Centre for Internet and Society

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

Studying Digital Creative Industries in India: Initial Questions

sneha-pp — 2016-03-18T13:55:56Z

This brief overview of the discourse around creative industries is an attempt to explore some ways of identifying what could be digital creative industries in India, and the questions they raise and problematize for us in terms of cultural expression, knowledge production, creativity and labour. The term ‘creative industries’ has been around for a while now, but with the advent of the digital, and with interest from different sectors, especially with a focus on policy and economic development, it would be essential to critically examine the discourse around the term, and see where it may be changing to open up new possibilities, particularly for the arts, humanities and design.

Introduction

The term ‘creative industries’ has been popular for more than two decades now, and continues to remain an important sector for research and development, as indicated by several shifts in policy and public discourse in the last few years. A significant move has been the foregrounding of creativity and knowledge as important resources for economic growth and social well–being. The term has a connection with the older and more specific term ‘cultural industries’, with its origins in the Frankfurt School [1] of theory, but has developed as part of a larger discourse around the creative economy/knowledge economy. First used in Australia in 1994 as part of a report titled Creative Nation [2], it became more widely recognized in the following years with the setting up of the Creative Industries Task Force by the United Kingdom’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport in 1997.The UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (2005) [3] was perhaps the most prominent global effort in recognizing and taking steps towards fostering the growth of creativity and cultural production as part of sustainable development.

Following this there have been several other initiatives across the world, most noticeably in the Anglo-American context, that have built upon this framework to ease and facilitate cross-cultural flows and diversity in the circulation of information, labour and goods. Increasingly, the attempt now is to understand the relevance of these efforts in the digital age, where several advancements in technology and the ubiquitous presence of the internet continue to determine the creation, circulation and consumption of cultural commodities. This blog post is an attempt to outline some initial thoughts on what could be the possibilities of studying ‘digital’ creative industries in India. The digital is an inherent aspect of much cultural and creative expression today, given the steady transition from analogue to digital and the increased presence of internet in almost every domain. What would constitute creative digital industries in the present moment, how do they determine the larger course of cultural production, and pose new questions for labour, commodities, creativity and technology more broadly are some of the questions explored here.

According to the UN Creative Economy Report 2010 [4] the creative industries:

are the cycles of creation, production and distribution of goods and services that use creativity and intellectual capital as primary inputs;
constitute a set of knowledge-based activities, focused on but not limited to arts, potentially generating revenues from trade and intellectual property rights;
comprise tangible products and intangible intellectual or artistic services with creative content, economic value and market objectives;
stand at the crossroads of the artisan, services and industrial sectors; and
constitute a new dynamic sector in world trade.

As the report mentions, these are ‘evolving’ concepts and definitions, and just the number of areas that can come within the purview of the creative industries has increased greatly in the last decade. The report classifies creative industries under four different models as illustrated here:

Source: UN Creative Economy Report 2010.

Creative Industries in India

In India, there has been a keen interest in the potential of creativity as a resource, although creative industries may not be a popularly used term. From a policy perspective it is largely in terms of opportunities for economic growth, and more recently the potential for innovation and entrepreneurship, as seen in the Niti Aayog report presented in 2015 [5], which says that:

the committee proposes using digital platforms to encourage innovation, reforming the educational system to encourage creativity and upskilling workers to make them more employable, improving the ease of doing business, and strengthening intellectual property rights. Finally, the committee also proposes a number of measures to change cultural biases and attitudes towards entrepreneurship in the long-term, including attaching entrepreneurship to large scale economic and social programs, promoting new high-potential sectors via the government’s “Make in India” campaign, fostering a culture of coordination and collaboration, attempting to redefine cultural notions of success, and tying entrepreneurship with the social inclusion agenda.

The report therefore reflects an interest in harnessing creativity or creative labour as a significant factor in fostering innovation and entrepreneurship, and in some sense also expanding the scope of such entrepreneurship by tying it with social inclusion and encouraging collaboration. What this also has implications then is for educational reform, capacity-building and upskilling for increased employability and better livelihoods, something that requires a systemic and focused effort spread over time. The report also explicitly speaks of strengthening an existing intellectual property regime, which also has been a rather dominant framework for the creative industries discourse from a policy perspective. While there is a need to focus on growth and innovation, a perceived objective of IP, the easy conflation of the two is problematic. Further, the role of IPR in fostering innovation and socio-economic development, as reflected in the draft National IPR policy (2014) [6] is contentious, as responses to the draft have pointed out [7]. It would also be imperative to understand better the ‘cultural notions of success’ and how these would also impact the creative industries discourse in India.

As part of a large research initiative titled Culture: Industries and Diversity in Asia (CIDASIA) [8] spread over two years, the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society Bangalore worked on some of the pertinent questions that emerged out of the creative industries discourse in India and the sub-continent. In a report produced as part of this initiative creative industries are described as:

[T]he vast sector that has emerged with the arrival of modern technologies (emphasis as in the original) and forms of mass reproduction since the colonial period. This sector has now become an important site of intervention for both governments such as in UK, Australia and India and international agencies such as the United Nations.

Further, about the programme the report says:

The initiative attempts to assess the viability of international and government policies for cultural and creative industries and thus lay the groundwork for a hitherto unprecedented intervention of philanthropic organizations in the domain. We specifically focus on culture industries through the node of ‘livelihoods’ that we see as inextricably tied to this sector.

The importance of the question of livelihood to the growth in culture industries remains even today, as they are a source of employment for a vast section of society, mostly in rural areas, and often fall into what is called the unorganized sector. Low capital investment and the disputable legality of many of these industries however, make this connection a complicated one, as pointed out by the CIDASIA research. The study critiqued existing models of creative and cultural industries which emphasized copyright and intellectual property rights (IPR) as safeguards of livelihood and identity, a rather contentious connection given the presence of a large underground economy based on creative labour, which is also often migrant in nature. Other initiatives in the programme included a consultation to rethink the existing debates around cultural policy and diversity, with a focus on the rights of marginalized people, rights in the domain of mass culture, copyright and IPR. Diminishing spaces for cultural or political-artistic performances, and the role of creative cities in fostering such spaces was another area of concern.

There were several learnings from these initiatives about the nature of creative industries (audio-visual media including film and television), the conflation and overlap with culture industries (including craft and legacy industries) and the complex relationship between the two, and how the latter benefits from the first. The question of livelihoods, particularly those of non-citizens, or the migrant is an important one, for it highlights the cultural visibility of these industries, and more importantly establishes the presence of an underground economy that produces goods of high economic value, using cheap labour. Policy reforms, especially with respect to IPR and any regulation of these industries would need to take into account these features. The convergence of difference forms of cultural production with the growth of new media technologies, in particular is a pertinent question. Along with growing concerns around piracy, growth of new kinds of content, exclusivity and distribution become important factors here. The availability of capital and technology, and a growing global presence has also changed dramatically the nature of several creative industries, such as media, entertainment and advertising, but also brought with it challenges of finding creative and sustainable business models [9]. The problem of cultural impenetrability, or the difficulty of certain commodities to find a market in certain countries was also brought up as part of a study on the Korean wave in India. The translation of cultural worth into economic value, here studied through an examination of the cinema as cultural object, produced interesting observations in addressing the commodification of these objects and understanding the problem of value in this context [10]. The role of technology in the growth of the creative industries was an inherent aspect of all these studies, with factors such as context, conditions and quality of access, and the need to understand the problem of the 'last mile' as a conceptual and cultural problem, rather than a technological one, being emphasized in these findings [11].

Creative Labour?

