a regular day, our phones are on our dining tables, our devices are buzzing with notifications silently in our pockets, and they are guiding us in our everyday practices. They are not just bringing us information but also listening to us, pre-empting our moves, doing things that we have not even imagined yet. Living with technologies is old — the new normal is living in technologies.

I was recently reminded by a research team that the cars we drive are giant super-computers with engines. That a new car on the roads has more computational processing power than the land-rover on Mars. Our cars are indeed computing devices and we sit in them, depending on a variety of computational processes to keep us safe, as we are hurled at high speeds ahead. Our smart homes, too, are slowly becoming sapient surfaces with specific functions. Microwaves that remember meal times, coffee machines that sense our proximity and start brewing or refrigerators that keep track of our expired food — they are all very basic computing devices that we are already used to.

However, our life is not just with the devices but the immense networks of other devices that they connect with. I got reminded of this very starkly on a recent trip to India, when I realised that the SIM card that I had bought the last time has been deactivated for non-use. At the same time, procuring a new SIM was going to need patience, time and Aadhaar authentication, which won’t happen at the airport. Additionally, there were no wifi hotspots to use in the middle of the night. Thus started the longest night of my life. In that four-hour digital blackout, I found myself thinking of my condition as a state of disconnectedness, of paralysis. I was surrounded by my two phones (don’t ask), my iPad, my laptop, and, armed to the teeth with charging cords and power-banks. Yet, none of them were of any use.

Once disconnected from the cloud that caters to my entertainment and the services that keep me talking, it was as if all my devices were useless. I scrolled through multiple screens and then gave up, resigning myself to looking at others with data, with malignant longing. It was with great shock that I realised that my devices are only gateway machines. Despite all the money and effort I have spent in selecting specific hardware combinations and care equipment, without their capacity to speak to other machines-servers, controllers, nodes — they are almost entirely pointless.

So used am I to instant interaction, reciprocation and feedback with my devices, I forgot that I am actually in conversation with an Internet of Things that far exceeds my immediate intimacy with my personalised screen. Somewhere in there is a powerful reminder of why data protection and security are so critical, but also fragile in the connected Web. Because we can do almost anything that we like to keep our individual devices secure, but the large networks that give them life and animate them are completely out of our control. In the face of this uncontrollable void, the best we can do is hope that things will be safe. And that illusion is not going to last long — in these moments of disconnection, one realises it. Thankfully, before the head got filled with the dark side of digital connectivity, I chanced upon an old movie I had saved on my laptop to show in a class once. It was Wall-E. I decided to just watch that film about a world where the only live thing was a robot, and in some strange way, found it very comforting.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-july-1-2018-nishant-shah-digital-native-bigger-picture

Digital Native: How smart cities can make criminals out of denizens

nishant — 2018-08-01T00:19:23Z

People download information and share it without knowing about the intellectual property rights. On social media bullying, harassment and hate speech find easy avenues.

The article was published in Indian Express on July 15, 2018.

I first heard about smart cities in 2003. Sitting in India, it seemed to be a very strange concept being developed in the Netherlands, where the planners were trying to arm an entire city with smartness. The idea was that if we deploy enough cameras, devices that see, machines that hear, and data connectivity that envelopes the city in a seamless cloud, it might lead to more order, discipline, and control. To me that felt like a strange experiment because under all of those different imaginations of the city as a neat, organised, controlled environment, were assumptions that were alien to my Indian sensibilities.

It was strange to look at all the promises that “smartness” would deliver — it would make human life easier. It would increase safety and create order out of chaos. It would build new lifestyles that are filled with assistive technologies. In all of these, was the imagination of the city as a laboratory — controlled and efficient, as opposed to riotous and serendipitous. The cities were positioned as filled with intention, so that the interruptions of people, animals, festivals, traffic and crowds would be removed through the deployment of these digital devices and networks. What needed to be preserved was the city and its infrastructure, rather than the individuals and communities that make the city alive and exciting. We wanted our infrastructure to be smart, taking decisions on our behalf, and shaping our lives through the algorithmic protocols that they were coded to embody.

In that faraway time, these had felt like idle speculations. Fifteen years on, I have now come to realise that the biggest motivation for building smart cities was not really facilitating human movement, habitation and habits. Indeed, at the heart of the smart city project was the setting up of a massive surveillance apparatus that would clinically diagnose the unwanted people and processes in the city, and surgically remove them — with the assistance of predictive technologies that would be implemented in policing and planning these city spaces.

Smart cities were not constructed to make people’s lives easier. They were constructed because, increasingly, all the people in a city are imagined as “users”, who need to be instructed through terms of services, how they must behave and live in these city spaces. One of the biggest cultural turns in the massification of the digital web was that almost all users were imagined as potential criminals by the very virtue of them being connected. Internet service providers and regulators knew that if people are connected, they will be violating the law at some point or another, sometimes unknowingly. People download information and share it without knowing about the intellectual property rights. On social media bullying, harassment and hate speech find easy avenues. The largest traffic on the internet is for pornographic and often banned material which finds its audiences on the connected web. Spammers, viruses, hijacked machines, and, often, searches for unexpected items lead people onto the dark web where the questionable human interactions happen frequently.

The introduction of the digital terms of services was essentially to presume that the user was a potential criminal who leases hardware and software, and, platforms from proprietary companies and governments could then control and discipline the user through comprehensive surveillance practices. Construction of smart cities performs a similar function in the physical space. Instead of thinking about citizens as co-owners who shape city spaces, smart cities establish a service level agreement with its occupants, and reduces them to users. Any deviation results in punitive action or devaluation, often curbing the movement, and the rights of belonging to the city spaces.

While it is true that smart technologies can facilitate certain aspects of human life, they depend on unfettered data collection, predictive profiling, correlative algorithms and conditions of extreme invasion and control — which are all predicated on the idea that you will falter. And when you do, the technologies will be there to witness, record, archive, and punish you for the daily transgressions till you are wiped into becoming a predictable, controlled, cleaned up drone that travels in docility across the networked edges of the city. We will be assimilated. Resistance will be futile.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-july-15-2018-nishant-shah-digital-native-the-citys-watching

Digital Native: Hashtag Along With Me

nishant — 2018-08-01T00:25:04Z

A hashtag that evolved with a movement.

The article was published in Indian Express on July 29, 2018.

Hashtags generally come with shelf lives and expiry dates. They come to life in a moment of public excitement and then slowly peter out as the attention shifts to something else. Even the most viral hashtags, which contain all the visceral power of explosive emotion, quickly get replaced by the next big thing. Hashtags have been critiqued as inefficient tools for activism. Because they absorb so much energy and attention, only to fade.

