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Mathematisation of the Urban and not Urbanisation of Mathematics: Smart Cities and the Primitive Accumulation of Data - Accepted Abstract
https://cis-india.org/raw/smart-cities-and-the-primitive-accumulation-of-data-abstract
<b>"Many accounts of smart cities recognise the historical coincidence of cybernetic control and neoliberal capital. Even where it is machines which process the vast amounts of data produced by the city so much so that the ruling and managerial classes disappear from view, it is usually the logic of capital that steers the flows of data, people and things. Yet what other futures of the city may be possible within the smart city, what collective intelligence may it bring forth?" The Fibreculture Journal has accepted an abstract of mine for its upcoming issue on 'Computing the City.'</b>
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<p>Speaking to Geert Lovink, Wolfgang Ernst explains that '[t]he coupling of machine and mathematics that enables computers occurs as a mathematization of machine, not as machinization of mathematics' <strong>[1]</strong>. In this paper, I propose that the idea of smart cities be understood not as 'urbanisation of mathematics' – as often described by industry documents, design fictions, and academic analyses – but as 'mathematisation of the urban.' By the notion of 'urbanisation of mathematics,' I indicate at those reports that conceptualise smart cities as data analytics, or civic mathematics, at an urban scale. I explain how this notion is shared by design visions of actors from the networking industry, such as IBM and Cisco, emerging academic practices in urban science and informatics, and calls for urbanising the technologies of regulation and governance, in the sense of making these technologies directly and bi-directionally interact with the urban citizens <strong>[2]</strong>. Conversely, the 'mathematisation of the urban' perspective foregrounds a specific transformation at hand in the production of urban space itself, which I argue is what is captured in the idea of smart cities. This transformation is not a new thing, and has been heralded by the coming of coded infrastructures and the transduction of urban space through them <strong>[3]</strong>. The process of 'mathematisation of the urban' refers to a fundamental reorganisation of the urban itself so as to make aspects of it available to mathematical manipulation, most often undertaken by software systems. This mathematisation takes place through the rebuilding of urban infrastructures so as to facilitate sensing and recording of parts of urban lives and processes as mathematical data, and the embedding of coded assemblages that can communicate and act upon the analysis of such data, and also through re-building the relations of property around this newly-obtained and continuously-generated resource of data about the urban.</p>
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<p>I propose in this paper that production, circulation, and ownership of data must be considered as a central problematique in the discussions of smart cities. As writings on smart cities have often focused on the dyadic relationships between code and space on one hand, and co-evolution (and splintering) of networked infrastructures and the urban form, the figure of data has remained implicit yet subdued as as an entry point to study the idea of smart cities. Even for commentators who do focus on the implications of data, the category is often treated as a feature or a capacity of new technological assemblages. Instead, I argue in this paper that it is the concerns of production, circulation, and ownership of data that drive the conceptualisation and actual material forms of the visions of smart cities. These technological assemblages, materialisation of which constitute such visions, are implementations of exclusive data collection operations targeting various portions of urban lives and processes. The imagination of 'city 2.0' takes a particularly insightful colour when thought of as an analogy to the 'web 2.0' model of capture and monetisation of user behaviour data. Further, I employ the Marxian theory of 'primitive accumulation' to describe how the material infrastructures of networked sensors and embedded data capture systems create enclosed spaces for conversion of collectively-held-information into data-as-exchangable-and-interoperable-value, through which disparate and distributed knowledge and experiences of the urban is transformed into urban data, which can be centralised and queried, and hence value can be extracted from it.</p>
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<h3>Footnotes</h3>
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<p><strong>[1]</strong> Lovink, Geert. 2013. Interview with German Media Archeologist Wolfgang Ernst. Nettime-l. February 26. Accessed on April 20, 2015, from <a href="http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0302/msg00132.html" target="_blank">http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0302/msg00132.html</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[2]</strong> Sassen, Saskia. 2012. Urbanising Technology. LSE Cities. December. Accessed on April 20, 2015, from <a href="http://lsecities.net/media/objects/articles/urbanising-technology/en-gb/" target="_blank">http://lsecities.net/media/objects/articles/urbanising-technology/en-gb/</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[3]</strong> Dodge, Martin, and Rob Kitchin. 2005. Code and the Transduction of Space. Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 95: 01. Pp. 162-180.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/smart-cities-and-the-primitive-accumulation-of-data-abstract'>https://cis-india.org/raw/smart-cities-and-the-primitive-accumulation-of-data-abstract</a>
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No publishersumandroData SystemsSpaceResearchSmart CitiesResearchers at Work2015-11-13T05:47:13ZBlog EntryWhatsApp and Transnational Lower-End Trading Networks
https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_whatsapp-and-transnational-lower-end-trading-networks
<b>This post by Maitrayee Deka is part of the 'Studying Internets in India' series. Maitrayee is a postdoctoral research fellow with the EU FP7 project, P2P value in the Department of Sociology, University of Milan, Italy. Her
broader research interests are New Media, Economic Sociology and Gender and Sexuality. This is the first of Maitrayee's two posts on WhatsApp and networks of commerce and sociality among lower-end traders in Delhi.</b>
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<p>One of the first things that stood out in the Delhi traders’ anonymous bearings was their love for smartphones. In the two mass electronic markets in the city, Lajpat Rai Market and Palika Bazaar, the traders of video games carried varieties of smartphones of different sizes and colours. From iPhones to Samsung Galaxies, the traders vied for the latest gadget available in the market. As a researcher, within a year, I moved from getting an accidental peek into their smartphone screens to a phase when the traders felt comfortable sharing their personal messages with me.</p>
<p>I spend considerable time in Lajpat Rai Market and Palika Bazaar in Delhi between September 2012 and September 2013. I interviewed different traders and had day-to-day conversations with the people coming to their shops. Tracking several events in the shops, I knew the relative time that the traders spent on various activities. I saw on most days the traders divided their time between interacting with consumers and browsing through their smartphones. The traders spent maximum time of their virtual existence by being on <em>WhatsApp</em>. A large part of the goods to local electronic markets in Delhi were coming from China. And increasingly, <em>WhatsApp</em> was becoming an important communication channel managing transnational trade related exchanges.</p>
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<h2>Entry into the <em>WhatsApp</em> World</h2>
<p>When I started visiting Lajpat Rai Market and Palika Bazaar at the end of 2012, I had not installed <em>WhatsApp</em> on my phone. The traders in the different markets were curious to know what was keeping me away from it. They came to a point when they could not anymore see me outside of <em>WhatsApp</em>. I, on the other hand had reservations of being part of a medium that meant continuous contact with the world. When finally I got past my initial doubts, there arose another problem. I could not download <em>WhatsApp</em> on my phone without the server asking for a rental fee of 250 Indian Rupees. After a few days, on being asked the same question again in Palika Bazaar, I told the traders about my problem. Lalit, a trader in Palika Bazaar retorted, ‘That is not possible! We did not pay to install <em>WhatsApp</em> on our phones’. He asked me to pass him my phone. Lalit cracked the security code by getting on to the Palika Bazaar Wi-Fi network and installed <em>WhatsApp</em> on my phone.</p>
<p>It was interesting to see that the traders did not always use legal channels to buy their smartphones and get an Internet connection. Many of the conversations about their smartphones were about where the traders bought their stolen iPhone. There were discussions about how much money different traders paid to get their hands on a used iPhone. They compared the feature and quality of each other’s smartphone. Sometimes even I was asked if I wanted a new cell phone for a good price and if I wanted to sell my old phone. The fascination for smartphones that in the first instance seemed like a fad for a shiny branded product, showed its own complex side. The importance of keeping an expensive phone had its conspicuous side and that explained the fascination of traders for iPhones. However, that was not all. The conspicuous side of the trader was not visible in other dimensions of their being, for instance the clothes they wore. The traders on most days were happy to buy second-hand and knock off goods from the street vendors outside Lajpat Rai Market and Palika Bazaar. The inclination of the traders to carry expensive phones and willingness to try different measure to possess them showed that smartphones were important to the traders.</p>
<p>I tried to understand the inclination of the traders towards their smartphones. One way by which I thought their smartphone usage could become intelligible to me was by locating it in their everyday world. What the traders did on most days and exploring where and how smartphones configured amongst other activities could make its usages noticeable. I observed one of the things that the traders hated in both the markets was to have free time in their hands. The time for chatter meant that they were not doing business. And the possibility of not making enough money made them anxious. The traders were trying to curtail the amount of time they spent on insignificant activities including the need to talk to me. Most of the times, they only entertained me when they did not have consumers in their shops. It was then interesting for me to see the traders’ fascination for their smartphones. The usage of the Internet also ideally carried levels of non-productivity that on other instances made the traders very anxious. It meant that they were not making direct monetary transactions with consumers. Having seen the traders obsessed about making sales, I was unable to place their choice of being on their smartphones in their free time. Soon, this dilemma was cleared. Being on the smartphone did not mean the traders were making social calls. Most of the times when the traders were on their smartphones, they were texting each other on <em>WhatsApp</em>. Eventually, I found out that most of the exchanges on <em>WhatsApp</em> were trade related. The traders not using <em>WhatsApp</em> for pleasure indicated that their activity on the Internet reflected how they are offline. The traders were preoccupied with the prospect of making profit and they did not want to waste any opportunity coming their way. This was the driving force and the source of innovation in the markets. The traders’ smartphone usage also followed the instinct of minimising wastage and find business opportunities in everything they did. The result was to make dominant in the markets another usage of <em>WhatsApp</em> other than its use for social communication: transnational real time trade exchanges.</p>
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<h2><em>WhatsApp</em> and Trading</h2>
<p>Especially in the year’s post 2010, the mass markets of video games in Delhi were in a strange predicament. The heyday of these markets as the sole channels of distribution and acquisition of video games was over. Increasingly, these markets that sold paraphernalia of gaming devices were challenged by the onslaught of online gaming market and gaming franchises in Delhi. In such a situation, many of the traders were trying to find alternative ways to boost up their sales. One of the ways in which these markets were trying to sustain themselves in the face of immense competition was to find niche market of electronic products. The traders in Lajpat Rai Market and Palika Bazaar extended their trading links to China in an effort to get diverse as well as cheap electronic products. The Chinese lower end markets particularly in the Guangdong province became an important supply node of different qualities of video games to the mass markets in Delhi. For each PlayStation Portables in Lajpat Rai Market and Palika Bazaar, there were a number of cheap varieties of ‘Made in China’ handheld games.</p>
<p>All the multiple links with the Chinese lower-end economy that sustained the day-to-day functioning of the Delhi markets depended on continuous communication between the Indian and Chinese traders. This was where <em>WhatsApp</em> took control of the trading scene. Traders used it regularly to communicate with the Chinese traders. In the absence of face-to-face interaction, <em>WhatsApp</em> messages were the only way to initiate business transactions with the Chinese traders. The lack of face-to-face interaction presupposed that trading details were resolved on <em>WhatsApp</em>. There were a large number of to and fro exchanges of messages. As the traders felt comfortable showing me glimpses of their <em>WhatsApp</em> messages, I saw that on a single day hundreds of messages were exchanged even before the real transaction of placing an order and payment details were discussed. Many of the messages were exchanges of images of different varieties of a game that the Indian traders might be interested in. Image after image arrived of video games with their prospective prices. Most of these exchanges were in English. However, at times there were also messages in Cantonese that the traders translated online.</p>
<p><em>WhatsApp</em> therefore, developed as a space where the traders got past their geographical and linguistic gap to successfully communicate and complete business transactions. <em>WhatsApp</em> facilitated messages enabled the markets to get new innovative products into the local market as well as track the complete transaction process.</p>
<p>For individual traders, <em>WhatsApp</em> was the lifeline of their present trade networks. Before the arrival of ‘instant messaging app for smartphone’, most of the links that the traders had with the transnational markets were through individual importers that travelled to Hong Kong, Bangkok and other places in Asia to get games manufactured in Japan and the West. During those days, a trader had to depend on the importers to bring him exclusive products that could be profitable in the local markets. The traders pointed out that the problem with this arrangement was that traders were almost entirely dependent on the importer not only to smuggle new products into the country but also for information. Often the traders knew of new products only with the information they acquired from the importers.</p>
<p>Things changed drastically with the advent of instant messaging especially <em>WhatsApp</em>. Now the traders were only a message away from connecting to their collaborators in China. An individual trader had the possibility to bring new innovative products without relying on others for information and trade negotiations. This increased the possibility for him to have a period of privileged profit before the product got widely popularised in the market. The constant exchanges of samples of video games and accessories were a step towards that. Often the traders kept up with continuous communication with the Chinese traders, as they did not want to miss an opportunity to be the first one to track the next big trend in the market. If the traders felt that they had picked up a product that had the potential of becoming a popular product, they were not hesitant to place huge orders. The traders said that they trusted the work ethics of the Chinese people. However, what also helped the traders to appreciate the Chinese work ethics was their constant tracking of transaction on <em>Whatsapp</em>. Bharat, a trader in Lajpat Rai Market had placed a large order for adaptors of gaming consoles in July 2013. Once when I was visiting his shop, he was messaging with a trader in China to sort out the delay that was occurring in the delivery process. Bharat said to me still texting on <em>WhatsApp</em>, ‘I don’t worry about the Chinese; they are very sincere and trustworthy’.</p>
<p><em>WhatsApp</em> is synonymous with transnational trading alliances in the lower-end markets in Delhi. It has seamlessly merged into the trading environment to the extent that the traders do not consciously reflect on the role it plays in pushing their individual trade forward. It seemed traders lived two parallel lives: one with the local market goers in Delhi and another with the Chinese traders on their smart phones. The individual trader-to-trader exchanges between two countries are unprecedented in history. And with time, the trade networks are becoming denser and wider.</p>
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<p><em>The post is published under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" target="_blank">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International</a> license, and copyright is retained by the author.</em></p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_whatsapp-and-transnational-lower-end-trading-networks'>https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_whatsapp-and-transnational-lower-end-trading-networks</a>
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No publisherMaitrayee DekaSocial MediaResearchers at WorkRAW Blog2015-09-13T10:44:15ZBlog EntryWhatsApp and the Creation of a Transnational Sociality
https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_whatsapp-and-the-creation-of-a-transnational-sociality
<b>This post by Maitrayee Deka is part of the 'Studying Internets in India' series. Maitrayee is a postdoctoral research fellow with the EU FP7 project, P2P value in the Department of Sociology, University of Milan, Italy. Her broader research interests are New Media, Economic Sociology and Gender and Sexuality. This is the second of Maitrayee's two posts on WhatsApp and networks of commerce and sociality among lower-end traders in Delhi. </b>
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<p>The beginnings of <em>WhatsApp</em> messages in Lajpat Rai Market and Palika Bazaar with lower-end traders in China were mostly trade related. However, with time, the messages were not just confined to the domain of products and prices. The traders in India started sharing personal messages and images with their counterparts in China. Some of the social exchanges could be interpreted within the gambit of the economy. In other words, these social exchanges in the form of photographs of anime and food developed trust and familiarity that further led to the strengthening of trade ties. However, other social exchanges on <em>WhatsApp</em> could be related to a more personal space whereby traders were binding themselves with Chinese traders in romantic relationships. In 2012 and 2013, the transnational sociality through <em>WhatsApp</em> was at its embryonic stage and showed signs of becoming much more layered in the future.</p>
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<h2>Friendship and Trust</h2>
<p>The traders in Lajpat Rai Market and Palika Bazaar elaborated on how the electronic shops in China were usually managed by polite and pretty women. Women managing the business transactions in China made the Indian traders come in touch with them via <em>WhatsApp</em>. One day at Rakesh’s shop at Palika Bazaar, he was browsing through his <em>WhatsApp</em> messages. He invited me to see some of the messages that he thought were interesting. As I went closer to the screen, I saw images of food, a bowl of soup and salad. Rakesh told me how he had become friends with this particular trader. She was a married woman and had a shop that sold accessories of games in China. Rakesh said over time that they had developed a special relationship. He regarded her as a warm person. He was familiar with her domestic life, her children and how old they were. Their interactions were governed by the exchange of information on everyday activities going on in their lives.</p>
<p>I observed that the trading exchanges were mitigated by various social and personal messages. It appeared that the personal messages were a way to maintain continuity of ties, business and otherwise. Whereas the traders between the two countries might not be doing business with the same set of people everyday, an image of a teddy bear and food acted as an assurance of a lasting relationship. It indicated that even though trade between two persons was temporarily suspended, they were going to revive it in the near future. The exchange of personal messages in between trade activities developed trust and mutual respect. In a physical market place, traders developed special relationship with different people, for instance, with the customers who came to the same shop regularly. These relationships were born out of investment of time and energy on part of the both parties, the traders as well as the customers. In both Palika Bazaar and Lajpat Rai Market, often a trader had a customer who had been visiting his shops since he was a child. The trader knew what his customer did for a living as an adult, how many members his family had and their whereabouts. The same case was true for a customer. He quickly noticed what were the changes that had been made to the physical layout of the shop. The long-term ties were advantageous to both the parties. Usually the customer got a good discount for a product and he also knew that in case of a defect he could easily ask for a replacement. For the trader, a customer was a constant source of income, as he knew that the customer would not choose another trader over him. Rarely, a permanent customer approached another trader in the market.</p>
<p>In the absence of physical proximity between the Chinese and Indian traders, there were few occasions in which the ties of trust based on familiarity could be developed. Simple exchange of trade messages did not build social solidarity. In order for the traders to substitute the strength of physical proximity and face-to-face interaction online, the cute anime were seen to intervene. The exchange of photographs and cartoons indicated that individual traders invested in each other and developed a circle of familiar objects and symbols that generated trust.</p>
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<h2><em>WhatsApp</em> and Movement</h2>
<p><em>Bubo is a fascinating figure in Palika Bazaar. In Govind’s shop, several people had different things to say about Bubo. Some claimed that he was a genius; other told me he was a techno nerd. Some even thought of him as an eccentric person who lacked social skills and etiquettes. Everyone however, unanimously agreed that I should not miss an opportunity to talk to him. Bubo handled the online sales of video games for Govind’s shop. He was responsible for putting up new/ second hand video games and accessories on diverse e-commerce sites in India such as OLX and Flipkart. He had a rented apartment in Pitampura area in New Delhi. Bubo and his brother usually spend days in their apartment in front of their computer screens. The traders in Govind’s shop were of the opinion that Bubo was more comfortable being online than meet people physically. This proved to be true. I on different occasions tried to talk to Bubo. I called him on his phone and he evaded the prospect of meeting me face to face. In the end, I gave up on him, as I did not know how to convince him to have a chat with me. While I personally never met Bubo, I collected information about him from different sources. As the traders at Govind’s shop found him peculiar, they had many things to say about him. They were all impressed by the fact that Bubo self taught himself to be a hacker and got past through many of the website requirements. The online trading networks entailed certain rules. For instance, with relation to the matters of quality of goods, many of the online marketing websites such as Flipkart in India wanted the trader to put up guaranteed products. According to the traders, Bubo was able to find solution to get past the different barriers put up by the big companies. Bubo with his hacking skills was an assent to Govind’s shop. Therefore, it was not surprising to see that throughout the course of my fieldwork, his name kept reappearing. In January 2015, when I went to Govind’s shop, the mythical figure of Bubo came up again. This time I saw his face for the first time on </em>WhatsApp<em> through Govind’s iPhone 5. I learnt that Bubo was in China. He had a new Chinese girlfriend whom he had met through online trading exchanges. As I flipped through the images on Govind’s phone, I saw Bubo dining with his girl friend, meeting her wide circle of friends and family in China.</em></p>
<p>Bubo’s story is an interesting illustration of how the lower-end trading alliances initiated by <em>WhatsApp</em> start to have a life of its own. Bubo was ambitious and wanted to make the most of the opportunities available to him. However, as Govind maintained his relocation to China could not be simply put as a business strategy. Govind recollected that Bubo held a fascination for Chinese women. His move to China therefore was both an attempt to better his economic prospects as well as an attempt at finding romantic love. Bubo was trying hard to teach himself Chinese and if everything worked in his favour, he might end up making a permanent move to China, Govind added.</p>
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<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>For many of the users of <em>WhatsApp</em> all over the world, it is difficult to imagine it as a tool for business. We are accustomed to sharing personal messages and images with friends and families living in different parts of the world. Only in recent times, we hear varied usages of <em>WhatsApp</em>: to spread xenophobic messages in closed groups, and organize events and community tasks. Even then, the impersonal usage of <em>WhatsApp</em> is marginal.</p>
<p>In early May 2015, I was part of a meeting of peer-to-peer value creation in Europe. One of the participants spoke about how a <em>Fablab</em> in Madrid was beginning to use <em>WhatsApp</em> to assign community related tasks and operations. It made me realise how the traders in Delhi were one step ahead of all of us. Already in 2013, traders were co-opting <em>WhatsApp</em> to their work sphere. At a time in which high-skilled knowledge workers in Europe are devising community platforms akin to <em>WhatsApp</em>, traders in Delhi saw the potential of it as a social and economic tool much earlier. I was amazed at the pace at which traders submerged themselves in different endeavours. The traders never had a half-hearted relationship with anything, their consumers and the search for profit. The similar merging into the environment was visible through their use of smartphones as well. The traders in Lajpat Rai Market and Palika Bazaar learnt to stay alert surviving in the margins of an urban economy. It had become their second nature to see an opportunity in everything. And this attitude meant that they pushed every situation to its limits. Flirting with laws, selling of contraband and pirated media goods showed that the traders were ready to test the limits of any situation.</p>
<p><em>WhatsApp</em> and trade related texts are an example of thinking out of the box. Even in its early days, <em>WhatsApp</em> facilitated trading links show a lot of potential. The traders from China and India have established profitable business links. Some of them have developed friendship and romantic relationships. Only time will tell to what extent and in which direction trade related ties would evolve. One could only imagine the prospect of long-term dense trading networks with China. With the official players in India and China having strong visions about where the futures of both countries should head, the experimental and out of the box thinking of many of the traders with technology per se gives hope for a more hybrid regime in Asia.</p>
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<p><em>The post is published under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" target="_blank">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International</a> license, and copyright is retained by the author.</em></p>
<p> </p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_whatsapp-and-the-creation-of-a-transnational-sociality'>https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_whatsapp-and-the-creation-of-a-transnational-sociality</a>
</p>
No publisherMaitrayee DekaSocial MediaResearchers at WorkRAW Blog2015-07-10T04:22:38ZBlog EntryMock-Calling – Ironies of Outsourcing and the Aspirations of an Individual
https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_mock-calling
<b>This post by Sreedeep is part of the 'Studying Internets in India' series. He is an independent photographer and a Fellow at the Centre for Public Affairs and Critical Theory, Shiv Nadar University, Delhi. In this essay, Sreedeep explores the anxieties and ironies of the unprecedented IT/BPO boom in India through the perspective and experiences of a new entrant in the industry, a decade ago. The narrative tries to capture some of the radical
hedonistic consequences of the IT-burst on our lifestyles, imagination and aspirations delineated and fraught with layers of conscious deception and prolonged probation.</b>
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<h2>best start (the advertisement)</h2>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/Sreedeep_MockCalling_01_Resized.jpg/image_large" alt="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_01_Resized" class="image-left" title="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_01_Resized" /><br />
<em>In the darkest hours of night, they remain awake serving some other continent across the oceans.<br />
The sparkling exterior complements the sleeplessness.</em></p>
<p>Colorful half-pagers listing job openings in dedicated sections of dailies for the ‘educated’ and ‘experienced’ have been common in post liberalized India. When the eyes cruise through the various logos and offerings of the MNCs in these over populated pages, one gets reminded of a decade when the front, back, and inside pages of newspaper supplements overflowed with job offerings in the lowest ranks of the IT. BPO vacancies which littered the folios primarily sought to lure fresh college pass-outs ‘proficient in English’. Back then, one was yet getting familiar with names such as ‘Convergys’, ‘Daksh’, ‘Global-Vantage’, ‘EXL’, ‘Vertex’. It made one wonder why they needed so many people to ‘walk-in’ week after week, and how they made thousands of ‘on the spot offers’ with ‘revised salaries’ following ‘quick and easy interviews’ and ‘fastest selection processes’. What these selected people actually did, once they got in, was another mystery altogether.</p>
