Pathways to Higher Education

August 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-09-13T06:26:30Z

Our newsletter for the month of August 2013 can be accessed below.

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcomes you to the eighth issue of its newsletter for the year 2013. In this issue we are glad to bring you the final report on banking and accessibility submitted to the Ministry of Finance, Government of India, a research paper on India’s obligations under bilateral investment treaties, a report from a Wikipedia workshop held at the Konkani Department in Goa University, a report on the sixth privacy roundtable held in New Delhi, recent news coverage, and updates on our upcoming events.

Archives of our newsletters are here. Our policies on Ethical Research Guidelines, Non-Discrimination and Equal Opportunities, Privacy, Terms of Website Use and Travel can be accessed here.

Jobs
CIS is inviting applications for the posts of Developer (NVDA Screen Reader Project). To apply for this post, send in your resume to Nirmita Narasimhan (nirmita@cis-india.org). CIS is also seeking applications for the post of Policy Associate (Internet Governance). To apply send your resume to Sunil Abraham (sunil@cis-india.org) and Pranesh Prakash (pranesh@cis-india.org).

Accessibility

As part of its project on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India with the Hans Foundation, we bring you three new draft chapters on Assam, Manipur and Puducherry. With this we have completed compilation of draft chapters for 21 states and 3 union territories. Feedback and comments are invited from readers for the below chapters:

The Assam Chapter (by CLPR, August 28, 2013)
The Manipur Chapter (by CLPR, August 29, 2013)
The Puducherry Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, August 31, 2013)

Note: All the chapters published on the website are early drafts and will be reviewed and updated.

Reports

Banking and Accessibility in India: A Report by CIS (by Vrinda Maheshwari, August 12, 2013). This is the final report submitted to the Ministry of Finance, Government of India.
Opening New Avenues for Empowerment (by UNESCO, August 31, 2013). UNESCO has published a global report on higher education titled “Opening New Avenues for Empowerment”. Nirmita Narasimhan was the coordinating author for the Asia Pacific region.

Access to Knowledge and Openness

As part of its project on developing the growth of Indic language communities with Wikimedia Foundation, CIS-A2K held six Wikipedia workshops. CIS is also doing a project (Pervasive Technologies) on examining the relationship between production of pervasive technologies and intellectual property. CIS also promotes openness including open government data, open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software through its Openness programme.

Access to Knowledge
Research Paper

India's Obligations under Bilateral Investment Treaties (Part A): “Bilateral Inhibiting Treaty?” — Investigating the Challenges that Bilateral Investment Treaties pose to the Compulsory Licensing of Pervasive Technology Patent Pools (by Gavin Pereira, August 31, 2013).

Column

Copyrights and Copywrongs Why the Government Should Embrace the Public Domain (by Pranesh Prakash, Yojana, Issue: August 2013).

Media Coverage

Dictionary words in software patent guidelines puzzle industry (by C.H. Unnikrishnan, Livemint, August 26, 2013). CIS work on Access to Knowledge is mentioned.

Blog Entries

Are Indian Consumer Laws Ready for the Digital Age? (by Vipul Kharbanda, August 8, 2013).
Do You Have the Right to Unlock Your Smart Phone? (by Puneeth Nagaraj, August 7, 2013).

Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia)

The A2K team consists of four members based in Bangalore: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, Subhashish Panigrahi and Syed Muzammiluddin, and one team member Nitika Tandon who works from Delhi.

Event Reports

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Krishnarajapet (by Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, August 14, 2013). The workshop was co-organized by the CIS-A2K team along with Kannada Sahitya Parishat of KR Pet.
An Odia Wikipedia Workshop at Sambalpur (by Gorvachove Pothal, August 27, 2013). This workshop was held at Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology, Burla, Sambalpur on July 26 and 27, 2013. Odia Wikipedian Gorvachove Pothal organized this workshop with financial support from the CIS-A2K programme.

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder? (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 31, 2013). CIS-A2K team organized this event at the Konkani Department, Goa University from August 21 to 24, 2013.
Konkani Wikipedia Advances in 4 Days — From 90 Articles to 130 Articles! (by Nitika Tandon, August 31, 2013). CIS-A2K team organized this event at the Konkani Department, Goa University from August 21 to 24, 2013. Thirty-eight students took part in the wiki editing workshop.

Events Co-organised

Digitization of Books for Indic Language WikiSource (organised by Wikimedia India and CIS-A2K, CIS, Bangalore, August 18, 2013).
A Workshop on Editing Wikipedia in Mumbai (organised by the Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education and CIS-A2K, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, August 24, 2013). The workshop was aimed at assisting students to take part in the Indian Languages Mela at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (September 20-21, 2013) which is hosting a competition for best Indian language entries on Wikipedia.

Event Hosted

Mobile Training Workshop @ CIS (CIS, Bangalore, August 29, 2013). Rachita and Keerthana Chandrashekar gave a talk on mobile campaigns.

Events Participated

Wikimania 2013: The International Wikimedia Conference (organised by Wikimedia Foundation, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, August 7 – 11, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.
Wikimedia Asia Meeting (organised by Wikimedia community, Hong Kong, August 10, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the meeting. Unedited transcript of the entire conversation is posted online.
వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం/హైదరాబాద్/ఆగష్టు (Hyderabad, August 25, 2013). T.Vishnu Vardhan participated for the meeting through Skype.

Media Coverage

Wikipedia Gains Massive Traffic Thanks To Vernacular Languages (Before It’s News, August 1, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.
Wikipedia boom in Marathi, Malayalam and other desi languages (by Sandhya Soman, The Times of India, August 1, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.
Wikipedia boom in vernacular languages (by Divya Saboo, August 1, 2013). The Centre for Internet and Society is mentioned.
Stress on posting articles on Kannada Wikipedia (by R. Krishna Kumar, Hindu, August 2, 2013). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja is quoted.
India’s Indigenous Languages Drive Wikipedia’s Growth (by Mahesh Sharma, TechCrunch, August 6, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.
Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop Coverage (Prajavani, August 12, 2013).
Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop Coverage (Vijaya Vani, August 12, 2013).
Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop Coverage (Suvarna Times of Karnataka, August 12, 2013).
Wikipedia writes a new script (by Joyce Dias, August 24, 2013, The Goan). CIS-A2K workshop held in Goa is mentioned extensively. Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi are quoted.
Konkani Wikipedia makes headway (by Diana Fernandes, OHeraldO, August 24, 2013). Nitika Tandon is quoted.
Konkani Wikipedians Speak (Goan Voice Daily Newsletter, September 4, 2013). Konkani Wikipedia workshop organized in Goa from August 21 – 24, 2013 is mentioned in this newsletter.

Ongoing / Upcoming Events

Wikipedia Training in Telugu for Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad (Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad, September 5-6, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is teaching a module on "Knowledge and Openness in the Digital Era".
You too can write on Wikipedia! — Orientation Workshop (co-organised by CIS-A2K and the Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, September 15, 2013).

Train the Trainer — Four-day long Residential Training Workshop in Bangalore (organised by CIS-A2K, Bangalore, October 1 – 5, 2013). The programme will be held in the first week of October.

Blog Entries

Voices from Goa: Frania Pereira tells Why She Writes Articles on Konkani Wikipedia (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 27, 2013).
Voices from Goa: Wikipedia Editor Rusita Paryekar (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 27, 2013).

Openness

Event Hosted

Open Hardware Lab: Play & Invent + Bonus Film Screening (CIS, Bangalore, August 4, 2013). A hangout was done with CIS Lab Community and with members of the Computer Club of India and Arduino enthusiasts.

Event Participated

e-DIRAP Google+ Hangout on Open Government (organised by Google, July 25, 2013). Sunil Abraham was a panelist.

Media Coverage

Beyond Property Rights: Thinking About Moral Definitions of Openness (by David Eaves, Tech President, August 6, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Extending The Spectrum Of Openness To Include The Moral Right To Share (by Glyn Moody, Techdirt, August 19, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Internet Governance

CIS began two projects earlier this year. The first one on facilitating research and events on surveillance and freedom of expression is with Privacy International and support from the International Development Research Centre, Canada. The second one on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia is with the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and support from the International Development Research Centre, Canada:

SAFEGUARDS Project

Event Report

Sixth Privacy Roundtable (co-organised by CIS, FICCI and DSCI, New Delhi, August 24, 2013). Bhairav Acharya and Prachi Arya participated in this event. The discussions and recommendations from the six round table meetings will be presented at the Internet Governance meeting in October 2013.

Newspaper / Magazine Columns

Freedom from Monitoring: India Inc Should Push For Privacy Laws (by Sunil Abraham, Forbes India Magazine, August 21, 2013).
Out of the Bedroom (by Nishant Shah, Indian Express, August 25, 2013).

Blog Entries

'Ethical Hacker' Saket Modi Calls for Stronger Cyber Security Discussions (by Kovey Coles, August 5, 2013).
Ethical Issues in Open Data (by Kovey Coles, August 7, 2013).
FinFisher in India and the Myth of Harmless Metadata (by Maria Xynou, August 13, 2013).

Events Organised

The Hackers Way of Reshaping Policies (CIS, Bangalore, August 2, 2013). Bernadette Langle gave a talk on different ways to reshape policies.
Chennai: Learn to Protect your Online Activities! (Asian College of Journalism, Taramani, Chennai, August 7, 2013). A Crypto Party was organised.
The Phishing Society: Why 'Facebook' is more dangerous than the Government Spying on You - A Talk by Maria Xynou (CIS, Bangalore, August 7, 2013). Maria Xynou gave a talk on phishing society.
Learn to Protect your Online Activities! (ACJ - Asian College of Journalism, Second Main Road (Behind M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation), Taramani, Chennai, August 7, 2013).
Privacy Meeting: Brussels – Bangalore (CIS, Bangalore, August 14, 2013). Gertjan Boulet and Dariusz Kloza gave a talk on privacy.
Learn to Protect your Online Activities! (CIS, Bangalore, August 17, 2013). A Crypto Party was held at CIS.

Events Participated In

Summer School 2013 (organized by the Research Center of Media and Communication at the University of Hamburg, Germany, July 29 – August 2, 2013). Dr. Nishant Shah was a panelist in the session on "Guilty until Proven Innocent: Pirates, Pornographers, Terrorists and the IT Act in India".
Meeting of a Sub-committee on DNA Profiling Bill (Hyderabad, August 6, 2013). Sunil Abraham participated in this meeting for discussing the draft bill.
Surveillance: Privacy Vs Security (organized by the Foundation for Media Professionals, India International Centre, New Delhi, August 17, 2013). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.

Media Coverage

Crypto Night (by Rahul M., Caravan, August 1, 2013). Pranesh Prakash and Bernadette Langle are quoted.
Facebook: Limiting access to social media can restrict freedom of speech (by Kim Arora, The Times of India, August 1, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Token disclosures? (by Deepa Kurup, The Hindu, August 4, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Memeâ€™s the word now (by Padmaparna Ghosh, The Times of India, August 4, 2013). Nishant Shah is quoted.
Chinese hackers baiting Indian govt, corporate employees: report (by Moulishree Srivastava and Anirban Sen, Livemint, August 9, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Mixed signals? Supreme Court notices to states on Facebook arrests (NDTV, August 16, 2013). Pranesh Prakash, Shreya Singhal and Faizal Farooqui discussed the grey areas of the IT Act.
Balancing vigilance and privacy (by Prashant Jha, The Hindu, August 18, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
How Next-Gen Smartphone Users are Being Bought and Sold (by Rohin Dharmakumar, Forbes India Magazine, August 13, 2013, and IBN Live, August 19, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Dear Milind Deora, Prakash Javadekar Deserved The Truth (by Rohin Dharmakumar, Forbes India, August 22, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Election campaign: parties draw battle lines on media platforms (by Venkatesh Upadhyay, Livemint, August 26, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
India's Internet Privacy Woes (by Rohin Dharmakumar, Forbes India Magazine, August 26, 2013). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Cyberspying: Government may ban Gmail for official communication (The Times of India, August 30, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Indian government to bar politicians from using Gmail for official business (by Neil McAllister, The Register, August 30, 2013). Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Cyber Stewards Project
Laird Brown, a strategic planner and writer with core competencies on brand analysis, public relations and resource management and Purba Sarkar who in the past worked as a strategic advisor in the field of SAP Retail are working in this project.