While it is true that in the rapidly overloaded information cycles of social media, hashtags might disappear in due time, maybe we need to think of their disappearance as hibernation rather than forgetting, being archived to memory rather than being lost to recall. Perhaps, it is not yet time to wash our hands of hashtag-based activism, because they do not stay in continued attention. Maybe, it is possible that even when hashtags might not be trending and garnering eyeballs, in their very presence and emergence, they transform something and catalyse actions that take incubation cycles longer than the accelerated digitalisation allows for.

Recently, this reminder came when I saw #NotGoingBack trending on Twitter. In 2013, when the Supreme Court of India overturned the Delhi High Court’s judgment reading down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, it was a moment of despair for human rights and queer communities that fight for their right to life and love. The judgment reinforced shame, persecution and pain that the queer community in India faced because of an arcane law that punished consenting same-sex love.

In that moment of despair, fighting against the oppression by law and in validation of #queerlivesmatter, a hashtag was born: #NotGoingBack. The hashtag referred both to the metaphorical closet that this judgement would force queer people back into, and also to a political determination of not accepting this verdict — of not going back on our commitments to build diverse, inclusive, and safe societies for all our people. #NotGoingBack captured the narratives of despair, but also the collective resolve to continue fighting for a nation that is for everyone, in 2013.

Since then, it has resurfaced at different points during moments of hope — like the NALSA judgement that legalised the rights of trans-gender people to be identified as the third gender, or, in moments of pain — when we heard of queer people killing themselves, unable to bear the social stigma of being criminalised for their right to love. The hashtag has continued to come up, when legal fights to protect queer rights and lives have proceeded, or when attention had to be drawn to the inhumane reports of murder, torture, rape and imprisonment that followed.

In July 2018, when the new bench constituted by the Supreme Court agreed to question the re-criminalisation verdict, and started hearings about the constitutional validity of this judgment, the hashtag returned in full force — and unlike the other times, it was also suffused with love, hope, and solidarity of a large community of queer, queer-allied, and queer-friendly people who supported this revision. It has been extraordinary to see how public support has changed in the five years since the hashtag made its first appearance. More and more people have realised that while this is a question of queer rights, it is also a question of human rights, and how we live and love. The 2013 verdict suggested that the people were not ready to accept queer lives. The 2018 bench has clearly opined that the role of the court is to protect the people based on constitutional rights, not to pander to populism.

And yet, what has been inspiring is that the popular response to decriminalisation has been overwhelmingly positive. To the extent that even the conservative government at the centre has indicated that it will not challenge the wisdom of the court if it decides to read down Section 377. As we await the final judgment that promises to be historic and hopeful, we cannot deny the indefatigable commitment, movement and protest that the lawyers, activists, and queer community leaders have invested in making this happen. At the same time, it is also a good indicator of how hashtags live, morph, and re-emerge across longer timelines. We need to start recognising them not only in their fruit-fly like presence but as catalysts for longer movements.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-native-hashtag-along-with-me

Digital Native: Delete Facebook?

nishant — 2018-05-06T03:08:25Z

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

The article was published in Indian Express on April 8, 2018.

One fine day, we all woke up and were told that Facebook sold our data to Cambridge Analytica and then they made dastardly profiles of us to target us with advertisement and political propaganda, so, we made a beeline for #DeleteFacebook. The most surprising part about the expose is how much of a non-event it is. We have been warned, at least since the Edward Snowden revelations, if not earlier, that our data is the new oil, coal and gold. It is being used as a resource, it is being mined from our everyday digital transactions, and it is precious because it can result in a massive social engineering without our consent or knowledge. Ever since Facebook started expanding its domain from being a friends-poke-friends-with-livestock website, we have been warned that the ambition of Facebook was never to connect you with your friends but to be your friend.

Time and again, we have been told that the sapient Facebook algorithm remembers everything you say and do, anticipates all your future needs, and listens to the most banal litany of your life. More than your mom, your partner or your shrink, it’s the Facebook algorithm which is interested in all your quotidian uselessness. It is not the stranger who accesses your post that should worry you. The biggest perpetrator of privacy violations on Facebook is Facebook itself. There is good reason why a company that offers its prime products for free is valuated as one of the richest corporations in the world. The product of Facebook – it has always been known – is us.

Why, then, are we suddenly taken aback at the fact that Facebook sold us? And while we are sharing our thoughts (ironically on Facebook) about deleting our profiles, the question that remains is this: How much of your digital life are you willing to erase? Because, and I am sorry if this pricks your filter bubble, Facebook’s problem is not really a Facebook problem. It is almost the entire World Wide Web, where we lost the battle for data ownership and platform openness more than two decades ago. Name one privately owned free service that you use on the internet and I will show you the section in its “terms and services” where you have surrendered your data. In fact, you can’t even find government services, tied up with their private partners, where your data is safe and stored in privacy vaults where it won’t be abused.

It is time to realise that the popular ’90s meme “All your base are belong to us” is the lived reality of our digital lives. As we forego ownership for convenience, as our governments sold our sovereignty for profits, and as digital corporations became behemoths that now have the capacity to challenge and write our constitutional and fundamental rights, we are waking up to a battle that has already been fought and resolved. A large part of our physical hardware to access the internet is privately owned. This means that almost all our PCs, tablets, phones, servers are owned and open to exploitation by private companies. Every time your phone does an automatic update or your PC goes into house-cleaning mode, you have to realise that you are being stored, somewhere in the cloud in ways that you cannot imagine.

It is tiring to hear this alarm and panic around Facebook’s data trading. Not only is it legal, it is something that has been happening for a while, most of us have been aware of it, and we have resolutely ignored it because, you know, cute cats. If somebody tells you that they are against privately owned physical property and are going to start a revolution to take away all private property and make it equally shared with the public, you would laugh at them because they are arriving at the battle scene after the war is over. This digital wokeness trend to #DeleteFacebook is the digital equivalent of that moment. If you want to fight, fight the governments and nations who can still protect us. Participate in conversations around Internet governance. Take responsibility to educate yourself about the politics of how the digital world operates. But stop trying to feel virtuous because you pulled out of a social media network, pretending that that is the end of the problem.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-april-8-2018-digital-native-delete-facebook

Digital India: PM Modi to launch BJP's flagship programme likely in July

pranesh — 2015-08-22T16:45:33Z

The article by Jochelle Mendonca and Neha Alawadhi was published in the Economic Times on May 29, 2015.