<p>Some of these MNCs promising nothing short of a ‘best start’ to one’s career, that too with the ‘best starting salaries for a fresher’, often came to college campuses for recruitment. They conducted large scale interviews and generously granted immediate offer-letters to final-year students, at the end of each academic year. I happily overlooked the (fine) print, the text, design, and all the other details of these BPO ads. In fact, I never bothered to figure out what the acronym meant till such time when I was in desperate need for a gadget make-over. My age old Range-Finder camera deserved to be disposed and displaced by a Digital SLR. That was the summer of 2003...</p>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/Sreedeep_MockCalling_02_Resized.jpg/image_large" alt="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_02_Resized" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_02_Resized" /><br />
<em>The iconic ship building of Convergys – one of the first amongst the many that stood alone fifteen years ago, surrounded by far-‐away sketches of multistoried constructions and a cyber-‐hub that was yet to be born and the eight lane highway leading to Jaipur, about to be built beside it.</em></p>
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<h2>say something more about yourself (the interview)</h2>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/Sreedeep_MockCalling_03_Resized.jpg/image_large" alt="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_03_Resized" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_03_Resized" /><br />
<em>Call flow and traffic flow is fast and furious both inside and outside such centers of info-exchange and mega-data transmissions every second every day.</em></p>
<p>“You have mentioned in this form that your aim is to ‘do something different’. How would you relate that to your decision to work in a call center?” I was asked.</p>
<p>I had given more than couple of interviews, to get rejected on both occasions, and by then had realized what exactly they preferred to hear and the kind of profile that they wanted to hire. I was in no mood to miss my lunch and waste another day in the scorching heat traveling to one of these hotels where the interviews were conducted. I was tired of waiting for hours sipping cold water and looking at formally dressed men and women being dumped from one room to another – going through a series of eliminating rounds before reaching the interview stage, when they politely conveyed “…thank you very much, you may leave for now, we’ll get back to you…”, especially, to all those lacking a ‘neutral English accent'.</p>
<p>On the first occasion, I took great pleasure and interest in observing every bit of it. On the second, I was getting a hang of it. On the third, I felt like a school kid appearing for an oral examination at the mercy of the schoolmaster and was perennially requested at every step to say something (more) about oneself. But, I had no grudges. Neither the posh ambience nor the polite attitude of the employers towards hundreds of candidates walking-in everyday was comparable with the interview-scene of Ray’s ‘<em>Pratidwandi</em>’ [1]. The scene was acting out in reverse. Now they needed us (in bulk) more than we needed them. Any English-speaking dude eager to believe in the promises of the new-age-profession, even with less or ordinary qualifications, or with no desires to seek further qualifications, was in great demand, like never before.</p>
<p>On the fourth occasion, I thought that I had my answers ready.</p>
<p>“Well, your CV suggests something else. Why don’t you contemplate choosing a creative profession?”</p>
<p>The extra curricular activities’ column on my CV was getting reduced in size with each passing interview that I chose to face. Later I felt that I could have said something else instead of answering, “Madam, I am from a middle-class family, where creativity is not given much space beyond a point.”</p>
<p>I was reminded that I should use her first name instead of uttering ‘Madam’ repeatedly. “But, most of the creative minds come from the middle-class background”, she refuted.</p>
<p>“May be I don’t have much of confidence in my creative abilities.”</p>
<p>The conversation continued for quite long. I did not fall short of sentences to cover up this process of conscious deception. She was busy evaluating my English and was possibly overlooking the content of my answers while making points on a piece of paper as she kept asking questions regarding hobbies, movies, etc. I was asked to listen to men talking in American accent and was instructed to choose between options that summarized the probable conclusion of their conversation. Then I was asked me to wait outside.</p>
<p>The interview with the Senior Process Manager from Pune was supposedly the last round, I was told. A charming voice from across the table made me feel as if he had been waiting to hear from me since the time we met long ago, “So, how is life?”</p>
<p>“Great Sir”.</p>
<p>“Great? You don’t get to hear that too often. Okay, please say something about your self.”</p>
<p>There seemed to be no end to this essential inquiry about ‘the self’ at any stage! I started with my name and ended with my ambition, which was to make a career in a call center.</p>
<p>He must have found it useless to discuss the work profile with me. Truly, I had no idea about what I was supposed to do on the deck. But, I did not miss any chance to convey how keen I was to learn and deliver. This was followed by a discussion on salary, which was short, because as a fresher, I was in no position to bargain.</p>
<p>While passing the offer letter, the HR lady formally made a point to emphasize the formal dress code in the office. Looking back, I presume it was my appearance that prompted her to state the code. With the hair almost touching the shoulders, and a face not shaven for more than a month, the loose fit denims incapable of keeping the shirt tucked, I must have made a sufficient impression to instigate concern in her mind, although unknowingly. Jaswindar (the man who thought smoking bidi in the lawns of the corporate cathedral is quite cool) replied, “I don’t have any formal wear. Does the company pay any advance for buying some?”</p>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/Sreedeep_MockCalling_04_Resized.jpg/image_large" alt="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_04_Resized" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_04_Resized" /><br />
<em>Cyber Hub @ midnight – the nerve centre of several corporates.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<h2>what if they find out (the first day)</h2>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/Sreedeep_MockCalling_05_Resized.jpg/image_large" alt="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_05_Resized" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_05_Resized" /><br />
<em>Even sky is not the limit. The exchange of information and its pace defies border – political or physical.</em></p>
<p>A cold current ran through the spine of several candidates, especially the first timers, with every signature they put on the bottom left of each page of the agreement of the terms and conditions that required them to be graduates. Obviously, quite a few of them were not graduates. What if they found out that they were not? But they did not. I guess, they never cared to verify the certificates enclosed in the pink file. Nor did they care to figure out what happened to those tax-forms, provident fund forms, insurance forms signed and submitted by the 124 employees joining job on the 9th of June. Lengthy spells of instructions related to form-filling on the first day were forgotten, as most of them were happily distracted or disinterested. The crowd was busy checking out each other – the vending machine and its options, the fancy phone and its features – also enquiring or narrating previous call center experiences, the hassle in missing or getting the first pick-up for the day...</p>
<p>While these strangers were desperate to know or let the others know ‘something more about themselves’, the junior officials instructing us ‘where to tick’, ‘what to remember’, ‘how to write’, ‘when to stop’ were not in a position to exhibit how irritated they were with the tough task of managing so many recruits. Things got even worse with the daylong induction lectures on training, transport, finance, assets, ‘our motifs’ and ‘your expectations’, ‘your contribution’ and ‘our expectations’. Thankfully, there was good lunch, free internet access (quite unthinkable in those days of expensive cyber cafes) and AC cabs to follow. I fancied my relief from the heat and hostel food for the next few weeks of my paid holiday without any sense of remorse.</p>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/Sreedeep_MockCalling_06_Resized.jpg/image_large" alt="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_06_Resized" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_06_Resized" /><br />
<em>The Convergys building (now taken over by Vedanta) on a full moon night. The plush lawns used to be a breeding ground for generating dust haze. The compound is highly protected/exclusive zone. Epitome of global connectivity ensures complete disconnection with the local surroundings.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<h2>my camera vs their camera (getting trained)</h2>
<p> <img src="https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/Sreedeep_MockCalling_07_Resized.jpg/image_large" alt="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_07_Resized" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_07_Resized" /><br />
<em>The ever-expanding city with all its imposed notions of urbanity on an area essentially rural leaves no scope for the evolution of the public space. On the contrary, any space outside the strict confines of these gated nations/notions invite threats of the highest order or at least it is perceived to be so.</em></p>
<p>What if they find out? No, they didn’t.</p>
<p>For the next one and a half months, we loitered around in the mornings, nights, evenings, and graveyard shifts of the classrooms and cafés (though not in every corner as mobility was highly restricted and under severe surveillance), at times enjoying and at times sleeping through the training sessions, impatiently waiting for the salary to get transferred to the Citi Bank account which they had opened for us to be swiped-out the moment the money arrived. Their surveillant eyes were not technologically advanced enough to guess the respective reasons to take up the job casually and remain appointed before absconding. A host of young fellas kept counting the number of day remaining:</p>
<ul>
<li>While the trainer with 3 kids in 7 years (now needing one more) with a ‘do it or I’ll make you do it’ attitude reminded us that prostitution is oldest customer care service, and the role of a customer care executive is one of the most prestigious ones and definitely not deplorable just because we work at night (as do the docs and cops).</li>
<li>While listening to the trainees whose primary interests varied from stock exchange to cooking for the wife to horse breeding and extending till the ‘search for truth in Himalayas’. In a free speech session in VNA (Voice and Accent Training), fitness was synonymous with Baba Ramdev for some folks and euthanasia meant mass-killing. And what about capital-punishment? “Would have known if I attended the college debates”, someone proudly said. The trainer was kind to say “Then talk about censorship”. The girl with colored hair was quick to question, “Is that an automated cruise?”</li>
<li>While cruising through the consonants, diphthongs, vowel sounds, and imported ‘modules’, rapid ‘mock-calls’ and learning to intonate. We bit the ‘B’s, kissed the ‘W’s and by the time we rolled the ‘R’s, reached the soft ‘T’s and faded ‘P’s, I felt that the next big revolution was here. Tongue, lip, throat, teeth tried their level best to ape the ones across the Atlantic to the norms of their phonetic culture.</li>
<li>While obviously not uttering the obvious that this entire system was a consequence of service being subcontracted to places where establishment and labour costs were way more cheaper.</li></ul>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/Sreedeep_MockCalling_08_Resized.jpg/image_large" alt="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_08_Resized" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_08_Resized" /><br />
<em>Walls can guard the flow of trespassers but the walls can rarely be guarded against the practice of public urination. An employee relieves himself in the middle of a graveyard shift on his way back after a quick smoke during the miserly half an hour break.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<h2>keeping balance (the absconding case & the attrition list)</h2>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/Sreedeep_MockCalling_09_Resized.jpg/image_large" alt="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_09_Resized" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_09_Resized" /><br />
<em>The building came first as isolated blocks of self-sufficient units generating its own electricity and meeting its own needs. The infrastructure external and essential to its sustenance is still in its nascent stage.</em></p>
<p>In between the lines of the Punjabi beats in the moving cab or Pearl Jam playing on the i-pod in full volume to resist the former; before and after ‘hi bro’, ‘hey dude’, ‘yo man’, ‘yap buddy’; from weekend <em>masti</em> to an inspirational night-out, we constantly juggled with call-center jargon and silently yapped about:</p>
<ul>
<li>How to revolt against ‘IST’ (Indian Stretchable Time)</li>
<li>Why the ‘pick-up time’ hadn’t been SMSed yet</li>
<li>Why the fucking cab driver did not come fucking five fucking minutes earlier</li>
<li>How often to ‘login’ early and ‘logout’ late</li>
<li>Why the ‘systems were running slow’</li>
<li>What should be the perfect ‘call-opening’ and ‘call ending’</li>
<li>How to handle ‘high call flow’</li>
<li>How to ‘sale’ a product to the ‘disinterested customer’</li>
<li>How to ‘appease’ the dissatisfied ‘enquiring consumers’</li>
<li>How to ‘empathize’ with an ‘irate customer’</li>
<li>How to keep the ‘call control’ while making the customer feel empowered</li>
<li>How to avoid ‘escalating’ the call</li>
<li>How to make full use of the two ‘fifteen minutes breaks’ and one ‘half hour break’</li>
<li>Why not to say – “I am sorry to hear that” – to a recently divorced customer</li>
<li>Whom to give the extra food coupons</li>
<li>What to do to in order to know when your calls are being monitored</li>
<li>How to reduce the ‘AHT’ (Average Handling Time)</li>
<li>How to increase the ‘C.Sac’ (Customer Satisfaction) scores</li>
<li>Why not to take two ‘consecutive weekend-offs’</li>
<li>What to write in the ‘feed-back forms’</li>
<li>Which friend should be referred to get compensated for the ‘referral’ before leaving the job</li>
<li>What else could be done to maximize ‘P4P’ (Pay for Performance)</li></ul>
<p>Soon after swiping the card and clearing the balance, many of us became what they called, ‘an absconding case’ and added our names to the ‘attrition list’. The ‘cost-effective-labour’ (not ‘cheap labor’), stopped coming to office just before ‘hitting the (production) floor’ without bothering to formally say a bye, and without multiplying the hundreds of dollars that their clients had invested in our training and maintenance. Some of us had to get back to our colleges, which had re-opened. The others either complained about the team-leader or the work pressure till the time they got a call from some other call-center across the road offering a slight increment, but the same work. Others changed jobs as they habitually did twice or thrice a year to acquire a new ambience and acquaintances only to get bored yet again. One chap was smart enough to hold two offices simultaneously. The rest either perished without a trace or sat on the same chair hoping to climb the ‘vertical ladder’ by pleasing the bosses and putting more working hours while executing the ‘communicative tools’ and ‘navigation skills’ that they remembered from the training days. They were the ones the industry hoped to retain. They were also the ones too particular about their performance. Habitual consumption and consistent conflicts between the personal mornings/mourning and the professional nights took a consistent toll.</p>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/Sreedeep_MockCalling_10_Resized.jpg/image_large" alt="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_10_Resized" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_10_Resized" /><br />
<em>The city sleeps. Metros come to halt. Signs of human existence disappear. But thousands of people continue with the calls in each floor of these buildings answering queries and collecting unpaid amounts catering to a different time zone altogether.</em></p>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/Sreedeep_MockCalling_11_Resized.jpg/image_large" alt="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_11_Resized" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_11_Resized" /><br />
<em>Different floors and different corners of the same floor cater to different clients across the globe.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<h2>after-call wrap-up (remains of the flirtatious feed-back)</h2>
<p>I-cards hung like nameplates around the neck all the time along with codes that were generated from the distant land. Punching these plastic cards ensured automated entry, strictly confined to those floors where we had some business. Forgetting to carry them required prolonged human intervention to convince the security that we did deserve to get in. Losing it lead to penalty. Hiding/absconding beneath one of the many call center note-pads I found the Separation Clause 4b: “upon separation from the company, you will be required to immediately return to the company, all assets and property including documents, files, book, papers and memos in your possession.”</p>
<p>The termination clause 6.b.i. of one of the appointment letters stated - “During the probation period you are liable to be discharged from the company’s service at any time without any notice and without assigning any reason”. But I guess the employees left the company more often without any notice or assigning any reasons. The company, most often, had no answers for this unwanted discharge to its owners across the oceans. IT abroad/onboard was not advanced enough to predict/prevent people who made the industry look like a make-shift arrangement; a probation that would rarely lead to permanence.</p>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/Sreedeep_MockCalling_12_Resized.jpg/image_large" alt="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_12_Resized" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_12_Resized" /><br />
<em>A common sight of fleet of cabs (a service which is outsourced to external vendors) outside the building waiting for scheduled drops and pick-ups.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<h2>is there anything else that I can do to help you/me</h2>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/Sreedeep_MockCalling_13_Resized.jpg/image_large" alt="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_13_Resized" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_13_Resized" /><br />
<em>As the piling debris suggest infrastructural work perennially in progress.</em></p>
<p>Between the cafeteria cleaned once every hour and the adjacent murky road side dhaba; between the latest cars in the parking lot and the rickshaws waiting for those who couldn’t yet afford to pay the car-installment; between the fiber-glass windows and the jhopris (visible once the curtains were lifted) – new heights were achieved and new targets were set that were globally connected, locally disconnected.</p>
<p>In a site, which is otherwise devoid of consistent water supply, electricity and public transport (running it servers on generators 24X7), the vertical-limits of the translucent fiber glass and false roofs prepare the suburbs. The soothing cubicles confirm to the global standards of ‘how a city ought to look’ from a distance.</p>
<p>Just like the enormous demands of the IT industry, which has created its support sectors (catering, security, transport, house-keeping etc) to stray around the BPOs trying to extract their share of profit, I moved around its orbit as well for some time. Why and how there is a bit of BPO in most my creative endeavors and in the purchase of digital devices between 2003-2008 doesn’t require any further explanation.</p>
<p>I got better and better with my mock-calls.</p>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/Sreedeep_MockCalling_14_Resized.jpg/image_large" alt="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_14_Resized" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Sreedeep_Mock-Calling_14_Resized" /><br />
<em>Surrounded by the debris of development and standing tall with its emphatic presence, such an imposing architecture seems like a myth that constantly challenges the harsh realities that envelop it. The pillared peak is so representative of its desire to remain connected with the ‘distant-impossible’ 24x7.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Endnote</h2>
<p>[1] The protagonist in the film violently revolted against the lack of basic amenities in the interview-space and against the idea of calling so many people for just a couple of vacancies, when people were expected to be selected not on the basis of merit, anyway.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>The post, including the text and the photographs, is published under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" target="_blank">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International</a> license, and copyright is retained by the author.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_mock-calling'>https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_mock-calling</a>
</p>
No publisherSreedeepSpaces of DigitalDigital LabourResearchers at WorkRAW Blog2015-08-06T05:00:33ZBlog Entry'Originality,' 'Authenticity,' and 'Experimentation': Understanding Tagore’s Music on YouTube
https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_understanding-tagores-music-on-youtube
<b>This post by Ipsita Sengupta is part of the 'Studying Internets in India' series. In this essay, she explores the responses to various renditions of songs composed by Rabindranath Tagore available on YouTube and the questions they raise regarding online listening cultures and ideas of authorship of music. </b>
<p> </p>
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p>On typing “Rabindra Sangeet” on YouTube, one finds videos of the concerned Bengali songs in diverse visual and aural compositions. Just like for every other type of video that is put up on the site, as interesting as the videos may be, is the feedback they receive.</p>
<p>At the centre of this essay are such videos found on the social media platform YouTube, ones that play Rabindra Sangeet. Literally, “Songs of Rabindra(nath)”, this is a term used to identify poetic and musical pieces penned and composed in the late 19th- early 20th centuries by the Bengali writer and artist Rabindranath Tagore. The body of work has today become a genre among Indian music.</p>
<p>User-generated expression of YouTube makes it a medium with simultaneous individual and group dynamics. Apart from feedback as quantitative data through “Views”, “Likes” and “Dislikes”, the opinions of many users can be found in the “Comments” section.</p>
<p>Visuals of YouTube song videos of Rabindra Sangeet are diverse. So are renditions, with solitary or duet or band performances, and with varying rhythm and instrumental accompaniment. The set of comments below each video sometimes take the form of a conversation. Between applause and criticism, the latter is of special interest here.</p>
<p>Content of specific kinds seem to face disapproval: visual montages and stills from contemporary cinema, like images of urban youth, romance, longing. Some have shots of band performers and some, album cover images. Some of these renditions can be categorized as remixes because of their fast pace, bouncy vocals and electronic melody. The comments in question reflect and reveal hurt sentiments of people trying to preserve some kind of sanctity and authenticity of Rabindra Sangeet.</p>
<p>They state in different ways that the ethics of presenting the genre have been violated, via their notation and design; either by either makers of the film in the song’s incorporation, or by the way young pop stars have been placed in particular montages.</p>
<p>Here are some comments below to illustrate what audiences find wrong. The video is embedded below, followed by the comments posted on the video page.</p>
<p><iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/cjRLkITYhqk?rel=0" frameborder="0" height="360" width="640"></iframe></p>
<p> </p>
<ul>
<li>What a rubbish song! Just remember please that Rabindra sangeet is not for Band musicians ! Please do not distort Rabindra sangeet. Only idiots will try to do so. Shame on you lot !
</li><li>Unfortunately these band party can never be anything like that great man....hence they should stop making fun of his creation....</li>
<li>This song is from Shyama and I think that the innocent beauty of a young boy falling in love with a court dancer. The arrangement does not suit the lyrics.</li></ul>
<p> </p>
<p><iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/lSgEsoGGZjQ?rel=0" frameborder="0" height="360" width="480"></iframe></p>
<p> </p>
<ul>
<li>Who has sung this? Started well, but after a while it changed the melody on its own. Only Bengalis are so indecent to change the work of the composer while performing. But otherwise, the voice is promising.</li></ul>
<p> </p>
<p><iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/oCmdFo3felo?rel=0" frameborder="0" height="360" width="480"></iframe></p>
<p> </p>
<ul>
<li>Robindra shongoter ijjot nosto kore dise... super dislike... (“They have destroyed the dignity of Rabindra Sangeet... super dislike...”)</li>
<li>Henshit! rock does not suit to melody and classics. Don't fusion "Sangeet"/ folk/patriotic songs.</li></ul>
<p> </p>
<p><iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/VGM-T5cME-4?rel=0" frameborder="0" height="360" width="480"></iframe></p>
<p> </p>
<ul>
<li>Rabindra sangeet is usually better off with minimum instrumental accompaniment. That is why the Kishore Kumar version is more appealing. And the maestro Hemanta Mukherji used only a harmonium and tabla for most of his superb renditions.</li>
<li>Simply bogus. In Bengali... Shreya r nyaka voice just intolerable (“Shreya's coquettish voice just intolerable”).</li></ul>
<p> </p>
<p><iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/yer7wAJdHSA?rel=0" frameborder="0" height="360" width="480"></iframe></p>
<p> </p>
<ul>
<li>some confused experiments with a song rendered by many exponents. This singer in his misguided modernism mostly misses the target.</li>
<li>bhalo lagche na shunte...Rabindra Nath er gaan er opor please bekar improvisation ta korben na...onar opor churi kachi ta nai ba chalalen... (“I am not enjoying listening to this... please do not do useless improvisations on Rabindranath's songs... do not use knives and scissors on him...)</li>
<li>… Tomra please originality maintain kore experiment koro … (...Could you please maintain originality while experimenting...)</li></ul>
<p> </p>
<p><iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/WfHX5y-xI2w?rel=0" frameborder="0" height="360" width="480"></iframe></p>
<p> </p>
<ul>
<li>...Go listen to the original tagore score and then come here with some innovative posts, k?</li>
<li>Absolutely bogus. Very badly sung. Who the hell is the singer? It has Jhankar beats too!!! Who the hell is the music director? Shame that people of such low taste and caliber are directing Bengali movies nowadays. Maobadi der diye petano uchit eder (“They should be beaten up by the Maoists)!!!!!</li></ul>
<p> </p>
<p><iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/-ywjZshLBrI?rel=0" frameborder="0" height="480" width="640"></iframe></p>
<p> </p>
<ul>
<li>THere should be a self imposing limit of Screwing rabindra sangeet.</li>
<li>F...king Indian Hindi speaking bas....ds</li></ul>
<p> </p>
<p>This is not to say that these voices reign supreme. The listeners who enjoy the works leave great appreciation and also debate with the naysayers. But here I am taking into account the criticism that the videos receive. They have turned out to be more descriptive than the appreciation, and because of this they open up a lot of questions. We observe them in the light of both the medium as well as some understanding of the artistic ideals Tagore aspired to in his lifetime. The complete list of URLs of videos with their comments is given in the bibliography.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>The Poetic/Musical Works of Tagore and Technologies of Access</h2>
<p>Tagore was born in 1858 in a wealthy landowning household in Bengal. In his growing up years, the household Jorasanko was a space where Western and Indian lifestyles and artistic developments coexisted. Besides his own training in musical performance, and education and cultural exposure abroad, he also grew up amidst the rich musical, literary and theatrical talent of his family members.</p>
<p>Tagore was impressed and inspired by all kinds of artists and musical styles, and traces of these are found in his compositions and lyrics- whether folk, the ritualistic <em>Kirtan</em>, the mystic <em>Bauls</em> of rural Bengal, or even songs native to the West. For example the Scottish song ‘Auld Lang Syne’ influenced ‘purano shei diner kotha’ and ‘Ye banks and braes’ inspired ‘phule phule dhole dhole’ (Som, 2009).</p>
<p>From a young age itself, the poet was uncomfortable with strict boundaries and rules, one of them being the tight-rope walk over <em>Raaga</em>-based notations and rhythm structures of Indian classical music. He did believe in the power of <em>Raagas</em> to evoke the emotion they were said to be designed for, and while placing his poetry in musical compositions, he based his tunes on <em>Raagas</em> depending on the mood of his verse. However, he would combine melodic characteristics of established <em>Raagas</em> very often- a common practice with artists resulting in “mishra”, or mixed <em>Raagas</em>. He even combined rhythms or <em>Taala</em>s, and designed new ones for his songs. He found the classical genre embellishments of <em>Taan</em> and <em>Aalaap</em> unnecessary and left them out. “He declared his songs to be his unabashed expression of modernity because in them he could escape adhering to any expected literary standard” (Som, 2009).</p>
<p>Tagore lived in an era when Indian classical music was being written down with notations which were intelligible to Western audiences. Though he put on paper notations for his own songs, it so happened sometimes that when he was asked to sing in a public gathering, he could not remember the exact composition he’d first created. He would improvise immediately and complete the performance successfully.