Video Interview

Part 9: Interview with Saikat Datta (August 5, 2013).

Telecom

CIS has published one newspaper column in the Business Standard and also made a submission to TRAI:

Newspaper Column

Breaking into the Closed Circle: Domestic High-Tech Manufacturing Needs Access To Markets (by Shyam Ponappa, originally published in the Business Standard, July 31, 2013 and also mirrored in Organizing India Blogspot, August 1, 2013).

Submission

TRAI Consultation Paper on Spectrum (by Shyam Ponappa and A.B. Beliappa, August 31, 2013). The submission was made to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on August 21, 2013.

Digital Humanities

We are building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. The Digital will be used as a way of unpacking the debates in humanities and social sciences and look at the new frameworks, concepts and ideas that emerge in our engagement with the digital. The clusters aim to produce and document new conversations and debates that shape the contours of Digital Humanities in Asia.

Blog Entries

Digital Humanities Talk (by Sara Morais, August 1, 2013). Sara wrote about her talk in this blog entry.
Theorizing the Digital Subaltern (by Sara Morais, August 2, 2013).

Event Organised

Digital Humanities for Indian Higher Education (co-organised by CIS-A2K, HEIRA, CSCS, Tumkur University, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and CCS-Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, July 13, 2013). Errata: We had got the name of one of the co-organisers wrong in our previous newsletter. We have corrected this now.

Event Participated In

South Asia Conference on Higher Education (organised by the Centre for Study of Culture and Society, Ford Foundation Office, New Delhi, August 5 – 7, 2013). Sunil Abraham participated in this conference.

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.
Follow us elsewhere

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Visit us at http://cis-india.org

*Support Us*

Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of ‘The Centre for Internet and Society’ and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru – 5600 71.

Request for Collaboration
We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/august-2013-bulletin

Digital native: Lie Me a River

nishant — 2017-03-19T14:47:16Z

The sea of social media around us often drowns the truth, exchanging misinformation for facts.

This basic process of truth telling loses all affordance in social media practices. Let me channel my inner school teacher and present you with a question.

One of the most common methods of testing a student’s knowledge is the multiple choice question template that asks the examinee to identify one of four options as correct solutions to a problem. The pedagogic principle behind these questions is simple enough: We live in a world where truth and accuracy are important. No matter what our subjective feelings, impressions, memories or instincts might be, we need to rely on verifiable facts to make a truth claim. If we fail to do so, there would be negative consequences.

This basic process of truth telling loses all affordance in social media practices. Let me channel my inner school teacher and present you with a question. Drawing on samples of WhatsApp messages on my social media feeds, I invite you to answer this simple question: Which of these statements is not true?

Drinking from disposable paper cups lined with wax to keep the liquid from seeping leads to wax deposits in your stomach, resulting in fatal health risks.
Beverages in India have been contaminated by the Ebola virus and are on our shelves right now.
According to Ayurveda, burning camphor and cardamom together kills the swine flu virus in air.
Bollywood actor Farida Jalal is dead.

Of all of these, the only one you can verify is that Farida Jalal is not dead. The reason we know it for sure is because, she had to come to Twitter, and like Oscar Wilde, announce that the rumours of her death were wildly exaggerated. As Jalal herself pointed out in an interview, she was harassed by a barrage of phone calls, of people calling her up to ask her (oh, the irony!) if she was dead. The other three claims are right now floating in the air, ready to settle down as truth, with continuous repetition. We cannot be sure that they are inaccurate. Especially because they don’t just come as one-line headlines but long narratives of imaginary proofs.

Why have we reached this post-truth moment? Why have our social media feeds become minefields of dubious information masquerading as lies? There are many laments lately about how this lack of veracity and fact-checking is becoming the new normal and the blame is always put on either the media that promotes accelerated spread of messages without space for reflection, or gullible people who do not pause to think about the ludicrousness of the message before they spread it to their groups. And, while it is necessary to develop a critical literacy to make sure that we understand the responsibility of our role as information circulators and curators, there is one dimension that needs to be explored more — trust.

In our pre-digital knowledge practices, when information came with a signature, we believed that somebody had done the due diligence needed for the information to be published. An author’s book was supported by the rigour of the publisher behind it. A news report was fact-checked by verifiers who are employed precisely to do that. Information from a friend or somebody we know was credible because of our assessment of the person’s expertise and knowledge. We have always been able to determine the source of information, and our proximity with the source allowed us to trust the information that came through it.

However, with social media, this relationship has changed. When somebody sends us a message on WhatsApp, it is still coming from a source that we know, but we have to realise that this source is not producing or verifying this information, but merely circulating it. Messages come with a signature, they seem to emerge from people we know and trust, and, hence, we presume that they have done the due diligence required before passing on the information.

It is important to realise that within the social web we don’t really parse, analyse or process information, we merely pass and distribute it. This is how digital media perceives its users — as information circulators. And, this means, that information which mimics facts but is blatantly false, finds easy prey. So, the next time you come across information on these endless message groups, ask a simple question before you pass it along: no matter what the message claims, can you actually locate the source of the information? Is the person who forwards that message producing the information or merely sharing it? If they are sharing it, get back to them and ask how they know what they know. We trust things that are authored, but in our social apps, people are not authors, they are circulators. Making the distinction between the two might be the first step towards developing a critical literacy for fact-telling on the digital web.

Nishant Shah is a professor of new media and the co-founder of The Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-march-19-2017-digital-native-lie-me-a-river

Evaluating Safety Buttons on Mobile Devices: Preview

Rohini Lakshané and Chinmayi S.K. — 2023-03-18T04:40:15Z

Much technological innovation for women is aimed at addressing violence against women. One such ubiquitous intervention is mobile device-based safety applications, also known as emergency applications. Several police departments in India, public transport services, and commercial services such as taxi-hailing apps deploy a mobile device-based “panic button” for the safety of citizens or customers, especially women. However, the proliferation of safety apps through both public and private players raises several concerns, which will be studied through this study by Rohini Lakshané of the CIS and Chinmayi S.K. of The Bachchao Project. Research assistance for this report was provided by CIS intern Harish R.S.K. Visualisations by Saumyaa Naidu.

Download the preview document: PDF

There is currently a deluge of mobile safety apps in India: Apps run or supported by police departments, apps run by public transport services, apps endorsed by celebrities and politicians, an app developed by an entertainment television channel, and apps by NGOs and private developers. Through a public notification made in April 2016, the Ministry of Women and Child Development in India announced that every phone sold in the country from January 2017 should come equipped with a physical panic button and a GPS module 2. An international innovation award for USD 1 million was instituted in late 2016 for innovators to build an emergency alert app.

Preliminary user-testing conducted by us shows that many of these apps lack in technical quality and are prone to failure of one kind or another. There are no defined policies of privacy or terms of use, which could lead to possible data and identity theft and egregious surveillance of users.

This study will evaluate a total of 26 different apps operational in India, the permissions they use, the privacy policies and end user agreements on their websites, and will also undertake qualitative case studies of the use and deployment of some of these apps.

The questions framing this evaluation are:

What are the technical concerns (including those of accessibility and literacy) with user experience of these safety button applications being developed and deployed by both government and private agencies, especially at a moment of crisis?
How well do the widely used safety button applications in India protect the data shared by the user and the user’s privacy?
What technical and other solutions can be implemented to ensure more effective, accessible, secure, and responsible modes of communication in such a context?

We are releasing one of the datasets that logs all the different permissions sought by selected “safety applications” available on the Google Play store in India. It was compiled in November 2016.

The dataset has been released under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. All uses of the accompanying data or parts thereof must contain the following attribution: "Data provided by Rohini Lakshané (Centre for Internet and Society) and Chinmayi S K (2018)”. To request a waiver, email rohini [at] cis-india [dot] org. Data are provided AS-IS, without warranty as to accuracy or completeness.

Zenodo record: https://zenodo.org/record/3630585

Click to download:

List of permissions sought by safety applications on the Google Play Store (Excel File)
List of permissions sought by safety applications on the Google Play Store (Open File)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/evaluating-safety-buttons-on-mobile-devices-preview

June and July Newsletter

pranav — 2021-08-10T15:57:16Z

The newsletter presents the work done in the months of June and July 2021.

Announcements

We are pleased to announce the launch of a seminar series to showcase research around digital rights and technology policy, with a focus on the Global South. The CIS seminar series will be a venue for researchers to share works-in-progress, exchange ideas, identify avenues for collaboration, and curate research. It will also seek to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 on research exchange, and foster collaborations among researchers and academics from diverse geographies. For more details on the first session, on Information Disorders, and to register, click here: [link]

We are also hiring for two full time remote positions:

Research Associate: Access to Knowledge Programme: Apply by August 13 [link]
Communication Designer: Apply by August 20 [link]

Cybersecurity, Privacy, and Emerging Technology

Following the MCA notification mandating disclosures of crypto currency holdings by companies, Aryan Gupta, in an issue brief, discusses the policy landscape in the United States of America, United Kingdom, and Japan with particular emphasis upon definition, accounting practices, and taxation, with respect to crypto currencies. [link]
We submitted comments in response to the Supreme Court E-committee’s draft vision document of phase III of the E-courts project. Aman Nair, Arinjay Vyas, Pallavi Bedi and Garima Saxena submitted their general comments and recommendations, and comparatively analysed the integration of digital technology into the judiciary in both South Asia and Africa. [link]
Google’s new Privacy Sandbox platform promises to preserve anonymity when serving tailored advertising. But does this new framework help users in any way? Maria Jawed’s analysis reveals that Google’s gambit to reorient the ad-tech ecosystem under the garb of privacy, ultimately ends up undermining it. [link]
Pandemic technology is taking a toll on data privacy, especially in the absence of any legal framework; these tools are being used for purposes beyond managing the pandemic. In an article published in the Deccan Herald, Aman Nair and Pallavi Bedi argue that India’s digital response to the pandemic has stoked concerns that surveillance could pose threats to the privacy of the personal data collected. [link]
In a piece for The Wire, Aman Nair analyses Tether, a lesser known crypto currency that is at the heart of a $3 trillion market. Issued by Tether Limited, Tether forms the foundation for modern day crypto trading and could potentially be one of the biggest schemes in financial history. [link]
India has 500 million internet users — over a third of its total population — making it the country with the second largest number of internet users after China. With this comes several kinds of digital threats that an average digital consumer in India must regularly contend with. Pranav M.B. attempts to identify the existing state of digital safety in India, with a report that maps digital threats in the country. [link]
Since last year, there have been regular questions around the anti-competitive practices of digital platforms. After 46 US states filed an antitrust case against Facebook along with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in December 2020, Kamesh Shekar analyzed these developments in a blog post. [link]
Recently, the Indian government mandated online messaging providers to enable identification of originators of messages on their platforms. In an academic paper for the NUJS Law Review, Gurshabad Grover, Tanaya Rajwade and Divyank Katira conduct a legal and constitutional analysis of this ‘traceability’ requirement, how it can be implemented, and how these methods come with serious costs to usability, security, and privacy. [link]
The National Digital Health Mission: Health Data Management Policy seeks to establish a digital health ecosystem by creating a unique health identity (UHID) for every Indian citizen. Pallavi Bedi points out that hasty implementation of the policy without adequate safeguards not only risks the privacy and security of medical data, but also undermines trust in the system leading to low uptake. [link]
In our comments to the proposed amendments to the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020, our analysis focuses on eight points: Definitions and Registration, Compliance, Data Protection and Surveillance, Flash Sales, Unfair Trade Practices, Jurisdictional Issues with Competition Law, Compliance with International Trade Law and Liabilities of Marketplace E-commerce Entities. [link]

