We are anonymous, we are legion

Getting Connected

praskrishna — 2011-04-01T17:03:14Z

Nishant Shah of the Centre for Internet & Society talks about the growing adoption of social media, and what can constitute a "social media network"

See the video in livemint here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/social-media

Get an Aadhaar card if you don't have one

praskrishna — 2017-04-04T15:39:05Z

The Aadhaar number has been made compulsory for filing tax return. With both the government and private parties insisting on it for various activities despite the Supreme Court's assertion that is not mandatory, you need to get one at the earliest.

The article by Priya Nair and Sanjay Kumar Singh was published in the Business Standard on March 27, 2017. Udbhav Tiwari was quoted.

Until now the need for an Aadhaar card arose if someone wanted to avail of the LPG subsidy, or if senior citizens wanted to enjoy a concession on train tickets. This 12-digit number, which is a proof of identity, is largely used by the government to distribute cash benefits and other subsidies under its welfare schemes. Since submitting the Aadhaar card at the time of opening a bank account, investing in a mutual fund, etc is optional (you can submit another proof of identity), many people have still not bothered to get one. That ambivalent attitude will now have to change.

This year onwards all those filing income tax returns will have to furnish their Aadhaar number. There is a field in the income tax return form for Aadhaar number. Don’t forget to fill it this year. If you do not have an Aadhaar number, you will have to submit the enrolment number of your application for Aadhaar. "In case of failure to intimate the Aadhaar number, the PAN allotted to the person shall be deemed invalid and the other provisions of the Income Tax Act shall apply, as if the person has not applied for allotment of PAN," says Amarpal Chadha, tax partner, people advisory services, EY India.

Experts say that this step has been taken to deal with the problem of duplicate permanent account numbers (PAN) and to control black money. Says Kuldip Kumar, partner and leader-personal tax at PwC India: “Many people have more than one PAN, even though there is a penalty under the Income Tax Act for doing so. The government is linking PAN to Aadhaar to deal with this problem. This step will also help control black money. Whether you invest in stocks, shares, or do any other high-value transaction, over a period of time the tax department will be able to see all this information at the click of a button." Other experts also agree that this step will create an audit trail for various transactions. “Linking of Aadhaar and PAN will throw up any discrepancies in reported transactions and provide a ready database to the revenue authorities for necessary action,” says Vikas Vasal, partner, Grant Thornton India.

Interim problems
This measure is expected to create a slew of problems for people. Many individuals may still not have an Aadhaar card. They should apply for one post-haste. Everyone needs to check if their Aadhaar and PAN details match. If there are discrepancies between the two, get either your Aadhaar or PAN details updated so that you do not face problems at the time of filing returns. Details on how to update the Aadhaar and PAN are available on the web sites of UID and the IT department respectively (see box).

Non-Resident Indians (NRI) and foreign nationals may also need to obtain an Aadhaar number now. Many NRIs have an income (before claiming any deduction) that exceeds the basic exemption limit of Rs 2.5 lakh, and hence file a tax return in India. Foreign nationals who have spent time in India and earned an income also need to file a tax return. Indian residents who have been sent by their companies to work abroad will also have to scramble for the card. "March is about to end and tax returns will have to be filed by the end of July. Persons who have to file a tax return but are abroad will face a challenge getting the Aadhaar card made in time since you have to be physically present in India for this purpose,’’ says Kumar. The government may possibly grant some leeway to such people.

Even though the Supreme Court has said that Aadhaar is not mandatory, there are several instances where the authorities are insisting on it. Those applying for domicile proof and those who want to get their property registered are being asked to provide this number. Some telecom providers also insist on it before giving a connection. Schools are asking for it from students. You need it to appear for competitive exams like IIT JEE. Online providers of financial products insist on Aadhaar since it makes KYC easier. With the government moving strongly towards making Aadhaar compulsory, one can't escape complying with this regulation.

Risks of an Aadhaar-centric system
There are several risks associated with Aadhaar, whose basic purpose is authentication and authorisation. The first problem arises from the fact that it is easily accessible to miscreants. Aadhaar numbers of thousands of people have been uploaded on the Internet. "Since the Aadhaar number has to be given at so many places, it can be misused to pull information about people from the centralised database. In the case of credit and debit cards, we are told not to shares these numbers publicly as the number is the first thing required for carrying out a transaction. That is not the case with Aadhaar. UID's position is that you should treat your Aadhaar number carefully. But the fact is that the Aadhaar number is not used carefully either by consumers or businesses. It is a fairly public number. With Aadhaar too much power is being vested in a number that is quite public,’’ says Udbhav Tiwari, policy officer, Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru.

Second, Aadhaar has a centralised database, and all centralised databases are vulnerable to hacking. Third, biometrics are not a very secure form of authentication. "Fingerprints are easy to forge. The UID says that the device (used to check the fingerprint) should not remember the biometrics but should only transfer it to UID which will verify the information. But miscreants could use a device that captures your biometrics," says Tiwari.

Other documents used for identification like PAN and passport are not easy to duplicate because of their security features. PAN, for instance, has a hologram. The power of the passport lies not in the passport number but in the document. Without the passport one cannot travel internationally. But in case of Aadhaar one can go on the Internet and print a new Aadhaar card. “If somebody has managed to capture my fingerprint and has my Aadhaar number, he can use it wherever Aadhaar is required,’’ says Tiwari.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-march-27-2017-priya-nair-and-sanjay-kumar-singh-get-an-aadhaar-card-if-you-dont-have-one

Geospatial Info Regulation Bill will hurt start-ups, small firms

praskrishna — 2016-05-13T15:46:13Z

The Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, 2016, whose draft outlaws the acquisition of geospatial information without the government’s permission, is expected to impact smaller companies rather more than the large ones.

The article by Varun Aggarwal was published in Hindu BusinessLine on May 10, 2016. Sumandro Chattapadhyay was quoted.

Experts said that the law is being created to keep large corporates in check, but if implemented in its current form, its biggest impact would be on start-ups and smaller firms that use or create geospatial data.

“While companies such as Uber and Google can survive by getting all their maps vetted by the government, smaller companies will be impacted. This will act as a big entry barrier in favour of the dominant players such as Google and Microsoft,” said Sumandro Chattapadhyay, research director at Centre for Internet and Society.

“Smaller companies have no means to know what kind of geospatial information they can store and what they cannot. Moreover, if a start-up requires three months to get approvals for your data before you can use it, it’ll be as good as dead,” Chattapadhyay said.

Google declined to comment on the draft Bill.

U-turn by Centre

Sanjay Kumar, president of the Association of Geospatial Industries, recalled that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had in a speech in September last highlighted the importance of geospatial data in everyday life of the common man. “But now, the government seems to be taking a U-turn,” he said.

The Association has hundreds of members, including Google, offering various geospatial services.

“The PM’s campaigns on skill development, digital India and enhancement of the transport sector are heavily dependent on geospatial data. There are several private sector companies that provide services for these projects. If this Bill is passed as drafted, all this development process will be stalled,” said Kumar.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindu-businessline-may-10-2016-varun-aggarwal-geospatial-info-regulation-bill-will-hurt-start-ups-small-firms

Genetic Profiling: Is it all in the DNA?

praskrishna — 2015-09-13T09:47:17Z

A Bill seeks to make genetic profiling mandatory for the fight against crime—and generates a debate about the clash of ethics, freedom, science and data.