There were also times when his students or family members would sing their own interpretation of his tunes. Though his contemplation on it was based on a personal judgment of how well they adapted what he'd taught and how talented they were, he realised that the other singer was “not a gramophone” and he’d have to “grant that artistic independence” (Som, 2009).</p>
<p>“The art with which he matched melody with each nuanced lyric or combined ragas and improvised novel musical expressions, made each song a gem to be discovered anew everytime it is sung” (ibid, 2009). We may admit this but through this thought we may also understand that every live vocal rendition is intangible, however much we stick to notations.</p>
<p>In the electronic age, however much we record a rendition on devices, it is stored as data taking up space. Data is a common form that text, visuals, and audio all take. Though some recordings of Tagore's voice can be found online, they are digital versions that have been converted from the analog. Besides the technical transition, today's listener is also accessing it through a device and not listening to him performing. Two dynamics could happen here: either his performances are immortalised by the technology which has collected the sound of his voice in the exact way he has performed them and audiences will form an idea of “authentic” or “original”. And the other is that the audience will understand that in his time, when his voice was recorded, effects like electronic disco beats had not been invented.</p>
<p>That way, the performances of Tagore's verses that we are witnessing on YouTube today are the tangible notations combining with fresh new thought processes and constantly changing music performance styles, and manifesting on a contemporary media space. It is beyond just a copy, as we will see later, and to put it in Tagore's own words, it is “not a gramophone”.</p>
<p>Perhaps the accompanying instruments that were recommended for the verses have been replaced in a particular video with other and/or newer sources of musical sound- like digital sound. And the visuals in the video were probably not what the author was familiar with in his lifetime- body language of human actors, their clothes, the cityscape, and the like. In the film clips and non-cinematic material of Rabindra Sangeet videos, contemporary visuals include digital copies of photographs of Tagore and his contemporaries that help us make sense of his era.</p>
<p>“Adapting Chion’s theorisation of Dolby sound, the aesthetics of the remix may be thought of not as a consequence of technical changes but rather as the way in which technology combines with different musics to create the remix” (Duggal, 2010). It's not that new technology like electronic beats happens to an old composition when time passes and corrupts it like fungus or dust, it is that one one applies new aesthetics to an older text to innovate.</p>
<p>Describing the prime place of music in the hierarchy of sound in the cultural history of the West, Kahn discussed the phobia of sound that was not “significant” (Kahn, 2003). For a long time, sounds that reproduced the world for us- such as ambient sounds or noise- and which came via machines instead of established musical instruments were not considered valid within music. His stand in this context was that “it would make more sense to experience artistic works in their own right, not how they might conform to gross categorical distinctions”.</p>
<p>Given the artistic spontaneity which Tagore believed in, and the changing technology, what do we mean when we say that Rabindra Sangeet is being “distorted”, or its dignity (“ijjot”) or “innocence” threatened? What is the misunderstood modern? What is this “original” missing from “experimentation”? Especially when the composer himself is not witness to the forms his songs are taking today, what is this imagination of the ideal performance that leads to the judgment that another type of performance is not acceptable?</p>
<p>Perhaps at this point we can also shine a tiny light on Tagore's beliefs in other spheres. “Nationalism” is a compilation of a series of lectures given around the world, which Tagore gave in the 1916-‘17. In the introduction to this compilation, Guha illustrates Tagore’s realisation that mindless boycotting of everything that the West introduced in India in the name of Swadeshi (which he used to support) was to throw out the baby with the bath water. Quoting a letter Tagore wrote to a friend in 1908, he writes, “ ‘I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live” ’ (Guha, 2009).</p>
<p>Soon after delivering these lectures in US and Japan, the Visva Bharati University was founded in December 1918. Tagore envisioned “a synthesis of the East and the West through a healthy intellectual and cultural interaction” (Som, 2009). Ironically, Visva Bharati, for over six decades after his death, held a copyright on Tagore’s work and assumed exclusive right of approval over song recordings of how notations were to be followed.</p>
<p>Surely it is not only due to a lack of understanding of Tagore's ideals that some renditions are marked as <em>wrong</em>? Many who don't appreciate the new versions may actually be well aware of his life story or beliefs. At various instances, the beats, the voice, the performers are targeted. Can we put a finger on the problem? Does it have something to do with the means of interaction of the medium? What is this search for the authentic or the correct? Is there a xenophobia of generational shifts in lifestyle - the opposition to a lifestyle because that is the “other” of a fantasy of tradition, it is not “high culture”? Because internet access transcends boundaries of class, education, and generation?</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Mechanical Reproduction and Digital Media</h2>
<p>In the early 20th century, when Tagore was writing his songs, in another part of the world political thinker Benjamin wrote in his timeless essay that when a work of art is mechanically reproduced, when there are only copies and the “original” in a particular place and space in history loses significance, its distribution boosts its “exhibition value” (Benjamin, 1936). “The work of art becomes a creation with entirely new functions, among which the one we are conscious of, the artistic function, later may be recognized as incidental.” The “social significance” (ibid.) of an art work increases with multiple reproductions of it reaching the masses because the ritual value of it goes down, and it becomes open to as much criticism as enjoyment or reverence.</p>
<p>On social media spaces this democracy is visible on the same page- such as the “Comments” discussion. The “aura” (ibid.) of the “original” Tagore cannot exist in the flux of digital reproductions and uploads of individual creations- how valid then is the fight over it? Or is it in fact a fear of losing in this flux a memory of something revered? Does that imagined revered have something to do with defining and maintaining a community identity in this passageway of a multitude of identities that is the internet?</p>
<p>One of the integral features of a social media space is the option of “sharing” the content, i.e., individuals transmit it further to other users. While YouTube’s Likes and Comments give the content a boost and analytics from YouTube automatically circulate this more “popular” content, individual users have a major role in the circulation of online content.</p>
<p>Besides directly sharing, they can take either the audio or visual aspects of a video piece, restructure or redesign the piece, creating as a result an all new video and circulating that. Through “appropriation and reproduction”, “the web in general, and the web video in particular intensify the culture of the copy, for it provides its users free access to an immense database of ready-to-use information” (Vanderbeeken, 2011).</p>
<p>Someone may download from elsewhere an audio composition used earlier in a video of “concentration music”, attach it to different visuals, and upload it back on YouTube under “relaxation music”. After all, as studies have found, the response to one’s online content through mechanisms such as “likes” give the author a sense of gratification and encourages him/her to keep checking notifications every few minutes- on various social media platforms.</p>
<p>In such a situation, “the original creator suddenly occupies the position of yet another spectator. Within this process, the role of transmitters is so important that they assume a vague position of authority over the works” (Menotti, 2011). Through its one on one connection with the spectator, each individual video exists as an independent entity subject to active, on the spot feedback as well as manipulation by every individual who watches it. And of course, circulation is in the hands of each viewer resulting in content originating as altogether new information.</p>
<p>At this juncture I would like to make an intervention using a formulation by Frith, about the fluid, transitional nature of identity. “It is in deciding- playing and hearing what sounds right- that we both express ourselves, our own sense of rightness, and suborn ourselves, lose ourselves, in an act of participation” (Frith, 1996).</p>
<p>Let us take for example, another type of video found on YouTube. Instrumental pieces of music with descriptions such as “music for concentration”, “study music”, and even “brain music”. If we break down the description along these lines, we have firstly, tunes of any kind and varying pace on string and wind instruments. Then colourful visuals of mostly natural landscapes, the human body, or graphical representations of the “mind”. The written word accompanies the frame, and each aspect combines to add meaning to the other two.</p>
<p>Just because the label says that the music will enhance concentration, does it always have that effect? Our everyday experiences with the audio-visual would have surely shown us that the design of a composition- both musical and cinematic- does not necessarily make everyone feel the same way. Moreover, the credibility of video descriptions is always subject to doubt, as discussed above.</p>
<p>We see thus that in case of online media, it holds true all the more that one acquires or asserts an identity in playing/listening to a performance of some sort of music and adding opinions below, as much as the performance or presentation itself. We can actually trace this to a perspective that a remixed video is a form of feedback too- to an earlier understanding of Rabindra-Sangeet by the maker who thought that the genre could be expressed this way as well. “The intrinsic relationship of ‘original’ to ‘imitation’ is weakened” (Vanderbeeken, 2011), and this is where digital media picks up from where analog technology left off.</p>
<p>In such an interaction, between human beings exchanging data with equal authorship over it, could YouTube be playing a role in the “production of the rhetoric of the classical and canonical” (Duggal, 2010) around a historical figure from eastern India, where some audio-visual images are acceptable to his definition and others not?</p>
<p>An older and a newer understanding of the same cultural object co-exist on one space such as the standardised video frames of YouTube. Alongside Tagore's voice are those of Kishore Kumar, Hemant Kumar, Jayati Chakraborty, Shreya Ghoshal, and many others. A sense of the “original” exists beyond Tagore's voice because everybody has not sung it fast- if its rules were to go slow. And if somebody wants to give a tribute to Rabindra Sangeet by pepping it up, he/she obviously must not have meant to “ruin” it.</p>
<p>Is it the anonymity of the Comments space which makes the discussions the way they are? Because one cannot see the person who has uploaded it and is confident that what they were taught was the only truth- the uploader/ content creator probably comes across as an imposter.</p>
<p>But maybe this search for the “correct” rendition is a search for political correctness in a world densely connected through information technology, where one's identity through a databank of online searches does not belong just to oneself but to corporations and advertisers too. Could there also be people who believe that the very act of having Rabindra Sangeet online is a mismatch of the authentic Tagore experience- because the internet is not from his time or geographical location?</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>As described earlier, when Tagore composed his music largely based on the notational arrangements prescribed by <em>Raagas</em>, he removed what he determined were complications of the indigenous classical music system. What he retained were what he comprehended as the moods evoked by particular <em>Raagas</em>, and engineered several songs on selected rules of different <em>Raagas</em>. In the process, he created a genre which those who were not fortunate enough to get formal training in the classical grammar of music could sing and engage in.</p>
<p>From the point of view of pure classical renditions being “high art”, Rabindra Sangeet thus could not fit into that umbrella. But it was popular and regarded because it spoke to the people, as a result of which it is still given a special place in collective memory after 100 years. Thus we see that “in terms of aesthetic process there is no real difference between high and low music” (Frith, 1996).</p>
<p>Social media exposes today that musical spontaneity has constraints in the collective memory of forms. Proving at the same time that music truly cannot be contained- since it has such diverse imaginations of the “real” at a time when the author is not alive any more. Tagore was “comfortable in the knowledge that his songs were like wild flowers” (Som, 2009), drawing from natural landscapes and human emotions. Is YouTube telling us that in this century, some consumers of his music might be narrowing down definitions of “significant sound” to identity politics around a literary figure and his homeland? Or simply trying to hold on to something familiar in an ever changing zone, resisting- perhaps unconsciously- an attempt by others to reinterpret it through their reality or sense of beauty?</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Bibliography</h2>
<p>Benjamin, Walter. 1936. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Trans. Harry Zohn. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Schocken/Random House, 2005. <a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm" target="_blank">https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm</a></p>
<p>Duggal, Vebhuti. The Hindi Film Song Remix: Memory, History, Affect. Diss. Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2010.</p>
<p>Frith, Simon. “Music and Identity”. Questions of Cultural Identity. Eds. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay. Sage Publications, 1996.</p>
<p>Guha, Ramachandra. Introduction. Nationalism. Rabindranath Tagore. Penguin Books, 2009.</p>
<p>Kahn, Douglas. “The Sound of Music”. The Auditory Culture Reader. Eds. Michael Bull and Les Black. Berg Publishers, 2003.</p>
<p>Menotti, Gabriel. “Objets Propages: The Internet Video as an Audiovisual Format”. Video Vortex Reader II: Moving Images Beyond YouTube. Eds. Geert Lovink and Rachel Somers Miles. INC Reader #6, 2011.</p>
<p>Som, Reba. Rabindranath Tagore: The Singer and his Song. Penguin Books India, 2009.</p>
<p>Tagore, Rabindranath. Nationalism. Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1918.</p>
<p>Vanderbeeken, Robrecht. “Web Video and the Screen as a Mediator and Generator of Reality”. Video Vortex Reader II: Moving Images Beyond YouTube. Eds. Geert Lovink and Rachel Somers Miles. INC Reader #6, 2011.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>The post is published under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International</a> license, and copyright is retained by the author.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_understanding-tagores-music-on-youtube'>https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_understanding-tagores-music-on-youtube</a>
</p>
No publisherIpsita SenguptaDigital MediaResearchers at WorkRAW Blog2016-07-07T02:18:12ZBlog EntryStudying the Emerging Database State in India: Notes for Critical Data Studies (Accepted Abstract)
https://cis-india.org/raw/studying-the-emerging-database-state-in-india-accepted-abstract
<b>"Critical Data Studies (CDS) is a growing field of research that focuses on the unique theoretical, ethical, and epistemological challenges posed by 'Big Data.' Rather than treat Big Data as a scientifically empirical, and therefore largely neutral phenomena, CDS advocates the view that data should be seen as always-already constituted within wider data assemblages." The Big Data and Society journal has provisionally accepted a paper abstract of mine for its upcoming special issue on Critical Data Studies.</b>
<p> </p>
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p>Through the last decade, the Government of India has given shape to an digital identification infrastructure, developed and operated by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). The infrastructure combines the task of assigning unique identification numbers, called Aadhaar numbers, to individuals submitting their biometric and demographic details, and the task of authenticating their identity when provided with an Aadhaar number and associated data (biometric data, One Time Pin sent to the pre-declared mobile number, etc.). The aim of UIDAI is to provide universal authentication-as-a-service for all residents of India who approach any public or private agencies for any kind of service or transaction. Simultaneously, the Aadhaar numbers will function as unique identifiers for joining up databases of different government agencies, and hence allow the Indian government to undertake big data analytics at a governmental scale, and not only at a departmental one.</p>
<p>In this paper, I am primarily motivated by the challenge of finding points and objects to enter into a critical study of such an in-progress data infrastructure. As I proceed with an understanding that data is produced within its specific social and material context, the question then is to read through the data to reflect on its possible social and material context. This is complicated when approaching a big data infrastructure that is meant to produce data for explicitly intra-governmental consumption and circulation. The problem then is not one of reading through available big data, but one of reading through the assemblage and imaginaries of big data to reflect on the kind of data it will give rise to, and thus on the politics of the data assemblage and the database state it enables.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Logic of the Database State</h2>
<p>Application of data to inform governmental acts have taken place at least since government has been understood as responsible for the welfare of the population and the territory. The measurement of the population and the territory – the number of people, their demographic features, amounts and locations of natural resources, and so on – have always been integral to the functioning of the modern nation-state. Database state is used in this paper to identify a particular mode of mobilisation of data within governmental acts, which is fundamentally shaped by the possibilities of big data extraction, appropriation, and analytics pioneered by a range of companies since late 1990s. The reason for not using big data state but database dtate is that big data refers to a body of technologies emerging in response to a set of data management and analysis challenges situated in a certain moment of development of information technologies, whereas database refers to a symbolic form (Manovich 1999): a form in which not only the population is made visible to the government (as a collection of visual, textual, numeric, and other forms of records), but also how the acts of government are made visible to the population (as a collection of performance indicators, budget allocation and utilisation tables, and other data visualised through dashboards, analog and digital).</p>
<p>The data production and management logic of this database state is specifically inspired by the notion of platform introduced by the so-called Web 2.0 companies: providing a common service layer upon which various other applications may also run, but under specific arrangements (including distribution of generated user data) with the original common layer provider. Data assemblages of the database state are expected to enable the government to function as a platform, as an intensely data-driven layer that widely gathers data about population individuals and feeds it back selectively to various providers of public and private services. This transforms the data assemblage from one vertical of governmental activities to a horizontal critical infrastructure for modularisation of governmental activities.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Studying the Emerging Database State in India</h2>
<p>Government of India is presently debating the legal and technical validity of the digital identity infrastructure programme in the Supreme Court, while simultaneously carrying out the enrollment drive for the same, linking up assignment of unique identity numbers with a national drive for population registration, and rolling out citizen-facing services and applications that implement the Aadhaar number as a necessary key to access them. With the enrollment process going on and the integration with various governmental processes (termed seeding by Aadhaar policy literature) just beginning, I enter this study through two key sets of objects reflecting the imaginaries and the technical specifications of the emerging database state in India. The first entry point is through the various official documents of vision, intentions, plans, and reconsiderations, and the second entry point is through the Application Programming Interface (API) documentations published by UIDAI to specify how its identity authentication platform will collaborate with various public and private services.</p>
<p>The first section of the paper provides a brief survey of pre-UIDAI attempts by the Government of India to deploy unique identification numbers and Smart Cards for specific population groups, so as to understand the initial conceptualisation of this data assemblage of a digital identification platform. The second section foregrounds how this platform undertakes a transformation of the components and relations of the pre-existing data assemblage of the Government of India, as articulated in various official documents of promised utility and proposed collaborations. The third section studies the API documentations to track how such imaginaries are materially interpreted and operationalised through the design of protocols of data interactions with various public and private agencies offering services utilising the identity authentication platform.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Notes for Critical Data Studies</h2>
<p>Expanding the early agenda note on Critical Data Studies by Craig Dalton and Jim Thatcher (2014), Rob Kitchin and Tracey P. Lauriault have taken steps towards emphasising the responsibility of this nebulous research strategy to chart and unpack the data assemblages (2014). This is exactly what I propose to do in this paper. While Kitchin and Lauriault provide a detailed list of the components of the apparatus of a data assemblage (2014: 7), I find the concepts of infrastructural components and infrastructural relations very useful in thinking through the emerging infrastructure of authentication. Thus, my approach to these tasks of charting and unpacking is focused on the infrastructural relations that the digital identity infrastructure re-configures, instead of the infrastructural components it mobilises (Bowker et al 2010). This tactical choice of focusing on the infrastructural relations is also necessitated by the practical difficulty in having comprehensive access to the individual components of the data assemblage concerned. Addressing questions of causality and quality becomes difficult when studying the assemblage sans the produced data, and rigorously analysing concerns of security and uncertainty pre-requires an actually existing data assemblage, with a public interface to investigating its leakages, breakages, and internal functioning. In the absence of such points of entry into the data assemblage, which I fear may not be an exceptional case, I attempt an inverted reading. Turning the data infrastructure inside out, in this paper I describe how the digital identity platform is critically reshaping the basis of governmental acts in India, through a specific model of production, extraction and application of big data.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Bibliography</h2>
<p>Bowker, Geoffrey C., Karen Baker, Florence Millerand, & David Ribes. 2010. Toward Information Infrastructure Studies: Ways of Knowing in a Networked Environment. Jeremy Hunsinger, Lisbeth Klastrup, & Matthew Allen (Eds.) International Handbook of Internet Research. Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York. Pp. 97-117.</p>
<p>Dalton, Craig, & Jim Thatcher. 2014. What does a Critical Data Studies Look Like, and Why do We Care? Seven Points for a Critical Approach to ‘Big Data.’ Society and Space. May 19. Accessed on July 08, 2015, from <a href="http://societyandspace.com/material/commentaries/craig-dalton-and-jim-thatcher-what-does-a-critical-data-studies-look-like-and-why-do-we-care-seven-points-for-a-critical-approach-to-big-data/" target="_blank">http://societyandspace.com/material/commentaries/craig-dalton-and-jim-thatcher-what-does-a-critical-data-studies-look-like-and-why-do-we-care-seven-points-for-a-critical-approach-to-big-data/</a>.</p>
<p>Kitchin, Rob, & Tracey P. Lauriault. 2014. Towards Critical Data Studies: Charting and Unpacking Data Assemblages and their Work. The Programmable City Working Paper 2. July 29. National University of Ireland Maynooth, Ireland. Accessed on July 08, 2015 from <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2474112" target="_blank">http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2474112</a>.</p>
<p>Manovich, Lev. 1999. Database as Symbolic Form. Convergence. Volume 5, Number 2. Pp. 80-99.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>Note: Call for Papers for the special issue can found here: <a href="http://bigdatasoc.blogspot.in/2015/06/call-for-proposals-special-theme-on.html" target="_blank">http://bigdatasoc.blogspot.in/2015/06/call-for-proposals-special-theme-on.html</a>.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/studying-the-emerging-database-state-in-india-accepted-abstract'>https://cis-india.org/raw/studying-the-emerging-database-state-in-india-accepted-abstract</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroBig DataData SystemsResearchFeaturedAadhaarResearchers at WorkE-Governance2015-11-13T05:54:53ZBlog EntryNew Modes and Sites of Humanities Practice
https://cis-india.org/raw/new-modes-and-sites-of-humanities-practice
<b>An extended survey of digital initiatives in arts and humanities practices in India was undertaken during the last year. Provocatively called 'mapping digital humanities in India', this enquiry began with the term 'digital humanities' itself, as a 'found' name for which one needs to excavate some meaning, context, and location in India at the present moment. Instead of importing this term to describe practices taking place in this country - especially when the term itself is relatively unstable and undefined even in the Anglo-American context - what I chose to do was to take a few steps back, and outline a few questions/conflicts that the digital practitioners in arts and humanities disciplines are grappling with. The final report of this study will be published serially. This is the sixth among seven sections. </b>
<p> </p>
<h2>Sections</h2>
<p>01. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities-in-india">Digital Humanities in India?</a></p>
<p>02. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/a-question-of-digital-humanities">A Question of Digital Humanities</a></p>
<p>03. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/reading-from-a-distance-data-as-text">Reading from a Distance – Data as Text</a></p>
<p>04. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/the-infrastructure-turn-in-the-humanities">The Infrastructure Turn in the Humanities</a></p>
<p>05. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/living-in-the-archival-moment">Living in the Archival Moment</a></p>
<p>06. <strong>New Modes and Sites of Humanities Practice</strong></p>
<p>07. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities-in-india-concluding-thoughts">Digital Humanities in India – Concluding Thoughts</a></p>
<hr />
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p>From a brief exploration of the problem of new objects and methods of research in the digital context, we have come to or rather returned to the problem of location or contextualising DH, and whether it may be called a field or discipline in itself, in India. As the previous sections may have illustrated, most of the prominent initiatives around DH in India have largely been within the university context, or have at least focused around the university as the centre of the processes of knowledge production, and emphasise a move away from more traditional ways of doing humanities, and at a larger level the more established and disciplinary modes of knowledge formation. In the context of pedagogy, DH seems to be developing in a very specific role, which is that of training in a certain set of skills and topics, which the existing disciplines have so far not been able to provide or even accommodate. These include tools for working with digitisation processes, digital archives, and the use of computational methods in the study of cultural artifacts. Thus processes such as topic modelling, data visualisation, cultural analytics, sentiment analysis and several more become increasingly prominent in discussions about DH. The university or more specifically the traditional classroom offers a particular kind of teaching-learning experience which may not always have within its ambit the necessary resources or strategies to foster new methods of knowledge production, and a lot of DH work has been posited as trying to plug knowledge gaps in precisely this area.</p>