Freedom of Expression, Intermediary Liability and Information Disorders

The recent “Infodemic” clearly shows that disinformation costs people’s lives. CIS, and the Global Disinformation Index have published a report that examines the risk of disinformation on digital news platforms in India, creating an index that is intended to serve donors and stakeholders with a neutral assessment of news sites that they can utilise to defund disinformation. [link]
Torsha Sarkar, Gurshabad Grover, Raghav Ahooja, Pallavi Bedi and Divyank Katira examine the legality and constitutionality of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, highlighting potential benefits and harms that may arise from the rules, and making recommendations to retain the rules within constitutional bounds, and retain consistency with human rights based approaches to content regulation. [link]
The passage of the Intermediary Liability Rules, 2021, has also formalized the legal requirement for the utilization of automated tools in content moderation. In a blog-post for the KU Leuven’s Centre for IT and IP (CITIP) Blog, Shweta Mohandas and Torsha Sarkar analyze the requirement in light of concerns of freedom of expression of Internet users. [link]
Our comments to the Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill, 2021, authored by Tanvi Apte, Anubha Sinha, and Torsha Sarkar, examine the constitutionality and legality of the Bill and whether the proposed amendments are compatible with established constitutional principles, precedents, previous policy positions and existing law. [link]
Tanvi Apte and Torsha Sarkar, in a submission to the Facebook Oversight Board in Case 2021-008-FB-FBR: Brazil, Health Misinformation and Lockdowns, answer questions set out by the Board which concerned a post made by a Brazilian sub-national health official, and raised questions on health misinformation and enforcement of Facebook's community standards. [link]
In an essay for the Indian Journal of Law and Technology (IJLT), Torsha Sarkar analyzes issues rising out of the recent litigation between Trump and Twitter. Torsha examines intermediary liability issues under American law, and draws parallel for India, in light of the ongoing litigation around the suspension of advocate Sanjay Hegde’s Twitter account. [link]

Copyright & Access to Knowledge

The Indian Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce’s report weighs on several aspects of the Indian IPR system and issues of protection and enforcement. In a blog post, Anubha Sinha summarily notes the observations and recommendations of the Committee on the Copyright Act, 1957 which stand to impact access to knowledge. [link]
The 41st edition of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) organized by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was held from 28 June to 1 July. Anubha Sinha participated in the event as a speaker and delivered statements on the Protection of Broadcasting Organisations [link], and on Limitations and Exceptions [link]. Readers can access the notes from Day 1 [link], Day 2 [link], and Days 3 & 4 [link].
The CIS Access to Knowledge team published a comparative analysis of two prominent Wikimedia initiatives, Wikipedia Asian Month and Project Tiger, to understand prevailing challenges and opportunities, and strategies to address the same. Nitesh Gill in a two-part report outlines the research questions and methods of this study [link], and then presents some of the observations and learnings [link].

Labour and Social Justice

In a flagship report on domestic and care workers on digital platforms, Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon argue that digital platforms are complicit in discriminating against workers on the basis of their identities, and that domestic workers continue to remain in precarious positions without any legal recognition or support. This work was jointly authored between the Centre for Internet and Society and the Domestic Workers’ Rights Union. [link]
The ongoing pandemic has raised very valid questions of access and infrastructure in India, especially during a time when the Internet and digital technologies are essential, and in many ways the ‘new normal’. P.P. Sneha and Anasuya Sengupta write in Seminar Magazine, outlining some key challenges in digitalisation and representation of non-dominant/marginalised languages on the Internet, through reflections on two recent projects related to languages and the Internet. [link]
With the onset of the national lockdown on 24th March 2020 in response to the outbreak of COVID-19, the fate of millions of migrant workers was left uncertain. In addition, lack of enumeration and registration of migrant workers became a major obstacle for all state governments and the Central Government to channelize relief and welfare measures. Ankan Barman compiled a report to qualitatively assess health conditions of migrant workers and access to welfare during the first COVID-19 lockdown, in three host-states, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Haryana. [link]
Between July to November 2019, Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers (IFAT) and International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) conducted 2,128 surveys across six major cities: Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi NCR, Hyderabad, Jaipur, and Lucknow, to determine the occupational health and safety of app-based transport workers. Findings from the survey have been compiled as a report which reveals the complete absence of social security and protection of workers in a digital platform economy. [link]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/june-july-2021-newsletter

#CultureForAll Conference on Cultural Mapping

sneha — 2021-09-20T15:18:02Z

Sahapedia is organising the #CultureForAll Conference on Cultural Mapping, digitally on September 28 and 29, 2021. The conference will take place in collaboration with the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra, Azim Premji University, the Centre for Internet and Society, and the Re-Centring Afro Asia project at the University of Cape Town.

Cross-posted from Sahapedia

Featuring 15 papers across 4 sessions, the conference will present research primarily from South Asia with some papers discussing experimental mapping techniques in Africa and Europe. Sessions will be chaired by academicians from among our collaborators and promise to interrogate, discuss, and reflect upon the complex questions of who, what, how, and for whom to map culture. Speakers at the conference will present work ranging from literature in Nagaland and food in Goa to music in South Africa and architecture in Delhi. They include researchers in history, literature, and music, as well as architects and educators.

The conference will be held on Zoom. Register here: https://bit.ly/2X4XAap
For the schedule and more details, visit https://www.sahapedia.org/conferences
The Cultural Mapping Conference is part of the ongoing #CultureForAll (CFA) festival by Sahapedia.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/culture-for-all-conference-on-cultural-mapping

Whose Change Is It Anyway? | DML2013

nishant — 2015-04-24T11:47:19Z

As a preparation for the DML conference, Nishant Shah had an interview with Howard Rheingold, a cyberculture pioneer, social media innovator, and author of "Smart Mobs. Nishant Shah is chair of 'Whose Change Is It Anyway? Futures, Youth, Technology And Citizen Action In The Global South (And The Rest Of The World)' track at DML2013. Here, he talks about shifts in citizen engagement in Indian politics and civics, and the underlying significance of these changes.

"More and more, you have young people who are trying to come together, not merely to express discontent, but actually take action so that they can build the kinds of futures they want to occupy."

The 2013 DML conference will be held in March 14-16, 2013 in Chicago, Illinois. The conference is supported by the MacArthur Foundation and organized by the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub located at the University of California's systemwide Humanities Research Institute at UC Irvine.

More details about the DML2013 Conference and the Call For Workshop/Panel/Paper Proposals can be found at the conference website: dml2013.dmlhub.net.

Video

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/nishant-shah-whose-change-is-it-anyway

April 2017 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2017-05-20T12:59:17Z

Welcome to the CIS newsletter for April 2017.

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
In a report on the information security practices of Aadhaar, Amber Sinha and Srinivas Kodali documented numerous instances of publicly available Aadhaar numbers along with other personally identifiable information of individuals on government websites. CIS along with like minded organizations made a submission to the Government of India to frame a feasible accessibility guidelines for mobile apps since there is no single standard in existence at the moment. A two-day 100 Women Edit-a-thon was held in March 2017 by CIS-A2K team along with Odisha's biggest newspaper Sambad. The event was inspired by BBC’s 100 Women series and edit-a-thons with the same name in December 2016. More than 20 female journalists participated and registered as new Odia Wikipedians. On March 31, 2017, the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Department of Personnel and Training released a Circular framing rules under the Right to Information Act, 2005 (“RTI Rules”). The Ministry invited comments on on the RTI Rules. CIS submitted its comments. In an article originally published in Hindu Businessline on March 31, Sunil Abraham lists out 11 reasons why Aadhaar is not just non-smart but also insecure. Shuttleworth Foundation has announced Sunil Abraham as Honorary Steward for its September 2017 fellowship round. CIS worked on a three part case study. The first case study on digital protection of traditional knowledge was published by GIS Watch in December 2016. The other two case studies along with the synthesis overview has also been published.

CIS in the news:

NGOs, individuals urge state CMs to curb Internet shutdown (The Times of India; April 4, 2017).
India’s National ID Program May Be Turning The Country Into A Surveillance State (Pranav Dixit; BuzzFeed News; April 4, 2017).
Privacy, what? Bengaluru police leaks 46,000 phone numbers on Twitter (Neha Vashishth; India Today; April 6, 2017).

Bengaluru cops' twitter handle in ethical storm (Umesh Yadav; The Times of India; April 6, 2017).

Opposition questions govt move to make Aadhaar must (Komal Gupta; Livemint; April 12, 2017).
Aadhaar: A widening net (Komal Gupta, Apurva Vishwanath and Suranjana Roy; Livemint; April 21, 2017).
Chemistry research in India 'still not in big league' (IANS and India Online News Portal; April 24, 2017).
Stop the Haphazard Internet Shutdown Says MP Jay Panda (Regina Mihindukulasuriya; Businessworld; April 26, 2017).
Now, Aadhaar details displayed in Mizoram too (Sebastian P.T.; National Herald; April 26, 2017).
After SPB-Ilaiyaraaja, Sony Music and Sun Network lock horns over copyrights (Priyanka Thirumurthy; Newsminute; April 26, 2017).
Analysis: Data Protection in India - Getting It Right (Suparna Goswami and Varun Haran; Info Risk Today; April 26, 2017).
India bans social media in Kashmir for one month (Telegraph; April 27, 2017).
J&K social media ban: Use of 132-year-old Act can’t stand judicial scrutiny, say experts (Shruti Dhapola; Indian Express; April 28, 2017).

CIS members wrote the following articles:

How Aadhaar compromises privacy? And how to fix it? (Sunil Abraham; Hindu; April 1, 2017).
Digital native: You can check out, you can never leave (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; April 2, 2017).
Aadhaar marks a fundamental shift in citizen-state relations: From ‘We the People’ to ‘We the Government’ (Pranesh Prakash; Hindustan Times; April 3, 2017).
It’s the technology, stupid (Sunil Abraham; Hindu Businessline; April 7, 2017).
Privacy in the Age of Big Data (Amber Sinha; Asian Age; April 10, 2017).
Digital native: Are You Still Having Fun? (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; April 17, 2017).
Digital native: Snap out of outrage mode (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; April 30, 2017).

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Accessibility & Inclusion
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India has an estimated 70 million persons with disabilities who don't have access to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. As part of our endeavour to make available accessible content for persons with disabilities, we are developing a text-to-speech software in 15 languages with support from the Hans Foundation. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

Submission

Mobile Accessibility Practices (Nirmita Narasimhan; April 12, 2017).

Event

Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2017 (Organized by Prakat Solutions, Mithra Jyothi and CIS; Bengaluru; May 18, 2017).

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Access to Knowledge
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Our Access to Knowledge programme currently consists of two projects. The Pervasive Technologies project, conducted under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to conduct research on the complex interplay between low-cost pervasive technologies and intellectual property, in order to encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The Wikipedia project, which is under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

►Wikipedia

As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Blog Entries

Note: All the following events were held earlier but the reports were published in the month of April:

Women's Day Edit-a-thon at Jeewan Jyoti Women's Empowerment Centre, Pune (Subodh Kulkarni; April 10, 2017).
Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Savitribai Phule Mahila Ekatma Samaj Mandal, Aurangabad (Subodh Kulkarni; April 13, 2017).
Google-translated Telugu articles prioritisation exercise: January iteration (Pavan Santhosh; April 15, 2017).
Telugu Wikipedia stall at Vijayawada Book Festival (Pavan Santhosh; April 15, 2017).
Women's Day Edit-a-thon at Jnana Prabodhini (Subodh Kulkarni; April 15, 2017).
Bargarh Manuscript Digitisation Project (Sailesh Patnaik; April 16, 2017).
Imperial College Orientation Program, Bargarh (Sailesh Patnaik; April 16, 2017).
Orientation & Training session for Environmental Activists in Satara (Subodh Kulkarni; April 16, 2017).
Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Rajarshi Chhatrapati Shahu College, Kolhapur (Subodh Kulkarni; April 16, 2017).
Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Shivaji University, Kolhapur (Subodh Kulkarni; April 16, 2017).
Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Sangli, Maharashtra (Subodh Kulkarni; April 16, 2017).
Orientation & Training session of Jalbiradari Activists (Subodh Kulkarni; April 16, 2017).
"Free-license Wings To Your Books" in Guntur (Pavan Santhosh; April 16, 2017).
"Free-license Wings To Your Books" in Vijayawada (Pavan Santhosh; April 16, 2017).
Adikavi Nannaya University Telugu Wikipedia Workshop (Pavan Santhosh; April 16, 2017).
Odia Wikipedia Workshop in IIMC, Dhenkanal (Sailesh Patnaik; April 17, 2017).
Sambad 100 Women Edit-a-thon (Ting Yi Chang and Sailesh Patnaik; April 18, 2017).
Google-translated Telugu articles prioritisation exercise: February iteration (Pavan Santhosh; April 18, 2017).