The importance of the question of livelihood to the growth in culture industries remains even today, as they are a source of employment for a vast section of society, mostly in rural areas, and often fall into what is called the unorganized sector. Low capital investment and the disputable legality of many of these industries however, make this connection a complicated one, as pointed out by the CIDASIA research. The study also critiqued existing models of creative and cultural industries which emphasized copyright and intellectual property rights (IPR) as safeguards of livelihood and identity, a rather contentious connection given the presence of a large underground economy based on creative labour, which is also often migrant in nature. Other initiatives in the programme included a consultation to rethink the existing debates around cultural policy and diversity, with a focus on the rights of marginalized people, rights in the domain of mass culture, copyright and IPR. Diminishing spaces for cultural or political-artistic performances, and the role of creative cities in fostering such spaces was another area of concern.

In the last decade alone, the internet and digital technologies have grown at an exponential pace in India. Creative industries have been driven greatly by advancements in technology, and the role of the digital here then becomes an important aspect of the discourse, in terms of either a space, object or context. The term itself has drawn different kinds of criticism, beginning with the juxtaposition of creativity and industry, or the ‘economisation of culture’, as another product of contemporary capitalism, a critique that stems from the Frankfurt School. The problems are several, as outlined here by Andrew Ross [12]:

It may be too early to predict the ultimate fate of the paradigm. But sceptics have already prepared the way for its demise:: it will not generate jobs; it is a recipe for magnifying patterns of class polarisation; its function as a cover for the corporate intellectual property (IP) grab will become all too apparent; its urban development focus will price out the very creatives on whose labour it depends; its reliance on self-promoting rhetoric runs far in advance of its proven impact; its cookie-cutter approach to economic development does violence to regional specificity; its adoption of an instrumental value of creativity will cheapen the true worth of artistic creation.2 Still others are inclined simply to see the new policy rubric as ‘old wine in new bottles’ – a glib production of spin-happy New Labourites, hot for naked marketization but mindful of the need for socially acceptable dress. For those who take a longer, more orthodox Marxist view, the turn toward creative industries is surely a further symptom of an accumulation regime at the end of its effective rule, spent as a productive force, awash in financial speculation, and obsessed with imagery, rhetoric and display.

Similar concerns may be highlighted in the Indian context as well, where the employability of many in creative fields of work, which often fall under the informal or unorganized sector, has always been fraught with uncertainty. The access to cultural and social capital also defines the discourse in a certain manner, as largely urban-centric and focused around a particular class. Education, training and capacity-building efforts in creative fields, and access to these are an important factor that requires further exploration. As reflected in the discussions above, the prevalent imagination of cultural and creative industries still focusses on IPR and socio-economic development of certain sectors of the knowledge economy, therefore making invisible other kinds of labour. The appropriation of the term itself to focus on innovation in certain sectors, at the cost of others, and streamlining and regulation of these in some way would be another aspect of concern. More importantly, the definition of creativity, as beyond skilling for certain kinds of work also needs to be emphasized in these discussions.

Key Questions

Whether these are still pertinent criticisms now is a question, and more importantly, what would be new ways to frame the creative industries debate today would be a relevant starting point of engagement. The following are some questions that could be useful in mapping the creative industries discourse and how it could be thought about today, post the digital turn:

What are digital creative industries? Is it possible to identify a smaller subset of industries that would come within the purview of this term, or is it another entry point into the creative industries discourse in India, where the digital is all pervasive? What are new kinds of creative industries that are heavily and/or purely reliant on the internet and digital technologies?
Does the digital add a new perspective/dimension to how we theorise the notion of creative labour, because of the manner in which it affects, or determines creative expressions in the present, on the internet and more broadly in the digital? More importantly, do we need to critically think about a definition of creativity itself, today within the digital context? How do we then understand questions of precarity in working conditions, innovation and entrepreneurship in this space?
Who is the creative subject? Is it possible to understand such a subject outside of the very Eurocentric discourse around creativity and ‘creation’, which paints the creator as hegemonic in some sense? Another new way to reframe the livelihoods question is to understand the creative worker/knowledge worker, and how to think of these distinctions. What are the new ways to understand this debate?
The discourse around creative industries has largely been framed within the context of the intellectual property rights, and as a method to ensure the stability of the IPR regime. Given the changes, and many nuances to the IPR debates in the last few years, and the growth of the Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) movement, it would be useful to understand the growth of creative digital industries in this context.
What does this tell us about a growing digital economy in India? Creative industries would raise interesting questions about the fostering of a digital economy in India, and the many ways in which it determines cultural production in the rest of the world.

Endnotes

[1] Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, 'The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,' 1944. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/culture-industry.htm.

[2] See: http://apo.org.au/resource/creative-nation-commonwealth-cultural-policy-october-1994.

[3] See: http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=31038&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html.

[4] See: http://unctad.org/en/Docs/ditctab20103_en.pdf.

[5] See: http://niti.gov.in/mgov_file/report%20of%20the%20expert%20committee.pdf.

[6] See: http://dipp.nic.in/English/Schemes/Intellectual_Property_Rights/IPR_Policy_24December2014.pdf.

[7] For more on this see: 'Comments on the First Draft Of The National IPR Policy' submitted by the Centre for Internet and Society, 2015 http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-comments_first-draft-of-national-ipr-stategy.pdf, and 'SpicyIP Tidbit: New IPR Policy in 2 months' by Balaji Subramanian, SpicyIP, October 2015, http://spicyip.com/2015/10/spicyip-tidbit-new-ipr-policy-in-2-months.html.

[8] See: http://cscs.res.in/irps/cidasia-1.

[9] S. Ananth, 'Business of Culture in India,' 2008. http://cscs.res.in/dataarchive/textfiles/textfile.2009-12-18.9970782136.

[10]'When The Host Arrived: A Report on the Problems and Prospects for the Exchange of Popular Cultural Commodities with India,' 2008. http://cscs.res.in/dataarchive/textfiles/textfile.2009-07-17.9853066637/file.

[11]Ashish Rajadhyaksha, 'The Last Cultural Mile' (Bangalore: Centre for Internet and Society, 2011) http://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/the-last-cultural-mile/the-last-cultural-mile-blog-old.

[12] Andrew Ross, 'Nice Work of You Can get it: The Mercurial Career of Creative Industries Policy,' in MyCreativity Reader. Eds. Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter (Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2007).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/studying-digital-creative-industries-in-india-initial-questions

Making Voices Heard: Privacy, Inclusivity, and Accessibility of Voice Interfaces in India

shweta — 2019-12-18T12:10:05Z

We believe that voice interfaces have the potential to democratise the use of internet by addressing barriers such as accessibility concerns, lack of abilities of reading and writing on digital text interfaces, and lack of options for people to interact with digital devices in their own languages. Through the Making Voice Heard Project supported by Mozilla Corporation, we will examine the current landscape of voice interfaces in India.

Download the project announcement cards (shown above): Card 01, Card 02, and Card 03

Making Voices Heard: Project Announcement

Although voice enabled interfaces are being deployed there is a need to understand how they are beneficial, and what have been important knowledge gaps and challenges in their development, adoption, use, and regulation. Through the Making Voice Heard Project supported by Mozilla Corporation, we will be examining the current landscape of voice interfaces in India, and seek to address the following questions:

What is the broad (sectoral and functional) typology of available voice interfaces in Indian languages? How widely are these voice interfaces (in Indian languages) used, and what barriers prevent their further adoption and use?
What are concerns related to privacy and data protection that emerge with the growth of voice interfaces? What kind of protocols for data processing may need to be built into the design of these interfaces?
How accessible are these interfaces for persons with disabilities (PWDs)? What kinds of accessibility features, especially for Indian languages, may need to be developed to ensure effective use of voice technologies by PWDs?
Where do challenges in these three areas intersect? For instance, is compromising on users’ privacy, including weak or missing data protection regulations, required to create comprehensive speech datasets that may help develop better accessibility features, and address linguistic barriers?

In order to approach these questions we have begun mapping the various developers and users of voice interfaces in India. In the next stage of the process we will be looking at these interfaces through the lens of privacy, language, accessibility, and design. In order to add to the mapping and questions, we will be conducting interviews and workshops with users, developers, designers and researchers of voice interfaces in India, including the Common Voice team at Mozilla.