<p>Wikipedia and internet-based sources of information are entering classrooms with the proliferation of gadgets and tools, and with this there is a tendency towards adopting a more open, participatory and customised model of learning based on collaboration. DH has been characterised by many as a space, or method that intervenes in the traditional ‘hierarchies of expertise’ (Davidson and Goldberg, 2010) – not only in terms of people, but also spaces, methods and objects of learning - to present a significant ‘alternative’ that is now slowly becoming more mainstream. A rather direct example of this in the global discourse on DH is the growth of a number of ‘alt- academics’ <strong>[1]</strong>: people with training in the humanities who now inhabit what earlier seemed to be a rather nebulous space between academics and an array of practices in computing, art and community development among many others. But it is the in-between, or the liminal space that holds the potential for new kinds of knowledge to be generated. The connotations of this notion however are many and problematic, as seen particularly in the emphasis on new kinds of skills or competences that are now required to inhabit such a space, as also the narrative of loss of certain critical skills that are part of the disciplinary method and the resistance from certain quarters within the university to acknowledge such a trend. Conversely, it is also reflective of how certain kinds of skills in writing, reading, visualisation and curation have now become essential and therefore visible. While the DH discourse in India has developed mostly within the university space, given its multidisciplinary interests and methods, it is often seen as bearing potential in terms of working outside the academic norm. Through an examination of changes in teaching-learning methods, creative and critical practices that come about with the adoption of the digital, it may be useful to explore whether it indeed opens up such alternate modes of humanities practice and how it informs the way we do DH in India; as practitioners, researchers, students, teachers or the lay person. The growth of the internet and digital tools and technologies has led to many changes in teaching-learning practices, and engendered new methods and forms of humanities practice, all of which may now be found within the university or academic space. It is therefore imperative to examine these new modes of research and practice, to arrive a better understanding of the changes in and possibilities available for humanities work after the digital. The notion of the ‘alternate’ is also an important concern here, and the emergence of these new modes of humanities practice help unpack and understand this term better.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Technology in the Classroom</h2>
<p>This state of being within and to a certain extent outside of a certain predominant discourse is a peculiar one with several possibilities, and DH, owing to its interdisciplinary content and methods, seems to be a suitable space to foster new and alternate knowledge-making practices. India is also still a multi-layered technological space very much in a moment of transition, and the debates remain largely confined to the English and History departments and to some extent library and archival spaces. Outside of the university circle however, there are a number of initiatives, such as online archival efforts, media, art and design practices and research, where one may see DH–related work being done. What remains an important part of the discourse in the context of the university is the access to and a more substantial and critical engagement with technology in the classroom.</p>
<p>The use of technology in education has grown by leaps and bounds in the last decade or so in India, as evidenced by the number of initiatives taken to introduce ICTs in the classroom <strong>[2]</strong>. However, the digital divide still persists, as a result of which many initiatives come with problems of their own, the most important being the lack of connection among practice, content and pedagogy <strong>[3]</strong>. Vikram Vincent, a doctoral scholar in the Interdisciplinary Program in Educational Technology, Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, attributes this to a problem of understanding technology itself and what it can do for learning. He looks at technology as an extension of the human body and not something alien to it. Over the course of his research, he has found that the prevalent attitude to the use of technology in the classroom, particularly in early ICTs in education projects, has been more techno-centric rather than learner-centric, which is not the most effective approach <strong>[4]</strong>. Technology has always been around in some form or the other, from drawing on walls to the blackboard to now the smart board; it has always been in the classroom. How you choose to use it determines the outcomes, and one needs to ensure that the learning environment evolves with the new technology that is introduced, because it does not happen automatically but over a period of time.</p>
<p>The Wikipedia India Education programme pilot project, implemented in Pune in 2011 is an example of the number of challenges that the introduction of a new technology in the classroom brought forth, in terms of skills, content and pedagogy <strong>[5]</strong>. The need to focus on the educational component of the technology, the improvement of skills of the learner in writing, research and communication, rather than on the tool itself has been an important learning from the programme, even as it continues in a different university today. As Vincent adds further, the problem arises with looking at technology as a disruptive element or merely a tool to aid learning, which prevents institutions from envisioning a more holistic model of learning that takes some amount of time and effort. This also requires the appropriate stimulus and other conditions such as training of teachers, access to resources and training in certain required skills, addressing barriers of language and so forth, which is a feature of some programmes, such as the IT @ school in Kerala which have seen a measure of success <strong>[6]</strong>. Vincent further mentions examples of programmes he has been part of, some of them under the MHRD-NMEICT initiative which focussed on the teaching-learning process rather than the technology itself, key to which is building teacher capacity to use new and already available resources better <strong>[7]</strong>. These would be crucial steps to take before envisioning a model of teaching-learning that is premised largely on digital technologies and the internet.</p>
<p>While educational technology is a separate field in itself which looks at better interactions between teaching-learning practices and technology <strong>[8]</strong>, it does form part of the context, or landscape in India within which DH would perhaps develop as a discipline, practice or a pedagogic approach.</p>
<p>Another predominant discourse that informs DH is that of Information Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) which is often used as a rather broad, catch-all term, and has been variously defined and used by different groups and stakeholders across domains (Saith et al, 2008). ICT4D is premised largely around the question of access, and seeks to bridge the digital divide in terms of knowledge, resources, people and infrastructure, among other things. This has also been an intensely debated term, given its social and political implications, particularly in the manner in which it informs a larger discourse on development, technology and globalisation in the global South.(Sundaram, 2005) It is important to understand whether DH has been posited as making an intervention into these prevailing systems of knowledge – so that the mode of understanding both technology and the humanities, and the interaction between the two domains (assuming that they are separate) undergoes a significant change. What then goes into promoting more institutional stability for DH, in other words, in teaching and learning it – will be a question to contend with in the years to come, as more universities take to incubating research around digital technologies and related components and incorporating this into the existing curricula.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Towards a Digital Pedagogy</h2>
<p>Dr. Abhijit Roy, Assistant Professor at the Department of Media, Communication and Culture, Jadavpur University is positive about the changes he sees in pedagogy and research with the advent of digital technologies. According to him, while a media or film studies department would be close to the concerns of DH, and use some form of digital technology such as video clips or blogs as part of coursework, it is particularly important to see what change it has brought about in traditional humanities disciplines like History and languages. While some of these changes are elementary, such as the use of digital technologies in classroom teaching and learning exercises, it is in the practice of research that he sees a vast change now. Many researchers, many of his students also, have found this a useful part of the research process, through the use of blogs and social media and the possibilities to publish and engage in discussions with other researchers through platforms and tools like Academia or Scalar <strong>[9]</strong>. It not only makes the process more transparent, but also encourages an ethos of constant sharing, dissemination and a network of usage and storage online. This has transformed the way research and pedagogy can be imagined now, and opened up several possibilities for teaching-learning practices.</p>
<p>It is in realising this potential for new research and pedagogical models that universities have slowly begun to adopt digital technologies, but the institutional efforts at building curricula specifically around DH-related concerns have been few, with the prominent ones in India being the courses at Jadavpur University and Presidency University in Kolkata, and more recently Srishti School of Arts, Design and Technology in Bangalore. The change is recent, as several researchers have pointed out. There have always been concerns about privacy and regulation of content, whether on a university archive or its network. The enthusiasm towards ‘anything digital is good’ is relatively new, and comes from a larger (and sometimes rather utopian) development discourse focussed around modernity and technology. Curricularisation comes with its own issues too, and they stem largely from the fact that one is still unable to understand fully the nature of the digital and its facets - we also inhabit a time when there is a transition from analogue to digital, and both modes exist simultaneously - but the rate of change is faster with the digital than with other domains of knowledge, so much so that the curricula developed may often seem provisional or arcane, which makes it doubly challenging to demonstrate its various facets in practice, particularly in the classroom. A useful distinction would be between DH being brought in as a problem-solving approach to address the extant issues of the humanities, thus also seen as threat to the disciplines themselves, but to see if it has its own epistemological concerns which may be related to but also distinct from the humanities - in short to help us ask new questions, or provide new ways of asking old ones.</p>
<p>The development of courses on DH in three universities in India, and the manner in which the field has been ‘curricularised’ so to say, would be an indication of its specific academic concerns in the Indian context, and the disciplinary challenges and questions that it may throw up for the teaching-learning process. Expectedly, the three courses mobilise a set of resources and expertise that the schools have built over the course of many years. In doing so they also foray into areas that existing humanities courses at the university may not have explored enough, within their own disciplinary framework. For example the course on Digital Humanities and Cultural Informatics at Jadavpur University <strong>[10]</strong> comprises of components on software studies and digital music preservation, building on work done at the large archives at the School of Cultural Texts and Records. Similarly, the course at Presidency University <strong>[11]</strong> has components on storytelling in digital media through video games, while the course at Srishti <strong>[12]</strong> has a focus on design practice and critical making amongst other interests. The courses therefore follow a decidedly interdisciplinary framework, which no doubt interesting, also makes curriculum development and course assessment a challenge. While the ‘digital’ aspect of ‘DH’ forms a significant part of these explorations, the manner in which it is being studied is an important point of focus – whether as a condition, space, concept or object, rather than just a set of tools and methods that facilitate the enquiry of the humanities. Digitisation significantly alters the cultural artifact, and there is a need to understand and theorise this digital object better. As Padmini Ray Murray points out, the digital is one way to mediate the material object, particularly those that are not textual, since that kind of experiential access can only be provided by the digital, especially in the case of archival objects. A critical understanding of the digital needs to therefore be a key aspect of such an enquiry in DH.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Alternate Spaces of Humanities Practice</h2>
<p>While these are the developments within academia or the university space, there are a number of spaces outside this circle that have also been asking similar questions, and producing new kinds of scholarship and research around these ideas. The Indiancine.ma and Pad.ma archives have not only served as rich repository of material on film and video, used by scholars and film enthusiasts alike, but also as a pedagogic tool in spaces like the Media Lab at Jadavpur University. Through an innovative fellowship programme, Pad.ma has supported research and film making using the archive as a platform. An interesting example here would be a documentary film on power plants in Chhattisgarh made by Sunil Kumar. Available as a film treatment/script on Pad.ma, Kumar’s work is based on research in mainly two districts of Chhattisgarh, where he met and spoke with people, collected documents and shot several hours of video, which he then published in the form of 80 footage series on Pad.ma <strong>[13]</strong>. There are several other examples on Pad.ma, such as the video-art project on the Radia tapes, and the work on "perfume arts" in Bangalore <strong>[14]</strong>. The Sound and Picture Archives for Research on Women (SPARROW) through its workshops on oral and visual history has tried to engage with the more pedagogic aspects of the archive <strong>[15]</strong>. While the possibilities are many, the uptake of such platforms in universities has been slow, due to issues that range from lack of internet connectivity to a discomfort or unfamiliarity with the internet and other kinds of technology. This eventually relegates initiatives like these to the space of an alternate, extracurricular or outlier, even though they seem to be asking the same questions as the mainstream institutions and doing similar work.</p>
<p>What this also refers to is the space for new modes of knowledge production that an increased interaction with digital and internet technologies now engenders or even brings to the fore in already existing practices. With these however, also come the questions about the legitimacy of these forms and methods of knowledge production, as seen in the rather polarised positions around DH in its global discourse. The Wikipedia is one example of this, and illustrates some of the core concerns of and about DH as it calls into question notions about authorship, expertise and established models of pedagogy and learning. Lawrence Liang (2011) describes this as a larger conflict over the authority of knowledge, the origins of which he locates in the history of the book, and specifically in the print revolution and pre-print cultures of the 15th -18th centuries. He likens the debate over Wikipedia’s credibility, or more broadly over technologies of collaborative knowledge production ushered in by the Internet to similar phenomena seen before in early print culture and how it contributed to the construction and articulation of the idea of authority itself. He says:</p>
<blockquote>The authority of knowledge is often spoken of in a value-neutral and ahistorical manner. It would therefore be useful to situate authority in history, where it is not seen to be an inherent quality but a transitive one 6 located in specific technological changes. For instance, there is often an unstated assumption about the stability of the book as an object of knowledge, but the technology of print originally raised a host of questions about authority. In the same way, the domain of digital collaborative knowledge production raises a set of questions and concerns today, such as the difference between the expert and the amateur, as well as between forms of production: digital versus paper and collaborative versus singular author modes of knowledge production. Can we impose the same questions that emerged over the centuries in the case of print to a technology that is barely ten years old?</blockquote>
<p>He further goes on to elaborate that the question of the authority of knowledge should ideally be located within a larger ‘knowledge apparatus’, comprising of certain technologies and practices, (in this case that of reading, writing, editing, compilation, classification and creative appropriations) which help inflate the definitions of authority and knowledge even more.</p>
<p>The above argument throws into sharp relief the notion of the ‘alternate’–often posited as the outlier or a vantage point, or even as being in resistance to a certain dominant discourse or body of knowledge. While resistance itself is discursive; the ‘alternate’ has also always existed in various forms, such as the pre-print cultures illustrated in the argument above, and particularly in India where several kinds of prominent practices and occupations are but alternatives - from alternative medicine to education - to the already established or mainstream system in place. As mentioned earlier, these practices may just be increasingly visible and acknowledged now. The attempts to subsume these alternate practices under a unifying term such as DH, which began as and may perhaps have been relegated to the status of a sub-culture for long, within academia then seem to be one way of trying to circumvent the authority of knowledge question.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Humanities and Technology: A Twinned History</h2>
<p>Another factor in this reduced visibility of the alternate and now re-emergence is the invisible ‘technologised’ history of the humanities, which prompts us to rethink the separation between the humanities and technology as mutually exclusive domains. Therefore by extension then, the term DH itself may be a misnomer or yet another creative re-appropriation of various knowledge practices already in existence. David Berry (2012) in his essay on the computational turn speaks of possibilities that computationality, and specifically new software and code offer in terms of unifying multiple kinds of knowledge in the university. He says that:</p>
<blockquote>In trying to understand the digital humanities our first step might be to problematize computationality, so that we are able to think critically about how knowledge in the 21st century is transformed into information through computational techniques, particularly within software. It is interesting that at a time when the idea of the university is itself under serious rethinking and renegotiation, digital technologies are transforming our ability to use and understand information outside of these traditional knowledge structures. This is connected to wider challenges to the traditional narratives that served as unifying ideas for the university and, with their decline, has led to difficulty in justifying and legitimating the postmodern university vis-à-vis government funding. (5)</blockquote>
<p>Berry therefore indicates that this turn towards computationality is the result of an emerging need to demonstrate the relevance of the university structure to processes of knowledge production, therefore reiterating the ‘crisis’ argument. The notion of the postmodern university has been examined in detail by Bill Readings, who Berry quotes in his paper. Readings (1997) is sceptical of the term postmodern, preferring instead the idea of a post historical university, which is divested from the notion of the nation-state and further culture as a unifying idea, and is moving towards a notion of excellence that he sees as techno-bureaucratic, a result of several factors including globalisation and the fact that processes of knowledge production and institutionalisation are no longer centred around a liberal subject. If the demonstrated project of the university has changed, the emergence of such new discourse, and specifically concepts and terms such as the ‘alt – academy’ has relevance to how one may now imagine new spaces, objects, processes and figures of knowledge itself.</p>
<p>The significance of the university system to knowledge production has been a recurring point of much debate and discussion in India. Although not explicitly stated as a crisis in humanities by the people interviewed, there are problems of content, pedagogy, infrastructure, and vision that continue to plague higher education at large <strong>[16]</strong>, and very often technological fixes are seen as a solution to these, in some part due to the imagination of a techno-democracy as described in the introduction to this report. As Berry points out then, computationality is a promise, or possibility to do things differently, which is then also inherently assumed to be a way of doing things better. The computational possibilities of DH still need to be explored, but how much of these contribute qualitatively to addressing or even furthering certain disciplinary concerns, still remains an open question. As Jan and Sebastian point out from their experience of working on Indiancine.ma and Pad.ma, the computational aspects of the archives are still to be developed, as there are still restrictions in terms of speed and feasibility (see chapter on infrastructure <strong>[17]</strong>); the kind of new questions it produces for cinema studies at large will remain a contention. Further, as Padmini Ray Murray observes, drawing on archival material, or data to develop new computational hypotheses would be a direction to work towards, as not much work has been done in this respect in India (See chapter on archives <strong>[18]</strong>). The challenges with computationality then demand, as Berry argues, a more critical exploration of the term itself, and in fact can be extended to a critical analysis of the state of digitality more broadly.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Final Notes</h2>
<p>The problems with the crisis in the humanities and the contribution of technology to these changes could be located to this change in what has traditionally been seen as the space of culture and reason, which has now moved on to something else, a notion of excellence in Readings’ example, thereby changing the questions at the centre as well. This is perhaps the underlying challenge to the ontological and epistemological stake in the field. At best then DH may be seen as the result of a set of changes in the last couple of decades, the advancements in technology being at the forefront of them, whereby certain new and alternative modes of humanities practice have been brought to the foreground, but have also challenged the manner in which we asked questions before to a certain extent. As the field gains institutional stability, it remains to be seen what the new areas of enquiry that emerge shall then be in the years to come. Some of the questions or points or focus that open up are as follows:</p>
<ol><li>The role of extra-institutional/non-academic or alternate spaces in humanities practice, and in producing and creating new kinds of knowledge.</li>
<li>The increased visibility of new objects and methods within informal and marginal spaces of knowledge production. This demands different, and often innovative methods of enquiry, and whether they alter disciplinary modes of humanities practice and research.</li>
<li>The notion of a moving away from established modes of humanities practice, research and scholarship (therefore the question of a ‘crisis’) which would open up a larger debate around the authority of knowledge.</li>
<li>The ontological and epistemological stake of DH, in short the kinds of new questions it enables us to ask.</li></ol>
<p>As important and visible as the idea of the alternate is in DH, it also presents the mainstream itself as fractured space that imbibes several contradictions of the practices in question, which cannot be confined to these watertight silos of formal/informal, academic or creative. Nevertheless, the mainstream spaces remain crucial for widening and deepening creative digital practice and research in arts and humanities disciplines, and will be the spaces to watch to understand the development of a substantive DH discourse in India.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Endnotes</h2>
<p><strong>[1]</strong> For more on this see: Nowviskie, Bethany, (Ed.) Alternative Academic Careers for Humanities Scholars, July 2011, <a href="http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/alt-ac/cluster/alternative-academic-careers-humanities-scholars">http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/alt-ac/cluster/alternative-academic-careers-humanities-scholars</a>, last accessed December 23, 2015.</p>
<p><strong>[2]</strong> The largest and most ambitious has been the Ministry of Human Resources and Development’s National Mission in Education through ICT programme (NMEICT), started in 2009. See: http://mhrd.gov.in/technology-enabled-learning-0 Last accessed December 23, 2015.</p>
<p><strong>[3]</strong> To stay with the example of the NMEICT, an evaluation of the programme pointed out several challenges to technology-enabled learning, namely in the areas of connectivity, content, and pedagogy. See <a href="http://www.sakshat.ac.in/Document/NMEICT_Evaluation_Report.pdf">http://www.sakshat.ac.in/Document/NMEICT_Evaluation_Report.pdf</a>. Last accessed December 23, 2015.</p>
<p><strong>[4]</strong> For more see this position paper by the NCERT on education technology in India: <a href="http://www.ncert.nic.in/new_ncert/ncert/rightside/links/pdf/focus_group/educational_technology.pdf">http://www.ncert.nic.in/new_ncert/ncert/rightside/links/pdf/focus_group/educational_technology.pdf</a>. Last accessed December 23, 2015.</p>
<p><strong>[5]</strong> See an evaluation report on the programme by Tory Read: <a href="http://oceanwork.com/portfolio/wikipedia-education-program-reputation-management/">http://oceanwork.com/portfolio/wikipedia-education-program-reputation-management/</a>. Last accessed December 23, 2015.</p>
<p><strong>[6]</strong> See: <a href="http://education.kerala.gov.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=51&Itemid=59">http://education.kerala.gov.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=51&Itemid=59</a>. Last accessed December 23, 2015.</p>
<p><strong>[7]</strong> For more on these projects see: <a href="http://www.et.iitb.ac.in/sanket/?p=87">http://www.et.iitb.ac.in/sanket/?p=87</a>. Last accessed December 23, 2015.</p>
<p><strong>[8]</strong> See: Spector, J. Michael. <em>Fundamentals of Educational Technology: Integrative Approaches and Interdisciplinary Perspectives</em>. New York: Routledge, 2015; and Toru Iiyoshi and M.S. Vijay Kumar. (Eds.) <em>Opening up Education</em>. Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2008, <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/9780262515016_Open_Access_Edition.pdf">https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/9780262515016_Open_Access_Edition.pdf</a>. Also see: <a href="http://ciet.nic.in/">http://ciet.nic.in/</a>. Last accessed December 23, 2015.</p>
<p><strong>[9]</strong> See: <a href="https://www.academia.edu/">https://www.academia.edu/</a> and <a href="http://scalar.usc.edu/scalar/">http://scalar.usc.edu/scalar/</a>. Last accessed December 23, 2015.</p>
<p><strong>[10]</strong> See: <a href="https://sctrdhci.wordpress.com/">https://sctrdhci.wordpress.com/</a>. Last accessed December 12, 2015.</p>
<p><strong>[11]</strong> See: <a href="http://dhgenedpresi.blogspot.in/2014/01/welcome-to-digital-humanities-presidency.html">http://dhgenedpresi.blogspot.in/2014/01/welcome-to-digital-humanities-presidency.html</a>. Last accessed December 12, 2015.</p>
<p><strong>[12]</strong> See: <a href="http://srishti.ac.in/programs/pg-program-ma-in-digital-humanities">http://srishti.ac.in/programs/pg-program-ma-in-digital-humanities</a>. Last accessed December 12, 2015.</p>
<p><strong>[13]</strong> See: <a href="http://pad.ma/texts/sunil_kumar:Future_Power_Plants_in_Chhattisgarh:_a_Documentary_Film_Treatment_%2F_Script">http://pad.ma/texts/sunil_kumar:Future_Power_Plants_in_Chhattisgarh:_a_Documentary_Film_Treatment_%2F_Script</a>. Last accessed December 12, 2015</p>
<p><strong>[14]</strong> See: <a href="http://pad.ma/texts">http://pad.ma/texts</a> Last accessed December 12, 2015.</p>
<p><strong>[15]</strong> See: <a href="http://www.sparrowonline.org/">http://www.sparrowonline.org/</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[16]</strong> See the report of 'The Committee to Advise on Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education: by the Ministry of Human Resources and Development: <a href="http://mhrd.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/document-reports/YPC-Report.pdf">http://mhrd.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/document-reports/YPC-Report.pdf</a>; and Roy, Kum Kum, "Decoding 'New Education Policy,'" <em>Economic and Political Weekly</em>, Vol. 50, Issue No. 19, May 09, 2015, <a href="http://www.epw.in/journal/2015/19/web-exclusives/decoding-new-education-policy.html">http://www.epw.in/journal/2015/19/web-exclusives/decoding-new-education-policy.html</a>, last accessed December 23, 2015.</p>