►Copyright and Patent

National Conference on Intellectual Property Rights and Public Interest (Organized by Indian Law Institute; New Delhi; April 7 - 8, 2017). Maggie Huang took part in the event.

►Openness

Our work in the Openness programme focuses on open data, especially open government data, open access, open education resources, open knowledge in Indic languages, open media, and open technologies and standards - hardware and software. We approach openness as a cross-cutting principle for knowledge production and distribution, and not as a thing-in-itself.

Publication

Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in India: Opportunities for Advocacy in Intellectual Property (Sunil Abraham and Vidushi Marda; GIS Watch and Association for Progressive Communications; April 23, 2017). Total 4 reports: Synthesis Overview, Access to Mobile Technology, Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, and FOSS and Open Standards.

Submission

Comments on the Right to Information Rules, 2017 (Amber Sinha; April 27, 2017).

Event Organized

NASA Space Apps Challenge 2017 (CIS, Bengaluru, April 22, 2017).

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Internet Governance
-----------------------------------

As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and IDRC) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on restrictions that the Indian government has placed on freedom of expression online.

►Privacy

Blog Entries

Analysis of Key Provisions of the Aadhaar Act Regulations (Amber Sinha; April 3, 2017).
Right to be Forgotten: A Tale of Two Judgements (Amber Sinha; April 7, 2017).

►Free Speech and Expression

Blog Entries

Killing of Yameen Rasheed Reveals Worsening Human Rights Situation in the Maldives (Pranesh Prakash; April 25, 2017).
Internet Shutdowns in 2016 (Japreet Grewal; April 27, 2016).

►Miscellaneous

Blog Entry

Regulating Bitcoin in India (Vipul Kharbanda; April 20, 2017).

Event

Amutha Arunachalam - Stand Shielded of Digital Rights (CIS; New Delhi; May 5, 2017).

Participation in Event

ISO/IEC JTC1/SC 27 Meetings (Organized by Bureau of Indian Standards; University of Waikato and Novotel; New Zealand; April 18 - 25, 2017). Udbhav Tiwari attended the meetings.

►Cyber Security

Event Organized

Dr. Madan M. Oberoi - Digital Forensics and Cyber Investigations (CIS; New Delhi; April 7, 2017).

Participation in Event

Brainstorming Session on the Global Conference on Cyberspace (GCCS 2017) (Organized by the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology; New Delhi; April 12, 2017). Japreet Grewal attended the session.

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About CIS
-----------------------------------
The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, 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 reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

Please help us defend consumer and citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of 'The Centre for Internet and Society' and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru - 5600 71.

► Request for Collaboration

We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at sumandro@cis-india.org (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, at tanveer@cis-india.org.

CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/april-2017-newsletter

Digital native: You can check out, you can never leave

nishant — 2017-05-05T01:31:46Z

Aadhaar is not something you define and opt into, it is something that defines you.

The article was published in the Indian Express on April 2, 2017. Nishant Shah is a professor of new media and the co-founder of The Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore.

Ok. I get it. You don’t want yet another piece on the horrors and perils of the surveillance state that has come to the forefront with Aadhaar numbers now being tied to our taxes. I know that you must have already made up your mind about whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. If you believe that the way to streamlining bureaucracy and making our systems more accountable is transparency, then you are ready to welcome the digital ecosystem of Aadhaar, as introducing checks and balances that might help to curb some of the excesses and wastes of our governance systems . If you are of the opinion, however, that the state cannot be trusted with our information, without the oversee of the Parliament and the judiciary, then you want to resist this mandatory implementation of the “voluntary” Aadhaar. And, for once, I am unable to take a side, favouring one set of arguments over the other. This ambiguity does not come from a lack of political conviction. I continue to fear about the future of our lives when these technologies of control and domination fall in the hands of governments which have an authoritarian bend of mind.

Instead, my lack of preference on the good, bad and ugly sides of Aadhaar stems from a completely different concern around network technologies of digital connectivity that has found very little attention in the almost zealous discourse about “yes Aadhaar, no Aadhaar”.

This is a concern about the relationship between technological networks and the messy realities that we embody. There has been an easy acceptance of a digital network as a description of our everyday life. If you look at any network that you belong to — from public discussion forums to private WhatsApp groups — you will realise that these networks offer to visualise your connections and transactions with the people, places and things in your circles. Thus, it is possible to say that Facebook describes your collection of friends and your social life. Or you could suggest that LinkedIn is a visualisation of your professional landscape. And, in a similar vein, we can also propose that Aadhaar is a representation of the working of our government systems of identification.

Each one of these propositions, seemingly innocent, is blatantly wrong. Facebook, for example, didn’t just connect you with your friends. It has fundamentally changed the idea of what is a friend. For a generation of young people who grew up naturalised in social media, the notion of a friend has lost all its meaning and nuance. Every connection, acquaintance, friend of a friend, a random stranger who likes the same band as you do, is now a friend. And the increasing anxiety we have about people falling prey to predatory friendships is because Facebook has now normalised the idea that if somebody calls you their friend, you don’t have to worry about sharing personal and private information with them. Similarly , for anybody who has spent time on LinkedIn, we know that it is not just a portal that describes our work. It is the space where we stay connected with events and people far removed from us. It is the resource pool that we draw on while looking for new work. It is also the space that we keep an eye on just to see if a better job has opened up. It is a collection of events, links and connections that not only shows what you do but what you aspire for, who you connect with and what are the kinds of professional ambitions you see for yourself.

Just like Facebook and LinkedIn, which don’t just describe a reality but actually simulate, prescribe and shape it, Aadhaar is a digital network that is seeking to change the very foundational reality of our lives. Like most digital networks, it is not merely an explanation of how things are but the context within which who we are and what we do finds meaning and validation. Thus, Aadhaar might propose that it is merely trying to describe your identity but it is actually offering to shape a new one for you. The programme might suggest that it is trying to implement a system already in place, but it is, in reality, creating an entirely new system within which you and I have to now find space, function and identity. The latest announcements of mainstreaming Aadhaar merely betray this fact – that Aadhaar is not something you define and opt into, Aadhaar defines you. And opting out is going to have severe penalties and consequences.

Digital networks have long masqueraded as benign visualisations of the world. But they are, in principle, blueprints that transform the world as we know it. This, in itself, is not bad. However, hiding this transformation is. Because when a transformation happens, especially at systemic levels, it is always the people who are the most vulnerable that suffer the most from it. Think about the older friend who might not be the most tech savvy and how they struggle for inclusion on Facebook and WhatsApp messages. Pay some attention to people who did not understand the public nature of LinkedIn and ended up getting fired because they wrote about their current work conditions and the desire to change them. And, similarly, do think if the people who are being pushed into these digital ecosystems without adequate digital literacy, care and information about the consequences of their actions, are being made vulnerable in their access to resources of life and dignity.

Whether you and I like Aadhaar or not is not really the question. The question is not about the right to privacy either. What is at stake in this deployment of Aadhaar is a government that is pushing radical transformations of the life of its citizens without consulting with them and addressing their needs. In the past, when governments have done this, we have developed strong voices of protest and correction asking the state to be responsible towards those affected by the transformation. The reliance on the digital, however, allows these governments to escape this responsibility and, in the guise of description, are making prescriptions of reality which need to be resisted.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-april-2-2017-digital-native-you-can-check-out-you-can-never-leave

Digital native: Snap out of outrage mode

nishant — 2017-05-05T01:45:12Z

Rage at the inequality of the digital world is good. But why stop at the Snapchat CEO?

Nishant Shah is a professor of new media and the co-founder of The Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore. The article was published in the Indian Express on April 30, 2017.

If you are reading this right now, let’s just get something out of the way — you are not poor. Just the affordability of English language literacy and access to national news media marks you as belonging to a very small elite group in the country. If you are reading this online, the point is driven home even more. So, when you heard about the CEO of Snapchat (If you are asking SnapWhat, don’t feel crestfallen, you are not “out of it”, you are just not 17) being quoted from a statement he made two years ago, that he is not interested in expanding in poor countries like India, you were obviously riled.

There were many things wrong with the alleged statement that Evan Spiegel made. He betrayed his own ignorance and arrogance, where he was unable to understand the growing consumer base of mobile-based apps in emerging networked countries like India. He also more or less failed to understand that poverty is layered, and while India continues to struggle with poverty, it has a growing population of extremely wealthy and affluent users, who are not only driving global consumption trends but also the key focus of digital growth. His biggest faux pas was to not recognise that in the global information technologies development cycles, there is a huge chance that a large number of his employees and contractors might be located in India, and that Digital India is an undeniable extension of Silicon Valley apps and platforms.

Speigel’s cockiness is actually so common in how digital ecosystems are mapped, that you could almost ignore it because “everybody says it”. It is great that he was called out on his neo-colonial viewpoints. Users from India (and around the world) joined in to not only to protest against his bravado, but also to call for an action that hurts private companies in the one way they recognise — revenue. #BoycottSnapchat has been trending this last week, and millions of people using this visual filtered storytelling app are uninstalling it from their devices. People have been making jokes and criticising Snapchat, leading to a huge dip in the user base of Snapchat.

These moments of digital collective action are admirable and we need more instances where we call out such acts of discrimination and exclusion. We do need to make sure that we do not make Snapchat Enemy No. 1, pretending that the rest of the web is all good. Speigel is profoundly wrong, in his comments or in his defence that his app is “free” to download, which shows that he is not excluding India. However, Speigel cannot be singled out in all of this. Across the digital landscape, countries like India are always trapped in a strange dichotomy. On the one hand, Indian engineers and knowledge workers are being harvested as the cheap labour who “steal global jobs” and on the other, India is always seen as poor, underdeveloped, in need of saving.

This distilling of the Indian landscape, in all its complexity, into these two polarised identities, allows for these tech companies to continue unfair practices which affect both the glamorous white-collar techies and the invisible labours of IT cities. It emphasises the idea that the IT worker, upwardly and geographically mobile, is being offered a path to escape either the country or their context, because they are touched by the economic power of the digital corporation. It also justifies the exploited labour conditions of IT industries, where the story of transformation is presented as an excuse for underpaid overworked production environments.

At the same time, these companies seek to take up state-like responsibilities without the accountability, destroying fundamental media and information rights in the guise of bridging the digital divide. Remember Internet.Org’s attack on #NetNeutrality in their attempt to provide free Internet to the poor. Pay attention to Uber’s continued exploitation of its drivers, refusing to treat them as employees and yet regulating them more than any employer can dare to. Realise that despite our #MakeInIndia campaigns, we have very little investment in creating localised, Indian language digital infrastructure. Notice that the Indian digital scene, far from being start-up friendly, is turning into a monopoly of a handful of telecom companies, which nonchalantly discard the legal apparatus of safeguards. Reflect on how we are building biometric databases like Aadhaar, without any regard for data protection and security, so that millions of people are compromised through data leaks. All of these different phenomena need to be read along with our outrage at Snapchat. All of these are stern reminders that our act of questioning the digital does not stop at uninstalling an app, but at reorganising our policies and politics of the digital in the country.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-april-30-2017-digital-native-snap-out-of-outrage-mode

May 2017 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2017-06-17T02:46:03Z

Welcome to the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) newsletter for May 2017.

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
CIS compiled a report that highlighted four government projects run by various government departments that have made sensitive personal financial information and Aadhaar numbers public on the project websites. Article 19 had put out a call for applications for its Internet of Rights Fellowship in February 2017. Vidushi Marda was selected for Internet of Rights Fellowship. CIS gave inputs on a document on implementing digital accessibility to Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on May 2, 2017. The 34th session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) was held in Geneva from May 1 to 5, 2017. Anubha Sinha participated in the event and a summary report is available here. She made statements on behalf of CIS on the Discussion on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives and on the Proposal for Analysis of Copyright Related to the Digital Environment. CIS-A2K’s widely well-regarded flagship skill building program, Train The Trainer and MediaWiki Training was conducted in Kolkata earlier this year. Tito Dutta captured the developments in a blog post. Although it has made the topographic maps or the Open Series Maps available to general public, Survey of India’s (SoI) Nakshe portal will have to go through a variety of litmus test, as the initiative fails to implement the mandates of public sharing of government data using open standards and open license as put forward by the NMP 2005 and NDSAP 2012, said Sumandro Chattapadhyay in an interview with Geospatial World on May 02, 2017. In an interview with nettime.org, Geert Lovink discussed with Ramesh Srinivasan Tech Anthropology Today and "how can we embrace the realities of communities too-often relegated to the margins". In an article published in the Business Standard on May 3, 2017, Shyam Ponappa examined whether policies can be better framed to harness the market potential. Why is so much investment flowing into India's securities markets?