The Modi government, which completed one year at the Centre, is preparing for a big-ticket launch of Digital India, taking technology to the villages and block levels, through merchandise, hackathons and games spread over a week-long initiative across the country.

The National e-Governance Division (NeGD), under the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), has empanelled agencies for a messaging campaign, gamification, printing and merchandise, advertising and creatives, including advertising for rural outreach and social media.

Working directly with the Prime Minister's Office, NeGD has been tasked with preparing for the launch since February. Though no formal dates have been fixed yet, the Digital India Week (DIW) is likely to take off in July, and will involve stakeholders across state governments and ministries, and is expected to be the flagship programme for the second year of the BJP government, EThas learnt.

The event is certainly being planned on a grand scale, according to the tender documents issued by the government. The government has asked for merchandise such as t-shirts, caps, trophies, pen drives and leather cloth and plastic bags. A gamification agency will work on the portals, mobile applications and social media handles to boost participation.

The messaging agency must be able to carry out, track, record and analyse 50 lakh to one crore messages a day. The event will be launched by the Prime Minister through a radio address on "Mann ki Baat", which will be followed by events at gram panchayats, block and sub divisional headquarters, district and state levels, eventually culminating in a national event, according to a presentation seen by ET.

As part of the run-up to the DIW, events such as hackathons, training programmes and webinars would be held in schools and colleges, followed by crowdsourcing ideas through the government's portal MyGov, as well as a new Digital India portal that is being designed. "It is a typical BJP-style campaign.

The Prime Minister does not want to hold the final day event in Delhi and the location is being finalised. All state and line ministries have been involved, and are being asked to showcase e-services and best practices, along with the launch of some programmes like digital locker," said another person familiar with the plans being rolled out for the DIW. The watch words of the campaign will be "inform, educate and engage", which will include taking the message of Digital India to the masses through educational institutions, industry and government agencies.

"It will educate people on various important services such as digital literacy, cyber hygiene and e-waste management, and also look at engaging a large number of people, especially youth on a continuous basis," said a person familiar with the ongoing preparation.

NeGD is looking at using the principles of gamification to gather feedback. Experts on e-governance say this is a good move as most e-governance projects, across the world, fail because there's not enough buy-in from stakeholders or the goals aren't communicated widely to the public.

"E-governance needs evangelising. That is what this campaign looks like it will do. Some parts are dated — such as posters and the print elements. But this is a good idea. Whether it works or not depends on the participation they see at the end," Sunil Abraham, director at the Centre for Internet and Society, said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/economic-times-may-29-2015-jochelle-mendonca-and-neha-alawadhi-digital-india

Digital India: Did Modi get it wrong in Silicon Valley?

praskrishna — 2015-10-18T04:44:52Z

A bear hug, a photo filter and a new debate on net neutrality - Ayeshea Perera examines the domestic fallout of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Facebook townhall in US.

This was published by BBC News on October 16, 2015. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

It was supposed to be a moment that rocked the virtual world. Mr Modi, widely acknowledged as one of the world's most influential politicians on social media, enveloped a slightly stunned Mark Zuckerberg in a bear hug.

But what was it that really happened in Menlo Park? Why did some people think Mr Modi wasn't acting in India's best digital interests when he hugged Mr Zuckerberg?

India with an internet population of 354 million - which has already grown by 17% in the first six months of 2015 - is an obvious target for not only Facebook, but other Silicon Valley giants. And they have all been more than happy to pledge their support for digital India - a recently launched government initiative aimed at reinvigorating an $18bn (£11.6bn) campaign to strengthen India's digital infrastructure.

Google offered to provide 500 railway stations with free WiFi and Microsoft pledged to connect 500,000 Indian villages with cheap broadband access.

Digitally colonised?

But this huge show of support and the increased interest in India has caused some concern within the country.

"Is Digital India going to only make India a consumer of services offered by global tech companies in lieu of data? Personal data is the currency of the digital world. Are we going to give that away simply to become a giant market for a Facebook or a Google? Look at the way the tech world is skewed. Only China has been able to come up with companies that can take on these MNCs" Prabir Purkayasta, chairman of the Society for Knowledge Commons in India, told the BBC.

"The British ruled the world because they controlled the seas," he said. "Is India going to be content to just be a digital consumer? To being colonised once again?"

And in the aftermath of the Facebook townhall in particular, some talk has begun to surface about what Mr Zuckerberg's real India ambitions are.

Soon after the townhall ended, both Mr Modi and Mr Zuckerberg declared their support for digital India by using a special Facebook filter to tint their profile pictures in the tri-colour of the Indian flag.

Multitudes of Indians followed suit and timelines were awash with snazzy tinted profile pictures, all in support of "Digital India".

'Innocent mistake'

But then a tech website released what it claimed to be a portion of Facebook's source code, which allegedly "proved" that the "Support Digital India" filter was actually a "Support Internet.Org" filter.

Facebook quickly issued a denial, blaming the text in the code on an "engineer mistake" in choosing a shorthand name he used for part of the code.

But the "mistake" which has been coupled with a huge advertising blitz for Internet.Org across television channels and newspapers has raised suspicion about Facebook's motives. A Facebook poll on Internet.Org that frequently appears on Indian user timelines has also been ridiculed for not giving users an option to say no.

Instead the answer options to the poll question "Do you want India to have free basic services?" are "Yes" and "Not now".

Internet.org (now called free basics), aims to extend internet services to the developing world by offering a selection of apps and websites free to consumers.

Facebook's vice-president of infrastructure engineering, Jay Parikh has described the initiative as an "attempt to connect the two-thirds of the world who do not have access to the Internet" by trying to solve issues pertaining to affordability, infrastructure and access.

When Facebook launched the initiative in India in February, it was criticised by Indian activists who expressed concerns that the project threatened freedom of expression, privacy and the principle of net neutrality.

On the other end of the debate, Indian columnist Manu Joseph wrote in the Hindustan Times newspaper, hitting out at the "selfish" stand on net neutrality. He said concerns over the issue should be "subordinate to the fact that the poor have a right to some Internet".

Wrong signal

A massive campaign by India's Save the Internet Coalition exhorting Indians to speak out against initiatives threatening net neutrality caught public imagination and saw more than a million emails to India's regulator, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), demanding a free and fair internet in the country. Internet.Org was one of the initiatives immediately affected.

TRAI since released a draft policy on net neutrality, but a question that has been asked is whether it was appropriate for Mr Modi to visit Facebook given that the policy was still under consideration.