We hereby invite researchers, developers and designers of voice interfaces to speak to us and help inform the study. You may contact Shweta Mohandas at shweta@cis-india.org.

- Shweta Mohandas, Saumyaa Naidu, Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay (project team)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/making-voices-heard-project-announcement

Digital Humanities and New Contexts of Digital Archival Practice in India

sneha-pp — 2019-12-18T10:32:07Z

Puthiya Purayil Sneha attended and presented at a conference on 'The Arts, Knowledge, and Critique in the Digital Age in India: Addressing Challenges in the Digital Humanities' organised by Sahapedia and Department of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad on November 28-29, 2019.

Conference: Website (external)

Digital humanities and new contexts of digital archival practice in India

This is the abstract of Sneha's presentation on digital humanities in India and transitions in digitization and cultural archival practices in the postcolonial context. The presentation was part of a session titled 'Community and Knowledge.'

The last few decades have seen several large-scale efforts in digitalization across various sectors in India. In space of Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) in particular, there have been several initiatives undertaken by state institutions, along with individual and collaborative efforts to digitize and make cultural heritage and educational content available online. The growth of new areas of research and creative practice like digital humanities has also brought to the fore the need for digital corpora, including new technologies and methods of research as ways to engage with cultural content through the development of digital pedagogies and creative practice.

Many of these questions are located in long-spanning efforts in digitization and digital literacy more broadly, which are still fraught with challenges of access, usage and context. While digitization and archival practice form a significant aspect of the discourse on digital humanities, there still exist a number of anxieties around its practice. Especially in the case of community-led efforts, such as archiving oral histories or GLAM initiatives with collaborative knowledge platforms like Wikimedia, challenges of the digital divide are persistent, reflecting also a larger politics around the growth and sustenance of cultural heritage projects and the humanities and arts more broadly. Drawing upon excerpts from work on mapping the field of DH in India, and ongoing conversations on the digital transition in cultural archives, this presentation seeks to understand the practices and politics of digitization and archival work today, and how it continues to inform the growth of fields like digital humanities in India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities-and-new-contexts-of-digital-archival-practice-in-india

Data Infrastructures and Inequities: Why Does Reproductive Health Surveillance in India Need Our Urgent Attention?

Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon — 2019-12-30T16:44:32Z

In order to bring out certain conceptual and procedural problems with health monitoring in the Indian context, this article by Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon posits health monitoring as surveillance and not merely as a “data problem.” Casting a critical feminist lens, the historicity of surveillance practices unveils the gendered power differentials wedded into taken-for-granted “benign” monitoring processes. The unpacking of the Mother and Child Tracking System and the National Health Stack reveals the neo-liberal aspirations of the Indian state.

The article was first published by EPW Engage, Vol. 54, Issue No. 6, on 9 February 2019.

Framing Reproductive Health as a Surveillance Question

The approach of the postcolonial Indian state to healthcare has been Malthusian, with the prioritisation of family planning and birth control (Hodges 2004). Supported by the notion of socio-economic development arising out of a “modernisation” paradigm, the target-based approach to achieving reduced fertility rates has shaped India’s reproductive and child health (RCH) programme (Simon-Kumar 2006).

This is also the context in which India’s abortion law, the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act, was framed in 1971, placing the decisional privacy of women seeking abortions in the hands of registered medical practitioners. The framing of the MTP act invisibilises females seeking abortions for non-medical reasons within the legal framework. The exclusionary provisions only exacerbated existing gaps in health provisioning, as access to safe and legal abortions had already been curtailed by severe geographic inequalities in funding, infrastructure, and human resources. The state has concomitantly been unable to meet contraceptive needs of married couples or reduce maternal and infant mortality rates in large parts of the country, mediating access along the lines of class, social status, education, and age (Sanneving et al 2013).

While the official narrative around the RCH programme transitioned to focus on universal access to healthcare in the 1990s, the target-based approach continues to shape the reality on the ground. The provision of reproductive healthcare has been deeply unequal and, in some cases, in hospitals. These targets have been known to be met through the practice of forced, and often unsafe, sterilisation, in conditions of absence of adequate provisions or trained professionals, pre-sterilisation counselling, or alternative forms of contraception (Sama and PLD 2018). Further, patients have regularly been provided cash incentives, foreclosing the notion of free consent, especially given that the target population of these camps has been women from marginalised economic classes in rural India.

Placing surveillance studies within a feminist praxis allows us to frame the reproductive health landscape as more than just an ill-conceived, benign monitoring structure. The critical lens becomes useful for highlighting that taken-for-granted structures of monitoring are wedded with power differentials: genetic screening in fertility clinics, identification documents such as birth certificates, and full-body screeners are just some of the manifestations of this (Adrejevic 2015). Emerging conversations around feminist surveillance studies highlight that these data systems are neither benign nor free of gendered implications (Andrejevic 2015). In continual remaking of the social, corporeal body as a data actor in society, such practices render some bodies normative and obfuscate others, based on categorisations put in place by the surveiller.

In fact, the history of surveillance can be traced back to the colonial state where it took the form of systematic sexual and gendered violence enacted upon indigenous populations in order to render them compliant (Rifkin 2011; Morgensen 2011). Surveillance, then, manifests as a “scientific” rationalisation of complex social hieroglyphs (such as reproductive health) into formats enabling administrative interventions by the modern state. Lyon (2001) has also emphasised how the body emerged as the site of surveillance in order for the disciplining of the “irrational, sensual body”—essential to the functioning of the modern nation-state—to effectively happen.

Questioning the Information and Communications Technology for Development (ICT4D) and Big Data for Development (BD4D) Rhetoric

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and data-driven approaches to the development of a robust health information system, and by extension, welfare, have been offered as solutions to these inequities and exclusions in access to maternal and reproductive healthcare in the country.

The move towards data-driven development in the country commenced with the introduction of the Health Management Information System in Andhra Pradesh in 2008, and the Mother and Child Tracking System (MCTS) nationally in 2011. These are reproductive health information systems (HIS) that collect granular data about each pregnancy from the antenatal to the post-natal period, at the level of each sub-centre as well as primary and community health centre. The introduction of HIS comprised cross-sectoral digitisation measures that were a part of the larger national push towards e-governance; along with health, thirty other distinct areas of governance, from land records to banking to employment, were identified for this move towards the digitalised provisioning of services (MeitY 2015).

The HIS have been seen as playing a critical role in the ecosystem of health service provision globally. HIS-based interventions in reproductive health programming have been envisioned as a means of: (i) improving access to services in the context of a healthcare system ridden with inequalities; (ii) improving the quality of services provided, and (iii) producing better quality data to facilitate the objectives of India’s RCH programme, including family planning and population control. Accordingly, starting 2018, the MCTS is being replaced by the RCH portal in a phased manner. The RCH portal, in areas where the ANMOL (ANM Online) application has been introduced, captures data real-time through tablets provided to health workers (MoHFW 2015).

A proposal to mandatorily link the Aadhaar with data on pregnancies and abortions through the MCTS/RCH has been made by the union minister for Women and Child Development as a deterrent to gender-biased sex selection (Tembhekar 2016). The proposal stems from the prohibition of gender-biased sex selection provided under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostics Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1994. The approach taken so far under the PCPNDT Act, 2014 has been to regulate the use of technologies involved in sex determination. However, the steady decline in the national sex ratio since the passage of the PCPNDT Act provides a clear indication that the regulation of such technology has been largely ineffective. A national policy linking Aadhaar with abortions would be aimed at discouraging gender-biased sex selection through state surveillance, in direct violation of a female’s right to decisional privacy with regards to their own body.

Linking Aadhaar would also be used as a mechanism to enable direct benefit transfer (DBT) to the beneficiaries of the national maternal benefits scheme. Linking reproductive health services to the Aadhaar ecosystem has been critiqued because it is exclusionary towards women with legitimate claims towards abortions and other reproductive services and benefits, and it heightens the risk of data breaches in a cultural fabric that already stigmatises abortions. The bodies on which this stigma is disproportionately placed, unmarried or disabled females, for instance, experience the harms of visibility through centralised surveillance mechanisms more acutely than others by being penalised for their deviance from cultural expectations. This is in accordance with the theory of "data extremes,” wherein marginalised communities are seen as living on the extremes of data capture, leading to a data regime that either refuses to recognise them as legitimate entities or subjects them to overpolicing in order to discipline deviance (Arora 2016). In both developed and developing contexts, the broader purpose of identity management has largely been to demarcate legitimate and illegitimate actors within a population, either within the framework of security or welfare.

Potential Harms of the Data Model of Reproductive Health Provisioning

Informational privacy and decisional privacy are critically shaped by data flows and security within the MCTS/RCH. No standards for data sharing and storage, or anonymisation and encryption of data have been implemented despite role-based authentication (NHSRC and Taurus Glocal 2011). The risks of this architectural design are further amplified in the context of the RCH/ANMOL where data is captured real-time. In the absence of adequate safeguards against data leaks, real-time data capture risks the publicising of reproductive health choices in an already stigmatised environment. This opens up avenues for further dilution of autonomy in making future reproductive health choices.

Several core principles of informational privacy, such as limitations regarding data collection and usage, or informed consent, also need to be reworked within this context.^[1] For instance, the centrality of the requirement of “free, informed consent” by an individual would need to be replaced by other models, especially in the context of reproductive health of rape survivors who are vulnerable and therefore unable to exercise full agency. The ability to make a free and informed choice, already dismantled in the context of contemporary data regimes, gets further precluded in such contexts. The constraints on privacy in decisions regarding the body are then replicated in the domain of reproductive data collection.

What is uniform across these digitisation initiatives is their treatment of maternal and reproductive health as solely a medical event, framed as a data scarcity problem. In doing so, they tend to amplify the understanding of reproductive health through measurable indicators that ignore social determinants of health. For instance, several studies conducted in the rural Indian context have shown that the degree of women’s autonomy influences the degree of usage of pregnancy care, and that the uptake of pregnancy care was associated with village-level indicators such as economic development, provisioning of basic infrastructure and social cohesion. These contextual factors get overridden in pervasive surveillance systems that treat reproductive healthcare as comprising only of measurable indicators and behaviours, that are dependent on individual behaviour of practitioners and women themselves, rather than structural gaps within the system.

While traditionally associated with state governance, the contemporary surveillance regime is experienced as distinct from its earlier forms due to its reliance on a nexus between surveillance by the state and private institutions and actors, with both legal frameworks and material apparatuses for data collection and sharing (Shepherd 2017). As with historical forms of surveillance, the harms of contemporary data regimes accrue disproportionately among already marginalised and dissenting communities and individuals. Data-driven surveillance has been critiqued for its excesses in multiple contexts globally, including in the domains of predictive policing, health management, and targeted advertising (Mason 2015). In the attempts to achieve these objectives, surveillance systems have been criticised for their reliance on replicating past patterns, reifying proximity to a hetero-patriarchal norm (Haggerty and Ericson 2000). Under data-driven surveillance systems, this proximity informs the preexisting boxes of identity for which algorithmic representations of the individual are formed. The boxes are defined contingent on the distinct objectives of the particular surveillance project, collating disparate pieces of data flows and resulting in the recasting of the singular offline self into various 'data doubles' (Haggerty and Ericson 2000). Refractive, rather than reflective, the data doubles have implications for the physical, embodied life of individual with an increasing number of service provisioning relying on the data doubles (Lyon 2001). Consider, for instance, apps on menstruation, fertility, and health, and wearables such as fitness trackers and pacers, that support corporate agendas around what a woman’s healthy body should look, be or behave like (Lupton 2014). Once viewed through the lens of power relations, the fetishised, apolitical notion of the data “revolution” gives way to what we may better understand as “dataveillance.”

Towards a Networked State and a Neo-liberal Citizen

Following in this tradition of ICT being treated as the solution to problems plaguing India’s public health information system, a larger, all-pervasive healthcare ecosystem is now being proposed by the Indian state (NITI Aayog 2018). Termed the National Health Stack, it seeks to create a centralised electronic repository of health records of Indian citizens with the aim of capturing every instance of healthcare service usage. Among other functions, it also envisions a platform for the provisioning of health and wellness-based services that may be dispensed by public or private actors in an attempt to achieve universal health coverage. By allowing private parties to utilise the data collected through pullable open application program interfaces (APIs), it also fits within the larger framework of the National Health Policy 2017 that envisions the private sector playing a significant role in the provision of healthcare in India. It also then fits within the state–private sector nexus that characterises dataveillance. This, in turn, follows broader trends towards market-driven solutions and private financing of health sector reform measures that have already had profound consequences on the political economy of healthcare worldwide (Joe et al 2018).

These initiatives are, in many ways, emblematic of the growing adoption of network governance reform by the Indian state (Newman 2001). This is a stark shift from its traditional posturing as the hegemonic sovereign nation state. This shift entails the delayering from large, hierarchical and unitary government systems to horizontally arranged, more flexible, relatively dispersed systems.^[2] The former govern through the power of rules and law, while the latter take the shape of self-regulating networks such as public–private contractual arrangements (Snellen 2005). ICTs have been posited as an effective tool in enabling the transition to network governance by enhancing local governance and interactive policymaking enabling the co-production of knowledge (Ferlie et al 2011). The development of these capabilities is also critical to addressing “wicked problems” such as healthcare (Rittel and Webber 1973).^[3] The application of the techno-deterministic, data-driven model to reproductive healthcare provision, then, resembles a fetishised approach to technological change. The NHSRC describes this as the collection of data without an objective, leading to a disproportional burden on data collection over use (NHSRC and Taurus Glocal 2011).

The blurring of the functions of state and private actors is reflective of the neo-liberal ethic, which produces new practices of governmentality. Within the neo-liberal framework of reproductive healthcare, the citizen is constructed as an individual actor, with agency over and responsibility for their own health and well-being (Maturo et al 2016).

“Quantified Self” of the Neo-liberal Citizen

Nowhere can the manifestation of this neo-liberal citizen can be seen as clearly as in the “quantified self” movement. The quantified self movement refers to the emergence of a whole range of apps that enable the user to track bodily functions and record data to achieve wellness and health goals, including menstruation, fertility, pregnancies, and health indicators in the mother and baby. Lupton (2015) labels this as the emergence of the “digitised reproductive citizen,” who is expected to be attentive to her fertility and sexual behaviour to achieve better reproductive health goals. The practice of collecting data around reproductive health is not new to the individual or the state, as has been demonstrated by the discussion above. What is new in this regime of datafication under the self-tracking movement is the monetisation of reproductive health data by private actors, the labour for which is performed by the user. Focusing on embodiment draws attention to different kinds of exploitation engendered by reproductive health apps. Not only is data about the body collected and sold, the unpaid labour for collection is extracted from the user. The reproductive body can then be understood as a cyborg, or a woman-machine hybrid, systematically digitising its bodily functions for profit-making within the capitalist (re)production machine (Fotoloulou 2016). Accordingly, all major reproductive health tracking apps have a business model that relies on selling information about users for direct marketing of products around reproductive health and well-being (Felizi and Varon nd).

As has been pointed out in the case of big data more broadly, reproductive health applications (apps) facilitate the visibility of the female reproductive body in the public domain. Supplying anonymised data sets to medical researchers and universities fills some of the historical gaps in research around the female body and reproductive health. Reproductive and sexual health tracking apps globally provide their users a platform to engage with biomedical information around sexual and reproductive health. Through group chats on the platform, they are also able to engage with experiential knowledge of sexual and reproductive health. This could also help form transnational networks of solidarity around the body and health (Fotopoulou 2016).