CIS in the news:

130 Million Aadhaar Numbers Were Made Public, Says New Report (The Wire; May 1, 2017 and MensXP.com; May 5, 2017).
Aadhaar Details Of 13.5 Crore People Available On Government Sites (Mahima Kapoor; Bloomberg Quint; May 2, 2017).
Aadhaar numbers of 135 mn may have leaked, claims CIS report (Press Trust of India; May 2, 2017).
Details of 135 million Aadhaar card holders may have leaked, claims CIS report (Hindustan Times; May 2, 2017).
UIDAI remains silent on #Aadhaarleaks of 13 crore users through government portals (Shruti Menon; Newslaundry; May 2, 2017).
১৩ কোটি আধার তথ্য ফাঁস চার সরকারি পোর্টাল থেকে! বিস্ফোরক দাবি রিপোর্টে (Amar Bazar Patrika; May 2, 2017).
13 crore Aadhaar numbers on four government websites compromised: Report (Akram Mohammed; New Indian Express; May 2, 2017).
Aadhaar numbers of 135 mn may have leaked, claims CIS report (DNA; May 2, 2017).
Biggest blast on Aadhaar leak so far: govt sites leaked data of 13 crore people (Jikku Varghese Jacob; Manorama; May 2, 2017).
Around 13 crore Aadhaar numbers easily available on government portals, says report (Scroll.in; May 2, 2017).
What privacy? 13 crore Aadhaar numbers accessible on government portals (Anusha Ravi; Oneindia; May 2, 2017).
Govt may have made 135 million Aadhaar numbers public: CIS report (Komal Gupta; Livemint; May 2, 2017).
Aadhaar numbers of 135 mn may have leaked, claims CIS report (The Times of India; May 2, 2017)
Aadhaar data leaks not from UIDAI: Centre (Krishnadas Rajagopal; Hindu; May 3, 2017).
135 MEELLION Indian government payment card details leaked (Richard Chirgwin; The Register; May 3, 2017).
Aadhaar data of over 13 crore people exposed: New report (Indian Express; May 3, 2017).
In The Biggest Data Leak, Info Of 13 Crore Aadhaar Card Holders Has Been Compromised And Is Available Online (Bobins Abraham; The Times of India; May 3, 2017).
Around 130-135M Aadhaar Numbers published on 4 sites alone (Nikhil Pahwa; Medianama; May 4, 2017).
Aadhaar's the largest biometric database globally but it is leaky by design (Rohith Jyotish; Global Voices; May 2, 2017 and Business Standard; May 5, 2017).
Why Aadhaar leaks should worry you, and is biometrics really safe? (Rakesh Mehar; Newsminute; May 4, 2017).
Indian Government says it is still drafting privacy law, but doesn’t give timelines (Vivek Pai; Medianama; May 4, 2017).
आधार नंबर, नाम, पता, बैंक अकाउंट और दूसरी संवेदनशील जानकारियां लीक: CIS रिपोर्ट (Aaj Tak; May 4, 2017).
With digitisation at the forefront, government departments need to be cautious about digital security (Manas Pratap Singh; NDTV; May 4, 2017).
Kashmir: Telecom firms struggle to block 22 banned social media sites (Aijaz Hussain; Livemint; May 4, 2017).
Aadhaar data of 130 millions, bank account details leaked from govt websites: Report (India Today; May 4, 2017).
Aadhaar: Are a billion identities at risk on India's biometric database (Soutik Biswas; BBC News; May 4, 2017 and Rawlson King; Biometric Update.com; May 5, 2017).
135 million aadhaar details, 100 million bank accounts "leaked" from government websites: Researchers (Counterview; May 5, 2017).
Suicide videos: Facebook beefs up team to monitor content (Kim Arora; The Times of India; May 5, 2017).
Aadhaar assurances fail to assuage privacy concerns (Anirban Sen; Livemint; May 5, 2017).
A 13-year-old's rape in TN highlights the major threat online sexual grooming poses to children (Priyanka Thirumurthy; May 6, 2017).
Experts stress on need for enhanced security (New Indian Express; May 6, 2017).
Taking Cognisance of the Deeply Flawed System That Is Aadhaar (Shreyashi Roy; Wire; May 10, 2017).
Plug data leak before imposing Aadhaar (Deccan Herald; May 11, 2017).
Aadhaar data leak: Take precautions while sharing info on websites, MEITy tells all depts (Indian Express; May 11, 2017).
Aadhaar security: Here's how your private information can be protected (Sanjay Kumar Singh; Business Standard; May 11, 2017).
Online Trolls Attack Critics of India's Aadhaar State ID System (Rohith Jyothish; Global Voices; May 31, 2017).
India is building a biometric database for 1.3 billion people — and enrollment is mandatory (Shashank Bengali; Los Angeles Times; May 12, 2017).
Watch: Aadhaar has become a whipping boy: Nandan Nilekani (Alnoor Peermohamed and Raghu Krishnan; Business Standard; May 13, 2017).
Partnership on AI Adds Corporate, NGO Members, Charts Initial Course (Benjamin Romano; Xconomy; May 16, 2017).
WannaCry: ATMs not to shut down, clarifies RBI, but how safe are our machines? (Soumya Chatterjee; May 16, 2017).
Google, Facebook's AI group adds new members (Jens Meyer; Axios; May 16, 2017).
22 companies join Partnership on AI, begin to study AI's impact on work and society (Alison DeNisco; TechRepublic; May 17, 2017).
Intel, Salesforce, eBay, Sony and others join the grand AI partnership club (CIOL; May 17, 2017).
IT companies in Bengaluru on high alert over WannaCry ransomware (Kiran Parashar K M & Shruthi H M; New Indian Express; May 17, 2017).
Partnership on AI adds new organizations to its network (Madison Moore; Software Development Times; May 17, 2017).
Intel, eBay, SAP, Salesforce y Sony colaborarán en inteligencia artificial (Monica Tilves; Silicon; May 17, 2017).
22 nieuwe leden voor Partnership on AI (Telecom Paper; May 17, 2017).
Provide hacker details, outfit that claimed data leak told (Mahendra Singh; The Times of India; May 18, 2017).
UIDAI asks Centre for Internet & Society to provide hacker details (Mahendra Singh; Economic Times; May 18, 2017).
Hack exposes Zomato's weak protection of customer data, say Cyber experts (Alnoor Peermohamed; Business Standard; May 19, 2017).
What’s Hard To Digest About The Zomato Hacking (Aayush Ailawadi; Bloomberg Quint; May 19, 2017).
UIDAI puts posers to CIS over Aadhaar data leak claim (Press Trust of India and Financial Express; May 19, 2017).
Faking it on WhatsApp: How India's favourite messaging app is turning into a rumour mill (Samarth Bansal; Hindustan Times; May 19, 2017).
Debate over #Aadhaar Turns Nasty as Critics Accuse Supporters of Online Trolling (Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprahasta; The Wire; May 19, 2017).
Hacker steals 17 million Zomato users’ data, briefly puts it on dark web (Kim Arora and Digbijay Mishra with inputs from Ranjani Ayyar; The Times of India; May 19, 2017).
UIDAI goes after org that disclosed government departments were releasing Aadhaar data (Nikhil Pahwa; May 19, 2017).
Developer releases WannaCry key-recovery tool for Windows XP (Cirilo Laguardia; Hoyen TV; May 20, 2017).
Will Aadhaar leaks be used as an excuse to shut out scrutiny of welfare schemes? (Anumeha Yadav; Scroll.in; May 20, 2017).
Microsoft says WannaCry ransomware must be a wake-up call for governments (Journaldu Maghreb; May 20, 2017).
Noida cyber cell gives tips on preventing WannaCry attack (Juana McKenzie; World News Journal; May 20, 2017).
Chinese state media says U.S. should take some blame for cyber attack (Ellis Neal; Villages Suntimes; May 21, 2017).
Zomato hack: You need to enhance online security with a password manager (Sanjay Kumar Singh; Business Standard; May 23, 2017).
Sharad Sharma Apologises for Trolling Aadhaar Critics; Unmasking Ispirit's Controversial Trolling Program (Shweta Modgil; Inc 42; May 23, 2017).
iSpirt's Sharad Sharma: Sorry, I trolled Aadhaar critics (Shalina Pillai and Anand J; The Times of India; May 24, 2017).
Sharad Sharma's case shows how rampant troll culture has become under Modi (Catch News; May 25, 2017).
Aadhaar Card: One Identity, Multiple Disorders (Gaurav Raj; India Saga; May 25, 2017).
Tweets from the afterlife (Heena Khandelwal; DNA; May 28, 2017).
BBMP faces ire for publishing pourakarmikas' Aadhaar details on website (Bharat Joshi; Economic Times; May 29, 2017).

CIS members wrote the following articles

Aadhaar Case: Beyond Privacy, An Issue of Bodily Integrity (Amber Sinha and Aradhya Sethia; Quint; May 1, 2017).
Digital native: Free speech? You must be joking! (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; May 14, 2017).
Digital native: Look before you (digitally) leap (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; May 28, 2017).

Submission

Comments on the draft Policy on IT Accessibility for People with Disabilities (Nirmita Narasimhan; May 19, 2017).

-----------------------------------
Access to Knowledge
-----------------------------------
Our Access to Knowledge programme currently consists of two projects. The Pervasive Technologies project, conducted under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to conduct research on the complex interplay between low-cost pervasive technologies and intellectual property, in order to encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The Wikipedia project, which is under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

►Copyright

Blog Entries

34th SCCR: A Summary Report (Anubha Sinha; May 15, 2017).
34th SCCR: CIS Statement on the Proposal for Analysis of Copyright Related to the Digital Environment (Anubha Sinha; May 15, 2017).
34th SCCR: CIS Statement on the Discussion on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives (Anubha Sinha; May 15, 2017).
34th SCCR: Observer Statements on Proposal for Analysis of Copyright related to the Digital Environment (Anubha Sinha; May 30, 2017).
34th SCCR: Observer Statements on Limitations and Exceptions for Educational and Research Institutions (Anubha Sinha; May 30, 2017).
34th SCCR: Observer Statements on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives (Anubha Sinha; May 30, 2017).

Participation in Event

Fixing Copyright for Education (SCCR34 Side Event) (Hosted by Communia, EIFL, Creative Commons, and PIJIP; May 5, 2017). Anubha Sinha was a speaker.

►Wikipedia

Blog Entries

Wiki Loves Mayabazaar (Pavan Santhosh; May 1, 2017).
Marathi Wikipedia Symposium at Gokhale Institute Of Politics & Economics (Subodh Kulkarni; May 1, 2017).
Digitisation, Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource Orientation Workshop at Vigyan Ashram, Pabal, Pune District (Subodh Kulkarni; May 4, 2017).
Thematic Edit-a-thon at J.P.Naik Centre for Education & Development, Pune (Subodh Kulkarni; May 10, 2017).
Train The Trainer 2017 (Manasa Rao; May 10, 2017).
Continuing community engagement: Communities of interest and Quarrying (Manasa Rao; May 19, 2017).
Preliminary research result on Wikipedia gender gap in India (Ting-Yi Chang; May 22, 2017).
MediaWiki Training 2017 (Tito Dutta and Ananth Subray; May 23, 2017).
Mini TTT and MWT held in Kolkata (Tito Dutta; May 23, 2017).

Note: The workshops for the above blog posts were held earlier but the reports were published during the month of May.

►Openness

Blog Entry

SoI’s Open Series Maps Fails to Implement Public Sharing of Govt Data (Geospatial World; May 4, 2017). Sumandro Chattapadhyay was interviewed.