Mr Purkayasta is of the opinion that it could have been avoided. "It was not the time or the place to go. Even if it was simply a publicity gimmick, it still sends a signal to officials involved in drafting the policy," he said.

However, Sunil Abraham from the Centre for Internet and Society told the BBC he believed that while Facebook's intentions were suspect, Mr Modi's visit had the potential to safeguard net neutrality in India.

"India is a hugely important market for Facebook, and the prime minister has the power to force positive changes to its policies," he said. "We gain nothing by shutting them out."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bbc-october-16-2015-digital-india-did-modi-get-it-wrong-in-silicon-valley

Digital India' in Dire Need of Safety Policy Reboot - Cybersecurity Experts

Admin — 2018-05-05T12:00:43Z

Some experts say the need of the hour is for India to update its cybersecurity policy to respond to growing threats in cyberspace. Information warfare specialists hint at the local storage of digital information as the key to the cybersecurity of the country.

The blog post was published by Sputnik on April 17, 2018. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

The afternoon of the first Friday of April was a telling statement on India's biggest nightmare — a digital meltdown. It was so glaring that the National Media Centre in the capital Delhi was abuzz with media persons seeking to ascertain the news of around 10 government websites, including those of the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Home Affairs, was hacked and the government seemed clueless. No government official was ready to speak, prompting the day's headlines to thrive on speculations with television channels running news flashes attributing the mischief to a "Chinese" hacker.

The Defense Ministry website was showing Mandarin characters in an error message which further gave strength to the conspiracy theory. In panic, the Ministry of Home Affairs shut down its portal, creating further speculations.

In the absence of an official statement, the press based their news reports on a tweet by Defense Minister Nirmala Sitaraman which confirmed the alleged hack. A sense of a massive cyberattack engulfed the air.

The general sense was that it was a digital offensive targeted against India and perpetrated by none other than its neighbor China. There was a sudden outrage among social media users who accused the government of failing to protect the nation's digital assets and letting India be vulnerable to cyber threats.

After Ministry of Defence, suspected Chinese hackers hack Ministry of Home Affairs’ website too. Welcome to Modi’s Digital India Jumla. #IndiaDoesNotTrustBJP #IndiaHatesBJP

However, late in the evening, National cybersecurity head Gulshan Rai conveyed that all 10 websites hosted by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) went down due to "a hardware failure" while declining to comment on the possibility of a cyberattack by any neighboring country.

"There is no hacking or coordinated cyberattack on the website of central ministries. There was a hardware failure in the storage network system at the NIC which resulted in a number of government websites being serviced by that system going down. We are working to replace the hardware and these websites will be up soon," Rai said in a statement putting to rest all speculations.

The National cybersecurity head, who directly works under thExperts also blame the lack of a clear commitment on the part of the government as a reason for loopholes in India's cybersecurity net, calling for greater participation of the individual and private institutions in the country's digital preparedness.e supervision of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, also confirmed that a total of ten websites, including that of the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Central Vigilance Commission, the e-gazette of India, and the websites of the Ministries of Law, Civil Aviation, Defense, Home Affairs, Labor, Water Resources and Science & Technology suffered due to the hardware failure.

Nevertheless, experts say that India needs a robust framework not only to protect the cyber assets, but also quickly assess threats in view of the experience.

"Technical glitches happen, especially when you have so many hardware and software products connected online. The immediate reaction of the hack (on Friday, 6th April 2018) was in haste and caused all the confusion but no such hack took place. We need to have a more robust framework for response, reporting, and reaction," cyber expert Rakshit Tandon told Sputnik.

The brief period of inaccessibility of the government websites and the ensuing panic was symptomatic of a situation which India is facing. Even if it was not a hack, the hardware failure is worrying for the billion plus nation, say experts.

The cyber emergency in India was not the first. Last year, the Home Ministry websites had to be temporarily shut down following a cyberattack. This was in close heels to a hack of the website of the elite Indian special force National Security Guard (NSG) by a suspected Pakistan based group. In 2016, data from Indian missions in Africa and Europe were hacked and posted online by unknown hackers.

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), the premier cyber security agency of India had stated in a reply in Parliament that until June 2017 India had more than 27,000 cyberattacks of all levels and cost the economy around $4 billion.

The Hindustan Times in a report predicts that with India embarking on an ambitious digitalization mode, the total losses from cybersecurity threats for the country could touch $20 billion over the next ten years.

Experts also blame the lack of a clear commitment on the part of the government as a reason for loopholes in India's cybersecurity net, calling for greater participation of the individual and private institutions in the country's digital preparedness.

"We have a national cybersecurity policy but we don't have a clear commitment from the government when it comes to financial allocations. The government must fund small and medium-sized enterprises to produce innovative cybersecurity products and services. Separately, the government must fund research by corporations, civil society organizations, educational organizations, and individuals which should be published in peer-reviewed open access journals and also presented at national and international cybersecurity academic conference," Sunil Abraham, executive director, Centre for Internet and Society told Sputnik.

"India has the best minds when it comes to hacking. In fact, a majority of the top hackers in the world are Indians but they are not part of India's security apparatus and not in the country's service," Rizwan Shaikh, ethical hacker and one of the youngest information security consultants in South Asia told Sputnik.

Rizwan was in the news recently when he drew the attention of the government about the severe lacuna in the Indian Railway system which is called the backbone of Indian economy employing around 1.3 million people and running 13,000 passenger trains daily.

The ethical hackers cannot sustain in the government ecosystem, they need patronage and incentives in terms of recognition, but the government of India lacks any such program. There was a program launched recently by the Ministry of Information Technology but it has failed to attract good minds due to its lack-luster management. In India, even if I find a loophole, there is no reporting system to intimate and no proper heads to initiate action, Rizwan added.

The Indian government has multiple stakeholders to monitor and report on digital emergency situations. The plethora of agencies begin with the nodal agency of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, there is a hub called the National Critical Infrastructure Information Protection Center, then there is the interior security ministry of Home Affairs which is the oversight authority over all investigative agencies in the country and there is a new institution by the name national Cyber Coordination Centre created recently.

Rakshit Tandon says that "a sudden spurt in online transactions especially after demonization (in October 2016), coming of 4G mobile networks, cheaper smartphones, and the prestigious vision of 'Digital India' have made the country and its population more prone to cyber threats."

Moreover, with the controversy of the British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica allegedly using personal details of Indian social media users has created a sense of insecurity among the online population of the country.