The article by Ullekh NP was published in Open Magazine on August 7, 2015. Sunil Abraham gave his inputs.

When British geneticist Sir Alec Jeffreys first developed the DNA profiling test 31 years ago in his laboratory at Leicester University, he didn’t help the police prove a man guilty. His test—back then it took weeks to complete DNA profiling procedures as opposed to a few hours now—proved that a rape suspect in police custody was innocent. Details from the whole exercise also subsequently helped the local police nab the real criminal, who had killed his teenaged rape victim. Later, the police found that he was the one who had committed a similar crime three years earlier in a village nearby. Britain was destined to make great gains in solving crimes thanks to DNA identification, while the rest of the developed world, including the US, caught up later, but only after lagging initially thanks to the relentless—and sometimes ill-founded—opposition from civil liberties activists. In India, the Human DNA Profiling Bill, 2015, a proposed law that envisages collecting DNA finger prints—which are unique to an individual—especially of criminals, has been in the making for the past 12 years. The draft bill, which will shortly be placed before the Union Cabinet for its nod, has been prepared by the Department of Biotechnology and the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting & Diagnostics (CDFD), a Hyderabad-based Central Government-run agency, after examining and reviewing submissions by a panel of experts, holding consultations with various stakeholders and getting responses from the public. Notwithstanding the claims of safeguards against any misuse of the intended DNA data base, activists, lawyers, internet freedom fighters, civil liberty activists and columnists have been up in arms against the Government, arguing that the DNA profiling bill is ill- conceived and naïve—to the extent that it would destroy an individual’s right to privacy as it lacks provisions to check data tampering.

The international experience has proved otherwise. Ever since Sir Jeffreys extracted DNA from human muscle tissue, identified and processed genetic markers (which are unique to individuals except in the case of identical twins) from what was until then considered ‘seemingly purposeless segments of the human DNA’ in the words of writers Peter Reinharz and Howard Safir, more than 500,000 ‘otherwise unsolvable’ cases have been solved in the developed world thanks to the DNA identification, note CDFD scientists. DNA is the hereditary material in the human body. It is found in blood, saliva, urine, strands of hair, semen, tears, skin, etcetera.

Dr Madhusudan Reddy Nandineni, staff scientist and group leader, laboratory of DNA fingerprinting services and laboratory of genomics and profiling applications, CDFD, is worried that opposition to the Bill is gaining momentum in India due to a raft of reasons. Of course, the West, too, has witnessed sharp protests against DNA profiling laws. One of the key reasons anti-profiling activists have an edge, says a senior Home Ministry official who asks not to be named, is that there is a “general public anxiety” over “anything to do with disclosing personal details”. He agrees that the tests are going to be intrusive, because muscle tissue may have to be collected from private parts. The procedure of DNA sample collection—as explained in the draft Bill submitted in January by a committee headed by TS Rao, senior adviser to the department of biotechnology—talks about obtaining intimate body samples of living persons (on page 6-7 of the 48- page document) from ‘the genital or anal area, the buttocks and also breasts in the case of a female’. According to the draft Bill, it also involves external examination of private parts, taking samples from pubic hair or by swabs or washing or by vacuum suction, by scraping or by lifting by tape and taking of a photograph or video recording of, or an impression or cast of a wound in those areas. “But then, it is par for the course,” says the Home Ministry official by way of justification.

American military historian and author Edward Luttwak agrees that DNA profiling is a significant intrusion into the “very body of a citizen”. That is the price one has to pay in the choice between liberty and equality before investigation, he posits. Luttwak is glad that in the US, as well as in other countries that have such profiling laws, DNA identification has yielded results. “It protects suspicious/ low status but innocent people from false accusations and helps to catch clever/high-status law-breakers,” he says.

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For his part, Dr Nandineni says that every aspect of the Human DNA Profiling Bill for India is based on similar legislation that has already been implemented in the US, Canada, UK, Australia and Continental Europe for more than 20 years. He also contends that the benefits that have accrued there are enormous, which India has missed out on for all these years. “In all these countries, the concerns of the general public on privacy matters have been allayed in their legislation,” he adds. He points out that the retention of DNA profiles in a ‘DNA Data Bank’ is meant to apprehend repeat offenders and thus serve a larger societal good. As regards privacy concerns, Dr Nandineni says that consultations on the preparations of the Bill lasted for 2-3 years and took into account the views of an expert committee whose members included representatives of NGOs.

Dr Nandineni is of the view that the opponents of the Bill have managed to get an upper hand in a national debate thanks to their media-savvy backgrounds. Agrees the Home Ministry official: “Perhaps the drafters of the Bill have not been communicative enough in getting their points across to the public and the media. Which might explain why the Bill has come under tremendous attack in the media. Even otherwise, global trends also show that civil liberty rights activists have had great initial advantage in their campaign against DNA profiling.” After all, the potential for misuse of DNA samples is not restricted to biological material collected under the provisions of the DNA Bill alone, Nandineni offers. “Any and every blood sample collected by a clinical laboratory has the same potential for misuse,” he says.

While Dr J Gowrishankar, director, CDFD, has been vocal about the positives of the Bill, its opponents have been louder. Many of those who oppose the Bill say the question is not one of being loud or feeble, but about being naïve or not.

The likes of Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bangalore-based internet research organisation Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), have no argument against DNA profiling being the gold standard for all forensic investigations. “There is nothing wrong with using DNA evidence for forensic purposes,” says Abraham, “However, the draft Bill is filled with techno-utopianism; it assumes that the people and machines that leverage DNA technologies are infallible.” He goes on, “This is not true. It is easier to tamper with DNA evidence than it is to tamper with a video recording. Therefore, all we are asking for are process checks that prevent compromised persons and machines from using DNA evidence to convict or exonerate the wrong person.” His contention is that if the DNA sample is sent to two different labs and both labs come back with exactly the same result, then the courts can be convinced of the veracity of the result. “Also the Bill says that DNA labs will give courts ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers to questions related to DNA matching. But ideally, the lab must give the exact match percentage along with all the detailed information that emerges from the match process so that the court can fully appreciate the significance of the DNA evidence,” he suggests.

Abraham and legal scholar Usha Ramanathan—both members of the expert panel who filed notes of dissent and disagreed with various aspects of the Bill—have a problem with the claim that the proposed DNA data bank will cover only criminals and not the general public. Points out Ramanathan: “The Bill does not restrict the data base to criminals alone, not by a long shot. The provision in the proposed Bill reads: ‘(Clause 31(4)) Every DNA Data Bank shall maintain following indices for various categories of data, namely: (a) a crime scene index; (b) a suspects’ index; (c) an offenders’ index; (d) a missing persons’ index; (e) unknown deceased persons’ index; (f) a volunteers’ index; and (g) such other DNA indices as may be specified by regulations.’ That is an elaborate set of indices. There is certainly a lot of the ‘general public’ in it.”

Supporters of the DNA Profiling Bill have maintained that a DNA data bank is not for the public but only for a limited category of individuals. The proposed law also provides for storing profiles with the consent of relatives of missing children and grownups so that relationship identities can be established.