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Internet Governance
-----------------------------------

►Freedom of Speech and Expression

Submission

Comments from the Centre for Internet and Society on Renewal of .NET Registry Agreement (Vidushi Marda with inputs from Pranesh Prakash and Sunil Abraham; May 31, 2017).

Event Organized

Communication Design and Visualising Information (CIS, Bengaluru; May 5, 2017). Saumyaa conducted a session on the broad principles of communication design and visualising information.

Participation in Events

World Press Freedom Day 2017 (UNESCO and the Digital Empowerment Foundation; New Delhi; May 3, 2017). Udbhav Tiwari participated in the event.
Consilience 2017 - A Conference on Artificial Intelligence & Law (Organized by National Law School of India University; May 20, 2017). Vidushi Marda was a panelist.

►Privacy

Submission

Comments on the Statistical Disclosure Control Report (Srinivs Kodali and Amber Sinha; May 2, 2017).

Blog Entry

(Updated) Information Security Practices of Aadhaar (or lack thereof): A documentation of public availability of Aadhaar Numbers with sensitive personal financial information (Amber Sinha and Srinivas Kodali; May 1, 2017).

Events Organized

Stand Shielded of Digital Rights (CIS; New Delhi; May 5, 2017). Amutha Arunachalam gave a talk.
Meeting on Proactive Disclosure and Personal Data (CIS; New Delhi; May 13, 2017).

Participation in Events

4th National Standards Conclave Evolving a Comprehensive National Strategy for Standards Sectoral and Regional Inclusiveness (Organized by Ministry of Commerce and Industry and the Confederation of Indian Industry; May 1 - 2, 2017).
Stockholm Internet Forum 2017 (Organized by Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency; Stockholm; May 15 to 18, 2017). Elonnai Hickok was a panelist in the session, "Private sector and civil society collaboration to advance freedom online".
Open house on information breaches (Organized by Has Geek; Bengaluru; May 26, 2017). Udbhav Tiwari was a speaker.
T20 Germany and Beyond: Digital Economy (Organized by GIZ and EPF; May 29 - 30, 2017). Elonnai Hickok participated in a round-table discussion.

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Telecom
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CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources, and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Newspaper Column

Policies to Sustain India's Market (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; May 3, 2017 and Organizing India Blogspot; May 4, 2017).

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Researchers at Work
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The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by an emerging need to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It aims to produce local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

Blog Entry

Tech Anthropology Today: Collaborate, Rather than Fetishize from Afar (Geert Lovink and Ramesh Srinivasan; nettime.org; May 16, 2017).

Participation in Event

Consultative Meeting for a Digital Archive Lab (Organized by Ambedkar University, New Delhi; May 20, 2017). P.P. Sneha participated in the meeting.

-----------------------------------

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

► Request for Collaboration

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/may-2017-newsletter

Digital native: Free speech? You must be joking!

nishant — 2017-06-08T01:16:01Z

India’s digital landscape is dotted with vigilante voices that drown out people’s right to free speech.

The article was published in the Indian Express on May 14, 2017.

Freedom of speech and expression has always been a tricky issue. While all of us are generally in favour of defending our rights to speak what is in our hearts, we are not equally thrilled about the speech of others that we might not enjoy. While we know that free speech and expression are not absolute — there are blurred lines of things that are offensive, might cause harm, and are directed with malice at different individuals or collectives — we also generally accept that this is a freedom that marks the maturity and sustainability of a stable democratic system.

Thus, even when confronted with speech and expression that might be undesirable: a political view that contradicts ours, an expression of blasphemy or profanity, a voice of dissent that questions the status quo, or an unsavoury information tidbit that mocks at somebody we admire, we generally take it in good stride, and learn to deal and engage with these actions. We do this, because we know that trying to curtail somebody else’s rights to free speech, would eventually restrict our own capacity for it, thus reducing the scope of an engaged and critical society. Especially in countries like India, where everybody has an opinion, where people offer critiques over chai and join heated debates over paan, there’s no denying that we are fond of our rights and capacity to speak
our minds.

However, within Digital India, these things seem to be changing fast. Every day we wake up to the cacophonous clamour of social media to realise that increasingly we are becoming an intolerant society filled with vigilantes bent on stopping people from saying things that we might just not like. In the ongoing saga of shrinking spaces of free speech, we now add the shameful incident at the Embassy of Sweden in India. On May 8, following mass populist trolling and complaints from the Twitteratti, the Embassy disinvited two women print and TV journalists — Swati Chaturvedi and Barkha Dutt — and cancelled their event, ironically, in the honour of World Press Freedom, on the topic of women’s participation in the online public space, to talk about trolls.

I shall wait here for the bitter irony to sink in: two of the strongest women voices in Indian public media, were disinvited to speak from an event where they were to talk about their experience of being trolled, harassed, bullied and intimidated in the newly emerging digital media landscape. Instead of giving them a voice, sharing their experiences, and engaging with their stories, the hypermasculine army of right wing vigilantes who object to these women’s history of critique of the current government and its leaders, decided to show their Twitter might, and celebrated as they succeeded in putting one more nail in the coffin of free and fearless speech in the country.

Some Twitter users went ahead and tagged their favourite leaders — @Narendramodi and @manekagandhibjp. They demanded, using their freedom of voice, to stop others from speaking. Social media networks have often been celebrated as alternative spaces where new, and unexpected voices can express their opinions without the fear of physical retribution or penalisation. While this has been consistently proven wrong by government authorities who have regularly policed, penalised and punished voices of dissent or disfavour, that at least is something we can notice, challenge and contest through legal redressal. However, with this new mob justice where the volume of voices engineered to amplify their disapproval, coupled with threats of violence and economic downfall (the users this time threatened to make a list of Swedish products and boycott them) is a recurring and disturbingly new phenomenon.

Crowds have always had the power to demand and leverage change of their liking. However, on social media, this can take up more sinister forms, because a handful of people through Twitter bots and chat scripts can create the illusion of a hugely amplified voice that can then be used to threaten and restrict the scope of free speech. The mass bullying effect needs a strong counterpoint in the form of better internet governance policies and regulations that nurture safe spaces for the tinier voices to be heard.

At the same time, however, the stifling attempts require another strategy — the need to speak up against such acts of intimidation and silencing, not only from the regular people on the web, but from the officials and leaders who have sworn to protect our constitutional rights. And this is, perhaps, where our leaders are failing us. Because, in an age of hypervisibility, where every step they take is a selfie moment, where every move they make makes it to the headlines, and they take pride in documenting their life in exceedingly boring detail, it creates a deafening silence when the leaders remain mute to the slow dissipation of the rights to free speech and expression by the angry mobs of networked digitality.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-may-14-2017-digital-native-free-speech-you-must-be-joking

Digital native: Look before you (digitally) leap

nishant — 2017-06-08T01:22:54Z

Creating a digital future is great, but there’s a serious need to secure the infrastructure first.

The article was published in the Indian Express on May 28, 2017.

Digital technologies of connectivity have one unrelenting promise — they offer us new ways of doing things, augmenting existing practices, amplifying capacities and affording new possibilities of information and data transactions that accelerate the ways in which we live. This idea of the internet as infrastructure is central to India’s transition into an information technologies future.

Nandan Nilekani, almost a decade ago, in his book, Imagining India, had clearly charted how the digital is the basis for shaping the future of our communities, societies and governance. As one of the architects of Aadhaar, Nilekani had argued that the country of the 21st century will have to be one that seriously invests in the digital infrastructure.

In 10 short years, we have reached a point where we no longer question the enormous investment we make in digital systems of governance and functioning, and we appreciate the economic and networked values of projects like #DigitalIndia and #MakeInIndia that shape our markets and cities into becoming the new cyber-hubs.

There is no denying that digital offers a new way of consolidating a country as polyphonic, multicultural, expansive and diverse as India. We also have to appreciate that, even if selectively, the digitisation of public records, government services, and state support is clearly producing an administrative momentum that is reforming various practices of corruption and incompetence in the massive state machinery. The role of the digital as infrastructure has been a boon for many developing countries.

This positioning, however, masks the fact that infrastructure needs its own support and care systems. Take roads, for example. Roads allow for connectivity, movement and mobility between different spaces. They are one of the most important of state and public infrastructures and for all our jokes about pot-holes and eroding spaces for pedestrians, roads remain the life-line of our everyday life. A complex mechanism of planning, regulation and maintenance needs to be put into place in order to make roads survive.

The amount of attention we pay to roads — the material quality, the land that it occupies, the lanes for different vehicles, the traffic lights and zebra crossings, blockages and streamlines, authorising specific use of roads and disallowing certain activities to happen there — is staggering. A public planner would tell you that before the road comes into being, the idea of the road has to be formulated. The road needs protection and planning and its own infrastructure of support and creation.

When it comes to the information superhighway of the digital web, this remains forgotten. We are so focused on the digital as infrastructure that we seem to pay no attention to its infrastructure. Thus, when we proposed, deployed and now enforced a project like Aadhaar, the focus remained on its unfolding and its operations. Aadhaar as an aspiration of governance has its values and has the capacity to become a system that augments statecraft.

However, the infrastructure that is needed to make Aadhaar possible — rules and regulations around privacy, bills and acts about data sharing and ownership, contexts of informed consent and engagement, community awareness and data security protocol — have been missing from the debates. For years now, activists have been advising and warning the state that building this digital infrastructure without building the contexts within which they make sense is not just irresponsible, but downright dangerous.

Different governments have turned a deaf ear to these protests. Now, when the Aadhaar portals are found disclosing massive volumes of public data, making people vulnerable to data and identity theft and fraud, we are realising the massive projects we have started without thinking about the context of security.

With the ongoing controversies around #AadhaarLeaks, the question is not whether the disclosure of this information was a leak, a breach or an ignorant exposure of sensitive information. The response to it cannot be just about fixing the infrastructure and building more robust systems. The question that we need to confront is how do we stop thinking of the internet as infrastructure and start focusing on the infrastructure that needs to be set into place so that these digital systems promise safety, security, and protection for the lives they intersect with.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-may-28-2017-digital-native-look-before-you-digitally-leap

'I feel the pain of having nowhere to go': A Manipuri Trans Woman Recounts Her Ongoing Lockdown Ordeal

Santa Khurai — 2020-06-22T11:42:39Z

"My life and work in Bengaluru came to an abrupt halt with the COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown this March. We no longer had jobs and were forced to plan our departure from the city." -- As told to Santa Khurai, Manipur-based queer and Nupi Manbi activist, artist and writer. Compiled by Aayush Rathi, a cisgender, heterosexual man, and researcher with Centre for Internet and Society, India. This account is part of an ongoing CIS research project on gender, welfare and surveillance in India, and is supported by Privacy International, UK.

Originally published by Firstpost, June 20, 2020.

In 2015, I left my home state of Manipur for Bengaluru.

My name is Sarik*; I prefer to be known as Siku. I am a Nupi Manbi (trans woman).

Other Nupi Manbi had told me that Bengaluru is tolerant of transgender individuals, and that it is easy to find decent, well-paying jobs here. I contacted friends who had already moved here and relocated with their help.

Immediately, I found work at a fabric dyeing factory. The salary meant I could send some money home, my family was able to invest some of the funds in a monthly marup [revolving informal credit collective], and I was able to dream of someday having enough to buy a piece of land in Manipur.

I wasn’t to know at the time that just five years later, the happiness and hope would both prove fleeting.

***

I grew up in a small locality of Imphal East District, the youngest of three siblings. My mother had passed away, my father is a priest and story-teller, and my older brother worked as a traditional cook. As a result, our lives were fairly hand-to-mouth.

The frequent shifting of homes was very difficult for me, but I had no choice in the matter. I used to earn money by assisting other transgender friends in their tailoring works. While I worked hard in order to set aside enough money to own a small piece of land, it proved impossible with my meagre earnings.

After years of struggle, I decided to move to a big city with the aspiration to earn more.

***

My life and work in Bengaluru came to an abrupt halt with the COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown this March.

We no longer had jobs and were forced to plan our departure from the city. The Manipur government had announced measures that would allow stranded citizens to return to the state, so we began the formal process for our repatriation.