In view of the threat to personal and national digital security, Sunil Abraham calls for an approach to a complete upheaval the country's cyber laws to combat the threat. He says simply user behavior change is not sufficient for keeping Indians safe from digital harm.

"First, India needs a comprehensive omnibus data protection law, in the lines of the GDPR which exists for the EU. Second, India needs amendments to our existing competition law. Once the law has been updated to give the regulator powers to go after Internet monopolies —we need a comprehensive investigation of the anti-competitive activities, especially in the digital advertising sector. Change in user behavior is not sufficient to mitigate harms resulting from Internet monopolies. These harms can only be addressed via appropriate, comprehensive and proactive action by lawmakers and regulators," Sunil Abraham said.

Information warfare specialists hint at the local storage of digital information as the key to cybersecurity of the country.

"A nation the size of India can never be a comfortable partner for other great powers who will always be uneasy of the latent power of this sleeping giant. Consequently unlike Japan, South Korea or Singapore, we cannot rely on a security umbrella from another great power to reach our full economic potential," Pavithran Rajan, information warfare specialist based out of Bangalore, told Sputnik.

Pavithran Rajan is a former Indian Army officer-turned writer and trainer on cyber issues.

The need for a data protection law was triggered by the debate on individual privacy. However, the importance of this data for national security must not be overlooked. The solution lies in localizing the sensitive data of Indian citizens within the boundaries of India. While currently the infrastructure for this may not exist, it would come up if the data controllers wish to continue to take advantage of the size of the Indian market, he added.

Rajan feels that data protection for India is vital as it is on the cusp of a major technological advancement and has opined that the country needs to put in place legal stipulations on data transfers.

"The advent of the IoT (Internet of Things technology) would exponentially increase the volume of data being generated. Any new infrastructure being created for IoT should also make arrangement for data to be stored in India. We understand that cross-border flows of data cannot be completely stopped. However, no sensitive personal data should be permitted to go outside the country. There should be legal restrictions on the transfer of data to controllers who have no presence in India," Pavithran Rajan told Sputnik.

The earliest technology-based law in India was the Indian Telegraph Act of 1885 which is still operational and encompasses the telephone services as well. With the advent of the digital age, India brought in the Information Technology Act in the year 2000 and lastly, a National Cybersecurity Policy was drafted and presented for action 2013, but its actual implementation has not yet taken place. With the fast changing digital ecosystem, India, the largest democracy in the world, struggles to keep pace with the threats it faces and the dangers seem imminent.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/sputnik-april-17-2018-digital-india-in-dire-need-of-safety-policy-reboot-cybersecurity-experts

Digital India launch likely in July

praskrishna — 2015-05-31T16:08:07Z

The article by Jochelle Mendonca and Neha Alawadhi was published in the Times of India on May 29, 2015. Sunil Abraham gave his inputs.

The National e-Governance Division (NeGD), under the Department of Electronics and Information Technology ( DeitY), has empanelled agencies for a messaging campaign, gamification, printing and merchandise, advertising and creatives, including advertising for rural outreach and social media.

"They really want to make this the biggest programme of the second year. The idea is that many things have been done in the digital space that need to get highlighted," an individual with knowledge of the plans told ET.

The event is certainly being planned on a grand scale, according to the tender documents issued by the government. The government has asked for merchandise such as t-shirts, caps, trophies, pen drives and leather cloth and plastic bags. A gamification agency will work on the portals, mobile applications and social media handles to boost participation.

The messaging agency must be able to carry out, track, record and analyze 50 lakh to one crore messages a day. The event will be launched by the Prime Minister through a radio address on 'Mann ki Baat,' which will be followed by events at gram panchayats, block and sub divisional headquarters, district and state levels, eventually culminating in a national event, according to a presentation seen by ET.

As part of the run-up to the DIW, events such as hackathons, training programmes and webinars would be held in schools and colleges, followed by crowd-sourcing ideas through the government's portal MyGov, as well as a new Digital India portal that is being designed.

"It is a typical BJP-style campaign. The Prime Minister does not want to hold the final day event in Delhi and the location is being finalized. All state and line ministries have been involved, and are being asked to showcase e-services and best practices, along with the launch of some programmes like digital locker," said another person familiar with the plans being rolled out for the DIW.

The watch words of the campaign will be "inform, educate and engage", which will include taking the message of Digital India to the masses through educational institutions, industry and government agencies.

"It will educate people on various important services such as digital literacy, cyber-hygiene and e-waste management, and also look at engaging a large number of people, especially youth on a continuous basis," said a person familiar with the ongoing preparation.

NeGD is looking at using the principles of gamification to gather feedback. Experts on e-governance say this is a good move as most e-governance projects, across the world, fail because there's not enough buy-in from stakeholders or the goals aren't communicated widely to the public.

"E-governance needs evangelizing. That is what this campaign looks like it will do. Some parts are dated — such as posters and the print elements. But this is a good idea. Whether it works or not depends on the participation they see at the end," Sunil Abraham, director at the Centre for Internet and Society, said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/times-of-india-jochelle-mendonca-neha-alawadhi-may-29-2015-digital-india-launch-likely-in-july

Digital in South Asia

praskrishna — 2016-08-02T15:38:39Z

Sunil Abraham participated in this event organized by the World Economic Forum on July 19, 2016 at Taj Mahal Hotel in Bangalore.

The digital revolution is transforming all the aspects of business and society. The internet has been a principal contributor to evolution and growth in the global economy over the past decades. Modern technologies are dramatically altering today’s industries. It continues to have the potential to propel societies and economies by enabling government and business leaders to develop innovative solutions, platforms, and models.

This session will focus on how Governments are designing, implementing, governing, and monitoring their digital strategies particularly as it pertains to growing the digital economy. The focus of the workshop will be to learn and understand how the Government’s in South Asia have and are currently developing digital agendas to support innovation, entrepreneurship, commerce, and economic growth. Further, the hope is to examine the parameters, mechanisms, and governance structures in the region. This working session will explore the specific opportunities and digital development barriers presented to governments. As well as discuss potential approaches or solutions to these barriers.

Structure

(25 min) Opening, digital champions from the private sector and civil society will present on the key issues of policy and governance as it pertains to growing the digital economy. There will be four discussion leaders and each leader will be given 5-7 minutes to make their remarks

(15 min) The opening remarks will be followed by a moderated discussion and Q&A led by Alan Marcus from the World Economic Forum. Government leaders will have the opportunity to react to the discussion leader’s comments and answer any additional questions. Potential leaders to call on include:

(5min) The next portion of the session will involve breakouts directly related to the Digital Policy work at the WEF. Alan Marcus will describe the Digital Government/ Economy project that is being done at the WEF and how the outcomes from the breakouts will feed the ongoing work.