<p><strong>[17]</strong> See: <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/the-infrastructure-turn-in-the-humanities">http://cis-india.org/raw/the-infrastructure-turn-in-the-humanities</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[18]</strong> See: <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/living-in-the-archival-moment">http://cis-india.org/raw/living-in-the-archival-moment</a>.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>References</h2>
<p>Berry, D.M. "The Computational Turn." <em>Culture Machine</em>. Vol 12, 2012 http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/viewArticle/440. Last Accessed April 12, 2016.</p>
<p>Davidson, Cathy N and David Theo. Goldberg. <em>The Future of Thinking: Learning Institutions in a Digital Age</em>. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010.</p>
<p>Iiyoshi, Toru and M.S. Vijay Kumar. (Eds.) <em>Opening up Education</em>. Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2008.</p>
<p>Liang, Lawrence. "A Brief History of the Internet from the 15th to the 18th Century." In <em>Critical Point of View: A Wikipedia Reader</em>. Geert Lovink and Nathaniel Tkacz (Eds). Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2011.</p>
<p>Readings, Bill. <em>The University in Ruins</em>. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.</p>
<p>Saith, A, M. Vijayabaskar and V. Gayathri. <em>ICTs and Indian Social Change</em>. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2008.</p>
<p>Spector, J. Michael. <em>Fundamentals of Educational Technology: Integrative Approaches and Interdisciplinary Perspectives</em>. New York: Routledge, 2015.</p>
<p>Sundaram, Ravi. "Developmentalism Redux." In <em>Incommunicado Reader</em>. Geert Lovink and Soenke Zehle (Eds.). Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2005.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/new-modes-and-sites-of-humanities-practice'>https://cis-india.org/raw/new-modes-and-sites-of-humanities-practice</a>
</p>
No publishersneha-ppDigital KnowledgeMapping Digital Humanities in IndiaResearchDigital HumanitiesResearchers at Work2016-06-30T04:45:25ZBlog Entry Call for Essays: Studying Internet in India
https://cis-india.org/raw/call-for-essays-studying-internet-in-india-2016
<b>As Internet makes itself comfortable amidst everyday lives in India, it becomes everywhere and everyware, it comes in 40 MBPS Unlimited and in chhota recharges – though no longer in zero flavour – the Researchers at Work (RAW) programme at the Centre for Internet and Society invites abstracts for essays that explore how do we study internet in India today. </b>
<p> </p>
<h3>Submission deadline extended to <strong>Sunday, July 03</strong>.</h3>
<hr />
<img src="https://github.com/cis-india/website/raw/master/img/RAW_Morpheus-Meme-Digital-Genre.png" alt="What if I told you memes are a new digital genre?" />
<p> </p>
<h6>Source: <a href="http://leonardoflores.net/blog/new-digital-genres-writing-for-social-media/">Leonardo Flores</a>.</h6>
<p> </p>
<p>How do we move beyond a fascination with new digital things and interfaces that we engage with on the internet, which are increasingly becoming the objects and sites of our research and creative practices? How do we engage with these on their own terms, and perhaps also against the grain? What "new" is being brought in, performed, and afforded by these digital artefacts in our daily lives? How can our concerns and practices benefit from developing an awareness of their aesthetics, functions, and politics?</p>
<p>This call is for researchers, workers, and others interested in closely – or from a distance – commenting on these topics and questions.</p>
<p>Please send abstracts (200 words) to <a href="mailto:raw@cis-india.org">raw@cis-india.org</a> by <strong>Sunday, July 03, 2016</strong>. The subject of the email should be 'Studying Internet in India.'</p>
<p>We will select up to 10 abstracts and announce them on <strong>Tuesday, July 05, 2016</strong>.</p>
<p>The selected authors will be asked to submit the final longform essay (3,000-4,000 words) by <strong>Sunday, July 31, 2016</strong>. The final essays will be published on the RAW Blog. The authors will be offered an honourarium of Rs. 6,000.</p>
<p>We understand that not all essays can be measured in words. The authors are very much welcome to work with text, images, sounds, videos, code, and other mediatic forms that the internet offers. We will not be running a Word Count on the final 'essay.' The basic requirement is that the 'essay' must offer an <em>argument</em> – through text, or otherwise.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/call-for-essays-studying-internet-in-india-2016'>https://cis-india.org/raw/call-for-essays-studying-internet-in-india-2016</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroInternet StudiesRAW BlogFeaturedNoticesResearchers at Work2016-07-04T12:48:15ZBlog Entry RBI Consultation Paper on P2P Lending: Legality and Implications
https://cis-india.org/raw/rbi-consultation-paper-on-p2p-lending-legality-and-implications
<b>The Reserve Bank of India published a Consultation Paper on Peer-to-Peer Lending on April 28, 2016. The Paper proposes to bring the P2P lending platforms under the purview of RBI’s regulation by defining P2P platforms as NBFCs under section 45I(f)(iii) of the RBI Act. Once notified as NBFCs, RBI can issue regulations under sections 45JA and 45L. The last date for submission of comments to the Consultation Paper is May 31, 2016. In this post, Pavishka Mittal discusses the legality and implications of the proposed classification of Peer-to-Peer lending companies as NBFCs. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>1.</strong> <a href="#1">Introduction</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>2.</strong> <a href="#2">Legal Basis for Classifying P2P Lending Platforms as NBFCs</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>3.</strong> <a href="#3">Legal Implications of Classifying P2P Lending Platforms as NBFCs</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>3.1.</strong> <a href="#3-1">Threshold Mechanism under Indian Law</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>3.2.</strong> <a href="#3-2">Change in Management or Control of NBFCs</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>3.3.</strong> <a href="#3-3">Compliance with KYC/AML/CFT Norms</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>3.4.</strong> <a href="#3-4">Compliance with Guidelines on Fair Practices Code for NBFCs</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>3.5.</strong> <a href="#3-5">Obligations to Share Credit Information</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>4.</strong> <a href="#4">Endnotes</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>5.</strong> <a href="#5">Author Profile</a></p>
<hr style="text-align: justify; " />
<h2 id="1" style="text-align: justify; ">1. Introduction</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">RBI in its Consultation Paper has proposed to classify Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending platforms as NBFCs. NBFCs in India are considered to be an alternative to the banking sector, with the only distinction being the prohibition on collecting demand deposits and the absence of running accounts. The established categories of NBFCs as per section 45I include loan, investment, asset finance and residuary non-banking companies incorporated under the Companies Act 1956. This blog post will examine the various categories of NBFCs in India and whether P2P lending platforms are within any of these established categories under law. The legality of the proposed course of action by the RBI in its consultation paper is subsequently examined. Further, the legal implications of the same, i.e the components of the increased compliance by the P2P platforms is discussed in detail.</p>
<h2 id="2" style="text-align: justify; ">2. Legal Basis for Classifying P2P Lending Platforms as NBFCs</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">P2P lenders are platforms serving as marketplaces for the lenders and the borrowers of funds to connect. Their very business model does not render them as a provider of finance, they are only an intermediary in the financial services sector. There is no question that loan companies are NBFCs under section 45I(f) of the RBI Act, 1935 <strong>[1]</strong>. However, since these P2P platforms do not provide any finance themselves, there can be no ground for classifying them as a loan company within section 45I of the RBI Act. NBFCs are also classified into deposit taking NBFCs and non-deposit taking NBFCs. In this situation, the question of permissibility, or legal basis, of taking deposits by the platform does not arise as the funds are to be directly transferred from the lender to the borrower, as stipulated in the Consultation Paper itself. The Paper further states that the balance sheet of the platform cannot indicate any borrowing/lending activity, which entails that the platform cannot itself provide finance or receive any funds for the provision of loans to others. Platforms are not allowed to determine the interest rates as they are not a party to the transaction. Neither would they be liable in cases of default by the borrower. These rules, standard for P2P platforms in other jurisdictions too, confirm the assumption that the platform itself is not providing finance and thus, cannot be entrusted with any liability, obligation from the transaction. However, it has to be vigilant in its role in maintaining data on the market participants on the platform for the fulfillment of KYC norms.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Serious concerns as to the financial health of the economy, however, are bound to arise if such entities are to continue operations without any regulatory supervision. The existing regulations, when made could not have fathomed the niche business models of the present. It is for this reason that sector-specific guidelines are often released for the benefit of all market participants as was seen in the case the revised e-commerce regulations <strong>[2]</strong>. In the present case, the proposed action is classifying P2P lending platforms as NBFCs with the RBI reserving the power to name any 'non-banking institutions' as NBFCs. Clause (a) of section 45I of the RBI Act 1934 declares that the business of a non banking financial institution includes the business of a non-banking financial company as specified under subsection (f). Clause (iii) of subsection (f) defines a non-banking financial company to include any other non-banking institution or class of such institutions, as the RBI may, with the previous approval of the Central Government and by notification in the Official Gazette, specify. Clause (c), in contrast identifies NBFCs through their activities, through their 'principal business'. The <em>fifty/fifty</em> test to determine the principal business of the firm as to the engagement of at least fifty percent of the assets of the firm in the core operations of the firm is not applicable if the RBI chooses to declare any 'non-banking institution' as a NBFC. In the present case, in the absence of any established characteristics of a NBFC within clause (c), the RBI has made use of clause (f) to meet the primary objective of regulation. The RBI will not exceed its regulatory authority in doing so. The only restriction on such an action is that an NBFCs cannot include any institution whose principal business is that of agricultural activity, industrial activity, sale/purchase of goods, sale/purchase/construction of immovable property.</p>
<h2 id="3" style="text-align: justify; ">3. Legal Implications of Classifying P2P Lending Platforms as NBFCs</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Reserve Bank under section 45JA of the RBI Act 1934, can validly determine the policy and give directions to all or any of the non-banking financial companies relating to income recognition, accounting standards, making of proper provision for bad and doubtful debts, capital adequacy based on risk weights for assets and credit conversion factors for off-balance sheet items and also relating to deployment of funds by a non-banking financial company, or a class of non-banking financial companies, or non-banking financial companies generally, as the case may be. Further, such non-banking financial companies shall be bound to follow the policy so determined and the directions so issued. Without prejudice to the generality of the powers named above, the Bank may also give directions to NBFCs generally or to a class of NBFCs or to any particular NBFC as to (a) the purpose for which advances or other fund based or non-fund based accommodation may not be made; and (b) the maximum amount of advances or other financial accommodation or investment in shares and other securities which, having regard to the paid-up capital, reserves and deposits of the NBFC’s and other relevant considerations, which can be validly made by that NBFC.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Section 45JA of the RBI Act 1934 is illustrious of the vast powers with the central bank to frame directions and policies applicable to NBFC’s. Powers of regulation extend to the subjective satisfaction of the RBI that the affairs of the NBFC are being conducted in a manner prejudicial to its depositors or the NBFC itself other than the established grounds of public interest and regulation of the financial system of the country to its advantage. This is of importance to P2P lending platforms because the characterization of their organizations as NBFCs would not just indicate compliance with the existing regulatory mechanism applicable to NBFCs but also any other direction, notification, policy that can be validly issued in the future on the subjective satisfaction of the above broad grounds. P2P lending platforms, many not even public companies presently may not be able to operate in the manner that is most beneficial to its private interests in the interest of the public. Further, no other legal form of organization other than a company would be valid under law. Further, no P2P Platform would be able to adopt any other legal form of organization (sole proprietorship, partnership etc.) other than a company due to the fact that clause (c) grants the power on the RBI to name any non-banking financial ‘company’ to include any other non-banking ‘institution’ or class of ‘institutions’. These ‘institutions’, when named NBFCs under law would be companies and would have to change their form of organization, by registration as a company within the Companies Act 2013, if necessary.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As per section 45I of the RBI Act 1934, all NBFCs excepting those which are regulated by other statutory/regulatory bodies are to be registered with the RBI. P2P lending platforms will thus have to comply with the following:</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>Minimum net worth requirement of Rs 2 crore for registration.</li>
<li>Make minimum investments as stipulated in RBI notifications in central, state government securities and would be liable to pay a penal interest in the case of non-compliance.</li>
<li>A minimum of 20% of net profits will have to be transferred to the Reserve Fund from which no appropriations are permissible except with intimation to the Central Bank within 21 days from such withdrawal.</li>
<li>Statements, information called for under the provisions of chapter IIIB would have to be furnished.</li>
<li>RBI bank is empowered to file a winding up petition if it is satisfied that the NBFC is unable to pay its debt or its continuance is detrimental to public interest/depositors of the company.</li>
<li>Prohibited from disclosing any information contained in any statement or return submitted by such company under the provisions of Chapter IIIB; or obtained through audit or inspection or otherwise by the Bank. Such information is to be treated as confidential with the exception of disclosure to any other NBFC in accordance with the practice and usage customary amongst such companies or as permitted or required under any other law.</li>
<li>Scope of business of banks is limited by section 16(1) of Banking Regulation Act - the only limitation being the prohibition on checking facilities, due to absence of demand deposits.</li>
</ul>
<h3 id="3-1" style="text-align: justify; ">3.1. Threshold Mechanism under Indian Law</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Due to differential financial risk posed by different categories of NBFCs, there exist different regulatory mechanisms applicable to the different classes. For these reasons other than administrative convenience, NBFCs were categorised into the following three groups:</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>Deposit accepting NBFCs,</li>
<li>Non-deposit accepting NBFCs with assets of less than Rs.100 crore, and</li>
<li>Non-deposit accepting NBFCs with assets of Rs.100 crore and above.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">With the aim to achieve a balance between under-regulation and over-regulation in the sector, RBI increased the threshold asset size for an NBFC to be considered systemically important (NBFC-ND-SI) from Rs.100 crore to Rs.500 crore <strong>[3]</strong>. A simplified regulatory framework has been established for NBFCs which are not systemically important (NBFCs-ND), i.e. NBFCs having total assets less than Rs.500 crore.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As per Economic Times, Faircent’s <strong>[4]</strong> enterprise valuation, which can be indicative of its net assets, is Rs 50 crore <strong>[5]</strong>. Keeping in mind that Faircent is arguably one of the biggest market players in the P2P segment, it seems that most P2P lending platforms will have net assets worth less than 500 crore, at least in the near future. Thus, this blog post, to analyse the <em>applicable</em> regulatory regime relies on the assumption that P2P lending platforms, if recognized as NBFCs, would not be systematically important as per the criteria laid down under law. Systematically Important NBFCs have different leverage, capital adequacy, asset classification, corporate governance and disclosure norms.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The RBI issued Prudential Norms Directions for Non-Systematically Important Non-Banking Financial (Non-Deposit Accepting or Holding) Companies in 2015 <strong>[6]</strong>. This framework classifies non deposit taking NBFCs on the basis of their access to public funds and customer interface. Subclause (ii) of clause (3) of Paragraph 1 states that these directions, excepting paragraph 15 are not applicable to NSI-NBFC’s provided that they do not accept or hold public funds. As per paragraph 15, a certificate will have to be submitted to the Regional Office of the Department of Non-Banking Supervision by the statutory auditor within one month from the date of finalization of the balance sheet and in any case not later than December 30th of that year.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">NSI-ND-NBFCs do not have to comply with the limited prudential norms when there is no access to public funds, either directly or indirectly. In the present case, the P2P Platform will not itself have any access to public funds, the funds being transferred directly from the lender to the borrower. The RBI in its consultation paper has proposed the applicability of a leverage ratio to P2P platforms which is in contravention of Paragraph 1 of the deemed regulations. The powers of the RBI under section 45JA of the RBI Act 1934 do not include the making of any directions/regulations which involve the applicability of a leverage ratio. If P2P platforms are made to comply with the deemed leverage ratio requirement under law, 7, it results in apprehension as the possibility of applicability of the other provisions of the NSI-ND-NBFC Prudential Norms Directions. The question as to the existence of regulatory authority to impose the leverage ratio arises which deserves clarification by the RBI.</p>
<h3 id="3-2" style="text-align: justify; ">3.2. Change in Management or Control of NBFCs</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Non-Banking Financial Companies (Approval of Acquisition or Transfer of Control) Directions, 2014 [herein after referred to as ‘Change in Control Directions’) was a step towards ensuring that all NBFCs are managed by ‘fit and proper’ management <strong>[8]</strong>. Earlier, only intimation with the Regional Office was required.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In 2015, addressing the responses from the industry, the RBI issued revised guidelines <strong>[9]</strong> to make prior written permission of the Reserve Bank be required for the following activities:</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>Any takeover or acquisition of control of an NBFC, which may or may not result in change of management.</li>
<li>Any change in the shareholding of an NBFC, including progressive increases over time, which would result in acquisition/ transfer of shareholding of 26 per cent or more of the paid up equity capital of the NBFC. This would not extend to cases involving buyback of shares/ reduction in capital provided approval from a competent court has been obtained.</li>
<li>Any change in the management of the NBFC which would result in change in more than 30 per cent of the directors, excluding independent directors. Prior approval would not be required for those directors who get re-elected on retirement by rotation.</li>
<li>Further, P2P lending platforms will have to continue to inform the RBI regarding any change in their directors/ management as stipulated under Non-Systemically Important Non-Banking Financial (Non-Deposit Accepting or Holding) Companies Prudential Norms (Reserve Bank) Directions, 2015.</li>
</ul>
<h3 id="3-3" style="text-align: justify; ">3.3. Compliance with KYC/AML/CFT Norms</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Non-deposit-taking NBFCs with assets of Rs 25 Crore and above are to comply with Know Your Customer (KYC) norms / Anti-Money Laundering (AML) standards / Combating of Financing of Terrorism (CFT) through the allotment of Unique Customer Identification Code for NBFC Customers in India (UCIC) as intimated by the RBI in its circular dated May 3, 2013 <strong>[10]</strong>. According to RBI's master circular dated July 1, 2014 <strong>[11]</strong>, NBFCs are required to prepare a risk profile of each customer and apply enhanced due diligence measures on higher risk customers. Further, NBFCs are to put in place policies, systems, and procedures for risk management keeping in view the risks involved in a transaction, account or banking/business relationships. In 2015, the RBI issued another notification <strong>[12]</strong>, which stated that the periodicity of the updation of the data required to be maintained through the 'client due diligence' directions should not be less than once in five years in the case of low risk category customers, and not less than once in two years in case of high and medium risk categories. Full KYC exercise will have to be done every two years for high risk, every eight years for medium risk, and every ten years for low risk individuals and entities taking in to account the adequacy of the data obtained through client due diligence measures, if any. The 2014 directions also stated that detailed guidelines on Customer Due Diligence (CDD) measures made applicable to Politically Exposed Person (PEP) and their family members or close relatives will have to be complied with.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Further, NBFCs have been warned in the notification that the information collected from the customer for the purpose of opening of account should be kept confidential, and should <em>not</em> be divulged for cross selling or any other purposes. NBFCs have to ensure that the information sought from the customer is <em>relevant</em> to the perceived risk, is not intrusive, and is in conformity with the guidelines issued in this regard. Any other information from the customer should be sought separately with her/his consent, and <em>after</em> opening the account.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">If the NBFC has knowledge or reason to believe that the client account opened by a professional intermediary is on behalf of a single client, the client must be identified. NBFCs should not allow opening and/or holding of an account on behalf of a client/s by professional intermediaries, like Lawyers, Chartered Accountants, etc., who are unable to disclose the true identity of the beneficial owner due to professional obligations of customer confidentiality. Some documents have been specified which should be called for and verified for the opening of an account in the name of a proprietary concern.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A Principal officer should be appointed to ensure compliance with the KYC/AML/CFT norms and the obligations under the Prevention of the Money Laundering Act 2002. A system should be made for the recording of transactions involving counterfeit coins/currency, cash exceeding Rs 10 lakh rupees, either individually or in a series, and for transactions that are ‘suspicious’ according to the Money Laundering Act 2002. NBFCs should maintain for at least ten years from the date of transaction between the NBFC and the client, all necessary records of transactions referred to in rule 3 of the Prevention of Money-laundering (Maintenance of Records of the Nature and Value of Transactions, the Procedure and Manner of Maintaining and Time for Furnishing Information and Verification and Maintenance of Records of the Identity of the Clients of the Banking Companies, Financial Institutions and Intermediaries) rules 2005, (hereinafter, referred to as the PMLA rules) to enable the reconstruction of transactions and the provision of evidence for prosecution of persons involved in criminal activity <strong>[12]</strong>. Even if P2P lending platforms do not enter into the transaction with the customer for the provision of the loan itself, there does exist a transaction involving the payment of processing fee etc. to the P2P lending platform, indicating compliance with the PMLA rules. Further, records pertaining to the identification of the customer will have to be maintained for a period of ten years after the termination of the business relationship. ‘Suspicious transactions’ will have to be reported to the Financial Intelligence Unit India. To combat financing of terrorism activities, continuous screening and monitoring of transactions which have no apparent economic or visible lawful purpose should be done. NBFCs should give special attention to business relationships and transactions with persons in countries which do not or insufficiently apply the FATF recommendations.</p>
<h3 id="3-4" style="text-align: justify; ">3.4. Compliance with Guidelines on Fair Practices Code for NBFCs</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Though P2P lending platforms are not loan companies, the object of classifying them as a NBFC would be defeated if they are not made to comply with the RBI established FCP guidelines. These requirements include:</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>All communications to the borrower shall be in the vernacular language or a language as understood by the borrower.</li>
<li>To enable the borrower to make an informed decision, loan application forms should include necessary information which affects the interest of the borrower, so that a meaningful comparison with the terms and conditions offered by other NBFCs.</li>
<li>A system of providing acknowledgement for receipt of all loan applications with a time frame should be established.</li>
<li>The amount of the loan sanctioned along with the terms and conditions including annualised rate of interest and method of application thereof should be kept on record by the NBFC.</li>
<li>NBFCs shall mention the penal interest charged for late repayment in bold in the loan agreement.</li>
<li>Non furnishment of a copy of the loan agreement or enclosures quoted in the loan agreement being an unfair practice, NBFCs are, therefore, advised to furnish a copy of the loan agreement along with a copy each of all enclosures quoted in the loan agreement to all the borrowers at the time of sanction / disbursement of loans.</li>
<li>The NBFCs should give notice to the borrower of any change in the terms and conditions including disbursement schedule, interest rates, service charges, prepayment charges etc.</li>
<li>NBFCs should also ensure that changes in interest rates and charges are effected only prospectively. A suitable condition in this regard should be incorporated in the loan agreement. Decision to recall / accelerate payment or performance under the agreement should be in consonance with the loan agreement.</li>
<li>NBFCs should release all securities on repayment of all dues or on realisation of the outstanding amount of loan subject to any legitimate right or lien for any other valid claim. If such right of set off is to be exercised, the borrower shall be given notice about the same with full particulars about the remaining claims and the conditions under which NBFCs are entitled to retain the securities till the relevant claim is settled/paid.</li>
<li>NBFCs should refrain from interference in the affairs of the borrower except for the purposes provided in the terms and conditions of the loan agreement (unless new information, not earlier disclosed by the borrower, has come to the notice of the lender).</li>
<li>In case of receipt of request from the borrower for transfer of borrowed account, the consent or objection of the NBFC, should be conveyed within 21 days from the date of receipt of request. Such transfer shall be as per transparent contractual terms in consonance with law.</li>
<li>In the matter of recovery of loans, the NBFCs should not resort to undue harassment. Staff should adequately trained to deal with the customers in an appropriate manner.</li>
<li>The Board of Directors of NBFCs should also lay down an appropriate grievance redressal mechanism within the organization to resolve disputes arising in this regard.</li>
<li>NBFCs will have the freedom of implementing measures which enhance the scope of the guidelines without sacrificing their underlying spirit.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The directions as to the formation of appropriate internal principles and procedures in <em>determining</em> interest rates excepting processing and other charges are not be applicable to P2P lending platforms. Thus, P2P lending platforms are not be made to adopt the interest rate model and communicate with the borrower as to the approach for gradation of risk and rationale for charging different rate of interest to different categories of borrowers.</p>
<h3 id="3-5" style="text-align: justify; ">3.5. Obligations to Share Credit Information</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In terms of Section 2(f) (ii) of the Credit Information Companies (Regulation) Act, 2005, a non-banking financial company as defined under clause (f) of Section 45-I of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934 has also been included as "credit institution" <strong>[13]</strong>. Further, the Credit Information Companies (Regulation) Act provides that every credit institution in existence shall become a member of at least one credit information company <strong>[14]</strong>. Thus all NBFCs being credit institutions are required to become a member of at least one credit information company as per the statute. In this regard, in terms of sub-sections (1) and (2) of Section 17 of the Credit Information Companies (Regulation) Act, 2005, a credit information company may require its members to furnish credit information as it may deem necessary in accordance with the provisions of the Act and every such credit institution has to provide the required information to that credit information company.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In terms of Regulation 10(a) (ii) of the Credit Information Companies Regulations, 2006, every credit institution shall:</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>keep the credit information maintained by it, updated regularly on a monthly basis or at such shorter intervals as may be mutually agreed upon between the credit institution and the credit information company; and</li>
<li>take all such steps which may be necessary to ensure that the credit information furnished by it, is update, accurate and complete.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Thus, P2P lending platforms will have to regularly disclose credit information, both current and historical, to enable the creation of robust databases with Credit Information Companies.</p>
<h2 id="4" style="text-align: justify; ">4. Endnotes</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>[1]</strong> See: <a href="https://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/Publications/PDFs/RBIAM_230609.pdf">https://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/Publications/PDFs/RBIAM_230609.pdf</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>[2]</strong> See: <a href="http://dipp.nic.in/English/acts_rules/Press_Notes/pn3_2016.pdf">http://dipp.nic.in/English/acts_rules/Press_Notes/pn3_2016.pdf</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>[3]</strong> See: <a href="https://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/content/pdfs/PNNBFC200315.pdf">https://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/content/pdfs/PNNBFC200315.pdf</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>[4]</strong> See: <a href="https://www.faircent.com/">https://www.faircent.com/</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>[5]</strong> See: <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/faircent-com-raises-pre-series-a-funding-of-250k/articleshow/47630279.cms">http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/faircent-com-raises-pre-series-a-funding-of-250k/articleshow/47630279.cms</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>[6]</strong> See: <a href="https://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=9830&Mode=0">https://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=9830&Mode=0</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>[7]</strong> See: <a href="http://dipp.nic.in/English/acts_rules/Press_Notes/pn3_2016.pdf">http://dipp.nic.in/English/acts_rules/Press_Notes/pn3_2016.pdf</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>[8]</strong> See: <a href="https://rbi.org.in/Scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=8899&Mode=0#f1">https://rbi.org.in/Scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=8899&Mode=0#f1</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>[9]</strong> See: <a href="https://rbi.org.in/Scripts/BS_NBFCNotificationView.aspx?Id=9934">https://rbi.org.in/Scripts/BS_NBFCNotificationView.aspx?Id=9934</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>[10]</strong> See: <a href="https://rbi.org.in/scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=7962&Mode=0">https://rbi.org.in/scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=7962&Mode=0</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>[11]</strong> See: <a href="https://rbi.org.in/scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=9081&Mode=0">https://rbi.org.in/scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=9081&Mode=0</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>[12]</strong> See: <a href="https://rbi.org.in/Scripts/BS_NBFCNotificationView.aspx?Id=9449">https://rbi.org.in/Scripts/BS_NBFCNotificationView.aspx?Id=9449</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>[13]</strong> See: <a href="http://www.incometaxindia.gov.in/Pages/acts/credit-information-companies-act.aspx">http://www.incometaxindia.gov.in/Pages/acts/credit-information-companies-act.aspx</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>[14]</strong> See: <a href="https://rbi.org.in/Scripts/BS_ViewMasCirculardetails.aspx?id=9913#16">https://rbi.org.in/Scripts/BS_ViewMasCirculardetails.aspx?id=9913#16</a>.</p>
<h2 id="5" style="text-align: justify; ">5. Author Profile</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Pavishka Mittal is a law student at West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata and has completed her second year. She takes contemporary dance very seriously and hopes to contribute to the dance community in India. Other than dancing, she indulges in binge-watching in her spare time.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/rbi-consultation-paper-on-p2p-lending-legality-and-implications'>https://cis-india.org/raw/rbi-consultation-paper-on-p2p-lending-legality-and-implications</a>
</p>
No publisherPavishka MittalSharing EconomyReserve Bank of IndiaResearchNetwork EconomiesP2P LendingResearchers at Work2016-05-31T13:25:37ZBlog EntryRBI Consultation Paper on P2P Lending: Data Security and Privacy Concerns
https://cis-india.org/raw/rbi-consultation-paper-on-p2p-lending
<b>On April 28, 2016 the Reserve Bank of India published a consultation paper on P2P Lending and invited comments from the public on the same. The Paper discusses what P2P lending is, the various regulatory practices that govern P2P lending in different jurisdictions and lists our arguments for and against regulating P2P lending platforms.</b>
<p> </p>
<h2>Arguments against Regulation</h2>
<p>The arguments against regulation of P2p lending companies as set out in the paper are (briefly):</p>
<ol><li>Regulating an exempt or nascent sector may be perceived as rubber stamping the industry through regulation, thus lending credibility to the P2P lending which could attract ill informed lenders to the sector who may not understand all the risks associated with the industry. In this way Regulation may cause more harm than good.</li>
<li>Regulations may also be perceived as too stringent, thus stifling the growth of an innovative, efficient and accessible industry.</li>
<li>The P2P lending market is currently in a nascent stage and does not pose an immediate systemic risk meriting regulation.</li></ol>
<p> </p>
<h2>Arguments in favour of Regulation</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The arguments for regulating the market on the other hand are:</p>
<ol><li>Considering the significance of the online industry and the impact which it can have on the traditional banking channels/NBFC sector, it would be prudent to regulate this emerging industry.</li>
<li>The, the importance of these methods of financing, specially in sectors where formal lending cannot reach, needs to be acknowledged.</li>
<li>If the sector is left unregulated altogether, there is the risk of unhealthy practices being adopted by one or more players, which may have deleterious consequences.</li>
<li>Section 45S of RBI Act prohibits an individual or a firm or an unincorporated association of individuals from accepting deposits “if its business wholly or partly includes any of the activities specified in clause (c) of section 45-I (i.e. activities of a financial institution); or if his or its principal business is that of receiving of deposits under any scheme or arrangement or in any other manner, or lending in any manner. Contravention of Section 45S is an offence punishable under section 58B (5A) of RBI Act. As per the Act, ‘‘deposit’’ includes and shall be deemed always to have included any receipt of money by way of deposit or loan or in any other form, but does not include any amount received from an individual or a firm or an association of individuals not being a body corporate, registered under any enactment relating to money lending which is for the time being in force in any State. Since the borrowers and lenders brought together by a P2P platform could fall within these prohibitions, absence of regulation may lead to perpetrating an illegality.”</li></ol>
<p>After listing out the arguments, the paper adopts the approach of regulating this industry and proposes to bring P2P lending platforms under the purview of RBI’s regulation by defining them as Non Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) under section 45-I(f)(iii) of the RBI Act. Once notified as NBFCs, RBI can issue regulations under sections 45JA and 45L. Though there is scope to comment on many aspects of the consultation paper our comments here will be limited to the data security and privacy aspects of the recommendations.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Data Security and Privacy Concerns</h2>
<p>While the understanding of potential borrowers, specially those who have had experiences with commercial financial institutions, is that the more amount of information they provide, the better their chances become of getting a loan. This perception emanates from the fact that any potential borrower is asked for a myriad of documents, including personally identifying documents before a request for a loan is considered, infact for almost all financial institutions it is part of their core prudential norms to ask for identity documents before disbursing a loan. Getting as much information as possible from the borrower is not just a quirk of the financial institutions but it makes business sense for them, since it is those institutions who bear the risk of recovery of their money. There is no reason why the same logic or allowing creditors all the information about the borrower should not be applicable to P2P lending platforms, as far as the principle of prudential business practices is concerned. However, the key difference between disclosing information to P2P lending platforms as opposed to financial institutions is that whilst the information supplied to financial institutions stays limited to the institution and its employees, a large amount of the information (though not necessarily all) given to P2P platforms is made available to all potential creditors, which in P2P lending translates to any internet user who registers as a potential creditor. In this way the potential for the information to reach a wider group of people is much higher and therefore privacy and data security risks require special attention in P2P lending.</p>
<p>In section 5.3(v) of the Paper it is recommended that “Confidentiality of the customer data and data security would be the responsibility of the Platform. Transparency in operations, adequate measures for data confidentiality and minimum disclosures to borrowers and lenders would also be mandated through a fair practices code.” Whilst the fair practices code has not yet been developed or at least not yet made publicly available, as companies in the P2P lending industry are body corporates, these fair practice codes should be in line with and satisfy the requirements of section 43A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (“<strong>IT Act</strong>”) as well as the Guidelines issued by the RBI’s Guidelines on Information security, Electronic Banking, Technology risk management and cyber frauds <strong>[1]</strong>.</p>
<p>The minimum standards for data protection in Indian law have been laid down by section 43A of the IT Act and the Information Technology (Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information) Rules, 2011 (“<strong>Rules</strong>”) issued under section 43A. As per Rule 4 of the Rules P2P platforms would be required to have a privacy policy to deal with sensitive personal data, which includes any details regarding financial information such bank account, credit/debit cards, etc <strong>[2]</strong>.</p>
<p>This policy would have to be published on the website of the platforms and would provide for a number of things such as (i) Clear and easily accessible statements of its practices and policies; (ii) type of personal or sensitive personal data or information collected; (iii) purpose of collection and usage of such information; (iv) disclosure of information including sensitive personal data or information; (v) reasonable security practices and procedures for the data. The other requirements of the Rules as regards consent before usage of the information, collection limitations, imparting information/notice to the consumer (information provider), retention limitation, purpose limitation, opt-out option, disclosure, etc. will also be applicable to P2P platforms and the fair practices code that the RBI would issue for this purpose will have to take all these issues into account.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Rules also provide that body corporates will be considered to have complied with reasonable security practices if they have implemented such security practices and standards and have a comprehensive documented information security programme and information security policies that contain managerial, technical, operational and physical security control measures that are commensurate with the information assets being protected with the nature of business. Although there are no such practices which have been endorsed by any governmental body for P2P lending platforms, however the Department of Banking Supervision, Reserve Bank of India, has issued guidelines on “Information security, Electronic Banking, Technology risk management and cyber frauds" <strong>[3]</strong>. which could be relied upon until a fair practices code is put into place. The major privacy and data security provisions of these guidelines are given below:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Security Baselines</strong>: The guidelines require banks to be proactive in identifying and specifying the minimum security baselines to be adhered to by the service providers to ensure confidentiality and security of data;</li>
<li><strong>Back up records</strong>: A cloud computing system must ensure backup of all its clients' information;</li>
<li><strong>Security steps</strong>: An institution may take the following steps to ensure that risks with respect to confidentiality and security of data are adequately mitigated: (i) Address, agree, and document specific responsibilities of the respective parties in outsourcing; (ii) Discuss and agree on the instances where customer data shall be accessed; (iii) Ensure that service provider employees are adequately aware and informed on the security and privacy policies.</li>
<li><strong>Confidentiality</strong>: Agreements should provide for maintaining confidentiality of customer's information even after the contract expires or is terminated by either party and specify the liability in case of security breach or leakage.</li>
<li><strong>Encryption</strong>: Normally, a minimum of 128-bit SSL encryption is expected. Banks should only select encryption algorithms which are well established international standards.</li>
<li><strong>Fraud Risk Management</strong>: It is also necessary that customer confidential information and other data/information available with banks is secured adequately to ensure that fraudsters do not access it to perpetrate fraudulent transactions.</li></ul>
<p>Although inclusion of the above principles in the fair practices code would be helpful, however since the workings of P2P platforms are quite unique, therefore it would be counterproductive to restrict the security and privacy protocols to only those applied to regular banking transactions and the fair practices code should take into account these unique problems of P2P lending rather than seek to apply the existing norms blindly.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Endnotes</h2>
<p><strong>[1]</strong> See: <a href="https://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/content/PDFs/GBS300411F.pdf">https://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/content/PDFs/GBS300411F.pdf</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[2]</strong> The Rules define “sensitive personal data or information” as information relating to: "(i) password, (ii) financial information such as Bank account or credit card or debit card or other payment instrument details, (iii) physical, physiological and mental health condition, (iv) sexual orientation, (v) medical records and history, (vi) Biometric information, (vii) any detail relating to the above clauses as provided to body corporate for providing service, and (viii) any of the information received under above clauses by body corporate for processing, stored or processed under lawful contract or otherwise."</p>
<p><strong>[3]</strong> See: <a href="http://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/content/PDFs/GBS300411F.pdf">http://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/content/PDFs/GBS300411F.pdf</a>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/rbi-consultation-paper-on-p2p-lending'>https://cis-india.org/raw/rbi-consultation-paper-on-p2p-lending</a>
</p>
No publishervipulPrivacyReserve Bank of IndiaData ProtectionResearchNetwork EconomiesP2P LendingResearchers at Work2016-06-01T11:41:17ZBlog EntryComments on the RBI's Consultation Paper on Peer to Peer Lending
https://cis-india.org/raw/comments-on-the-rbi-consultation-paper-on-peer-to-peer-lending
<b>The Reserve Bank of India published a Consultation Paper on Peer to Peer Lending on April 28, 2016, and invited comments from the public. CIS submitted the following response, authored by Elonnai Hickok, Pavishka Mittal, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Vidushi Marda, and Vipul Kharbanda.</b>
<p> </p>
<h2>1. Preliminary</h2>
<p><strong>1.1.</strong> This submission presents comments and recommendations by the Centre for Internet and Society (<strong>“CIS”</strong>) on the Consultation Paper on Peer to Peer Lending (<strong>“the consultation paper”</strong>) by the Reserve Bank of India (<strong>“RBI”</strong>) <strong>[1]</strong>.</p>
<h2>2. The Centre for Internet and Society</h2>
<p><strong>2.1.</strong> The Centre for Internet and Society, CIS <strong>[2]</strong>, 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, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfiguration of social processes and structures through the internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa.</p>
<p><strong>2.2.</strong> This submission is consistent with CIS’ commitment to safeguarding general public interest, and the interests and rights of various stakeholders involved. The comments in this submission aim to further the concerns of citizens’ and users’ rights in the context of products, services, and transactions facilitated by digital media technologies, the , the principle that regulation should be defined around functions of the acts concerned, and not the technologies of delivery. Our comments are limited to the clauses that most directly have an impact on these concerns.</p>
<h2>3. Response</h2>
<h3>3.1. Whether there is a felt need for regulating peer to peer lending platforms?</h3>
<p><strong>3.1.1.</strong> Peer to peer (<strong>“P2P”</strong>) lenders are platforms serving as marketplaces for the lenders and the borrowers of funds to connect. Their very business model does not render them as a provider of finance, as they aspire to function as pure intermediaries to enable lending and borrowing.</p>
<p><strong>3.1.2.</strong> The Section 45I.(f)(iii) of the RBI Act, 1935 <strong>[3]</strong>, provides RBI the authority to classify any financial institution as a non-banking financial company (<strong>“NBFC”</strong>) “with the previous approval of the Central Government and by notification in the Official Gazette.” Since the P2P lending platforms do not provide any finance themselves, undertake acquisition of financial instruments, deliver financial and/or insurance services, or collect financial resources directly, the only ground for classifying such companies as “financial institutions” <strong>[4]</strong> appears to be their involvement in “managing, conducting or supervising, as foreman, agent or in any other capacity, of chits or kuries as defined in any law which is for the time being in force in any State, or any business, which is similar thereto” <strong>[5]</strong>. P2P lending platforms can be considered to be brokers and thus there are other aspects that merit scrutiny such as antitrust issues, obligations of either party, company activities and the transactional system involved, as we will discuss in this document.</p>
<p><strong>3.1.3.</strong> The consultation paper itself states that the balance sheet of the platform cannot indicate any borrowing / lending activity, which entails that the platform cannot itself provide finance or receive any funds for the provision of loans to others. Platforms are not allowed to determine the interest rates as they are not a party to the transaction. Neither would they be liable in cases of default by the borrower. These rules, standard for P2P platforms in other jurisdictions as well, confirm the assumption that the platform itself is not providing finance and thus, cannot be entrusted with any liability, obligation from the transaction.</p>
<p><strong>3.1.4.</strong> Further, with RBI raising the threshold asset size for an NBFC to be considered systemically important (NBFC-ND-SI) from Rs. 100 Crores to Rs. 500 Crores <strong>[6]</strong>, and Economic Times reporting that one of the biggest Indian P2P lending platform’s enterprise valuation (which can be taken as indicative of its net assets) is Rs 50 Crores <strong>[7]</strong>, we may assume that most P2P lending platforms will have net assets worth less than 500 crore, at least in the near future; although there is a possibility for exponential growth with some companies.</p>
<p><strong>3.1.5.</strong> Given the limited sphere of operation, restricted ability (by design) of these platforms to shape interest rates and other features of financial instruments, and their generally non-systemically-important nature, we would submit that the regulation of such P2P lending platforms are kept to an absolute minimum, so that their economic viability is not undermined, and at the same time the key risks associated with their operations are addressed by RBI.</p>
<h3>3.2. Is the assessment of P2P lending and risks associated with it adequate?</h3>
<p><strong>3.2.1.</strong> CIS observes that the following are the key risks involved with the operations of the P2P lending platforms, and these are being respectively addressed by, or can be addressed by RBI in the following manners.</p>
<ol type="A"><li><strong>Insufficient information about the conditions of lending, leading to defrauding of the borrower:</strong> The borrower may not receive appropriate information about the terms of the loan, and/or the P2P lending platform may not act in a “fair” manner (say, in case of collusion between the P2P lending platform and the lender, or the lending platform and the borrower), which may lead to defrauding and/or economic loss of either party. By classifying P2P lending platforms as NBFCs, RBI will ensure that these companies follow the Guidelines on Fair Practices Code for NBFCs <strong>[8]</strong>, which extensively addresses concerns related to this type of risks.<br /><br /></li>
<li><strong>Insufficient information about the borrower, or her/his ability to repay the loan, may lead to non-repayment and economic loss of the lender:</strong> If the P2P lending platform allows the lender to offer loans to borrowers without acquiring and/or providing sufficient information to the lender about the borrower’s credit history and/or ability to repay the loan, modes of formulating security for loans, this may heighten the risks of non-repayment of loans. By classifying P2P lending platforms as NBFCs, RBI will ensure that these companies follow the Master Circular – 'Know Your Customer' (KYC) Guidelines – Anti Money Laundering Standards (AML) - Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 - Obligations of NBFCs <strong>[9]</strong>, which extensively addresses concerns related to this type of risks.<br /><br /></li>
<li><strong>Credit-related information of the lenders and the borrowers collected by P2P lending platforms may not be made available to other financial institutions and that will lead asymmetry in credit information available across various actors in the sector:</strong> Credit information, related to both lending and borrowing practices of entities using the platform concerned, is a key asset of the P2P lending platforms. Lack of sharing of such information with Credit Information Companies, for economic reasons or otherwise, may however, lead to information asymmetry within the financial sector, which will structurally weaken the entire sector (with pieces of credit information being distributed across actors and not being shared internally). By classifying P2P lending platforms as NBFCs, RBI will ensure that these companies follow the Credit Information Companies (Regulation) Act, 2005 <strong>[10]</strong>, which extensively addresses concerns related to this type of risks.<br /><br /></li>
<li><strong>P2P lending platforms diversifying their financial operations without informing RBI and hence without appropriate regulatory control:</strong> It is possible that P2P lending platforms may decide to diversify their activities. There have been similar examples in other related sectors, say e-commerce marketplaces, that have started their own product re/selling companies that use the same online marketplace concerned. By classifying P2P lending platforms as NBFCs, RBI will ensure that these companies provide RBI with detailed and regular reports of their economic activities and investments, which is expected to address concerns related to this type of risks.</li></ol>
<h3>3.3. Are there any other risks which ought to be addressed?</h3>
<p><strong>3.3.1.</strong> CIS observes that as part of the usual transaction related activities of the P2P lending platforms, the companies will come into possession of what has been defined as “sensitive personal data or information” by the Information Technology (Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information) Rules, 2011 <strong>[11]</strong>. The concerns related to this type of risk is directly addressed by the Rules concerned, and may not require additional attention from the RBI.</p>
<p><strong>3.3.2.</strong> CIS observes that as borrowers and lenders start using specific P2P lending platforms, the data regarding their credit histories and/or “financial reputation” will be owned by these companies. While such information might be shared internally within the financial sector through the Credit Information Companies, the borrowers and lenders themselves may not get direct access to such data. Hence, the borrowers and lenders will not be able to move easily and smoothly to a new P2P lending platform and make use of their existing credit information and/or “financial reputation” when accessing services offered via the new P2P lending platform. In other words, the borrowers and lenders may face a <em>service provider lock-in</em>, and inability to move between P2P lending platforms easily, without explicit access to their own credit history/reputation, and will not have the ability to migrate such information from one P2P lending platform to another (or to any other agency, for that matter). CIS submits that RBI must provide a mechanism to allow users to migrate between platforms as it has not been discussed in the consultation paper.</p>
<h3>3.4. Is the proposed approach to regulating these platforms adequate?</h3>
<p><strong>3.4.1.</strong> CIS observes that while classification of P2P lending platforms will appropriately address key risks associated with their operations (as listed in 3.2.1. A-D), it will not address a major risk emerging out of their operations that is unique to the technological basis of the business concerned (as mentioned in 3.3.2.), and further, it will impose substantial financial and management obligations that have a very high probability of undermining the economic viability of this emerging and niche sector of intermediated direct lending and borrowing.</p>
<p><strong>3.4.2.</strong> CIS observes that these financial and management obligations may involve the following topics among others discussed: 1) minimum net worth requirement for registration, 2) minimum investments required to be made government securities, 3) transferring of minimum percentage of net profits to RBI, 4) guidelines regarding corporate governance <strong>[12]</strong>, etc.</p>