On 14 May 2020, three of us left Bengaluru in a special train that was organised for returnees to Manipur. Four days later, we were in Manipur.

When we reached Imphal, all returnees were first assembled at Modern College in Porompat, Imphal East. From there, we were sent to our respective constituencies to be quarantined. In the process, I was separated from my friends.

I was taken to Wangkhei Girl School as my permanent address falls under this constituency. At the quarantine centre, I was allocated a room shared by six other men. All the inmates were also sharing a toilet. This made me very uncomfortable; my body was undergoing changes due to hormonal effects.

In my discomfort, I reached out to transgender activist Santa Khurai, highlighting the need to set up a separate quarantine centre for transgender people. She immediately created a WhatsApp group for all the transgender people housed at different quarantine centres, keeping us updated about a separate quarantine centre for us. On the evening of 20 May, we rejoiced on seeing photos of the quarantine centre set up for transgender people. That night was the end of my terrible stay at the common quarantine centre.

***

On 21 May, I was shifted to the quarantine centre for transgender people at Ideal Blind School, Takyel. There, I was reunited with two of my friends. We stayed there for 17 days, receiving support from Santa Khurai through telecounseling. Before the quarantine period concluded, we were tested for COVID-19. We did not receive the results, but were advised to go back home. We were provided an acknowledgment in the form of a medical document. The relatives and parents of the other two trans girls had come to pick them up, but since my family doesn’t own a vehicle and it was not possible to hire on, I called a transgender friend to drop me home. I could sense some animosity in the neighbourhood, and decided not to step out from the house.

On the morning of 4 June, local governing bodies and clubs including Meira Paibi [a women’s rights group] thronged my house. A large crowd gathered in the temple shed. The club and Meira Paibi leader called my family members out and we were made to sit in the middle of a large group of people. They asked me to produce the result of the COVID-19 test, and I showed the acknowledgement given to us at the quarantine centre. People in the crowd passed the paper to each other disapprovingly, arguing that I hadn’t been declared COVID negative. One of the local club leaders called the police and doctors. The doctor who was in charge of the facility for transgender persons responded to the call, and validated my discharge from quarantine.

After few hours, even the police arrived and said that I could stay at home. However, the locals pressured the cops into taking my family — including my frail father who is in his 80s — to the police station.

***

We were finally allowed to leave the police station after several rounds of interrogation. My father, my brother (along with his wife and son) were taken back home by the police, while I was separately dropped off at a hotel in Gandhi Avenue, Thangal Bazar. I was advised to check in the hotel at around 3 pm; the charge was Rs 1,000 per day. When I asked the man who would pay for the room, he said, “Let’s see. At least you will be safe to stay here as the locals didn’t accept you coming home. You stay here until the test result come out.”

I called Santa in desperation, who consoled and reassured me. In the meantime, I had also called my sister to ask if some clothes could be brought for me. Her response alarmed and frightened me: My sister told me that my family were not being allowed to enter the house. The gate had been locked and they were instructed to stay at a quarantine centre as they were exposed to me. The news shocked me and made me desperate in wanting the test result to come out expeditiously, so that it would at least prevent any further hardships for my family.

Now I’m staying at the hotel. I fear going back to the house, the hostility of the locals, my family being attacked, my old father being forced to stay at a quarantine centre. I feel the pain of having nowhere to go. It is also infuriating to think that this could have been completely avoided had the officials not been in a haste to make us leave the quarantine centre, and had let us stay till the actual test results were received.

* Name changed to protect identity.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/a-manipuri-trans-woman-recounts-her-ongoing-lockdown-ordeal-covid19

One. Zero.

nishant — 2015-04-24T11:50:32Z

The digital world is the world of twos. All our complex interactions, emotional negotiations, business transactions, social communication and political subscriptions online can be reduced to a string of 1s and 0s, as machines create the networks for the human beings to speak. So sophisticated is this network of digital infrastructure that we forget how our languages of connection are constantly being transcribed in binary code, allowing for the information to be transmitted across the web.

Nishant Shah's article was published in the Indian Express on September 16, 2012

Indeed, we have already reached a point where we don’t even need to be familiar with code to perform intimate functions with the machines that we live with, as they respond to us in human languages. While this human-machine duality has been resolved with the presence of intuitive and interactive interfaces that allow us to seamlessly connect to the person(s) at the other end of a digital connection, there is another binary that still remains at the centre of much discussion around all things digital.

This is the duality of the Real and the Virtual. In geekspeak, this particular separation has been coded as a divide between RL (Real Life) and VR (Virtual Reality). This separation between the two is so naturalised that it has become a part of our everyday imagination where things that happen online are ‘out there’ and ‘an escape’ whereas things that are offline, are ‘real’ and ‘believable’. However, as digital technologies become pervasive and ubiquitous, these lines between RL and VR have blurred. Especially with new technologies of augmented reality and simulated layers like Google Goggles or even location-based services on your smartphone that help you navigate through the offline world, it is becoming difficult to clearly say what is online and what is offline.

There are two questions that help demonstrate this blurring of boundaries very clearly. The first is an existential one, something that doesn’t crop up often in conversations, but suddenly haunts you on at 2 pm on an idle Thursday: Who are you, when you are online? A famous cartoon on the web had two dogs sitting on a connected computer, their paws on the mouse, and telling each other, ‘On the internet, nobody knows you are a dog’. But in the hyper-connected world that we live in, everybody knows exactly who we are, even as we ourselves are confused about where our bodies end and where our digital extensions and avatars begin. Things that we do in RL affect and shape the ways in which our avatars evolve on social networking sites. The interactions that our avatars have with other digital objects map back on our understanding of who we are and how we dress our bodies. Even when we are not connected, our avatars interact, constantly, not only with other avatars in the system, but also machines and artificial intelligence scripts, and robots and networks, masquerading as ourselves even outside our knowledge. We might be tagged, liked, shared, transmitted and morphed; we might be photoshopped, reduced to a tweet, condensed to a status message, embodied in an avatar on our favourite role playing game, or hovering as a signature to emails. These are all parts of us, but they are not just extensions of us. These are things that not only stand in for us but also shape the ways in which we understand ourselves and how we connect to the world.

The second question crops up regularly in digitally mediated conversations. When your parents call you on the cell phone, or your friend messages you on the Blackberry, or your colleague pings you on Skype or your IRC buddies see you on a chat channel. As our modes of access have become mobile and devices of access have become portable, we can never really clearly answer the question, ‘Where are you right now?’. It is a question worth dwelling on. Where are you when you are walking down a street, using GPRS data on your cellphone, and a friend uses a Voice Over IP service like Whatsapp to ask you, ‘Where are you right now?’. Are you on the street? On your phone? On an application? Located somewhere on a server? Bits of data on a high-speed optic fibre, zooming across the ionosphere? Depending upon who is asking the question, you would be able to and in fact have to give a different answer about where you are when you are online.

This blurred duality might be seen as confusing, taking away the assurance of our body and our geography from everyday practices. In fact, one of the reasons why the digital revolution has been so well received is because these technologies facilitate an almost seamless transfer of ideas, emotions and connections across the different realms of RL and VR, offering us new ways of thinking about being human, being social, and being connected. The strength of the digital is in this coupling together, of the hitherto irreconcilable realms of our life in messy and enchanting ways, giving us new opportunities to think about who we are and where we are in our quotidian lives.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/www-indianexpress-com-one-zero

Storytelling as Performance: The Ugly Indian and Blank Noise 1

denisse — 2015-10-24T14:31:11Z

This post compares the production behind a performance with the process of storytelling. To illustrate this analogy, we explore the stories of the Blank Noise project and The Ugly Indian- two civic groups from Bangalore making interventions in the public space. This post looks at the stages of pre-production and the screenplay to explore methods and narratives in storytelling.

spectacle
ˈspɛktək(ə)l/
a visually striking performance

performance
pəˈfɔːm(ə)ns/
an event in which a performer or group of performers behave in a particular way for another group of people: the audience. Sometimes the dividing line between performer and the audience may become blurred, as in the example of "participatory theatre" where audience members get involved in the 
production.

One of the mandates of this project is to locate discrepancies between "spectacles"[1] and realities of change to identify less visible examples of citizen action. However, an alternative route is to identify the characteristics of the spectacle, and learn how they can be used to make activism more visible: that is, more legible, intelligible and accessible. In this context, storytelling comes across as a method that can provide the same experience and benefits of a performance. This potential manifests itself in two ways:

a) First, in its infrastructure. We find that the structure holding stories together plays an important role in their ability to deliver a clear message. By unpacking the process of staging a performance -from what happens in the dressing rooms to what happens on stage- we will identify the building blocks of performances and by default, those comprised in effective storytelling.

b) Second manifestation occurs in the audience. The dynamic of performances resembles how we behave every day in our "socially and constructed worlds". We are constantly telling stories about ourselves and this 'sense of being' is what determines our actions and behavior (Holland et al, 1998). Furthermore, as social beings, we also build identities as a community and engage in "collective moments of self-enactment" (Urciuoli, 1995).

Linking this back to our project, understanding the performative potential of storytelling; its infrastructure and how it can touch on issues of identity, agency and collective action, is relevant to tackle challenges in activism and civic engagement -where the collective is very much linked to the political. To illustrate the relationship between storytelling and performance, I will use the example of two civic groups thriving in Bangalore: Blank Noise (founded by Jasmeen Patheja, who we interviewed back in January) and The Ugly Indian; and I will ask you to think about them as theatrical productions:

(The following images are 'Broadway posters' adapted to the identity of these groups. They were created merely for the purpose of this post and do not reflect the views of these organizations).

The Ugly Indian
stop talking. start doing.

Blank Noise
set new rules for street behavior

These groups were formed (in 2003 and 2010 respectively) to re-conceptualize how we understand our presence in the public space; Blank Noise focusing on sexual harassment and women safety and The Ugly Indian on waste management and civic interventions. On this post, we will look at their campaigns and identify features of the spectacle/performance in the storytelling methods they are using to communicate their mandates and interact with their volunteers. So, without further ado, let's explore this glossary of tweaked theatrical terminology:

How to navigate this post:

Section	Performance	Storytelling
Pre-production	Preparing all elements involved in a performance including locations, props, costumes, special effects and visual effects.	Preparing all elements needed to convey the message of the story including: spoken word, text, images, audio, video or other artifacts.
Screenplay	A written work narrating the movements, actions, expressions and dialogues of the characters.	Building a narrative in storytelling
Actors	Actors performing characters in a production.	The relationship between storytelling actors and agency
Stage	Designated space for the performance of productions	The public space as the stage for storytelling
Action!	Cue signifying the start of a performance	When storytelling leads to action

1. pre-production
ˈpri-prəˈdʌkʃ(ə)n/
the action of making or manufacturing from components or raw materials prior to the initial performance.

The stage of pre-production is when all the locations, props, cast members, costumes, special effects and visual effects are identified. It works in tandem with the screenplay to ensure the maximum consistence, coherence and clarity in the story. In the same way, planning storytelling also implies selecting the right elements and materials to hold the story together. Initially, only traditional mediums were available, such as spoken word, text and images; but storytellers today (the directors orchestrating these productions) are experiencing an urgency to re-invent and adapt the language of their stories to make it accessible in the network[3] (Hull and Katz, 2006; Urciuoli, 1995) and the practice has evolved into 'trans-media' or digital storytelling. Formats like audio-bytes, videos, sms, mobile apps are also part of its semiotic makeup and these mediums are mixed and matched to enhance the visibility of the message. As Scott McCloud suggests in ‘Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art’: “we need to invent new ways [and] develop new techniques of showing the same old thing” (1994) to make sure people still listen to what we have to say.

Both Blank Noise and The Ugly Indian have led highly visual campaigns in the online space, as they combine blogging with videos, audios, images and active community managers that interact with their volunteers. A few examples of the mediums they are using to capture the public's attention:

Video: Blank Noise did this art intervention, using real rape and sexual harassment reports from 2003 to challenge what we consider 'normal' and 'news'-worthy when it comes to sexual harassment and domestic violence:

Artifacts: ‘I never ask for it’ campaign: Blank Noise asked women to send garments they wore when they experienced ‘eve-teasing’ to challenge the notion “that women ask to be sexually violated”

I never ask for it. http://bit.ly/1mnEhMJ

Audio: Blank Noise documents and disseminates stories of sexual harassment as told by their Action Heroes' This is: Kitab Mahal's story.