This radical potential of network-building around reproductive and sexual health is, however, tempered to a large extent by the reconfiguration of gendered stereotypes through these apps. In a study on reproductive health apps on Google Play Store, Lupton (2014) finds that products targeted towards female users are marketed through the discourse of risk and vulnerability, while those targeted towards male users are framed within that of virility. Apart from reiterating gendered stereotypes around the male and female body, such a discourse assumes that the entire labour of family planning is performed by females. This same is the case with the MCTS/RCH.

Technological interventions such as reproductive health apps as well as HIS are based on the assumption that females have perfect control over decisions regarding their own bodies and reproductive health, despite this being disproved in India. The Guttmacher Institute (2014) has found that 60% of women in India report not having control over decisions regarding their own healthcare. The failure to account for the husband or the family as stakeholder in decision-making around reproductive health has been a historical failure of the family planning programme in India, and is now being replicated in other modalities. This notion of an autonomous citizen who is able to take responsibility of their own reproductive health and well-being does not hold true in the Indian context. It can even be seen as marginalising females who have already been excluded from the reproductive health system, as they are held responsible for their own inability to access healthcare.

Concluding Remarks

The interplay that emerges between reproductive health surveillance and data infrastructures is a complex one. It requires the careful positioning of the political nature of data collection and processing as well as its hetero-patriarchal and colonial legacies, within the need for effective utilisation of data for achieving developmental goals. Assessing this discourse through a feminist lens identifies the web of power relations in data regimes. This problematises narratives of technological solutions for welfare provision.

The reproductive healthcare framework in India then offers up a useful case study to assess these concerns. The growing adoption of ICT-based surveillance tools to equalise access to healthcare needs to be understood in the socio-economic, legal, and cultural context where these tools are being implemented. Increased surveillance has historically been associated with causing the structural gendered violence that it is now being offered as a solution to. This is a function of normative standards being constructed for reproductive behaviour that necessarily leave out broader definitions of reproductive health and welfare when viewed through a feminist lens. Within the larger context of health policymaking in India, moves towards privatisation then demonstrate the peculiarity of dataveillance as it functions through an unaccountable and pervasive overlapping of state and private surveillance practises. It remains to be seen how these trends in ICT-driven health policies affect access to reproductive rights and decisional privacy for millions of females in India and other parts of the global South.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/data-infrastructures-inequities-reproductive-health-surveillance-india

Call for Researchers: Welfare, Gender, and Surveillance

ambika — 2020-02-13T15:05:37Z

We are inviting applications for two researchers. Each researcher is expected to write a narrative essay that interrogates the modes of surveillance that people of LGBTHIAQ+ and gender non-conforming identities and sexual orientations are put under as they seek sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services in India. The researchers are expected to undertake field research in the location they are based in, and reflect on lived experiences gathered through field research as well as their own experiences of doing field research. Please read the sections below for more details about the work involved, the timeline for the same, and the application process for this call.

Call for Researchers: Download (PDF)

Description of the Work

Each researcher is expected to author a narrative essay that presents and reflects on lived experiences of people of LGBTHIAQ+ and gender non-conforming identities and sexual orientations as they seek sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services in India. We expect the essay to contribute to a larger body of knowledge around the increasing focus on data-driven initiatives for public health provision in the country and elsewhere. Accordingly, the researcher may respond to any one or more than one of the following questions, within the context of the geographical focus as specified by the researcher:

What are the modes of surveillance, especially in terms of generation and exploitation of digital data, experienced by people of marginalised gender identities and sexual orientations in India, as they avail of sexual and reproductive healthcare?
How are the lived experiences of underserved populations, such as people of marginalised gender identities and sexual orientations, shaped by gendered surveillance while accessing sexual and reproductive services?
What are the modes of governance and gender ideologies that have mediated the increasing datafication of such provision?

We expect the researchers to draw on a) the Indian Supreme Court’s framing of privacy in India, as a fundamental right, and its implications; and b) apply and/or build on feminist conceptualisations of privacy. Further, we expect the researchers to respond to the uncertain landscape of legal rights accessible to people of LGBTHIAQ+ and gender non-conforming identities and sexual orientations, especially in the current context shaped by The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019.

The researchers will undertake field research in locations of their choice, conduct interviews and discussions with people of LGBTHIAQ+ and gender non-conforming identities and sexual orientations seeking such services, and conduct formal and informal interviews with officials and personnel associated with public and private sector agencies involved in the provision of SRH services.

Eligibility and Application Process

We specifically encourage people of LGBTHIAQ+ and gender non-conforming identities and sexual orientations to submit their applications for this call for researchers.

We are seeking applications from individuals who:

Are based in the place where field study is to be undertaken, for the duration of the study;
Are fluent in the main regional language(s) spoken in the city where the study will be conducted, and in English (especially written);
Preferably have a postgraduate degree (current students should also apply) in social or technical sciences, journalism, or legal studies (undergraduate degree-holders with research or work experience should also apply); and
Have previous research and writing experiences on issues at the intersection of sexual and reproductive health, gender justice and women’s rights, and health informatics or digital public health.

Please send the following documents (in text or PDF formats) to raw@cis-india.org by Friday, January 24 to apply for the researcher positions:

Brief CV with relevant academic and professional information;
Two samples of academic/professional (published/unpublished) writing by the applicant; and
A brief research proposal (around 500 words) that should specify the scope (geographical and conceptual), research questions, and motivation of the essay to be authored by the applicant.

All applicants will be informed of the selection decisions by Friday, January 31.

Timeline of the Work

February 3-7 CIS research team will have a call with each researcher to plan out the work to be undertaken by them

February - March Researchers are to undertake field research, as proposed by the researchers and discussed with the CIS research team

March 27 Researchers are to submit a full draft essay (around 3,000 words)

March 30 - April 3 CIS research team will have call with each researcher to discuss the shared draft essays and make plans towards their finalisation

May 15 Researchers are to submit the final essay (around 5,000 words, without footnotes and references)

As part of this project, CIS will organise two discussion events in Bengaluru and New Delhi during April-June (tentatively). Event dates are to be decided in conversation with the researchers, and they will be invited to present their works in the same.

Remuneration

Each researcher will be paid a remuneration of Rs. 1,00,000 (inclusive of taxes) over two equal installments: first on signing of the agreement in February 2020, and second on submission of the final essay in May 2020.

We will also reimburse local travel expenses of each researcher upto Rs. 10,000, and translations and transcriptions expense (if any) incurred by each researcher upto Rs. 10,000. These reimbursements will be made on the basis of expense invoices shared by the researcher.

Description of the Project

Previous research conducted by CIS on the subject of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services in India observes that there is a complex web of surveillance, or ‘dataveillance’, around each patient as they avail of SRH services from the state. In this current project, we are aiming to map the ecosystem of surveillance around SRH services as their provision becomes increasingly ‘data-driven’, and explore its implications for patients and beneficiaries.

Through this project, we are interested in documenting the roles played by both the public and the private sector actors in this ecosystem of health surveillance. We understand the role of private sector actors as central to state provision of sexual and reproductive health services, especially through the institutionalisation of data-driven health insurance models, as well as through extensive privatisation of public health services. By studying semi-private, private, and public medical establishments including hospitals, primary/community health centres and clinics, we aim to develop a comparative analysis of surveillance ecosystems across the three establishment types.

This project is led by Ambika Tandon, Aayush Rathi, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay at the Centre for Internet and Society, and is supported by a grant from Privacy International.

Indicative Reading List

We are sharing below a short and indicative list of readings that may be useful for potential applicants.