Ramanathan is also worried that apart from purposes of criminal justice, DNA profiling may be extended to parental disputes (maternity or paternity), issues related to pedigree, those related to assisted reproductive technologies (surrogacy, in vitro fertilisation or IVF, intrauterine implantation or IUI, and so on), to transplantation of human organs (donor and recipient) under the Transplantation of Human Organs Act, 1994, and also related to immigration or emigration. She had objected to the requirement of revealing a person’s caste in the application form for offering blood samples. “This Bill is certainly not a convict data base. The ambitions are much much vaster, and little to do with crime control,” she alleges.

Abraham agrees that some safeguards have been built in the proposed law to prevent any misuse of DNA data under pressure from expert panel members such as him. However, he says, cyber security and privacy-related issues are not addressed in a comprehensive manner. “The Bill basically hopes that the Privacy Bill will address all of this when it becomes law. But unfortunately, a bill could take 7-10 years before it becomes law,” he says.

Dr Gowrishankar of CDFD and others have conceded that it was the decision of the expert panel to include an enabling provision for the privacy issues of DNA profiling to comply with the proposed Privacy Bill.

Abraham says that various measures to prevent ‘privacy harms’ to volunteers are missing in the latest draft of the Bill. “Given that biometric technology works on probabilistic matching, the larger the size of the database, the larger the incidence of mistaken identification. Therefore it is important that the database remain as small as necessary,” he asserts.

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The estimated cost of the Bill is Rs 20 crore—to create the infrastructure for the DNA Profiling Board and the data bank, which includes buildings, furniture, computer servers and so on. Among other things, the DNA Profiling Board is tasked with the responsibility of laying down and implementing standards for laboratories and proper protocols for ‘Data Bank’ operations.

CDFD scientists and government officials are keen to highlight the ‘under- hyped’ benefits of DNA profiling –similar to the Innocence Project in the US, which was aimed at securing the release of people who were erroneously convicted on the basis of other lines of evidence. Abraham has no patience for such comparisons. “DNA profiling for forensic purposes is very advanced and sophisticated, but technologies do not exist in a vacuum,” he says, “These advanced technologies have to work within traditional institutions with vulnerabilities and flaws. We need to, therefore, have non-technological procedural fixes that ensure that these technologies are not compromised by money and power. The choice is between the right to privacy and the rights and requirements of the criminal justice process.”

Ramanathan agrees with that view. “In the Indian context, the state of investigation is so poor that we have been looking for ways of circumventing our problems, not addressing them. That is how narco-analysis began to be used, till the court struck it down. DNA may be more reliable than most other scientific tools available to us today, but it is not all about the science. We also have to worry about contamination, what happens in the chain of custody, its potential for being planted or otherwise abused, and the errors even in the laboratory. You may remember the avowed mix-up of results in the Aarushi [Talwar murder] case, something the lab said they noticed over two years after they had given it to the investigators. The danger of treating DNA as conclusive and not needing corroboration is exacerbated in this kind of a vulnerable system. Which is why bringing this into a DNA data base law and not putting any checks on criminal procedure is less than wise,” she elaborates. She is least impressed with the ‘idea’ of ‘pedigree’ and of ‘population genetics’ in the Bill. “Institutions like the CDFD have been collecting DNA from suspects and asking for the caste of the person on the form. How does this seem innocent and safeguarded?” she asks.

Meanwhile, columnist and author Salil Tripathi says that it is sheer hubris to think that technology will provide all the answers to crime-fighting. “Tech- nology is enormously useful and powerful, but it is value-neutral; it can be used for good or bad ends… There have to be sufficient safeguards, overseen not only by technologists, law enforcement officers and bureaucrats, but also by lawyers and civil liberties experts, who can point out potential flaws and misuse and prevent those.”

Tripathi, too, is piqued that one of the markers sought is of caste. “Why?” he asks, emphatic that the country’s people should be concerned about allowing the state so much power over their lives. “And it may not be only the state; given that the scope of its future expansion is undefined, what guarantees are there that private actors won’t have access to the data, and if so, what security protocols would apply?”

Dr Gowrishankar and Dr Nandineni are right in saying that without DNA fingerprinting, many international criminals would still be at liberty, and the opponents of the Bill do not disagree with the efficacy of the technique developed by Sir Jeffreys. Instead, they are placing the spotlight on various objectionable aspects in the proposed law. In a country which first needs—according to former RAW chief Vikram Sood—to ensure access to Photofit (a technique to create an accurate image of a person that gels with a witness’ description) for its ground-level police operatives to combat crime, critics of the Bill seem to have won the war of words.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/open-magazine-august-7-2015-ullekh-np-genetic-profiling

Gender and Privacy: Countering the Patriarchal Gaze

Admin — 2018-09-19T01:48:07Z

Ambika Tandon participated in a workshop on privacy and gender which was organized by Privacy International in United Kingdom on September 13 and 14, 2018. Ambika was part of a panel on reproductive rights and privacy in India. She also recorded a podcast on the same topic, as part of a series on privacy and gender being hosted by Privacy International.

Read the Agenda here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/gender-and-privacy-countering-the-patriarchal-gaze

GeekUp with Erica Hagen

praskrishna — 2012-02-29T03:00:14Z

HasGeek is organizing a GeekUp with Erica Hagen of the GroundTruth Initiative on 1 March 2012 at 5 p.m. Erica will speak on the theme: "From Information to Empowerment: Unpacking the Equation".

From Information to Empowerment to Unpacking the Equation

In 2010, Erica Hagen and Mikel Maron started GroundTruth Initiative to work towards empowering communities through open data, open information and participatory processes. Erica's and Mikel's work at GroundTruth is informed by their earlier experience of working with the Map Kibera project where they helped the youth and the communities in Kibera to map their geographies and represent information about themselves to the world through citizen media. In the process, Erica and Mikel uncovered several complex dynamics about self-representation by communities, what open data really means to communities and how they apply it to their circumstances, the dynamics between participatory development and participatory technologies, and the process of using community media tools and online methods for talking about issues that matter to them.

In this lecture, Erica Hagen will talk about her work with communities in Kenya, Jerusalem, Nigeria and other parts of the world through GroundTruth Initiative. Specifically, Erica will unpack the relationship between empowerment, information, and storytelling, and what both these elements mean to communities in different parts of the world. How are communities applying the information and data that they collect about their governments and themselves? What are the challenges involved in the process of working with open data, participatory processes and technologies? How can communities apply new media and data gathering tools to achieve local goals? What does empowerment mean in the face of the delicate lines and precariousness that communities and the interveners/practitioners have to tread in the process of data gathering, representation, communication and outputs?

Interested persons need to confirm attendance by registering at http://geekup.in/2012/erica-hagen

Erica Hagen

Erica Hagen is a journalist and international development practitioner working for democracy of information and citizen participation in both online and traditional media. She is the co-founder of Map Kibera and GroundTruth Initiative. Erica has worked in four countries on development communication and evaluation, and in the United States on refugee and immigrant issues, for organizations such as United Nations Population Fund, Concern Worldwide, and Unicef. She holds a Masters Degree in International Affairs from Columbia University, New York.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/geek-up-with-erica

GeekUp with Alan Knott-Craig

praskrishna — 2012-06-29T11:11:52Z

HasGeek and CIS invite you to a lecture by Alan Knott-Craig at CIS office in Bangalore on June 30, 2012, from 5.00 p.m. to 6.30 p.m.

Alan is founder of World of Avatar and CEO of Mxit, Africa’s largest social network. Between 2003 and 2006, Alan co-founded five companies in the mobile services sector. In 2006, he was appointed managing director of iBurst, a broadband network operator in South Africa. In April 2008, he published Don’t Panic, a best selling book aimed at persuading emigrant South Africans to return home. In June 2008, he founded The Trust, an NGO focused on assisting charities access skills and capital. In 2009, he was named as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. In June 2012 he published Mobinomics, the story of Mxit and mobile in Africa. Alan is a qualified Chartered Accountant (SA).

The Story of MXit

MXit (pronounced "mix it") is a free instant messaging application developed by MXit Lifestyle (Pty) Ltd. in South Africa that runs on multiple mobile and computing platforms. According to a 2011 study by consultancy World Wide Worx, MXit currently has about 10 million active subscribers, making it the largest mobile social network in Africa.

MXit allows users to send and receive one-on-one text and multimedia messages to and from other users, and in general chat rooms. MXit also supports gateways to other instant messaging platforms such as MSN Messenger, ICQ and Google Talk.

On 1 April 2009, MXit released an open-source plug-in for the libPurple library. This allows applications using the libPurple library such as Pidgin and Adium to connect to the MXit network. This coincided with the release of the MXit Developer Zone web-site and documentation on the MXit client protocol. MXit has been included as a standard protocol in Pidgin since version 2.6.4.

Agenda

17:00 - 17:05	Welcome with Tea, Coffee, and Snacks
17:05 - 17:15	Lightning Talks
17:15 - 18:00	The Story of MXit
18:00 - 18:30	Q & A

For registration, click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/geek-up-with-alan-knott-craig

Geekup @ CIS

praskrishna — 2011-12-26T07:39:53Z

CIS is hosting a Geekup tomorrow, December 27, 2011 in its office in Bangalore. Shyam Mani will be giving a talk.

Shyam Mani

Based out of Singapore, Shyam (aka fox2mike on IRC and most of the intertubes) is one of the folks on the Mozilla IT team outside the USA. A geek at heart, he’s a part-time Gentoo developer, loves photography and volunteers as a race official for Formula 1 races in Singapore and Australia.

A peek into Mozilla IT

Mozilla IT manages over 7 datacenters in San Jose, Santa Clara, Phoenix in the US and Amsterdam as well as Beijing and 7 offices in Mountain View, San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto, Paris, Auckland and Beijing with over 4000 servers and virtual machines. They support Mozilla's mission on a 24/7 basis by making sure critical infrastructure functions as expected and is always available (when they're not being BOFHs). The 45 member strong team is primarily based out of the US and has a person each in India and Singapore.

This talk will provide an insight into Mozilla's Infrastructure in terms of scale and the methods/tools used to manage the same.

We will open with lightning talks from Bangalore's geeks. That means you. Give us a 5-10 minute intro to the tools you use or how your organization's IT is structured. Help get the mood going before Shyam's talk.

Schedule

Welcome with tea, coffee and snacks	18:00 - 18:15
Lightning Talks	18:15 - 19:00
A peek into Mozilla IT	19:00 - 20:00

Register now

The venue has limited capacity

Fill out the form to confirm your participation. We have limited space at the venue and may not be able to accommodate everyone. Registration will allow us to keep you updated about the talk. Do tell us something about yourself so we know whom we are expecting.

Our privacy policy: We do not share your info.

Also see the HasGeek website

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/mozilla-it

GDPR and India: A Comparative Analysis

Aditi Chaturvedi — 2017-11-28T15:17:39Z

At present, companies world over are in the process of assessing the impact that EU General Data Protection Regulations (“GDPR”) will have on their businesses.

The post is written by Aditi Chaturvedi and edited by Amber Sinha

High administrative fines in case of non-compliance with GDPR provisions are a driving force behind these concerns as they can lead to loss of business for various countries such as India.

To a large extent, future of business will depend on how well India responds to the changing regulatory changes unfolding globally. India will have to assess her preparedness and make convincing changes to retain the status as a dependable processing destination. This document gives a brief overview of data protection provisions of the Information Technology Act, 2000 followed by a comparative analysis of the key provisions of GDPR and Information Technology Act and the Rules notified under it.

Download the full blog post

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/gdpr-and-india-a-comparative-analysis

Game release cancelled over gay character

praskrishna — 2014-11-22T00:24:32Z

Electronic Arts stops accepting preorders for Dragon Age: Inquisition.

The article by Jaison Lewis was published in Mumbai Mirror on November 19, 2014. Pranesh Prakash gave his inputs.

In a city where just about any kid above the age of five who can afford to do so has played Grand Theft Auto, with its profusion of violence and profanity, it appears unlikely that a game would ever be withdrawn from release owing to explicit content. But when Electronic Arts (EA), creators of several such titles, decide to cancel the release of a game in India because it features a gay character and sequences of gay sex, there are bound to be fiery debates about censorship, moral policing, and the prevalence of gratuitous violence in games.

EA have withdrawn pre-orders for Dragon Age: Inquisition, a role playing franchise in which you play a character that you create - one such role is that of Dorian, who is gay and who is featured in sequences involving gay sex. EA is now in the process of refunding the money (Rs 3,499 for the standard edition (PC) and Rs 4,000 for the collectors' edition (PC)) that gamers in India paid to have access to Dragon Age when it is released on November 21.

Milestone Interactive, the company that distributes EA titles in India, has cancelled several pre-orders for the game that were booked through their website. However, a bulk of the PC pre-orders were made on EA's Origin software, a Windows application that lets gamers buy and play games directly from the company. Electronic Arts issued the following official statement to its Origin users in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. "In order to avoid a breach of local content laws, EA has withdrawn Dragon Age: Inquisition from sale in India and the game is no longer available for pre-order. Customers who pre-ordered the game will be contacted directly and will be fully refunded."

Though the local laws that applied were not mentioned, several online websites managed to obtain reactions from EA that implied the game's homosexual content was to blame, with mention of Section 377, which criminalises gay sex.

The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), a self-regulatory organisation based in New York, has classified Dragon Age as Mature, and, according to their online rating information, it "includes some sexual material: a female character briefly depicted in front of a man's torso (fellatio is implied); characters depicted topless or with exposed buttocks while lying in bed or after sex; some dialogue referencing sex/sexuality. The words "f**k," "sh*t," and "a*shole" appear in dialogue."

LGBT rights activist Aditya Bandopadhyay, said he believes EA could have withdrawn the game under pressure from the government.

"Self-censorship by corporations is even more insidious than censorship by the government, since the latter can be challenged in courts and has to abide within the limits set out within Article 19 of the Constitution, the former cannot be challenged at all except morally, "said Pranesh Prakash, member, The centre for internet and society.

"There can be no defence offered to the offensive instance of self-censorship by Electronic Arts, and is a slap against the fight by the LGBTQ community in India against oppressive colonial laws and mores. As Vikram Seth put it, it is homophobia that came into India, not homosexuality. It is homophobia that is unnatural and which militates against Indian morality. Under Article 19(1)(a), the government can be read to have a positive obligation to ensure an environment where freedom of speech and expression is guaranteed, so I call upon the government to speak out against the decision taken by Electronic Arts, " added Prakash.

"By way of legal background: Homosexuality as a gender identity is not illegal in India, while there is a case pending in the Supreme Court as to the criminality of engaging in 'unnatural' sexual intercourse. This law cannot possibly be read to hold that the public display of homosexuality in art is unlawful," he said

EA representatives were unwilling to discuss the game or the reasons for it being withdrawn from the market in India. "We are going to decline any further info beyond our statement," a spokesperson said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/mumbai-mirror-november-19-2014-jaison-lewis-game-release-cancelled-over-gay-character

Future Value of Data

Admin — 2018-01-17T00:32:50Z

Carnegie India with support of Facebook organized a workshop in Bengaluru on January 10, 2018. Sunil Abraham participated in the workshop.

The event focused on the political economy of reform in India, foreign and security policy, and the role of innovation and technology in India's internal transformation and international relations.

Core aims of the workshop included:

Share and debate views on what changes we expect in the value of data over next decade.
Challenge and explore the underlying drivers of change across broad arena.
Debate the regional and global perspectives and highlight unique issues of greatest impact.
Build an informed collective view on the topic for all to use going forward.

For more details on Future of Value Data, click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/future-value-of-data

Future Tech and Future Law

Admin — 2019-01-03T01:17:29Z

The Dept. of IT & BT, Government of Karnataka organised the 21st edition of Bengaluru Tech Summit from November 29, 2018 to December 1, 2018 at Palace Grounds, Bengaluru. Arindrajit Basu was a speaker at the panel on 'Future Tech and Future Law'.

The discussion was moderated by Tanvi Ratna. Aayush's co-panelists were Apar Gupta,Jaideep Reddy and Nilesh Trivedi. During his remarks, he attempted to focus on our AI research thus far and our suggestions for AI regulation.

For more details see this page.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/future-tech-and-future-law

Future of Work: Report of the ‘Workshop on the IT/IT-eS Sector and the Future of Work in India’

ambika — 2020-03-05T19:03:07Z

This report provides an overview of the proceedings and outcomes of the Workshop on the IT/IT-eS Sector and the Future of Work in India (hereinafter referred to as the “Workshop”), organised at Omidyar Networks’ office in Bangalore, on June 29, 2018.

This report was authored by Torsha Sarkar, Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rath. It was edited by Elonnai Hickok. Akash Sriram, Divya Kushwaha and Torsha Sarkar provided transcription and research assistance. A PDF of the report can be accessed here.

Introduction

The Workshop was attended by a diverse group of stakeholders which included industry representatives, academicians and researchers, and civil society. The discussions went over various components of the transition in the sector to Industry 4.0, including the impact of Industry 4.0-related technological innovations on work broadly in India, and specifically in the IT/IT-eS sector (hereinafter referred to as the “Sector”). The discussion focused on the reciprocal impact on socio-political dimensions, the structure of employment, and forms of work within workspaces.

The Workshop was divided into three sessions. The first session was themed around the adoption and impact of Industry 4.0 technologies vis-a-vis the organisation of work. Within this the key questions were: the nature of the technologies being adopted, the causes that are driving the uptake of these technologies, and the ‘tasks’ constituting jobs in the Sector.

The second session focussed on the role of skilling and re-skilling measures as mitigators to projected displacement of jobs. The issues dealt with included shifts in company, educational, and social competency profiles as a result of Industry 4.0, transformations in the predominant pedagogy of education, vocational, and skill development programmes in India, and their success in creating employable workers and filling skill gaps in the industry.

The third session looked at social welfare considerations and public policy interventions that may be necessitated in the wake of potential technological unemployment owing to Industry 4.0. The session was designed with a specific focus on the axes of gender and class, addressing questions of precarity, wages, and job security in the future of work for marginalized groups in the workforce.

Preliminary Comments

The Workshop opened with a brief introduction on the research the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is undertaking on the Future of Work (hereinafter referred to as “FoW”) vis-a-vis Industry 4.0. The conception of Industry 4.0 that CIS is looking at is the technical integration of cyber-physical systems in production and logistics on one hand, and the use of internet of things (IoT) and the connection between everyday objects and services in the industrial processes on the other. The scope of the project, including the impact of automation on the organisation of employment and shifts in the nature and forms of work, including through the gig economy, and microwork, was detailed. The historical lens taken by the project, and the specific focus on questions of inequality across gender, class, language, and skill were highlighted.

It was pointed out that CIS’ research, in this regard, comes from the necessity of localising and re-examining the global narratives around Industry 4.0. While new technologies will be developed and implemented globally, the impact of these technologies in the Indian context would be mediated through local, political and socio-economic structures. For instance, the Third Industrial Revolution, largely associated with the massification of computing, telecommunications and electronics, is still unfolding in India, while attempts are already being made to adapt to Industry 4.0. These issues provided a starting point to the discussion on the impact of Industry 4.0 in India.

Qualifying Technological Change

Contexualising the narrative with historical perspectives

The panel for the first session commenced with a discussion around a historical perspective on job loss being brought about due to mechanisation. The distinction between Industry 3.0 and 4.0, it was suggested, was largely arbitrary, inasmuch as technological innovation has been a continuous process and has been impacting lives and the way work is perceived. It was argued that the only factor differentiating Industry 4.0 from previous industrial revolutions is ‘intelligent’ technology that is automating routine cognitive tasks. The computer, programmatic logic control (PLC) and data (called the ‘new oil’) were also a part of Industry 3.0, but intelligent technologies are able to provide greater analytical power under Industry 4.0.

The discussion also went over the distinction between the terms ‘job’, ‘task’ and ‘work’. It was argued that the term ‘job’ might be treated as a subset of the term ‘work’, with the latter moving beyond livelihood to encompass questions of dignity and a sense of fulfilment in the worker. With relation to this distinction, it was mentioned that the jobs at the risk of automation would be those that fulfill only the basic level in Maslow’s hierarchy - implying largely routine manual tasks. Additionally, it was explained that although these jobs will continue to use labour through Industry 4.0, it is only the nature of technological enablement that would change to automate more dangerous and hazardous tasks.

Technology as a long-term enabler of job creation

It was argued that technology has historically been associated with job creation. Historical instances cited included that of popular anxiety due to anticipated job loss through the uptake of the spinning machine and the steam engine, whereas the actual reduction in the cost of production led to greater job creation, increased mobility and improved quality of life in the long-term. Such instances were used to further argue that technology has historically not resulted in long-term job reductions.

The platform economy was posited as a model for creating jobs, through the efficient matching of supply and demand through digital platforms. It was indicated that rural to urban migration is aided by such platforms, as labourers voluntarily enrol in skilling initiatives given the certainty of employment through platformization. It was further argued that historically, Indian workers have been educated rather than skilled, and that platformization and automation, coupled with the elasticity of human needs, will provide greater incentives for technically skilled workers by creating desirable jobs.

Factors leading to differential adoption of automation

In relation to the adoption of the technologies Industry 4.0, it was argued that the mere existence of a technology does not necessitate its scalablity at an industrial level. Scalability would be possible only when the cost of labour is high relative to the costs entailed in technological adoption. This was supported by data from a McKinsey Report^{^[1]} which indicated that countries like the US and Germany would be impacted in the short term by automation, because their cost of labour is higher. Conversely, since the cost of labour in India is relatively cheap, the reality of technological displacement is still far away and the impact would not be immediate.

Similarly, a distinction was also made to account for the differential impact of automation in various sectors. For instance, it was indicated that since the IT/IT-eS sector in India is based on exporting services and outsourcing of businesses. Accordingly, if Germany automates its automobile industry, that would impact India less than if it automates the IT/IT-eS sector, as the latter is more reliant on exporting its services to developed economies. The IT/IT-eS sector was further broken down into sub-sectors with the intention of highlighting the differential impact of automation and FoW in each of these sub-sectors. It was agreed that the BPO sub-sector would be more adversely impacted than core IT services, given its constitution of routine nature of tasks at a higher risk of automation.

Disaggregating India’s Skilling Approach

The discussion around skilling measures was contextualised in the Indian context by alluding to data collected from the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) surveys. The data revealed that around 36% of India’s total population is under the age of seventeen and approximately 13% are between 18 - 24. Additional statistics suggested that only around a quarter of the workforce aged 18-24 years had achieved secondary and higher secondary education and close to 13% of the workforce was illiterate. While these numbers included both male and female workers, it was pointed out that it was an incomplete dataset as it excluded transgender workers. It was suggested it should be this segment of the Indian demographic that is targeted for significant skilling pushes, which could be catalysed through specific vocational training centres. It was also suggested that there was a need for to restructure the role of the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) in the Indian skilling framework.

A comprehensive picture was painted by conceptualising the skilling framework in India as 5 distinct pillars. This conceptualisation was used to debunk the narrative around NSDC being the sole entity pushing for skill development in the country. The NSDC’s function in the skilling framework was posited as providing funding to skilling initiatives with programmes lasting for a period of 3 months. These 3- month programmes were critiqued for being insufficient for effective training, especially given the low skill levels of workers going into the programmes. The NSDC’s placement rate of 12% as per their own records was used to support this argument. Further suggestions on making the NSDC more effective were made in a later discussion^{^[2]}.

Related to this, the second pillar of vocational skilling was said to be the Industrial Training Institute (ITI). The third pillar was said to be the school system which was critiqued for does not offering vocational education at secondary and senior secondary levels. The fourth pillar comprised of the 16 ministries which governed the labour laws in India - none of whose courses were National Skills Qualifications Framework (NSQF) compliant.

The fifth pillar was construed as the industry itself and the enterprise-based training it conducted. However, it was stated that India’s share of registered companies who did enterprise-based training was dismal. In 2009, the share of enterprise-based training was 16% which rose in 2014 to 36%. Further, most of these 36% were registered large firms as opposed to small and medium sized enterprises. Unregistered companies, it was suggested, were simply doing informal apprenticeships.

Joint public and private skilling initiatives

In addition to government sponsored skilling initiatives, attention was directed to skill development partnerships that took the shape of public-private initiatives. As an example, it was said that that a big player in the ride-hailing economy had worked with NSDC and other skilling entities to ensure that soft skills were being imparted to their driver partners before they were on-boarded onto the platform.

It was also brought forth that innovative forms of skilling and training were gaining traction in the education sector as well in the private sector. This was instantiated through instances of uptake of platforms which apply artificial intelligence, and within that machine learning based techniques, to generate and disseminate easier- to- consume video-based learning.

Driving Job Growth: Solving for Structural Eccentricities of the Indian Labour Market

Catalysing manufacturing-led job growth

The discussion began by discussing specific dynamics of the Indian labour markets in the context of the Indian economy. It was pointed out the productivity level of the services sector is not as high as the productivity level of manufacturing, which is problematic for job creation in a developing economy such as India witnessing capital-intensive growth in the manufacturing sector. The underlying argument was that the jobs of the future in the Indian context will have to be created in the manufacturing sector.

Several macroeconomic policy interventions were suggested to reverse the trend of capital-intensive growth in order to make manufacturing the frontier for enhanced job creation. The need for a trade policy in consonance with the industrial policy was stated as imperative. This was substantiated by highlighting the lack of an inverted duty structure governing the automobile sector that has led India to be amongst the biggest manufacturers of automobiles. The inverted duty structure entails finished products having a lower import tariff and a lower customs duty when compared to import of raw materials or intermediates. However, it was highlighted that a dissonant industrial policy failed to acknowledge that at least 50% of india’s manufacturing comes from Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and provided no assistance to MSMEs in obtaining credit, market access or technology upgradation. On the other hand, it was asserted that large corporates get 77% of the total bank credit.

Another challenge that was highlighted was with the Government of India’s severely underfunded manufacturing cluster development programs under the aegis of the Ministry of Textiles and the Ministry of MSMEs. For sectors that contribute majorly towards India’s manufacturing output, it was asserted that these programmes were astonishingly bereft of any governing policy and suffer from several foundational issues. Moreover, it was observed that these clusters are located around the country in Tier 2, 3 and 4 cities where the quality of infrastructure is largely lacking. The Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) program devised for the development of these cities is also myopic as the the target cities are not the ones where these manufacturing clusters are located. The rationale behind such an approach was that building infrastructure at geographical sites of job creation would lead to an increase in productivity which would in turn attract greater investment. This would have to necessarily be accompanied by hastening the setting up of industrial corridors - the lackadaisical approach to which was stated as a key component of India being outpaced by other developing economies in the South East Asian region.

An additional policy intervention that was suggested was from the lens of setting up of skilling centres by NSDC in proximity to these manufacturing clusters where the job creation is being evidenced as opposed to larger metropolitan cities.

Carving out space for a vocational training paradigm

It was asserted that the focus of skilling needs to be on the manufacturing rather than services sector, given the centrality of manufacturing to a developing economy undergoing an atypical structural transformation^{^[3]} - as outlined above. Further compounding the problem of jobless growth, it was stated that 50% of the manufacturing workforce have 8 or less years of education and only 5% of the workforce including those that have technical education are vocationally trained, according to the NSS, 62nd Round on Employment and Unemployment.

A gulf in primary and secondary education vis-a-vis vocational training was pointed as one of the most predominant causes behind the much touted ‘skills gap’ that the Indian workforce is said to be battling with. Using data to further cull out the argument, it was said that in 2007, the net enrollment in India for primary education had already reached 97% and that between 2010 - 2015, the secondary education enrollment rate went from 58% to 85%.^{^[4]} It was hypothesised that the latter may have risen to 90% levels since. Furthermore, the higher education enrollment rate also commensurately went up from 11% in 2006 to 26-27% in 2017.^{^[5]} It was argued that this is impossible to achieve without gender parity in higher education. This gender parity in education was contrasted with the systematic decline in the women’s labour force participation that India has been witnessing in the last 30 years.

Consequently, the ‘massification’ of higher education in India over the past 10 years was critiqued as ineffectual in comparison to the Chinese model, as the latter focused on engaging students in vocational training, which the Indian education system had failed to do. The role of the gig economy in creating job opportunities despite this gap between educational and vocational training was regarded as important, especially given the lack of growth in the traditional job markets.

Accounting for the Margins

With relation to the profiles of workers within sectors, it was indicated that factors such as gender, class, skill, income, and race must be accounted for to determine the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ of automation. Several points were discussed with relation to this disaggregation.

Technology as an equaliser? Gender and skill-biased technological change

First, the idea of technology and development as objective and neutral forces was questioned, with the assertion that human decision-makers, who more often than not tend to be male, allow inherent biases to creep into outputs, processes, and objectives of automation. Data from the Belong Survey in IT services^{^[6]} indicated that the proportion of women in core engineering was 26% of the workforce, while that in software testing was 33%. Coupled with the knowledge that automation and technology would automate software testing first, it was argued that jobs held by female workers were positioned at a higher immediate risk of automation than male workers.

The ‘Leaky Pipe Problem’ in STEM industries i.e. the observation that female workers tend to be concentrated in entry level jobs, while senior management is largely male dominated was also brought to the fore. This was used to bolster the argument that female workers in the Sector will lose out in the shorter term, when automation adversely impacts the lower level jobs.

A survey conducted by Aspiring Minds^{^[7]} which tracked the employability of the engineering graduates was utilised to further flesh out skill biased technological change. As per the survey, 40% of the graduating students are employable in the BPO sector, while only 3% of the students are employable in the sector for software production. With the BPO sector likelier to be impacted more adversely than core IT services, it was emphasised that policy considerations should be very specific in their ambit.

Social security and the platform economy

The discussion around the platform economy commenced with a focus on how it had created economic opportunities in the formal sector by matching demand and supply on one hand, and by reducing inefficiency in the system through technology on the other. It was pointed out that these newer forms of work were creating millions of entrepreneurship opportunities that did not exist previously. These opportunities, it was suggested, were in themselves flexible and contributing the greater push towards enhancing the numbers of those that come within the ambit of India’s formal economy.

This discussion was countered by suggesting that the shift of the workforce from the informal sector to the formal sector, which companies in the gig economy claimed they contributed to, have instead restricted the kind of lives gig workers have been living historically. As an instance, it was pointed out that a farmer who had been working with a completely different set of skills was now being asked to shift to a new set of skills which would be suited for a very specific role and not transposable across occupations. In other words, it would not be meaningful skilling. It was also pointed out that what distinguishes formal work from informal is whether the worker has social security net or not - mere access to banking services or filing of tax returns was not sufficient for characterising a workforce as being formal in nature.

Relatedly, the possibility of social security was discussed for the unorganised sector and microworkers. One of the possibilities discussed was to ensure state subsidised maternity, disability, and death security, and pensions for workers below the poverty line. The fiscal brunt borne by the government for such a scheme was anticipated to not be above 0.4% of the GDP. It was suggested that this would move forward the conversation on minimum wage and fair work, which would be of great importance in broader conversations around working conditions in the platform economy.

The interplay of gender and platformisation

It was highlighted that trends in automation are going to change the occupational structure in the digital economy - the effect of which will especially be felt in cognitive routine jobs given their increased propensity to platformisation. A World Economic Forum report^{^[8]} was cited which indicated the disproportional risk of unemployment faced by women given their concentration in cognitive routine jobs was also brought up.

The discussion logically undertook a deeper look at the platformisation of work with a specific focus on freelance microwork and its impact on the female labour force and culled out certain positive mandates arising from such newer forms of work. It was suggested that industries are more likely to employ female workers in microwork due to lower rates of attrition, and flexible labour. It was reiterated that freelancing in India extends beyond data entry and other routine jobs, to include complex work - thereby also catering to skilled workers desirous of flexibility. Platforms designing systems to meet the demand for flexible work were also discussed, such as platforms geared towards female workers undertaking reskilling measures and counselling for females returning from maternity leave or sabbaticals. Additionally, the difficulty of defining freelancing under existing frameworks of employment, compounded by the lack of legal structures for such work, was outlined.

Systemic challenges within the Indian labour law framework

Static design of legal processes

Labour law was, naturally, acknowledged as a key determinant in the conversation around both the uptake and impact of automative technologies encapsulated within Industry 4.0.

The archaic nature of India’s labour law framework was highlighted as a major impediment to ensuring both worker rights as well as the ease of conducting commerce. It was pointed out that organised labour continues to be under the ambit of the Industrial Disputes Act, which was made effective in 1947, has undergone minimal amendments since. This was critiqued on the basis that the framework for the law is embedded in its historical context, and while the industrial landscape in the country has transformed drastically since the implementation of the Industrial Disputes Act, the legal framework has not evolved. Similarly, the Karnataka Shops and Establishments Act, 1961 which regulates the Sector today was enacted much before the Sector even opened up in India in the 1990s.

Additionally, it was pointed out that the consolidation of the fragmented extant framework of labour laws in India was being consolidated into 4 labour codes without any wholesale modernisation push reforming the laws being consolidated. Consequently, it was argued that the government has to drive changes through policies alone as the legal framework remains static. Barriers to implementation of adequate policies were also discussed, such as the political impact of labour policies, lack of state initiative to deal with the impact of the future of work, apart from the historic inability of the law to keep up with the state of labour and economy.

Labour law arbitrage

One of the reasons behind the increasing contractualizing of labour in India was attributed to over-regulation. There was consensus that the labour law regime was not conducive to industry in India leading to greater opportunistic behaviours from industry participants. It was acknowledged that the political clout that a lot of contractors (of labourers) enjoy along with providing primary employers greater flexibility to hire and fire employees at will has led to a widespread utilisation of contract labour entities.

It was further stated that industry behaviour has adopted several other tools of arbitrage to not consider labour law as a key impediment in the ease of scaling business. Empirical evidence of labour law arbitrage was cited to drive home the point - according to national surveys, 80-85% of enterprises employ less than 99 workers as the law mandates stricter compliance requirements for enterprises employing 100 or more workers^{^[9]}. This was acknowledged a serious hurdle to scaling businesses.

Problems behind other apparently well-intentioned legislation from a public policy lens having counterproductive consequences was also highlighted. In the space of labour laws, the example of the recently enacted Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017 was cited. By enhancing maternity benefits, without accounting for other provisioning such as a paternity benefit inclusion, it was anticipated that companies may entirely shy away from hiring women.

Policy Paralysis

The discussion progressed towards a high-level discussion around the efficacy of law vis-a-vis state policy as a means to create a system of checks and balances in the context of Industry 4.0. It was highlighted that law, by design, would be outpaced by technological change. The common law system of law operating in India is premised on a time-tested emphasis on post-facto regulation. In other words, it is reactionary. While policy making in India suffers from a similar plague of playing catch-up, it is in large part due to a bureaucratic structure premised on generalism - a pressing need for domain expertise in policy making was emphasised upon. Having said that, it was stated that it is the institutional design of policy making institutions that needs rectification. What was acknowledged was the success, albeit scant, that individual states have had in policy making catering to specific yet diverse domains. A greater push towards clear and progressive evidence-based policy pushes was stressed upon with the anticipation that it would lead to self-regulation by the industry itself - be it in terms of the future of employment or of the economic direction that the industry will embark on.

Concluding Remarks

The discussions during the course of the Workshop situated the discourse around Industry 4.0 within the contours of the Indian labour realities and the IT sector within that.

As a useful starting point, various broader perspectives around the impact of technological change on the quantum of jobs were brought forth. While the industry perspective was that of technology as an enabler of job creation in the long-run, it was sufficiently tempered by concerns around those impacted adversely in the short to medium-term time frames. These concerns coalesced towards understanding the potential impact of Industry 4.0 on the nature of work, as well as mitigation tools to ease the impact of technological disruption on labour.

Important facets of technological adoption within the Sector were highlighted, such as potential for scalability as well as the distinct eccentricities of the various sub-sectors the IT sector subsumed. The differential impact within the various sub-sectors was pegged to the differential composition of automatable tasks (routine, rule-based) within each sub-sector. However, questions regarding the exact contours of task composition were left unanswered signalling a potential area for further research. On the other hand, the primary challenge to technological adoption faced from the labour-supply side was skilling, or the lack thereof. This was contextualised in the larger scheme of structural issues plaguing the skilling machinery operating in the country, which lead to inadequate dispensation of technical and vocational education and training (TVET). In terms of additional structural issues that would potentially have an impact on how Industry 4.0 plays out in the Indian context, attention was directed towards overdue reform of the labour law framework which has already struggled with incorporating newer forms of working engagements such as platform and gig work, that are being evidenced as a part of Industry 4.0.

An underlying theme that found mention across sessions was the need to devote attention to prevent further marginalisation as a consequence of technological disruption of the already marginalised. Evidence from government datasets as well as from literature around concepts such as skill biased technological change, the leaky pipe problem, and the U-shaped curve of female labour force participation were cited to explicate these issues. The merits of different policy measures to address these concerns, such as social security, living wages, and maternity benefits were also discussed.

While the Workshop touched upon several facets of the discourse around Industry 4.0 in the Sector, it also sprung up areas that require further inquiry. Questions around where in the value chain use-cases for Industry 4.0 technologies were emerging needed a more comprehensive understanding. Moreover, the impact of Sector Skill Councils (SSCs), a central aspect of the skilling ecosystem in India, wasn’t touched upon. An additional path of inquiry that emerged pertained to evolving constructive reforms to legal and economic policy frameworks as top-down interventions within the Sector that could be anticipated to play a significant role in the uptake and impact of Industry 4.0 technologies.

^{^[1]} McKinsey Global Institute, A future that works: Automation, employment, and productivity, https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/featured%20insights/Digital%20Disruption/Harnessing%20automation%20for%20a%20future%20that%20works/MGI-A-future-that-works-Executive-summary.ashx, (accessed 10 August 2018).

^{^[2]} See discussion under ‘Catalysing manufacturing-led job growth‘.

^{^[3]} R. Verma, Structural Transformation and Jobless Growth in the Indian Economy, The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Economy, 2012.

^{^[4]} S. Mehrotra, ‘The Indian Labour Market: A Fallacy, Two Looming Crises and a Tragedy’, CSE Working Paper, April 2018.

^{^[5]} ibid.

^{^[6]} Mohita Nagpal, ‘Women in tech: There are 3 times more male engineers to females’, belong.co, http://blog.belong.co/gender-diversity-indian-tech-companies, (accessed 10 August 2018).

^{^[7]} Aspiring Minds, National Programming Skills Report - Engineers 2017, https://www.aspiringminds.com/sites/default/files/National%20Programming%20Skills%20Report%20-%20Engineers%202017%20-%20Report%20Brief.pdf, (accessed 11 August 2018).

^{^[8]} World Economic Forum, The Future of Jobs Employment, Skills and Workforce Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Global Challenge Insight Report, January 2016.

^{^[9]} Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, All India Report of Sixth Economic Census, Government of India, 2014.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/future-of-work-report-of-the-workshop-on-the-it-it-es-sector-and-the-future-of-work-in-india

Future of Work in the ASEAN

aayush — 2020-03-05T19:22:50Z

A literature review of the future of work in automotive manufacturing and IT services in the ASEAN region, authored by Aayush Rathi, Vedika Pareek, Divij Joshi, and Pranav M B.

Read the research paper: Download (PDF)

Authored by Aayush Rathi, Vedika Pareek, Divij Joshi, and Pranav Bidare

Research assistance by Sankalp Srivastava and Anjanaa Aravindan

Edited by Elonnai Hickok and Ambika Tandon

Supported by Tides Foundation

Introduction

The world of work, and its future, have attracted a lot of attention in recent times. The discussion has been provoked by the confluence of recent technological breakthroughs that portend to have wide-ranging implications on work and livelihoods. In what has been termed the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” or “Industry 4.0” , the discussion has engaged numerous stakeholders. However, no shared understanding of what this future of work will look like has materialised. Historical scholarship around technological change and its impact on the labour market was focussed in the context of high-income countries. Contemporaneously, however, research is being produced that outlines the possible futures of work in low and middle-income contexts. It is exigent to generate scholarship dedicated to low and middle-income contexts given that in addition to technological drivers, the future of work will be mediated through region and country specific factors such as socioeconomic,geopolitical and demographic change.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/future-of-work-in-the-asean

Future of Privacy in India

praskrishna — 2013-03-26T05:14:45Z

DSCI and ICOMP are organizing a meet on Privacy at the Oberoi Hotel in New Delhi on April 5, 2013. Sunil Abraham will be participating in this event as a speaker.

In recent years, there has been an increasing deployment of ICT in the collection of personal information by both private sector and state agencies. Data is a reason for empowerment for both commercial and public purposes. The prolific use of the Internet for search, social networking cloud computing and e-commerce transactions places increasing amounts of personal information and Internet history in hands of dominant private sector players. Data is undeniably the capital of the Internet. While technology has evolved to be able to collect, store and mine increasing amounts of data for improved public services or for commercial purposes, there are understandable concerns over the lack of accountability for the purposes and limits of the use of personal data. These concerns demand an appropriate regulatory framework for Privacy.

As an important step toward formulating the privacy bill, an Expert Group headed by Justice A P Shah provides inputs based on a study of the international landscape of privacy laws, along with the predominant privacy concerns ensuing from technological advancements. The Committee’s report, submitted in Oct 2012 has recommended Nine Principles as the cornerstone for privacy legislation. While the Privacy Act is under development, DSCI and iCOMP are organizing a meet focusing on the following areas:

Outline an appropriate Indian context for privacy: the nine principles
Presentation of the state of play on privacy in key markets (practices, Issues, regulatory interventions)
Analyse the scope and implications of data collection by public agencies in India.
Analyse privacy challenges and risks related to commercial use of data collected on the Internet by private players
Consider how India can address these challenges and enshrine privacy principles in legislation

Key Speakers

Dr. Gulshan Rai, DG, CERT-In*

Mr. Simon Davis, London School of Economics

Mr. Manoj Joshi, JS, DOPT*

Mr. Kanta Roy, CEO, NeGD*

Dr. Kamlesh Bajaj, CEO, DSCI

Mr. Sunil Abraham, ED, CIS

* To be confirmed

Event Flow

Opening Remark by Mr. S V Divvaakar, Executive Director, ICOMP
Framework for Privacy Regulation in India, By Dr. Kamlesh Bajaj, CEO, DSCI
Keynote Address
‘Privacy :The International state of play’, by Mr. Simon Davis, London School of Economics
Panel Discussion 1: Context of Privacy in India
Panel Discussion 2: Business responsibility in the age of ‘data driven’ transformations

Date: April 5, 2013
Time: 9.00 a.m. to 1.00 p.m.
Venue: Oberoi Hotel, Nilgiri Room, New Delhi

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/future-of-privacy-in-india-on-april-5-2013-at-oberoi-hotel-new-delhi