<p><strong>3.4.3.</strong> Given this, CIS submits that instead of classifying P2P lending platforms as “Misc NBFCs,” a new sub-classification is created under the category of NBFC for such platforms, that directly addresses the key risks associated with businesses of P2P lending platforms, and protects lenders as well as borrowers while enhancing transparency in operations. This new sub-classification of P2P lending companies should also be divided into systemically-important and non-systemically-important like other NBFCs, and requirements regarding financial operations and corporate management should only be enforced for the former category of P2P lending companies.</p>
<h3>3.5. Any other relevant issues pertaining to P2P lending</h3>
<p>Beyond the issues already discussed above, CIS seek clarity from the RBI around the following aspects:</p>
<ol><li><strong>Transactional system pertaining to P2P lending:</strong>
<ol type="a">
<li>What are the requirements and prerequisites for mandating the collection of user identity?</li>
<li>Establishing a maximum sum that can be transferred per transaction.</li></ol>
</li>
<li><strong>Company activities:</strong>
<ol type="a"><li>Fees that can be charged by platforms.</li>
<li>How data security can be best addressed.</li>
<li>How the financial transactions are brokered.</li>
<li>Modes of redressal.</li>
<li>Restitution to users if something goes amiss in the transaction.</li>
<li>Insurance that the company has to buy or capital on hand to support.</li></ol>
</li></ol>
<p> </p>
<h2>Endnotes</h2>
<p><strong>[1]</strong> See: <a href="https://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/bs_viewcontent.aspx?Id=3164">https://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/bs_viewcontent.aspx?Id=3164</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[2]</strong> See: <a href="http://cis-india.org/">http://cis-india.org/</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[3]</strong> See: <a href="https://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/Publications/PDFs/RBIA1934170510.pdf">https://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/Publications/PDFs/RBIA1934170510.pdf</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[4]</strong> See Section 45I.(c) of RBI Act, 1923, last amended on January 07, 2013.</p>
<p><strong>[5]</strong> See Section 45I.(c)(v) of RBI Act, 1923, last amended on January 07, 2013.</p>
<p><strong>[6]</strong> See: <a href="https://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/content/pdfs/PNNBFC200315.pdf">https://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/content/pdfs/PNNBFC200315.pdf</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[7]</strong> See: <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/faircent-com-raises-pre-series-a-funding-of-250k/articleshow/47630279.cms">http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/faircent-com-raises-pre-series-a-funding-of-250k/articleshow/47630279.cms</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[8]</strong> See: <a href="https://rbi.org.in/scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=7866">https://rbi.org.in/scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=7866</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[9]</strong> See: <a href="https://rbi.org.in/scripts/BS_ViewMasCirculardetails.aspx?id=8168">https://rbi.org.in/scripts/BS_ViewMasCirculardetails.aspx?id=8168</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[10]</strong> See: <a href="http://www.incometaxindia.gov.in/Pages/acts/credit-information-companies-act.aspx">http://www.incometaxindia.gov.in/Pages/acts/credit-information-companies-act.aspx</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[11]</strong> See: <a href="http://deity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/GSR313E_10511%281%29.pdf">http://deity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/GSR313E_10511%281%29.pdf</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[12]</strong> See: <a href="https://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/BS_NBFCNotificationView.aspx?Id=3706">https://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/BS_NBFCNotificationView.aspx?Id=3706</a>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/comments-on-the-rbi-consultation-paper-on-peer-to-peer-lending'>https://cis-india.org/raw/comments-on-the-rbi-consultation-paper-on-peer-to-peer-lending</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroPrivacyReserve Bank of IndiaData ProtectionResearchNetwork EconomiesP2P LendingResearchers at Work2016-06-01T20:21:13ZBlog EntryCreativity, Politics, and Internet Censorship
https://cis-india.org/raw/creativity-politics-and-internet-censorship-20160525
<b>In collaboration with Karnataka for Kashmir, we organised a discussion on 'Creativity, Politics and Internet Censorship' on May 25, 2016. Mahum Shabir, a legal activist and artist, Mir Suhail, political cartoonist with Kashmir Reader and Rising Kashmir, and Habeel Iqbal, a lawyer who has worked with several justice groups in Kashmir, shared some of their work and experiences. This discussion was organised as part of Port of Kashmir 2016, a series of events bringing together a small collective of people using different modes of art and activism to address crucial challenges to free speech and democracy in the state. </b>
<p> </p>
<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cis-india/website/master/img/MahumShabirHandwara.jpg" alt="null" />
<h6>Mahum Shabir talking about the Handwara case. Source: Swar Thounaojam.</h6>
<p> </p>
<p>The discussion began with Mahum Shabir giving an overview of the work at the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, specifically on the Handwara case. She spoke of the role of the internet, and social media in particular, in perpetuating the gaze of the state, while also bringing up the larger question of how media propagates a certain way of looking at Kashmir, particularly women, marginalised groups and victims of violence. Internet blockades and media censorship pose several obstacles for the circulation of information, resulting in the need for surreptitious ways of communication as a necessary way to counter predominant narratives in the discourse around occupation. The implications of these for the rights of women in particular, the curbs on freedom at different levels, and the undercurrent of violence that is prevalent in everyday life, came up as significant questions.</p>
<p>Mir Suhail presented some of his cartoons, and shared some poignant personal experiences of growing up in a state under military occupation. His works reflect his concerns about a changing society, from understanding strife as an almost normalised state of existence, to now a phase of industrialization and control of resources. He spoke on the politics of exercising creative freedom in the present, and his attempt to encourage conversations on contemporary issues through his art. The role of technology in facilitating these conversations is as crucial as it is contentious, for it also brings up questions of surveillance and privacy;his art tries to navigate through some of these questions in different ways.</p>
<p>Habeel Iqbal, a lawyer who has worked on the Shopian and Handwara cases, spoke on some of the legal aspects of censorship and surveillance related issues in Kashmir, particularly in instances involving social media. He discussed some of the challenges faced by activists, social workers and political groups in working on certain cases, particularly in gathering and circulating information or in writing about sensitive issues. Self-censorship is often the only option for people working on these issues, as he elaborated through some personal experiences.</p>
<p>The discussion included questions on the possibilities opened up by privacy tools, such the use of encryption and to the extent to which they affect communication. Access to these technologies is a factor here; besides, transparency is also a goal for most human rights organisations working in the state. Social media, and social messaging apps in particular often function as an alternative to mainstream media as a means of communication, and it is interesting to see the questions it opens up for censorship. Examples of activism using not just the internet, but the network (through USBs and hard drives) were also discussed. The responses to such forms of activism, from across the world were interesting to engage with, as it tries to tackle predominant perceptions about the state. The economic aspects of different strategies of censorship and surveillance, through curfews and blockades and its broader implications for socio-economic development in the state were also discussed. The talk provided several insights into the problems and challenges to freedom of speech, the censorship of ideas, and its repercussions for creative freedom and politics in Kashmir.</p>
<p> </p>
<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cis-india/website/master/img/MirSuhailPostcards.jpg" alt="null" />
<h6>Postcards of cartoons by Mir Suhail. Source: Swar Thounaojam.</h6>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/creativity-politics-and-internet-censorship-20160525'>https://cis-india.org/raw/creativity-politics-and-internet-censorship-20160525</a>
</p>
No publishersneha-ppResearchers at WorkPracticeArtCensorship2016-06-17T07:07:40ZBlog EntryDigital Humanities in India – Concluding Thoughts
https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities-in-india-concluding-thoughts
<b>An extended survey of digital initiatives in arts and humanities practices in India was undertaken during the last year. Provocatively called 'mapping digital humanities in India', this enquiry began with the term 'digital humanities' itself, as a 'found' name for which one needs to excavate some meaning, context, and location in India at the present moment. Instead of importing this term to describe practices taking place in this country - especially when the term itself is relatively unstable and undefined even in the Anglo-American context - what I chose to do was to take a few steps back, and outline a few questions/conflicts that the digital practitioners in arts and humanities disciplines are grappling with. The final report of this study will be published serially. This is the final section. </b>
<p> </p>
<h2>Sections</h2>
<p>01. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities-in-india">Digital Humanities in India?</a></p>
<p>02. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/a-question-of-digital-humanities">A Question of Digital Humanities</a></p>
<p>03. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/reading-from-a-distance-data-as-text">Reading from a Distance – Data as Text</a></p>
<p>04. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/the-infrastructure-turn-in-the-humanities">The Infrastructure Turn in the Humanities</a></p>
<p>05. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/living-in-the-archival-moment">Living in the Archival Moment</a></p>
<p>06. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/new-modes-and-sites-of-humanities-practice">New Modes and Sites of Humanities Practice</a></p>
<p>07. <strong>Digital Humanities in India – Concluding Thoughts</strong></p>
<hr />
<h2>Concluding Thoughts</h2>
<p>This exercise in mapping ‘digital humanities’ in India has brought to the fore several learnings and challenges, especially in trying to locate the domain of enquiry even as our understanding of what constitutes new objects, methods and forms of research and pedagogy constantly undergo change and redefinition. As some of the people interviewed in the course of this study remarked, DH, with its interdisciplinary approach and porous boundaries is like a moving target that becomes increasingly difficult to define as it is constantly evolving into something new, which then adds another dimension to what is already understood about the field. This is not to say that there is a consensus on what is DH, globally or in India, but just to emphasise that the object or domain of enquiry is not fixed, or demarcated clearly.</p>
<p>Even as I wrap up this study, some of the key questions or problems of definition, ontology and method remain with us, as the ‘field’ – if there is such a thing – is incipient in India, as with other parts of the world. What it does for us immediately is throw open several questions about how we understand the idea of the ‘digital’, and what may be new areas of enquiry for the humanities at large, post the advent of the digital. This study therefore is not interested in the question of whether there is a field called DH in India, but rather in what questions are raised by and for DH and DH-like projects by a range of practices and scholarship in the humanities post the digital.</p>
<p>We began with the understanding that DH is a new space of interdisciplinary research, scholarship and practice with several possibilities for thinking about the nature of the intersection of the humanities and technology. The term was a little more than a found term of sorts, in the context of this study, which since then has taken on various meanings and undergone some form of creative re-appropriation. The history of the term in the context of “humanities computing” in the Anglo-American context has helped in locating and defining the field globally within the ambit of certain kinds of practices and scholarship in the contemporary moment. In India, this has been relatively complex endeavour, given that DH, or engagements with humanities-after-digital and/or with digital-through-humanities come out of a different chequered history of humanities and technology. As most of the literature around DH even globally has pointed out, the problem with arriving at a definition is ontological, more than epistemological. The conditions of its emergence and existence are yet to be completely understood, although if one is to take into account the larger history of science and technology studies or the more recent cyber culture and digital culture studies, these ‘epistemic shifts’ have been in the making for some time now. In India particularly, where a clear picture of the ‘field’ as such is still to emerge in the form of a theorisation of its key concerns, it is only through a practice-mapping that one may locate what are at best certain discursive shifts in the way we understand content, structures and methods in the humanities, within the context of the digital. These changes may be visible across only a few domains – particularly in the multi-layered technological landscape in India, and lack a wider consensus in terms of whether they really constitute a larger epistemic shift or new direction of thought. The first couple of chapters in this report tried to lay out ways of understanding the current state of ‘digitality’ that India is in, and the lack of an indigenous framework to theorise or understand it better. The layered technological and media landscape that we inhabit today, where both the analogue and digital co-exist serving various purposes, and access and usage are still contentious points of debate, provides an interesting and dynamic context to understand what are new practices of humanities research and scholarship today.</p>
<p>The fundamental premise of the nature of the digital and its relation to the human subject still lacks adequate exploration which would be required to define the contours of the field. The inherited separation of humanities and technology further makes this a complex space to negotiate, when the term may now actually indicate the need to decode the rather tenuous relationship between the two supposedly separate domains. If one may locate the question even earlier, the separation of the natural and social sciences lies above this segregation of disciplines, and needs further exploration. There is a need therefore to understand the growth of a ‘technologised’ history of humanities to examine whether this almost forced coming together of two historically separated domains may in itself be something novel, or create new and qualitatively different kinds of practices for humanities. Even so, the disciplinary contexts of the usage of the term DH in India open up certain questions of ontology and method more broadly for humanities research and practice in the digital space. These include changes in the nature of cultural artifacts brought about by digitisation, in a landscape where the analogue and digital co-exist but also are in a state of transition from the first to the second. One example is the digitisation of objects like film posters, lobby cards and other paraphernalia around a film text, which although analogue objects, can now be layered onto a digital film object in online archivel like Indiancine.ma, thus also changing the object or opening it up for more questions. The digital object or image, is a new object of study that also demands a different kind of analysis. The change in the nature of the archival object and the challenges to archival practice are some of the related questions stemming from this context. As mentioned by Dr. Indira Chowdhury in the chapter on archival practice, oral history archives and the practice of creating and maintaining them is fraught with many challenges because of a change in the archival object itself. A digital audio file has its own protocols of storage, retrieval and use, given the problems of format and technological obsolescence. Further the classification of such files, its copies in different formats, and their preservation also demands changes in archival practice. This points to some of the larger challenges that have emerged for archival practice in India today, which include – storage and preservation of materials, cross-referencing and meta-data standards, conditions and structures of access, roles and forms of curation, re-usage of archival materials in research and pedagogy, and the constraints to digitization of archival materials, particularly in terms of rare materials and those in Indian languages. The challenge of working with materials in Indian languages (see section on Data as Text) are several, and will form one of the significant areas of work in DH.</p>
<p>The question of methodology comes in as the next most important aspect here, as the method of DH is yet to be clearly defined. The proliferation of new disciplines and conflict over methodology is not new, the Gulbenkian Commission report published in 1996 titled ‘Open the Social Sciences’ documents some of these and other concerns with the growth and segregation of disciplines, and the debates it generated both internally, seen in the rise of cultural studies, and in the natural sciences as complexity studies as well (Wallerstein et al 1996). At present DH seems to be a combination and creative appropriation of methodologies drawn from different disciplines and creative practices. The change in the methodology of the humanities and social sciences itself as no longer remaining discipline-specific has been a contributory factor to the evolving methodology of DH as well. This has raised several methodological questions, as outlined by some of the people interviewed in the study. The foremost is the challenge in rethinking the notion of the text as a digitally mediated object, and the blurring of boundaries between film, audio and print and archival materials as they are transformed into digital objects. The existing methods of reading these texts then are inadequate. An example is the Bichitra variorum at Jadavpur University, or online archives like Indiancine.ma or Pad.ma, where you need new tools to navigate the vast corpus of material on these platforms, and to work with them. The notion of text and textual analysis also demands some rethinking in the light of new terms such as ‘distant reading’ that have come up in the DH discourse. Bichitra and Pad.ma or Indiancine.ma would facilitate some form of such ‘distant reading’ as they involve a method of reading the print or film text using a large number of texts, something possible only with a computer, but also with other kinds of ancillary material, like marginalia, errata, posters, pamphlets and lobby cards of a film. This brings up not just new ways of contextualizing the digital object, but also asking questions of it in terms of its material aspects. Working with collaborative online archives, while creating a new analytical and creative space for work using different kinds of film and film-related material, also pose questions of authorship and privacy. The lack of better transcription tools and other methods to work with sound in the digital space, has posed significant methodological challenges in oral history work as well, as outlined in earlier sections of this report.</p>
<p>The use of computational methods for humanities research is one of the important shifts that forms part of the growth of DH in India, although there is very little work being done in this area in academic spaces except for a few institutions. The Tagore variorum and the online film archives Indiacine.ma and Pad.ma are two examples in this study that have done some work with computational tools and a large corpus of material. The collation guide in Bichitra, and the use of different tools and filters in the film archives like Pad.ma and Indiancine.ma have been able to add another dimension to the analysis of humanities texts, but whether they help ask any qualitatively new questions still remains open to debate. The other spaces studied as part of this report, such as work on digitisation and archives at the School of Cultural Texts, Centre for Public History, or SPARROW, or media art work at CAMP, have been more engaged with exploring what the digital turn has meant for certain humanities research. Some of the more recent courses offered in DH, such as the master’s programme at Srishti School of Art Design and Technology, and the certificate course at University of Pune, do engage with some form of building or ‘material making’, by offering workshops and some practical sessions, as well as topics like data mining, and textual computing. As such the skills and infrastructure needed to work with large data sets and new technologised processes of interpretation and visualisation still remain outside the ambit of the mainstream humanities. Through an exploration of allied fields such as media, archival practice, design and education technology, the study tries to locate how certain practices in these areas inform what we understand of DH today.</p>
<p>The archive, media and now to a certain extent art and design have become the sites for most of the discussions around DH in India, primarily because of the nature of institutions and people who have engaged with the question so far. Archival practice has seen a vast change with the onset of digitisation, and the growth of more public and collaborative archival spaces will also bring forth new questions and concepts around the nature of the archive and its imagination as a dynamic space of knowledge production. The Centre for Public History at the Srishti School focuses on some of these questions, by trying to build more collaborative, online and public archival spaces, and involving in the process a rather diverse group of practitioners and researchers. The objective is also to make not only archives, but history, and oral histories as a discipline more accessible, and dynamic. he notion of the archive as a metaphor, and the possibility of looking at the archive as a database are some new questions which would inform the growth of DH in India. The growth of an open, distributive and collaborative archive, such as Indiancine.ma and Pad.ma also asks questions about the changes in film as an archival object, in its transition to the digital space. The availability of the film text for study, and the layering of different kinds of ancillary material around the film, such as posters, advertisements, literature and errata, opens up possibilities of reading the film text differently. At a more abstract level, the nature of the text as an unstable object itself, now increasingly being mediated and negotiated in different ways through digital spaces, tools and methods would be one way of locating an object of enquiry in DH and tracing its connection to the humanities, which are essentially still seen as ‘text-based disciplines’.</p>
<p>What has been a definite shift is the emphasis on process which has become an important point of enquiry, and one of the many axes around which DH is constructed. The rethinking of existing processes of knowledge production, including traditional methods of teaching-learning, and the emergence of new tools and methods such as visualisation, data mapping, distant reading and design-thinking at a larger level would be some of the interesting prospects of enquiry in the field. Though there is little conversation in the above areas in DH in India (even among the institutions and people mentioned in this study), and some work in other fields like the natural sciences, media and communication, its seems to not be part of the larger discourse developing around DH yet. The collation tool developed for the Tagore variorum, or the editing and annotation tools used in Indiancine.ma and Pad.ma are some examples of the tools and methods presently used in what could be DH or DH-like work in India. The method of DH is however, necessarily collaborative and distributed at the same time, as evidenced by its practice in these various areas and disciplines. A lot of the work done on both these platforms has been through collaboration among people across diverse domains of expertise, in the arts and humanities and technological fields. As the description of the variorum suggests, it needed the expertise of people from Computer Science, Library and Information Sciences, English and Bengali departments to set up such a platform. The method of using or working with Indiancine.ma and Pad.ma is necessarily collaborative and distributed, because everything from the primary film material to the annotations and editing is in some way user-generated, as the archive itself is open to different groups of people ranging from the film enthusiast to the film studies scholar.</p>
<p>The complex and somewhere problematic history of science and technology in India and the growth of the IT sector also forms part of this context, and will inform the manner in which DH grows as a concept, area of enquiry or even as a discipline. DH is yet another manifestation of changes that we have seen in the existing objects, processes, spaces and figures of learning, particularly the open, collaborative and participatory nature of knowledge production and dissemination that has come about with the advent of internet and digital technologies. More importantly, they also point towards the larger changes in what were earlier considered unifying notions for the university, and the humanities as disciplines founded on the ideas of reason and culture. The idea proposed by Bill Readings that the university is no longer concerned with the production of a radical or liberal subject is also an important one, as it points to a further question of the nature of the subject produced, and who the process of knowledge production is to be aimed at (Readings 1997). If one may extend this argument to DH, the subject of this new discourse around the digital is also now rather unclear.</p>
<p>One could explore the notion of the 'digital humanist,' or in a more abstract manner the digital subject as one example of this lack of clarity, which is also why it has been of much concern for several scholars, DH and otherwise. As Prof. Amlan Dasgupta says, it is difficult to identify such a category of scholars, although a person who is able to situate his work in the digital space with the same kind of ease and confidence that people of a different generation could do in manuscripts and books would perhaps fit this description, and he is sure that such a person may be found. For example someone who knows Shakespeare well and can write a programme, and he is sure a day will come when this is a possibility. It is a familiarity in which the inherent distance between these two pursuits becomes lesser – DH is at that moment - a composite of these two approaches rather than the difference. While many scholars concur with this explanation, others find the term misleading – humanities scholars do not call themselves ‘humanists’. Also, by virtue of being a digital subject, anybody engaged with some form of digital practice is already a digital humanist of some sort. The problem also is in the rather unclear nature of the practice, all of which is not unanimously identified as DH, as a result of which not many scholars would want to identify with the term. This poses another question about the skills required of a humanities scholar in the near future, will she have to learn how to code etc. Additionally there is also a concern, as pointed out by some scholars, about the loss of criticality as a result of a relying on algorithms to work with a corpus of texts, among other things.</p>
<p>However, many of these alternate or liminal spaces have always existed; they are perhaps becoming more visible and acknowledged now. This is also indicative of the larger changes in the landscape of work in the humanities, whether creative, academic or pedagogic. With the advent of the internet and new digital technologies, the nature of cultural artifacts has also been altered significantly, thus demanding a new mode of enquiry and analysis, which often goes beyond interpretation and representation. How these digital objects are constituted, are they ever complete or finished, such as the text in the variorum or the film in the archive which continue to take on layer upon layer of annotation to generate a plethora of meanings, are related questions. They pose a challenge to the existing methods of the humanities, and along with the distributed, collaborative, and networked structures of practice and research that the internet has engendered, they have opened up several possibilities for the humanities. DH, with its emphasis on interdisciplinarity and different kinds of knowledge drawn from a diverse set of practices definitely opens up space for a new mode of questioning; whether all of these different modes of questioning can coalesce as a new discipline or interdisciplinary field in itself will remain to be seen.</p>
<p>More importantly, it also indicates the changes taking place in the university system in India, which is trying to address multiple anxieties at a larger political and the every-day administrative levels, reflected in problems with quality, equity and access to education (Misra and Singh 2015; Academics for Creative Reforms 2015). The digital turn has been one of the sources of concern, as it has pushed for the need to rethink the role of technology, particularly internet, in teaching and learning practices, both within and outside the classroom. The internet, and the different challenges posed by it in terms of methods, objects and contexts of learning, has contributed greatly to the emergence of some of the digital practices discussed in this study, which also take some of the questions they pose about knowledge production, pedagogy or scholarship, outside the ambit of the classroom or university space. The emergence of DH can be seen as a coming together of these anxieties in some manner, and perhaps indicative of a distinct ontological basis for such a discipline or area of study in India. This is not to conflate the discourse with the narrative of a ‘crisis’ in the university (something that exists in the Anglo-American context of DH) but rather to highlight the changes that it is undergoing, where the internet and digital technologies continue to play a crucial role. In the absence of a history or established traditions for the growth of disciplines like media studies, software/internet studies or digital cultural studies in India, apart from the work done by research programmes like the Sarai programme at CSDS, it is imperative to ask if the emergence of DH is then a push to trace such a history, to understand better its ontological and political stake, and more importantly to explore what the ‘digital’ means not just for the humanities, but for a larger processes of knowledge production today.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>References</h2>
<p>Academics for Creative Reforms ‘What Is To Be Done About Indian Universities? In <em>Economic and Political Weekly</em>, Vol. 50, Issue No. 24, 13 Jun, 2015.</p>
<p>Misra, Rajesh and Supriya Singh ‘Continuum of Ignorance in Indian Universities’ in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 50, Issue No. 48, 28 Nov, 2015</p>
<p>Readings, Bill. The University in Ruins. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997</p>
<p>Wallerstein, Immanuel et al. Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. California: Stanford University Press, 1996, <a href="http://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/archive/iwstanfo.htm">http://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/archive/iwstanfo.htm</a>.</p>
<p> </p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities-in-india-concluding-thoughts'>https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities-in-india-concluding-thoughts</a>
</p>
No publishersneha-ppDigital KnowledgeMapping Digital Humanities in IndiaResearchEducation TechnologyDigital HumanitiesResearchers at Work2016-06-30T04:48:27ZBlog EntryPolicy Shaping in the Indian IT Industry: Recommendations by NASSCOM, 2006-2012
https://cis-india.org/raw/policy-shaping-in-the-indian-it-industry-recommendations-by-nasscom-2006-2012
<b>This is the first of a series of three blog posts, authored by Pavishka Mittal, tracking the engagements by NASSCOM and iSPIRT in suggesting and shaping the IT industry policies in India during 2006-2016. This posts focuses on the policy activities of NASSCOM in 2006-2012 with specific reference to Special Economic Zones, E-Commerce Industry and Transfer Pricing, along with a few other miscellaneous important recommendations.</b>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>1.</strong> <a href="#1">Introduction</a></p>
<p><strong>2.</strong> <a href="#2">Tax Reforms in Special Economic Zones (SEZs)</a></p>
<p><strong>3.</strong> <a href="#3">E-Commerce Industry</a></p>
<p><strong>4.</strong> <a href="#4">Transfer Pricing Issues</a></p>
<p><strong>5.</strong> <a href="#5">Other Recommendations</a></p>
<p><strong>5.1.</strong> <a href="#5-1">Concerns with the Union Budget Proposals</a></p>
<p><strong>5.2.</strong> <a href="#5-2">Request for Clarity in Classification of Transactions and Guidelines</a></p>
<p><strong>5.3.</strong> <a href="#5-3">New Retrograde Obligations under Law</a></p>
<p><strong>6.</strong> <a href="#6">Endnotes</a></p>
<p><strong>7.</strong> <a href="#7">Author Profile</a></p>
<hr />
<h2 id="1">1. Introduction</h2>
<p>The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) was established in 1988 as a non-profit, global trade association registered under the Indian Societies Act 1860 representing the interests of the IT Industry, now with over 1500 members. Its objective is to facilitate trade in the software development and services, software products, IT enabled/BPO services and e-commerce. It also undertakes research projects for facilitating innovation in advanced software and maintains data on industry trends, even a national database of registered and verified knowledge workers in the industry. Nevertheless, its role of policy advocacy cannot be over emphasized. It regularly interacts with the Government of India to bring about a favourable business environment for the IT Industry.</p>
<p>This blog post, the first part in a series, discusses NASSCOM’s major issues with policies of the Government of India in the period 2006-2012. The concerns of the IT industry, as highlighted by NASSCOM in the period aforementioned are with reference to the Special Economic Zones, E-Commerce Industry and Transfer Pricing broadly along with other miscellaneous important recommendations. The subsequent blog posts will focus on specific tax issues post 2012 and will elaborately discuss transfer pricing related concerns.</p>
<h2 id="2">2. Tax Reforms in Special Economic Zones (SEZs)</h2>
<p>The ITes and BPO industry constitutes a sizable portion of the number of SEZs in the country <strong>[1]</strong> so much so that it has been argued that the IT industry alone reaps the benefits of the SEZs and STPIs to the exclusion of the other sectors <strong>[2]</strong>.</p>
<p>The most salient incentive in the SEZ Act enacted by the Government of India in 2005 had been income tax exemption of export profits which contributed to the scheme’s success in attracting major investments <strong>[3]</strong>. Further, exemption from minimum alternate tax had been provided under section 115JB of the Income Tax Act. However, in 2011, the government decided to impose a Minimum Alternate Tax upto the rate of 18.5% on the book profits of SEZ’s developers and units through the Finance Act 2012 by introducing amendments to the Income Tax Act 1961, to be effective from April 2012 <strong>[4]</strong>. NASSCOM took a strong stance against equality in corporate tax liability as such tax is sought to be imposed upon income derived from investments made with a commitment of tax exemption. The intention of the government in making such policies having regressive outcomes will be judged if key promised characteristics of SEZs were differential economic laws from the remaining domestic territory. For all practical purposes, they are deemed to be foreign territories for the levy of trade duties and tariffs <strong>[5]</strong>. In the case of Mindtree Limited v. Union of India <strong>[6]</strong>, software company Mindtree argued that the imposition of MAT in SEZs was against the concept of promissory estoppel and the doctrine of legitimate expectation, which rendered such taxes constitutionally invalid <strong>[7]</strong>. Even though a time limit was not prescribed for the above tax exemption, it was argued that SEZ policy was predicated on tax relief and the subsequent change in policy was arbitrary and unfair. Individual taxpayers and undertakings should not be affected by subsequent laws if they make sizable investments, modify business models and bear the added expenses of moving into or developing a SEZ. It cannot be disputed that this argument is untenable keeping in mind that the legislature cannot be bound by past promises in line with practical considerations and their independence with regard to the effective discharge of public functions. It was held that the legislature cannot be bound by the doctrine of promissory estoppel <strong>[8]</strong>.</p>
<p>The Adani group had also challenged the imposition of MAT in the Gujarat HC in 2011 on the ground that that any amendments to the SEZ Act can only be brought about by amendments to the SEZ Act itself, and not through the Finance Act <strong>[9]</strong>. The SC in Madurai District Central Cooperative Bank Ltd. <strong>[10]</strong> held that the parliament has the authority to introduce a new charge of tax even by incorporating it in any other statute other than the act. However, the fact remains that such policies lead to a volatile business environment and the importance of stable business policies cannot be overemphasized. In 2011, NASSCOM recommended that MAT be withdrawn as it is opposed to the government’s long term policy of SEZ’s growth <strong>[11]</strong>. Alternatively, it stated that the imposition of MAT be withdrawn to ensure the continued economic viability of the SEZs which have already been notified by the government <strong>[12]</strong>. It also stated that international norms should be applied for the determination of the MAT rate, which was 1/3rd of the corporate tax rates <strong>[13]</strong>.</p>
<p>Another concern highlighted by other stakeholders was the prescribed period of ten years for the setting of the MAT against regular tax liability. This MAT credit may expire or be on the verge of expiration for participants in SEZs who enjoy tax holiday for a prescribed number of years when they start operations due to absence of initial tax liability. Foreign investors will face difficulties in claiming tax benefits in their home jurisdictions for MAT paid in India. Further, the exemption granted to SEZ developers as to the levy of Dividend Distribution Tax @ 15% has been revoked by the Finance Ministry in 2011 severely affecting the IT industry.</p>
<p>The government finally took note of the increased disinvestment as a consequence of such taxes and proposed to make the imposition of MAT and Dividend Distribution Tax inapplicable to SEZ’s in 2015 <strong>[14]</strong>.</p>
<h2 id="3">3. E-Commerce Industry</h2>
<p>NASSCOM in 2012 suggested the lowering of the interchange tax rate on debit cards transactions by the RBI. Debit cards possess lower risk in comparison to credit cards, the transactions being concluded immediately and the same should be reflected in the form of differential taxes. A standard 1-2% interchange/transaction fees were generally levied by banks. NASSCOM also recommended the introduction of a 2% tax incentive on the purchase of products online to facilitate increased purchases and encourage consumers to even undertake small value transactions online. Further, it emphasized that the base of e-commerce users have to be expanded. It commented on the differences in the Internet usage costs between China and India, USD 10 and USD 15-20 respectively. High internet usage costs can only be indicative of reduced Internet access. However, this is not to state that the E-commerce industry is unsuited for India due to infrastructural inefficiencies. NASSCOM has stated that India as of 2012 possesses over 100 million Internet users. Technology has to be developed which would reduce dropout rates of transactions. Further it suggested the creation of an online receipt repository which would store all online transaction receipts, accessible through mobile phones or the internet. It would contribute in increasing customer confidence by enabling tracking of payment, delivery etc.</p>
<p>The RBI in response to the recommendations of NASSCOM and the Online Payment Advisory Group <strong>[15]</strong> and in consultation with all concerned stakeholders, decided to put a maximum limit on the Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) for transactions undertaken with a debit card [16].</p>
<h2 id="4">4. Transfer Pricing Issues</h2>
<p>Transfer Pricing has become the dominant international tax issue affecting multinational corporations operating in India [17]. As noted by NASSCOM, a steep rise in litigation and the number of transfer pricing adjustments with the Indian Revenue Authority (IRA) has been observed due to ‘increased scrutiny’ by the IRA who has been rejecting the profit declared by foreign companies accruing to Indian subsidiaries by applying very high markups in this sector. Increased complications in setting valid prices through this process have arisen due to the rising presence of ‘highly complex transactions’ involving intangibles and multi-tiered services across the world. The Finance Act 2012 extended the applicability of domestic party transactions to certain related domestic parties, if the aggregate value of such transactions exceeds INR 5 crore, to any expenditure with respect to which deduction is claimed while calculating profits and to transactions related to businesses eligible for profit-linked tax incentives, including SEZ units under section 10AA <strong>[18]</strong>.</p>
<p>NASSCOM has proposed a three pronged approach to the problem of backlog of cases and absence of certainty of price of transactions:</p>
<ol><li>Implementation of Safe Harbour provisions to resolve existing disputes.</li>
<li>Introduction of Advance Pricing Agreements <strong>[19]</strong> to set fair and transparent prices.</li>
<li>Initiation of review of the structure and procedure of the Dispute Resolution Panel <strong>[20]</strong>.<br /></li></ol>
<p>The Finance Act 2009 introduced section 92CB <strong>[21]</strong> in the Income Tax Act 1961 which provided for the subjection of the arms length price determined under section 92C or section 92CA to Safe Harbour Rules, to be declared by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT). For the valid determination of such a transfer price, the minimum transfer price that a taxpayer is expected to earn for international transactions is prescribed along with certain specific norms for particular transactions. The safe harbour transfer price for eligible transactions is subject to certain prescribed minimum ceilings <strong>[22]</strong>. A price determined in accordance with such guidelines would be deemed to be an Arms Length Price (ALP). To that extent the safe Harbour Rules are in the nature of ‘presumptive taxation’ and incentivises IT firms to avoid unnecessary litigation by opting for the same. Unilateral, bilateral and multilateral Advance Pricing Agreements, binding on the taxpayer and the revenue authorities for five consecutive years have been introduced with effect from 1 July 2012. Certain domestic transactions are inapplicable for APA’s in the absence of other monetary conditions/stipulations under law for entering into an APA. Documentation on comparables is required to be maintained to substantiate compliance with arms length principle.</p>
<p>The concerns of the prescribed rates include non-representation of industry benchmarks and economic realities in as much as the prescribed rates exceed the actual arms length prices, often leading to the risk of double taxation in foreign jurisdictions. The division of IT services into two components has also been criticized as many of the activities might overlap. NASSCOM has stated that it is not clear how the existing current issues are proposed to be resolved. The introduction of domestic parties as applicable parties to be subject to the transfer pricing regulations will only increase the complexity in the law. There has been subsequent judicial development involving the establishment of some principles for the valid determination of comparables for the purpose of identifying an acceptable transfer price which will be discussed in the next blog post.</p>
<h2 id="5">5. Other Recommendations</h2>
<h3 id="5-1">5.1. Concerns with the Union Budget Proposals</h3>
<p>NASSCOM summarized that the Union Budget Proposals 2012-13 focus on the reduction of the fiscal deficit through higher taxation rather than expenditure management. More specifically, it focuses on the following concerns of the IT Industry:</p>
<ul><li>The issues of tax simplification have not been resolved as no roadmap for the implementation of the Direct Taxes Code and the Goods and Services Tax Bill has been provided.</li>
<li>The increase in the Current Account Deficit should have incentivized the government to introduce measures which facilitate high value exports, which has been wholly ignored from the budget.</li>
<li>Increase in indirect taxes, namely excise duty and service tax is a retrograde policy measure.</li>
<li>Restrictive conditions in the SEZ Act 2005 which do not facilitate the setting up of small companies, have to be modified.</li>
<li>There is no mention of reduction of Tax Deducted at Source (TDS) for SMEs and introduction of non-profit linked incentives in the form of employment benefits etc. in the proposal.</li>
<li>Similar provisions should also be introduced for Tier II and III cities in the country.</li>
<li>Some announcements as to the simplification of service tax refund and the removal of the provisions involving dual levy of service tax and VAT are not sufficient to resolve ambiguities in law. NASSCOM, in light of the increasing delays of service tax, suggested exemption of export activity from such tax and the applicability of a simplified mechanism similar to CENVAT wherein exemption will be provided to exporters in proportion of their exports to total sales.</li></ul>
<h3 id="5-2">5.2. Request for Clarity in Classification of Transactions and Guidelines</h3>
<p>NASSCOM in its pre-budget recommendations had suggested that in light of the confusion of the characterization of software as goods or services and the resultant dual taxation, in the form of taxes paid to both the Central and the State Governments, the provision of software, whether customized or packaged should be treated as a service irrespective of the media and mode of transfer with the assurance from the States that no VAT shall be leviable on software. Further, guidelines have to be outlined for various e-commerce transactions like database subscription, cloud computing, webhosting and data warehousing. Onsite exporter of services are being denied the benefits of certain tax exemptions due to the sunset of STPI provisions, thus forming the need for a formal clarification by the government deeming these activities to be an integral component of the IT services industry.</p>
<h3 id="5-3">5.3. New Retrograde Obligations under Law</h3>
<p>NASSCOM emphasized that the introduction of certain provisions, related to GAAR, related party transactions and the withholding of tax in the Finance Bill, some of these retrospective in nature, enhance the difficulties faced by the IT industry. Increased obligations on the corporate tax payers in the form of imposition of additional taxes will only increase the scope of multiple interpretations of the provisions which will lead to the exercise of discretionary powers by the tax authorities.</p>
<h2 id="6">6. Endnotes</h2>
<p><strong>[1]</strong> As of September 2011, a significant majority of the 143 operational SEZs in the country belonged to the IT/ITeS and electronic hardware as per data released by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.</p>
<p><strong>[2]</strong> See: <a href="http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-02-25/news/31099874_1_sez-unit-sez-promoters-multi-product">http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-02-25/news/31099874_1_sez-unit-sez-promoters-multi-product</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[3]</strong> Section 10AA of the Income Tax Act provides for 100% income tax exemption on export income for SEZ units for the first five years, 50% for the next five years and 50% of the ploughed back export profit for the next five years.</p>
<p><strong>[4]</strong> See: <a href="http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/govt-imposes-18-5-mat-on-sez-developers-units-111022800153_1.html">http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/govt-imposes-18-5-mat-on-sez-developers-units-111022800153_1.html</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[5]</strong> See: <a href="http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2005-07-08/news/27506703_1_special-economic-zone-act-sez-act-sez-bill">http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2005-07-08/news/27506703_1_special-economic-zone-act-sez-act-sez-bill</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[6]</strong> (2013)260CTR(Kar)146.</p>
<p><strong>[7]</strong> The doctrines of promissory estoppel and legitimate expectation, arising from legal relationships and reasonable expectation, respectively, are flexible equitable reliefs not defined in any statute. Judicial decisions have held that a party would not be entitled to go back on a clear and unequivocal promise which was intended to create legal relations, knowing or intending that it would be acted upon by the other party to whom the promise was made and acted upon by the other party under the doctrine of promissory estoppel. Legitimate expectation of a certain treatment arises against representation by an administrative authority, whether express (through promises), or implied (through consistent past practice) despite absence of any right otherwise.</p>
<p><strong>[8]</strong> It was held that the action of the government is legal as every tax exemption provision should also incorporate a sunset clause. The deletion of the exemption under law would only reduce the erosion of the tax base.</p>
<p><strong>[9]</strong> See: <a href="http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-05-11/news/29532409_1_sez-act-minimum-alternative-tax-mat">http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-05-11/news/29532409_1_sez-act-minimum-alternative-tax-mat</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[10]</strong> Madurai District Central Cooperative Bank Ltd. v. ITO (1975) 101 ITR 24(SC), the form and method of introduction of a legislation is not of importance provided the requirement of competence by the legislature to pass the deemed law with respect to its subject matter is satisfied. An amendment of a taxing statute, by an unconventional method of incorporation through an act of a different pith and substance is not unconstitutional. The primary purpose of the Finance Acts is to prescribe tax rates for taxes specified in the Income Tax Act. However, the above fact does not restrain the freedom of the legislature to impose an altogether new tax through the Finance Act or any other deemed legislation besides the Income Tax Act.</p>
<p><strong>[11]</strong> See: <a href="http://www.nasscom.in/nasscom-prebudget-recommendations">http://www.nasscom.in/nasscom-prebudget-recommendations</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[12]</strong> Ibid.</p>
<p><strong>[13]</strong> Ibid.</p>
<p><strong>[14]</strong> See: <a href="http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-02-13/news/59119589_1_sez-developers-and-units-minimum-alternate-tax-special-economic-zones">http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-02-13/news/59119589_1_sez-developers-and-units-minimum-alternate-tax-special-economic-zones</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[15]</strong> Formed in 2012 to examine the challenges faced by the E-commerce Industry in India and to recommend changes needed to facilitate the creation of a vibrant online payment sector.</p>
<p><strong>[16]</strong> Not exceeding 1 percent for transaction amount for value above 2,000. The directive was issued under section 18 of the Payments and Settlement Systems Act, with effect from July 1, 2012.</p>
<p><strong>[17]</strong> See: <a>http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/international-transfer-pricing/assets/india.pdf</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[18]</strong> This amendment would extend to any other transaction as may be specified and would be applicable for FY 2012-13 and subsequent years.</p>
<p><strong>[19]</strong> An Advance Pricing Agreement, generally covering multiple years, entered into between a taxpayer and at least one tax authority lays down the method of transfer pricing to be applicable to the taxpayer’s inter-company transactions which eliminates the need for transfer pricing adjustments for enclosed transactions provided the terms of the agreement are complied with.</p>
<p><strong>[20]</strong> The Finance Act 2009 inserted section 144C in the Income Tax Act which provides for the constitution of an alternative dispute resolution mechanism for transfer pricing taxation matters, namely a DRP (Dispute Resolution Panel) consisting of three commissioners rank officers.</p>
<p><strong>[21]</strong> Section 92CB defines Safe Harbour to be ‘circumstances under which the income tax authorities shall accept the transfer pricing declared by the assessee.’ The procedure for adopting safe harbour, the transfer price to be adopted, the compliance procedure upon adoption of safe harbours and circumstances in which a safe harbour adopted may be held to be invalid is specified in the new rules in 10TA to 10AG issued by the CBDT on 18th September 2013.</p>
<p><strong>[22]</strong></p>
<ul><li>Provision of software development services and information technology enabled services with insignificant risks- upto rs 500 crore- 20% or more on total operating costs, above rs 500 crore- 22% or more on total operating costs.</li><li>Provision of knowledge processes outsourcing services with insignificant risks-25% or more on total operating costs.</li><li>Provision of specified contract R & D services wholly or partly relating to software development with insignificant risks- 30% or more on total operating costs.</li></ul>
<p> </p>
<h2 id="7">7. Author Profile</h2>
<p>Pavishka Mittal is a law student at West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata and has completed her second year. She takes contemporary dance very seriously and hopes to contribute to the dance community in India. Other than dancing, she indulges in binge-watching in her spare time.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/policy-shaping-in-the-indian-it-industry-recommendations-by-nasscom-2006-2012'>https://cis-india.org/raw/policy-shaping-in-the-indian-it-industry-recommendations-by-nasscom-2006-2012</a>
</p>
No publisherPavishka MittalSpecial Economic ZonesTransfer Pricing PolicyNASSCOMResearchE-CommerceNetwork EconomiesIndustrial PolicyResearchers at WorkInformation Technology2016-07-04T08:11:05ZBlog EntryData for Governance, Governance of Data, and Data Anxieties
https://cis-india.org/raw/data-for-governance-governance-of-data-and-data-anxieties
<b>The Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) organised a panel discussion on 'The Data Explosion – How the Internet of Things will Affect Media Freedom and Communication Systems?' at Deutsche Welle's Global Media Forum 2016, held in Bonn, Germany during June 13-15, 2016. Sumandro Chattapadhyay was invited as one of the panelists.</b>
<p> </p>
<h2>Introduction to the Panel</h2>
<p>The emerging Internet of Things (IoT) will result in a vast network of Internet-connected devices that generate enormous volumes of data about human behavior and interactions. This data explosion will potentially reshape how media organizations both collect and report news, while at the same time fundamentally shifting how communications networks are organized worldwide. Yet currently most of the discussion about the IoT has focused on its spread in developed countries via the popularization of Internet-connected consumer devices.</p>
<p>In this panel we will discuss how the IoT may develop differently in the Global South and how it could present either a threat to open access to data and information, or an opportunity to improve media systems worldwide. We will also examine the impact of the data explosion in developing countries and what mechanisms need to be created in order to ensure the huge new mountain of data is used and governed responsibly.</p>
<p>The discussants were Carlos Affonso Souza (Director, <a href="http://itsrio.org/en/">Institute for Technology and Society</a> of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), Lorena Jaume-Palasi (Director for Communications, <a href="http://www.eurodig.org/">European Dialogue on Internet Governance, or EuroDIG</a>, Switzerland), and Sumandro Chattapadhyay (Research Director, the Centre for Internet and Society, India); and the conversation was led by Mark Nelson (Senior Director, <a href="http://www.cima.ned.org/">Center for International Media Assistance, or CIMA</a>, USA).</p>
<p><em>Source: <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/the-data-explosion-how-the-internet-of-things-will-affect-media-freedom-and-communication-systems/a-19116102">Deutsche Welle</a></em>.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Audio Recording</h2>
<iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/269045180&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" height="166" width="100%"></iframe>
<p> </p>
<h2>Things/Writings I have Mentioned</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://aqicn.org/map/world/">Air Pollution in World: Real-time Air Quality Index Visual Map</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://openenvironment.indiaopendata.com/#/airowl/">India Open Data Association - AirOwl</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://openenvironment.indiaopendata.com/#/dashboard/">India Open Data Association - Open Environment Data Project</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://scroll.in/article/805909/in-rajasthan-there-is-unrest-at-the-ration-shop-because-of-error-ridden-aadhaar">Anumeha Yadav - 'In Rajasthan, there is ‘unrest at the ration shop’ because of error-ridden Aadhaar'</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://thewire.in/2016/05/16/before-geospatial-bill-a-long-history-of-killing-the-map-in-order-to-protect-the-territory-36453/">Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Adya Garg - 'Before Geospatial Bill: A Long History of Killing the Map in Order to Protect the Territory'</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://savethemap.in/">Save the Map</a>.</li></ul>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/data-for-governance-governance-of-data-and-data-anxieties'>https://cis-india.org/raw/data-for-governance-governance-of-data-and-data-anxieties</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroDigital NewsGeospatial Information Regulation BillUIDData SystemsDigital KnowledgeResearchAadhaarResearchers at Work2016-07-03T05:59:48ZBlog Entry