Aayush Rathi, Is India's Digital Health System Foolproof? (2019)

Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon, Data Infrastructures and Inequities: Why Does Reproductive Health Surveillance in India Need Our Urgent Attention? (2019)

Ambika Tandon, Feminist Methodology in Technology Research: A Literature Review (2018)

Ambika Tandon, Big Data and Reproductive Health in India: A Case Study of the Mother and Child Tracking System (2019)

Anja Kovacs, Reading Surveillance through a Gendered Lens: Some Theory (2017)

Lindsay Weinberg, Rethinking Privacy: A Feminist Approach to Privacy Rights after Snowden (2017)

Nicole Shephard, Big Data and Sexual Surveillance (2016)

Sadaf Khan, Data Bleeding Everywhere: A Story of Period Trackers (2019)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/jobs/researchers-welfare-gender-surveillance-call

Digital Native: The e-wasteland of our times

nishant — 2018-05-06T03:21:49Z

How digitising isn’t necessarily a fast-track to a sustainable future.

The article was published in the Indian Express on April 22, 2018.

Digitise Everything” is the mantra of the day. Offices take pride in being paperless, hot-desking because our laptops and mobile computing devices have, more or less, become our workspaces. Governments are investing heavily in digitising archives, putting faith in the notion that digital preservation is the way forward for the future. Magazines and newspapers have had no alternative but to move into the digital realm to keep up with the new information ecosystems. Various campaigns make us believe that to be smart we need to be digital, and that it is more sustainable to have digital real estate which enables ease of access and reduced travel time and energy in engaging with different information systems.

The digital infrastructure is often presented as green, sustainable and efficient. These claims might have had some merit in the early days when computing was still exclusive and open only to a select few. The classic example that would be given within the research circles in the late ’90s would be, that in order to do historical archival research from India, a researcher would have to travel all the way to the archives of the British Library in England. The costs of travel, the energy required for the overseas journey, the finances of access that would be required to complete such research were characteristic of the pre-digital era. Now, a historian looking at the same archives through a simple broadband connection, can access this information at a fraction of the cost, speed and time.

However, it is difficult to take at face value the fact that this efficiency is sustainable in any form. As we go increasingly digital in almost all our devices, there are three massive environmental costs which are often made invisible. The first is in the sheer amount of electricity that our digital ecosystems consume. We all know the frustration that arises out of batteries dying and phones not carrying enough charge is, indeed, a harrowing experience. But at the back-end of it is an enormous power surge. The large network of service providers, surveys, information storage and distribution consumes an extraordinary amount of energy which is, generally, still dependent on fossil fuels. It is estimated that one hour of cellphone usage with data connection uses the same amount of energy that a family house uses in an entire day. Because while your device might be energy compliant and very low in emissions, the large array of the Internet of Things that needs to be in place to support your device, is an invisible energy cost that takes its tolls on the environment.

Even more than active usage, it is the storing of everything on the cloud that is, perhaps, more problematic. As we stream everything on Netflix, Spotify and YouTube, we have to realise that all this information is being stored in huge data centres powered by massive electricity sources to keep it all alive. The energy cost of our digital histories is almost impossible to compute in environmental measures.

The third big problem that we often don’t recognise is our obsession with updating our devices. We throw and exchange our electronic devices at the blink of a trend. Mostly, older phones and laptops are not recycled but broken down into e-waste. Huge landfills are now the graveyards of old electronics which have components that cannot be recycled, and have elements that are no longer useful. Most of these electronic devices are made with metals and precious components that are mined at huge environmental costs.

I was recently at a conference where we were given books as mementos. One of the delegates jokingly exclaimed, “Why am I being given a dead-tree object?” referring to the pages of the book and the trees that must have been felled to make the book. It was telling that he didn’t realise that his ebook, loaded on his tablet, probably killed more trees than that one physical book, which will lend itself to recycling more easily than his tablet would.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-native-the-e-wasteland-of-our-times

New Contexts and Sites of Humanities Practice in the Digital (Paper)

sneha-pp — 2019-12-06T05:03:33Z

The ubiquitous presence of the ‘digital’ over the couple of decades has brought with it several important changes in interdisciplinary forms of research and knowledge production. Particularly in the arts and humanities, the role of digital technologies and internet has always been a rather contentious one, with more debate spurred now due to the growth of fields like humanities computing, digital humanities (henceforth DH) and cultural analytics. Even as these fields signal several shifts in scholarship, pedagogy and practice, portending a futuristic imagination of the role of technology in academia and practice on the one hand, they also reflect continuing challenges related to the digital divide, and more specifically politics around the growth and sustenance of the humanities disciplines. A specific criticism within more recent debates around the origin story of DH in fact, has been its Anglo-American framing, drawing upon a history in humanities computing and textual studies, and located within a larger neoliberal imagination of the university and academia. While this has been met with resistance from across different spaces, thus calling for more diversity and representation in the discourse, it is also reflective of the need to trace and contextualize more local forms of practice and pedagogy in the digital as efforts to address these global concerns. This essay by Puthiya Purayil Sneha draws upon excerpts from a study on the field of DH and related practices in India, to outline the diverse contexts of humanities practice with the advent of the digital and explore the developing discourse around DH in the Indian context.

This essay was published in Vol 22 No 1 (2016): SummerHill, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. Edited by Dr. Bindu Menon. Download the essay here (PDF).

Abstract

The last couple of decades have seen an increasing prevalence of digital technologies and internet in the study and practice of arts and humanities. With the growth of fields like humanities computing, digital humanities (henceforth DH) and cultural analytics, there has been a renewed interest in the increasing role of the ‘digital’ in interdisciplinary forms of research and knowledge production. DH in particular has become a field of much interest and debate in different parts of the world, including in India. Globally, in the last two decades, there have been several efforts to organize the discourse around this field which seeks to explore various intersections between humanities and digital methods, spaces and tools1. But DH also continues to remain a bone of contention, with several perspectives on what exactly constitutes its methodology and scope, and most importantly its epistemological stake.

A specific criticism has been the Anglo-American framing of DH, located within a larger neoliberal imagination of the university and the higher education system at large. As a result, the connection of these two threads—a history of DH located in humanities computing and textual studies and its contextualization within the American university—is often represented as the history of DH. This has been met with resistance from several scholars and practitioners across the world calling for more global perspectives on the field. Drawing upon excerpts from a recently completed study on mapping the field of DH and related practices in India, this essay will attempt to outline the diverse contexts of humanities practice emerging with the digital turn, along with a reading of some of the global debates around DH to understand the discourse around the field in the Indian context.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/new-contexts-and-sites-of-humanities-practice-in-the-digital-paper

Digital Native: Cause an Effect

nishant — 2018-06-26T15:21:01Z

Aadhaar is a self-contained safe system, its interaction with other data and information systems is also equally safe and benign.

The article was published in the Indian Express on June 17, 2018.

Statistically, it has been proven, that the consumption of ice cream in the country increases significantly in the summer months. In the same months, the number of housebreak incidents also increase. It might be possible, though ridiculous, to now make an argument that eating ice cream leads to increased frequencies of housebreakings, and, hence, sale and consumption of ice cream should be regulated more rigorously. The humour in this situation arises out of the fact that we know, at a very human level, that correlation is not the same as causation.

We know that just because two things happen in temporal or spatial proximity with each other doesn’t necessarily mean they are connected or responsible in a chain of events. This is because human communication is designed to make a distinction between cause-and-effect relationship and happened-together relationship between two sets of information.

However, when it comes to computation, things turn slightly different. Within the database logics of computation, two sets of data, occurring in the same instance, are subjected to a simple scrutiny: Either one of them is linked with the other, or, one of the two is noise, and, hence, needs to be removed from the system. Computation systems are foundationally anchored on logic. Within logical systems, all the events and elements described in the system are interlinked and have a causal relationship with each other. Computational learning systems, thus, do not have the capacity to make a distinction between causal and correlative phenomena.

This is why computation systems of data mining and profiling are so much more efficient than human cognition. Not only are these systems able to compute a huge range of data, but they are also able to make unprecedented, unforeseen, unexpected, and often unimagined connections between seemingly disparate and separate information streams. I present to you this simplified notion of computer logic because it is at the heart of the biometric identity-based debates around Aadhaar right now. Recently, Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO, UIDAI, wrote an opinion piece that insisted that the data collective mechanisms of Aadhaar are not only safe but also benign. His opinion is backed by Bill Gates, who also famously suggested that “Aadhaar in itself” is not dangerous.

And, in many ways, Gates is right, even if Pandey’s willful mischaracterisation of Gates’s statement is not. For Gates, a computer scientist looking at the closed architecture of the Aadhaar system, it might appear, that in as much as any digital system could be safe, Aadhaar is indeed safe. In essence, Gates’s description was, that as a logical system of computational architecture, Aadhaar is safe, and the data within it, in their correlation with each other, does not form any sinister networks that we need to worry about.

However, Pandey takes this “safe in itself” argument to extend it to the applications and implementations of Aadhaar. He argues that because Aadhaar is a self-contained safe system, its interaction with other data and information systems is also equally safe and benign. In this, Pandey, either out of ignorance or willful mischaracterisation, confuses correlation with causality. He refuses to admit that Aadhaar and the biometrics within that are the central focal point around which a variety of data transactions happen which produce causal links between disconnected subjects.

Thus, the presence of a digital biometric data set might not in itself be a problem, but when it became the central verification system that connects your cellphone with your geolocation data, your presence and movement with your bank account and your income tax returns, your food and lifestyle consumption with your medical records, it starts a causal link between information which was hitherto unconnected, and, hence, considered trivial.

The alarm that the critics of Aadhaar have been raising is not about whether the data on Aadhaar is safe or not, but, how, in the hands of unregulated authorities, the correlations that Aadhaar generates and translates into causal profiles have dire consequences on the privacy and liberty of the individuals who carry the trace of Aadhaar in all facets of life. Pandey and his team of governors need to explain not the safety of Aadhaar but what happens when the verification information of Aadhaar is exploited to create non-human correlations of human lives, informing policy, penalisation and pathologisation through these processes.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-june-17-2018-digital-native-cause-an-effect

June 2018 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2018-08-11T02:52:10Z

CIS newsletter for the month of June 2018.

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights

Balbharati – the Maharashtra state bureau of textbook production and curriculum research – has issued a copyright policy that forces all publishers, digital educational-content creators, and coaching classes to obtain expensive licenses for developing material directly or indirectly relating to Balbharati’s content. This is an alarming development for Indian students reported Anubha Sinha in an article in the Asian Times on June 20, 2018.
CIS-A2K has started dialogue with the publishers for the last 6 months regarding FOSS, Open knowledge and content donation to Wikimedia Projects. As a result Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Prakashak Sangh, an apex body of publishers at all India level invited us for a orientation session at their annual gathering in Pune.
Submitted comments on the Draft Digital Communications Policy which was released to the public by the Department of Telecommunications of the Ministry of Communications on 1st May 2018 for comments and views.
Submitted comments on the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations which was released to the public by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on 29th May 2018 for comments and views.
The Task Force on Artificial Intelligence was established by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to leverage AI for economic benefits, and provide policy recommendations on the deployment of AI for India. Elonnai Hickok, Shweta Mohandas and Swaraj Paul Barooah wrote a blog entry on the artificial intelligence task force. The blog entry was edited by Swagam Dasgupta.
The world’s oldest networked infrastructure, money, is increasingly dematerialising and fusing with the world’s latest networked infrastructure, the Internet, wrote Sunil Abraham in an article published in the Economic Times on June 10, 2018.
An essay by P.P. Sneha was published in Summer Hill, a journal published by Indian Institute of Advanced Study. In the essay, edited by Dr. Bindu Menon, Sneha draws upon excerpts from a study on the field of digital humanities and related practices in India, to outline the diverse contexts of humanities practice with the advent of the digital and explore the developing discourse around digital humanities in the Indian context.
The inaugural conference of the Digital Humanities Alliance of India (DHAI) was held at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Indore on June 1-2, 2018. P.P. Sneha was a keynote speaker at the event. Her talk was titled ‘New Contexts and Sites of Humanities Practice in the Digital’.

Articles

Why NPCI and Facebook need urgent regulatory attention (Sunil Abraham; Economic Times; June 10, 2018).
Digital Native: Cause an Effect (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; June 17, 2018).
Maharashtra's Copyright Policy Makes Education Unaffordable (Anubha Sinha; Asia Times; June 20, 2018).

CIS in the News

Allow admins to add users to online group chats only after permission: SFLC.in (Times of India; June 1, 2018).
EC disables easy access to electoral data across states (Akshatha M; Economic Times; June 5, 2018).
Draft bill proposes Rs 1 crore fine, 3 year jail for data privacy violation (Vidhi Choudhury; Hindustan Times; June 8, 2018).
Citizens’ Draft Privacy Bill Seeks To Revolutionise Data Collection, Storage In India (Arpan Chaturvedi; Bloomberg Quint; June 9, 2018).
Police to counter fake news on WhatsApp (Nilesh Christopher and Naveen Menezes; Times of India; June 14, 2018).
'Full belief in fake texts shows cops not trusted' (Times of India; June 18, 2018).
Anushka finds support for her anti-litter tirade (Nina C. George; Deccan Herald; June 19, 2018).
Jindal varsity's international affairs students shine in job market (Economic Times; June 19, 2018).
Data Privacy: Footprints on the Web (Sujit Bhar; IndiaLegal; June 21, 2018).
Death By WhatsApp (News18.com, June 25, 2018).
Tech transformation: how agriculture is being redefined through digital innovation and startups (Your Story; June 29, 2018).

Access to Knowledge

Access to Knowledge (A2K) is a campaign to promote the fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and economic development. It deals with issues like copyrights, patents and trademarks, which are an important part of the digital landscape. Our A2K program comprises 2 projects: Pervasive Technologies done under a grant from International Development Research Centre examining interplay between cost-effective pervasive technologies and intellectual property and encouraging development of such technologies for social good, and Wikipedia under a grant from Wikimedia Foundation to enable the growth of Indic language communities and cultivate new editors in different Indian languages.

Wikipedia

Event Organized

Marathi Publishers' orientation session on FOSS,Open knowledge & Wikimedia Projects (Co-organized by Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Prakashak Sangh and CIS-A2K; Maratha Chamber of Commerce, Tilak Road, Pune; June 17, 2018).

Internet Governance

The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society has defined internet governance as the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles of shared principles, norms, rules, decision making procedures and programs that shape the evolution and use of the internet. CIS is engaged in 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

NITI Aayog Discussion Paper: An aspirational step towards India’s AI policy (Sunil Abraham, Elonnai Hickok, Amber Sinha, Swaraj Barooah, Shweta Mohandas, Pranav M Bidare, Swagam Dasgupta, Vishnu Ramachandran and Senthil Kumar; June 13, 2018).
The AI Task Force Report - The first steps towards India’s AI framework (Authored by Elonnai Hickok, Shweta Mohandas and Swaraj Paul Barooah and Edited by Swagam Dasgupta; June 27, 2018).

Submissions

Comments on the Draft National Policy on Official Statistics (Gurshabad Grover and Sandeep Kumar; June 7, 2018).
Comments on the Draft Digital Communications Policy (Anubha Sinha, Gurshabad Grover and Swaraj Barooah; June 14, 2018).

Participation in Event

Is Privacy Obsolete? (Organized by TERI; Bangalore; June 22, 2018). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.

Free Speech & Expression

Blog Entry

Network Disruptions Report by Global Network Initiative (Akriti Bopanna; June 12, 2018).

Telecom

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:

Submission

Comments on the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations (Sandeep Kumar, Torsha Sarkar, Swaraj Barooah, and Gurshabad Grover; June 22, 2018).

Researchers at Work

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:

Participation in Event

Digital Humanities Alliance of India - Inagural Conference 2018 (Co-organized by IIM and IIT, Indore with support from CIS; IIM, Indore; June 1 - 2, 2018). P.P. Sneha was a speaker and gave the keynote address.

Essay

New Contexts and Sites of Humanities Practice in the Digital (Paper) (P.P. Sneha; June 25, 2018).

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/june-2018-newsletter

July 2018 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2018-08-11T02:50:52Z

CIS July 2018 newsletter.

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights

Paul Kurien and Akriti Bopanna carried out an analysis of the diversity of participation at the ICANN processes by taking a close look at their mailing lists.
CIS-A2K organized 6 events: partnership discussions with Misimi Telugu monthly magazine; partnership activity in Annamayya Library, Guntur, a workshop in Tumakur University; a workshop of river activists for building Jal Bodh; a workshop of publishers and writers on unicode, open source and wikimedia projects; and a Telugu literary conference.
CIS had worked with the Research and Advisory Group (RAG) of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace (GCSC). The work looked at the negotiation processes and strategies that various players may adopt as they drive the cyber norms agenda. In continuation CIS has brought out a report which focuses more extensively on the substantive law and principles at play and looks closely at what the global state of the debate means for India.
The debate surrounding privacy has in recent times gained momentum due to the Aadhaar judgement and the growing concerns around the use of personal data by corporations and governments. In this light CIS has made comments and recommendations to the India Privacy Code, 2018.
CIS drafted a response to a Notice of Inquiry (NOI) issued by the U.S. Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) on "International Internet Policy Priorities." CIS commented on the free flow of information and jurisdiction, mult-stakeholder approach to internet governance, privacy and security.
Elonnai Hickok, Shweta Mohandas and Swaraj Paul Barooah compiled the AI Task Force Report, India's first step towards an AI framework. The Task Force on Artificial Intelligence was established by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to leverage AI for economic benefits, and provide policy recommendations on the deployment of AI for India.
Paul Kurian and Akriti Bopanna carried out an analysis of the diversity of participation at the ICANN processes by taking a close look at their mailing lists.

Articles

Digital Native: The bigger picture (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; July 1, 2018).
The Problems That Should Occupy Our Electioneers (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; July 6, 2018).
Digital Native: How smart cities can make criminals out of denizens (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; July 15, 2018).
Anti-trafficking Bill may lead to censorship (Swaraj Barooah and Gurshabad Grover; Livemint; July 24, 2018).
Digital Native: Hashtag Along With Me (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; July 29, 2018).
Lining up the data on the Srikrishna Privacy Draft Bill (Sunil Abraham; Economic Times; July 30, 2018).
Spreading unhappiness equally around (Business Standard; July 31, 2018).

CIS in the News

Smartphone rumours spark series of mob killings in India (Samanth Subramanian; The National; July 2, 2018).
Government Gives Nod To Bill For Building DNA Databases In India, For 'Criminal Investigation And Justice Delivery' (Huffington Post; July 5, 2018).
'Hope for such swift crackdowns for everyone' (Times of India; July 6, 2018).
Child-lifting rumours caused 69 mob attacks, 33 deaths in last 18 months (Business Standard; July 9, 2018).
Death by Social Media (Pretika Khanna, Abhiram Ghadyalpatil and Shaswati Das; Livemint; July 9, 2018).
India's Latest Data Leak: People's Aadhaar Number And Bank Account Are Just One Google Search Away (Gopal Sathe; Huffington Post; July 12, 2018).
People Should Have Right To Their Data, Not Companies, Says TRAI (Bloomberg Quint; July 16, 2018).
After Securing Net Neutrality In India, TRAI Goes To Bat For Data Privacy (Gopal Sathe; Huffington Post; July 16, 2018).
TRAI recommendations on data privacy raises eyebrows (Surabhi Agarwal and Gulveen Aulakh; Economic Times; July 18, 2018).
Srikrishna panel upset at timing of Trai suggestions (Megha Mandavia; Economic Times; July 19, 2018).
Firms find wealth in your data (Rajitha Menon; Deccan Herald; July 20, 2018).
WhatsApp races against time to fix fake news mess ahead of 2019 general elections (Venkat Ananth; Economic Times; July 24, 2018).
The crown of thorns that awaits Facebook’s India MD hire (Sunny Sen and Jayadevan PK; Factory Daily; July 25, 2018).
Bit by byte protecting her privacy (Mihir Dalal and Anirban Sen; Livemint; July 26, 2018).
Govt asks CBI to probe Cambridge Analytica in data breach case (Komal Gupta; Livemint; July 27, 2018).
Data localisation may pinch startups, payments firms (Mugdha Variyar and Pratik Bhakta; Economic Times; July 28, 2018).

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.

Wikipedia

Blog Entries

ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ತರಬೇತಿ ೨೦೧೮ @ ರಾಂಚಿ (Vikas Hegde; July 4, 2018).
How to write differently for different Telugu digital platforms - awareness session to Indu Gnana Vedika (Pavan Santosh; July 19, 2018).
వాట్సాప్ సాహిత్య వేదిక నుంచి వికీసోర్సుకు (Pavan Santosh; July 31, 2018).

Events Organized

Partnership activity in Annamayya Library (Guntur; July 10, 2014).
Partnership discussions with Misimi Telugu Monthly Magazine (July 24, 2018).
Tumakur University Workshop (Tumkur; July 25, 2018).
Workshop of River activists for building Jal Bodh - Knowledge resource on Water (Pune; July 25, 2018).
Workshop of Publishers and Writers on Unicode, Open Source and Wikimedia Projects (Pune; July 25, 2018).

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

Submissions

Response to a Notice of Enquiry by the US Government on International Internet Policy Priorities (Swagam Dasgupta; July 18, 2018).
The Centre for Internet and Society’s Comments and Recommendations to the: Indian Privacy Code, 2018 (Shweta Mohandas, Elonnai Hickok, Amber Sinha and Shruti Trikanand; July 20, 2018).

Blog Entry

The AI Task Force Report - The first steps towards India’s AI framework (Elonnai Hickok, Shweta Mohandas and Swaraj Paul Barooah; June 27, 2018). The blog post was edited by Swagam Dasgupta.

Participation in Events

IETF 102 Montreal (Organized by Internet Engineering Task Force; Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Montreal in Canada; July 14 - 20, 2018). Gurshabad Grover presented a review of the human rights considerations in the drafts of the Software Update for IoT Devices (SUIT) Working Group in the meeting of the HRPC research group.
Ethical Data Design Practices in the AI (Artificial Intelligence) Age (Organized by Startup Grind, Bangalore at NUMA Bangalore; July 28, 2018). Shweta Mohandas was a panelist.

Cyberspace and Cyber Security

Analysis

The Potential for the Normative Regulation of Cyberspace: Implications for India (Arindrajit Basu; July 30, 2018). The report was edited by Elonnai Hickok, Sunil Abraham and Udbhav Tiwari with research assistance from Tejas Bharadwaj.

Blog Entry

CIS contributes to the Research and Advisory Group of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace (GCSC) (Arindrajit Basu; July 5, 2018).

Participation in Event

IEEE-SA InDITA Conference 2018 (Organized by IEEE Standards Association; IIIT-Bangalore; July 10 - 11, 2018). Gurshabad Grover gave a brief presentation on how we could apply or reject 'Trust Through Technology' principles in the design of public biometric authentication.

Free Speech & Expression

Blog Entries

ICANN Diversity Analysis (Paul Kurian and Akriti Bopanna; July 16, 2018).
DIDP #31 Diversity of employees at ICANN (Akash Sriram; July 19, 2018).

Participation in Event

26th AMIC Annual Conference – India 2018 (Organized by Manipal Academy of Higher Education; Fortune Inn Valley View, Manipal, Karnataka; June 7 - 9, 2018). Swaraj Paul Barooah was a speaker. An article announcing the event by Kevin Mendonsa was published in the Times of India on June 5, 2018.

Telecom

Newspaper Column

The Problems That Should Occupy Our Electioneers (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; July 5, 2018 and Organizing India Blogspot; July 6, 2018).

About CIS

► 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/july-2018-newsletter