(45min) Following the moderated discussion, the group will split into four breakouts. Each breakout group will have a Table Leader and Firestarter. The role of the Table Leader is manage the flow of the discussion such that it addresses the three key questions below. The Firstarter will have prepared initial comments to commence the discussion.

1) What are the key policy issues that are critical to driving the digital economy? What hurdles, if any, are associated with governing these policies?

2) What mechanisms are currently being used to determine policy issues?

Many of the issues and needed digital policies straddle various government ministries/ agencies ?
What mechanisms determine policy at the national vs transnational level?

3) How can multistakeholder collaboration enhance and support respective government’s digital agendas?

(15 min) After the breakout groups have finished, each discussion leader will present the key and differentiating results of their table discussion to the plenary group. A moderator from the World Economic Forum will then lead invite comments on the outcomes, and discuss the next steps that could be taken to promote digital government in the region.

(15 min) Closing remarks will be made by Mr Ravi Shanker Prasad, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/digital-in-south-asia

Digital illusions

praskrishna — 2017-02-16T14:53:39Z

The Watal Committee’s report presents the government with an impossible road map to a cashless nirvana.

The article by V. Sridhar was published in Frontline, Print edition: March 3, 2017

MORE than two months after demonetising an overwhelming proportion of the currency in circulation, the Narendra Modi government now appears to have settled on its key objective for setting out on the unprecedented economic adventure. After shifting the goalposts several times—initially it was a means of combating terrorism and fake currency, later it was a war on black money and still later it was to forcibly march the country towards a “cashless” future, which was then modified to a more reasonable “less cash” society—the government now ostensibly has the road map to undertake the hazardous journey to an age when cash will no longer be king.

There is no better and time-tested means for a government bent on carrying out its whims than to appoint a committee headed by a former bureaucrat to give it the report that would justify what it has already decided to do. In August 2016, months before demonetisation, it constituted the Committee on Digital Payments, chaired by Ratan P. Watal, Principal Adviser, NITI Aayog, and former Secretary, Ministry of Finance. The committee dutifully submitted its report in double quick time on December 9, which was approved by the Finance Ministry on December 27.

The haste with which the committee has gone about its business is evident throughout the report. The committee’s slant is also evident in its approach, especially the reverence with which it welcomes the demonetisation move, even though it was commissioned before November 8, and its recourse to suspect data from private industry and multinational companies even when better quality data were available from official sources such as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The report’s lack of rigour, especially in tackling the substantive issues pertaining to monetary policy, was also hindered by the fact that not a single economist of worth, not even a specialist in monetary economics, was present in the committee.

Reckless rush

However, to blame the committee alone would be futile. The government, by pursuing an ambitious and reckless push towards “less cash” before setting out a regulatory framework governing digital payments, in effect, placed the cart before the horse.

The report reveals not just the haste with which the Watal Committee has pursued its mission with evangelical zeal but its utter lack of respect for conceptual issues. Nowhere is this more evident than in its recommendation that the regulatory responsibilities for governing the digital payments system be distanced from the RBI. This not only is out of tune with global practices, but it reveals the committee’s sheer inability to understand the fact that although payments account for just a small fraction of what a banking system does, they impinge on modern banking and monetary policy in crucial ways.

In a modern economy, currency creation by the central bank through fiat money is not the only means by which money is created. Deposits with banks, for instance, which provide the base for credit creation, are a means by which banks “create” money. From this perspective, a mobile wallet service provider also acts like a bank; even the users’ monies are held only for a brief period until transactions happen.

Thus, it appears fit and proper that such services are also governed by the central bank. However, the Watal Committee has recommended that they be supervised by an entity that has a measure of independence from the RBI. This suggestion is dangerous because such entities can potentially pose a systemic risk, which is a key responsibility of a central bank. There is also the risk of regulatory capture of the suggested body, the Payments Regulatory Board (PRB), if sections of the payments industry exercise their newly acquired clout.

The committee’s enthusiastic acceptance of the “go cashless” mantra is also evident in the data it has sourced. A good example of how it cherry-picked data is its use of a highly dubious (or at the very least, utterly misplaced) dataset to make the point that India is far too dependent on cash. It points to data sourced from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other sources to claim that India’s cash-GDP (gross domestic product) ratio is 12.04 per cent, much higher than countries such as Brazil, Mexico and South Africa.

However, this much-abused dataset, quoted widely by advocates of demonetisation, is an inaccurate measure because it only captures the extent of physical currency in circulation and ignores short-term deposits, which are defined as “broad money”. Logically, these deposits must be included because they are virtually on call by depositors and are, therefore, liquid. Secondly, the fact that such deposits have been increasing as a proportion of the currency in circulation, aided by the spread of banking in India, makes them particularly relevant in the Indian context. The committee, in its bid to justify sending the nation on a cashless path, proceeds to evaluate the “high” costs that cash imposes on the Indian economy. It quotes from McKinsey and Visa, both of which may have a vested interest in India’s mission to go cashless, to drive home the point that going digital would result in huge savings. It quotes McKinsey to claim that “transitioning to an electronic platform for government payments itself could save approximately Rs.100,000 crore annually, with the cost of the transition being estimated at Rs.60,000-70,000 crore” and a Visa report that claims a total investment of Rs.60,000 crore over five years towards creating a digital payments ecosystem could reduce the country’s cost of cash from 1.7 per cent of the GDP to 1.3 per cent.

Even while pushing the benefits of going cashless, the committee does admit that the transition to digital payments “cannot be agnostic to the actual costs incurred by the end customers, the reasons for preferring cash, and the factors inhibiting the uptake of existent channels of digital payments”.

A large part of the Indian economy is its “black” counterpart, estimated at about 60 per cent of the legitimate part of India’s national income. Since a significant portion of the currency in circulation caters to the demand from the shadow economy, apart from the huge segment that is engaged in legitimate but informal economic activity, these estimates miss a significant chunk of the economy and its need for cash. Conceptually, to that extent, they significantly overstate the extent of cash relative to real GDP, including the portion missing from official data.

The naive assumption that digitalised financial transactions are scale-neutral and costless, painless and efficient lies at the heart of the Watal Committee’s report. This has obvious implications for India’s large informal economy, which the Modi government is pushing, under pain of death, towards formality through digital channels. For instance, basic data on the usage of debit cards show how skewed the demand for cards is in India. In August 2016, cash withdrawals at ATMs accounted for 92.28 per cent of the value of all debit card transactions in the country. Thus, less than 8 per cent of the total value was made at point-of-sale (PoS) terminals.

This statistic is a clear indication of a divide that mirrors the income and consumption divide in Indian society. When banks issue cards (debit, credit or any other), card payment system companies such as Mastercard and Visa provide an interface with the customer for which the issuer pays a fee, which is, in any case, recovered from customers. According to a recent study by Visa, the penetration of PoS terminals has slowed down significantly since 2012, when the RBI set limits on what the card companies could charge as merchant discount rate (MDR), the amount charged from sellers. This reveals that card companies may have been slowing down penetration in order to bargain for a bigger slice of the transaction fee. Although the rates apply not just to card-based purchases but to cash withdrawals too (and have been waived or lowered in the wake of demonetisation on a purely temporary basis), there is no guarantee that they will not increase once the situation returns to normal. This is aggravated by the fact that the government may have little or no control, or the will, to prevent banks and card issuers from charging higher rates later. This has been demonstrated in the past with, for example, ATM-based withdrawals, for which customers have to pay a fee after a minimum number of transactions.

The flat fee (as a percentage) is regressive, especially because it punishes smaller sellers. It is in this sense that finance, digital or otherwise, is never scale-neutral. The fact that the immediate victims of demonetisation are small-scale producers and retailers implies that the balance has been tilted against them and in favour of larger producers and retailers after November 8. By skewing the field against small and tiny enterprises, demonetisation has been the vehicle for a massive and unprecedented transfer of incomes and wealth from the poor to the rich.

There is also a fundamental asymmetry in the use of technology in the financial services industry. ATMs, which have been around for decades, were originally touted as a technology that increases efficiency in the use of cash; you only need to withdraw as much as you need, so there is no motive to hoard cash. But that was not the motive for introducing ATMs; the real reason was that they enabled banks to reduce their workforce to cut costs. As ATMs became more ubiquitous, banks started moving from cost cutting to profit-seeking by levying a fee for every transaction above a minimum threshold. In effect, the gains from technology are boosting the profitability of banks while the wider systemic benefits made possible by the same technology have been sacrificed, as the imposition of fees above a minimum threshold actually drives people to hoard cash.

A study by Visa in October 2016, titled Accelerating The Growth of Digital Payments in India: A Five-Year Outlook, reveals that a one percentage point reduction in cash in circulation as percentage of GDP would require digital transactions of personal consumption expenditure to multiply ninefold. In other words, Visa suggested that digital transactions as a percentage of personal consumption expenditure would need to increase from 4 per cent to 36 per cent if the cash-GDP ratio has to reduce from 11 per cent to 10 per cent.

Security concerns

Apart from these weighty economic issues, which are central to the move towards digital financial transactions, there are other critically important issues that the committee has either ignored or swept under the carpet. The question of privacy and security was a central issue at a recent conference on digital payments organised by HasGeek, a platform for software developers, in Bengaluru. Several experts, including some from the payments industry, pointed out the serious security and privacy issues that are being ignored in the rush to go digital. For example, an expert on data security warned that the mindless rush to mobile-based transactions was especially scary because most Android phones are vulnerable because they leak data. In fact, he noted that it may be safer for Android mobile users to perform digital transactions using desktop browsers.

But what is more scary is the manner in which Aadhaar is being touted by the committee as the magic wand by which the digital era can be ushered in quickly. It recommends that mobile number-based and Aadhaar-based “fully interoperable payments” be prioritised within 60 days and that the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) be responsible for ensuring this.

There has been significant resistance to the idea of an Aadhaar-enabled service for digital transactions, primarily because of security and privacy concerns. Entities such as the Centre for Internet and Society have warned against linking Aadhaar to the financial inclusion project because it violates the Supreme Court stricture against making Aadhaar mandatory. Kiran Jonnalagadda of HasGeek pointed out that the Aadhaar system offered only “single factor authorisation”. He said in a recent tweet that Aadhaar involved only a permanent login ID without “a changeable password”, which, from a systemic point of view, made it open to abuse.

Longstanding critics of the Aadhaar project have pointed out the launch of such a countrywide programme at a time when a regulatory regime is not even in place, and when India does not have privacy protection laws, is dangerously misplaced. They have pointed to the fact that unlike in the case of a debit or credit card, which can be replaced when its integrity has been compromised, the theft of biometric characteristics of a user implies that they are compromised forever. This is not science fiction but a very real possibility as has been demonstrated across the world.

There are also serious worries that the high failure rate of biometric verification would hurt the poor, supposedly the main target group of the Aadhaar project; the large-scale denial of services such as access to the public distribution system has already been documented across the country. Extending a failed system to real-time financial transactions, thus, appears to be dangerously misplaced. The fundamental issue is this: can a digital mode of payment effectively provide the same level of trust between the transacting parties that is central to a cash-based transaction? The answer to that depends critically on whether the digital mode provides the same level of convenience, cost, predictability and certainty.

The Watal Committee has produced a report that the political masters sought. Its lack of appreciation of the economic issues underpinning financial transactions and of the wider economic processes in the Indian economy are obvious. Effectively, it has delivered what the Modi government asked for—an impossible road map to a cashless nirvana for a people already suffering the effects of demonetisation.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/frontline-v-sridhar-march-3-2017-digital-illusions

Digital ID Forum 2019

Admin — 2019-08-07T14:09:16Z

Sunil Abraham was one of the panelists at this event at Chulalongkorn University on July 3, 2019.

Click to view the agenda. Also see Wikipedia page

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/digital-id-forum-2019

Digital humanities: How social sciences may benefit from the digital revolution?

praskrishna — 2011-04-05T04:06:22Z

Centre for Contemporary Studies in collaboration with the Centre for Internet and Society presents a talk on Digital Humanities by Dominique Boullier, Professor at Sciences Po Paris on 9 July, 2010 at the Centre for Contemporary Studies.

This talk is in the context of the shift from traditional uses of digital power: databases, online questionnaires, and statistic analyses, to new uses of digital techniques for exploring digital data: producing datascapes from the huge amount of unstructured expressions on the Web and from the traces left by various kinds of behaviour. Starting with an example from the sociology of controversies redesigned by web crawling and visualization techniques, the speaker raises the following questions: How can we fill the gap between qualitative and quantitative analysis by using digital networks resources? How can we fill the gap between individual and structure when analyzing a phenomenon through digital lenses? In assessing the opportunities in the studies of social phenomena offered by using digital tools and web sources of data, the speaker seeks to demonstrate that it gives room for new social theory that can get rid of the concepts of “institutions”, “market” and “emergence” as unquestioned a priori.

All are cordially invited
Tea / Coffee will be served at 3.30 p.m.
Venue: Seminar Hall, Centre for Contemporary Studies (Formerly TIFR Mathematics Building), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/digital-humanities

Digital Empowerment Foundation--Internet Governance Forum Workshop, 5 December 2008, Hyderabad

sachia — 2011-04-02T16:16:28Z

CIS Director (Policy) Sunil Abraham will be a panelist at a workshop on Low Cost Sustainability Access to be held at the Internet Governance Forum 2008.

CIS Director (Policy) Sunil Abraham will be a panelist at a workshop on Low Cost Sustainability Access to be held at the Internet Governance Forum 2008. The workshop is organised by the Digital Empowerment Foundation and the Internet and Mobile Association of India, in association with Internet Society and Intel. It will be held on December 5, 2008, from 14:30 – 16:00.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/digital-empowerment-foundation-internet-governance-forum-workshop-5-december-2008-hyderabad

Digital divide: Why Irom Sharmila can’t do an Anna

praskrishna — 2011-09-01T05:55:13Z

Irom Sharmila has been on hunger strike for 10 years to protest against military abuses, force-fed by tubes through her nose. But the tragedy for the world’s longest hunger strike is that she is on the wrong side of India’s digital divide.

Twitter, Facebook and aggressive private TV have helped rally India’s biggest protests in decades to support civil activist Anna Hazare, a digital groundswell of a wired middle class that echoes the Arab Spring and has taken a Congress party-led government of elderly politicians by surprise.

But Sharmila, who has been on a hunger strike in the northeastern Manipur state to demand an end to the army’s sweeping emergency powers there, has only managed a small following, a footnote in media coverage.

“We also once tried to take our fight to New Delhi … but we did not get support from the rest of the nation,” Sharmila told Tehelka magazine.

She must be frustrated. The Hazare phenomenon has rallied Indians from the start with social media. Hazare’s India Against Corruption website says it has had 13 million phone calls of support. Its Facebook page has nearly 500,000 “likes”.

Its leaders have tweeted each step of the whirlwind crisis, whether describing their arrests in real time or negotiations with the government, outmanoeuvring Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his ministers at every step.

“Protest at PM’s residence: 35 people detained, taken to Tughlaq Rd. PS, hundreds still there, come if you can #Janlokpal,” twitter user @janlokpal sent its followers in just one example of how the movement was rallying support.

Cases like Sharmila expose the digital divide of Asia’s third-largest economy and underscore how a growing urban middle class may be getting its political voice heard while millions of poor remain off the digital protest map.

In response to Anna’s invitiation to join the anti-corruption movement, Sharmila said "Please try to reach the concerned legislators (read authorities) to let me get free, like yours, to join your amazing crusade to root out corruption."

She added that ” I cannot get the advantage of exercising my non-violent protest for justice against my concerned authority as a democratic citizen of a democratic country, unlike your environment. This is the problem I cannot understand.”

"This is the first time digital social media has resonated with such a large number of people," said Nishant Shah, head of research at the Centre for Internet and Society think-tank.

"But this is far more of a middle class, urban movement, than a national movement. Many people in India are excluded from it."

Twitter and Facebook are barely used in many of India’s social causes, including battles over land rights that are one of India’s most pressing problems involving millions of farmers.

Huge social issues in India, from caste discrimination to high food prices, from the building of dams to protests by farmers against nuclear power plants, have failed to create the kind of digital mobilisation that Hazare enjoys.

Digital Divide

India’s internet users have grown 1,400 percent between 2000 and 2010, behind only China and Vietnam among Asian countries, according to a report by Burson-Marsteller, a consulting firm. But that masks India’s low base. Internet penetration is around 8 percent in India, the lowest among major Asian countries.

That compares with nearly 40 percent in China. Out of a population of 1.2 billion, there are only 29 million people active in digital social networks. A report by Maplecroft consultancy warned that India was lagging other BRICs, Brazil, China and Russia in “digital inclusion”.

"India, for example, the wealthier, more affluent segment of the population, primarily based in urban areas, has embraced the use of modern communications technology,” the report said. “The vast majority of the population has, however, been excluded from this process."

Those statistics highlight that while the middle class has found a voice, electorally the centre-left Congress party will still need to pander to its traditional vote base of millions of farmers and poor Indians ahead of a 2014 general election.

Congress, in power for most of the life of independent India, has failed to use social media tools. One minister lost his job for tweeting too frankly, in a sign of government unease over the web, and the party lags behind an opposition that has embraced Twitter.

Libya overshadowed

So far, private TV channels have provided 24-hour coverage of the protests— the news from Libya is hardly to be seen. Urban Indians with mobile phones in hand have dominated rallies in the open grounds where Hazare was on his second week of fasting.

Small protests across the country, from demonstrations outside ministers’ houses to rallies outside metro stations, have been organised through Twitter and Facebook.

An app that can be downloaded on to smartphones running the Android operating system gives users the latest news on the campaign for a tough “Jan lokpal”, or anti-corruption bill, and details of the latest meetings.

Watch video: A group of people who came together on facebook reached the Ramlila Maidan to show solidarity with Anna Hazare.

"Social media has been huge for us, it has a life of its own," said Shazia Ilmi, in charge of Hazare media strategy.

Even before Hazare was arrested last week, organisers had prepared a pre-recorded video from him that went on YouTube.

The movement does have deep roots and social media has widened the protests, if not caused them. Many of Hazare’s protests have also been through word of mouth. Corruption also affects the poor more than middle classes with endemic bribes, whether permission for street food stands or driving licences.

"It’s not an up and down, national movement. It is largely a middle class cause," said Sagarika Ghose, a novelist and journalist at the CNN-IBN news television channel. "But it’s hugely important one. For a younger generation, corruption has become a catch-all phrase for the failure of development."

Some activists are already criticising Hazare as a hype of an elitist social media.

"Those thronging the Ramlila grounds or marching in support of Anna in the metros are not necessarily 'the people' of the country, and it is dangerous to take the two as identical," academic Prabhat Patnaik wrote in The Hindu newspaper.

You can view Irom Sharmila’s reply to Anna’s invitation below

Irom Sharmila Letter to Anna Hazare

This article was published in FirstPost.Ideas on 25 August 2011. The original story can be read here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/digital-divide