The message transmitted by the garments, the video and the audio are based on cultural and social constructions of what ‘sexual harassment’ means. Removing one of the garments from the installation, for instance, removes it from its resistance identity and hence, it can only exist in the narrative context Blank Noise is constructing alongside its volunteers.

On the other hand, The Ugly Indian's mandate is to change people's "rooted cultural behaviour and attitudes [...] to solve India's civic problems"; starting with the visible filth on the streets. It does not pursue systemic change, but seeks impact at the behavioral level. One of the methods it uses to achieve this, is the dissemination of images and videos showcasing their work. Their publications minimize the use of text in order to drive attention to aesthetics:

They recently complemented their graphic stories, by starting a blog that documents "the philosophy and the process" that drives The Ugly Indian. This excerpt from Chapter 3 explains their visual strategy and why they have chosen before-after pictures to communicate their work:

“The citizens of the online world are brutal – they only care for instant gratification and real results. So are citizens in the real world. They too only care for results. [...] V & X know that and have focused all their energies on delivering this dramatic result, this single Before-After image, that is proof of dramatic change. And it has worked – in terms of creating initial positive impact (both on the ground and online). Whether it will survive and change community behavior is another story. But this initial impact is crucial, as we will discover later, in generating respect from the community and the authorities.”

“When pictures carry the weight of clarity in a scene, they free words to express a wider area. And when words lock in the meaning of a sequence, pictures can really take off” Scott McCloud on comics

This is how pre-production is important for storytelling. Planning, designing and choosing the right elements, and how they interact with one another, will determine the level of legibility and meaning we give to the story (McCloud, 1994). Each medium: video, audio, text, music, etc.- becomes “a new literate space” or “symbolic tool” storytellers have on hand to portray narratives about the self, family community and society (Hull, 2006), and the introduction of digital technologies into storytelling space, coupled with the current hype around the method, signals we are moving towards a more strategic use of technology to produce and share knowledge more effectively. In this way, the choice of mediums and technologies will reflect a "conscious construction of identity" and "performances of the self" (Vivienne, 2011); a theme we will explore further in the 'screenplay' section.

2. screenplay
ˈskriːnpleɪ/
The script including descriptions of scenes and some camera/set directions.

The process of writing a screenplay is a careful exercise of creation and articulation. The dialogues, expressions and actions of the characters are narrated and located in a specific context that will determine how the events of the play unfold. The ability to build a coherent narrative structure is, in itself, a powerful tool of self-expression that enables the storyteller to a) construct an identity for the story and b) expose it to the public. Let's take a closer look at each stage:

a) Self-expression is directly related to the amount of freedom we experience in our ecosystem. Barriers to expression can come through our political regime or in the form of social norms and taboos, as is the case of conservative pockets in India. In either context, storytelling comes across an alternative outlet to describe ambiguous, unapologetic and personal truths (Vivienne, 2011). It enables less visible voices to claim a space and construct their own narrative within. Blank Noise has been very active on this front, as it creates opportunities for its volunteers, participants (dubbed Action Heroes), and otherwise silent voices to articulate their emotional and physical experiences in the public space. One of the ways they did it was by publishing a step by step guide to unapologetic walking, and then requesting people to participate:

step by step guide to unapologetic walking: http://bit.ly/1bz3MZZ

" Our street actions over the last few years have been based on emphasizing small simple scenarios- which can be challenging even though they appear 'normal' and everyday. For instance- should it be hard to just 'stand' on the street as an 'idle' woman? Would you 'dare' try it?"

The idea behind this intervention is to re-conceptualize how women navigate the public space, drawing inspiration, ideas and encouragement from the “personal truths” and stories shared by women who are doing it. This grants them greater autonomy at representing themselves through their online and offline presence and the narrative is continuously re-shaped through new submissions and testimonials.

b) Self-representation is how you create yourself: who you want to be and how you want others to see you. Miller’s work on identity and storytelling explores the role of storytelling in socialization and self-construction: “stories change depending on who is listening” (1993) as we construct ourselves with and for other people. In the same way a character in the script cannot come to life without an audience, the identities we create for ourselves need a public that recognizes who we are and our role in the world. Anthony Giddens' work on identity also draws a relationship between our identity and its narrative: “self-identity is not a set of traits but a person’s reflexive understanding of their own biography (...) and the capacity to keep a coherent narrative going: integrating events in the external world and sorting them into the story of the self” (Gauntlett, 2002; Giddens 1991).

The Ugly Indian took a solid stance against middle class apathy and idleness in its narrative, and with this premise, it built an identity for the organization that represents the opposite: a selfless, active, responsible middle class citizen. These are some examples:

Anonymous identity	Middle class citizen	How they are different to the common middle class citizen
“They call themselves The Ugly Indians and operate anonymously [...]. If you aren’t aware of The Ugly Indian (TUI), that’s understandable – they work hard to stay anonymous and underground, and want only their work to speak for itself.” (Chapter 1)	“The more the urban middle-class see ‘people like them’ mucking about in garbage, the more they will face up to the issue and start thinking about it [...] This leap from ‘it’s someone else’s job’ to ‘it’s my duty to fix this’ is what can transform our cities – this leap has to be made in the mind!” (Chapter 6)	“There is a specific purpose to making Amir (the garbage truck driver) talk. X and V are looking for cues on what really troubles him, what improvement in his daily working life he will really appreciate. Too often, well-meaning urban middle-class do-gooders think they know what the working class needs (gloves, better equipment and so on) and they get it so wrong. Listening without being judgmental is an art, and X and V are good at that. (Chapter 8)

You can read more about TUI’s story here.

“Human lives become more readable and intelligible when they are applied to narrative modes borrowed from history and fiction; and in function of stories people tell about themselves.”

Ricoeur, 1991

The set of traits chosen by The Ugly Indian is important. Their initiative is intentionally gentrified as they want it to resonate specifically with the middle class (as they are "people like them"). But at the same time, they integrate a reflexive understanding of their role as citizens by mentioning the need for a personal awakening ("this leap has to be made in the mind!") and further interaction with stakeholders outside of their network ("making the truck driver talk"), that will enable the common middle class citizen transition into the level of 'street and citizenship authority' TUI is at. On top of this, their clean drives back up this discourse, and while their identity remains incognito, the work is widely shared on social media every week -drawing a coherent narrative between their speech and their actions.

c) Interaction with audience: Finally, once the storyteller has created a coherent identity, its sense of purpose must also be evident for the audience. The possibilities for this are endless, but I would like to draw attention to the super-hero narrative chosen by both Blank Noise and The Ugly Indian. Both groups are seeking an internal awakening in their volunteers by juxtaposing their experiences with what a 'hero' would do in the same situation.

Bangalore Hero video on The Ugly Indian:

“Our message to all Bangalore citizens is simple. Go out and be a hero on your own street.
Take charge of it. Don’t be helpless. You have the power. You just need to go and use it”

Blank Noise's Action Hero game:

The Action Hero Game is built on a series of personal challenges in the city.
The game is simple. Your game partner and opponent is you.
There is no one method or quick solution to be an Action Hero. 
Each potential Action Hero goes to a new area in his / her city. On arriving there potential Action Heroes receive 'challenges' via phone messages 
Action Heroes across locations receive a set of 6 tasks over 4 hours via sms
If you don't wish to do a task (eg task 1a) text us and we will send you another task (eg task 1B) 
Are you an Action Hero? 
Find out! Play this game!

Blank Noise Action Hero
http://bit.ly/1fld8cV

“Share your Action Hero experience: An Action Hero sets new rules for behaviour. She could experience fear and threat, but devises ways to confront it. Being fearless is a process. Every person is a unique Action Hero.Tell us how you said NO to sexual violence. [...] This blog set out to record testimonials of when and how you became an Action Hero; documents and shares the memory of when you surprised yourself, did the unexpected. [...] You are an Action Hero not by the magnitude of what you did but how it made you feel. You are an Action Hero by the way you define your own Action Heroism. We don't have a reference for you.]

They both advance ideals of courage, fearlessness and responsibility in the public space through their campaigns. These are not only desirable traits by any citizen -let alone marginalized or silenced voices in the case of Blank Noise- but the strategy also speaks to a language of hope and empowerment we can relate to at a human level. It sheds light on our fears, our limits and the extent to which we are willing to use our power to act.[3] Mediating this message with digital technologies also creates the illusion of an omniscient narrator who is drawing the volunteers' path to heroism and guiding their journey through it. As Ricoeur puts it: "there is no self-understanding that is not mediated by signs, symbols and texts; and self-understanding will coincide with the interpretation given to these mediating terms" (1995) It is ultimately the interpretation the volunteers give to this ideal, and the magnitude to which they identify with it, what will determine their eagerness to emulate it and translate it into action. As said in the last post, one of the faculties of good storytelling is turning the experience being told, into the experience of those who are listening (Benjamin, 1955).

Before moving on to how 'action' unfolds in the performance, it is worth reflecting on the role of narratives, identities and mediation in collective action. Why do we need the hero narrative to mobilize agents? Why is heroic citizenship the gold standard and why does it work as a method for engagement? The topic is unfortunately out of the scope of this post, but the next one will attempt to address how identities as these ones can mediate our agency and action in the public space.

******

Access Part 2 here to look at the role of actors and the stage in performances to explore the role of agency and the public space in storytelling. We will also draw some final conclusions relating this back to the Making Change project.

Footnotes:

[1] Refer to Nishant Shah's Whose Change is it Anyway?. He argues that global audiences engage with local causes that embody "spectacles of the rise of the citizen". This is problematic as the more significant -less visible/undocumented- acts remain unnoticed, while they may be central to understand what it means to make change in a networked and information society. He posits we need to move beyond this 'spectacle imperative',recognize the context of these revolutions and re-evaluate how we conceptualize 'action'.

[2] Novelty: Quick exercise: run a quick google search of the words: ‘storytelling + social change’. You will find stories by influential magazines and publications, including Forbes, the Huffington Post and Open Democracy, all from 2013-2014. ‘Storytelling’ seems to be the newly (re)discovered tactic to advance business and social impact objectives, noticed by activists and corporates alike.

[3] For more on our power as agents and the role of narrative and identity, refer to Paul Ricoeur's work on the selves and agents (Oneself as another) and narratives (Time and Narrative). "As the most faithful articulations of human time, narratives present the moments when agents, who are aware of their power to act, actually do so, and patients, those who are subject to being affected by actions, actually are affected." Resources here: http://stanford.io/1c0pUwQ

Sources:

Benjamin, Walter. (1977): "The storyteller."89.

Gauntlett, David (2002), Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction, Routledge, London and New York.

Giddens, Anthony. "Modernity and self-identity: self and identity in the late modern age." Cambridge: Polity (1991).

Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner & Cain, (1998). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hull, Glynda A., and M. Katz. (2006) "Crafting an agentive self: Case studies of digital storytelling." Research in the Teaching of English 41, no. 1: 43.

McCloud, Scott. (1993)."Understanding comics: The invisible art." Northampton, Mass

Miller, P. (1994). Narrative practices: Their role in socialization and self-construction. In Neisser & Fivush (eds.), The remembering self: Construction and agency in self narrative (pp. 158-179). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Miller, P. & Goodnow, J. J. (1995). Cultural practices: Toward an integration of culture and development. New Directions for Child Development, No. 67 (pp. 5-16). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Ochs, E., & Capps, L. (1996). Narrating the self. Annual Review of Anthropology, 25, 19-43.

Ricoeur, Paul (1991). "Narrative identity." Philosophy today 35, no. 1 : 73-81.

Ricoeur, Paul. (1995) Oneself as another. University of Chicago Press,

Urciuoli, B. (1995). The indexical structure of visibility. In B. Farnell (ed.), Human action signs in cultural context: The visible and the invisible in movement and dance (pp. 189-215). Metuchen, NJ & London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.

Vivienne, Sonja (2011). "Trans Digital Storytelling: Everyday Activism, Mutable Identity and the Problem of Visibility” Gay & Lesbian Issues & Psychology Review 7, no. 1.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance