Centre for Internet and Society

November 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2014-12-15T13:27:04Z

We at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcome you to the eleventh issue of the newsletter (November 2014).

Highlights

On 13 November, 2014, the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion had released a Call for Suggestions for India's proposed National IPR Policy. CIS sent its comments.
As part of the Pervasive Technologies we published four methodology documents: Rohini Lakshané wrote on Patent Landscaping for the Indian Mobile Device market ; Anubha Sinha wrote on Intellectual Property in Mobile Application Development in India ; Maggie Huang wrote on Access to Music through the Mobile; and Nehaa Chaudhari wrote on Sub Hundred Dollar Mobile Devices and Competition Law .
Odisha's most circulated newspaper Sambad has collaborated with CIS-A2K to relicense 19 books published by its sister concern "Ama Odisha".
Vipul Kharbanda in a blog entry examines the relationship between privacy and transparency in the context of the right to information in India .
Geetha Hariharan in a blog entry explores what India's ITU proposal means for Internet Governance.
Pranesh Prakash wrote an article in the Economic Times exploring net neutrality.
In her final blog post on the mapping exercise undertaken by CIS-RAW, P.P.Sneha summarises some of the key concepts and terms that emerged as significant in the discourse around Digital Humanities in India.

►Job

Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge - Institutional Partnerships): CIS is seeking applications for the post of Programme Officer for its Access to Knowledge (A2K) Programme. The position will be based in its Bangalore office. Programme Officer will collaboratively work with the A2K Team and would report to the Programme Director, Access to Knowledge at CIS.

Accessibility and Inclusion

Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing two projects. The first project is on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. CIS in partnership with CLPR (Centre for Law and Policy Research) compiled the National Compendium of Policies, Programmes and Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (29 states and 6 union territories). The publication has been finalised and is currently in the process of being printed. The draft chapters and the quarterly reports can be accessed on the project page. The second project is on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

►NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Update

November 2014 Report (Suman Dogra; November 30, 2014).

Upcoming Event

Training in Use of eSpeak with Malayalam (co-organized by CIS, DAISY Forum of India and Chakshumathi Assistive Technology Centre; Trivandrum; January 24 - 25, 2015, Trivandrum).

►Other

Blog Entry

Central Guidelines and Schemes (Anandhi Viswanathan; November 6, 2014).

Access to Knowledge

As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) 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.

Submission

Comments on the Proposed Intellectual Property Rights Policy to the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (Pranesh Prakash, Nehaa Chaudhari, Anubha Sinha and Amulya P.; November 30, 2014).

Blog Entries

MHRD IPR Chairs - Underutilization of Funds and Lack of Information Regarding Expenditures (Amulya Purushothama, November 19, 2014).

Participation in Events

Ubiquity, Mobility, Globality: Charting Directions in Mobile Phone Studies (Organized by Center for Global Communication Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; November 6 - 7, 2014). Nehaa Chaudhari made a presentation on Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Marketplace.
Countering US pressures on India's IP regime (Organized by Lawyer's Collective; November 16, 2014). Anubha Sinha attended the event.
Technology and Gender Based Violence (Organized by the Bachchao Project; November 24, 2014). Rohini Lakshané was a speaker at the event. She spoke about various strategies that women use to respond to online harassment, such as reporting the abuser, and enlisting support from online followers, or friends or family in order to deal with the abuser.

►Pervasive Technology

Blog Entries

Methodology: Patent Landscaping (Rohini Lakshané; November 10, 2014).
Methodology: Intellectual Property in Mobile Application Development in India (Anubha Sinha; November 17, 2014).
Methodology: Access to Music through the Mobile (Maggie Huang; November 18, 2014).
Methodology: Sub Hundred Dollar Mobile Devices and Competition Law (Nehaa Chaudhari; November 25, 2014).

►Wikipedia

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

Op-Ed

Odia Wikisource, its Potential (Subhashish Panigrahi, The Samaja, November 17, 2014).

Blog Entries

55 Works of Iconic Indian writer released under Free Licence to benefit Wikisource (T. Vishnu Vardhan, November 13, 2014).
Odia author Nirmala Kumari Mohapatra's 21 books relicensed under CC-by-SA 4.0 (Subhashish Panigrahi, November 17, 2014).
Nineteen Books Published by Ama Odisha Relicensed under CC-by-SA 4.0 (Subhashish Panigrahi, November 25, 2014).

News and Media Coverage

CIS-A2K team gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

ಭಾಷಣದಿಂದ ಭಾಷೆ ಉಳಿಯಲ್ಲ, ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲೇ ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಸಿಗುವುದು ಅಗತ್ಯ: ಪವನಜ (Just Kannada; November 23, 2014).
Kannada Wikipedia Presentation in Mysuru (Prajavani; November 24, 2014).
Now, Tulu set to be promoted through Wikipedia articles (Hindu; November 24, 2014).
'Tulu Wikipedia' in incubation stage, 600 articles uploaded, says U.B. Pavanaja (Ravi Prasad Kamila; Hindu; November 26, 2014).
Odia Wikisource launched in Odisha capital (Odisha Sun Times; November 28, 2014).
Odia Wikisource aims to bring valuable and rare books on the Internet (Odisha Diary; November 28, 2014).

Event Co-organized

Odia Wikisource Sabha 2014 (Co-organized by CIS-A2K and Odia Wikimedia Community; November 28, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.

Participation in Event

A Seminar on E-publishing of Odia Books (Organized by Molybtech Technology Solutions; November 30, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi was a speaker.

►Openness

Blog Entry

Privacy vs. Transparency: An Attempt at Resolving the Dichotomy (Sunil Abraham with feedback and inputs from Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Elonnai Hickok, Bhairav Acharya and Geetha Hariharan; November 14, 2014).

News and Media Coverage

Getting Strategic about Openness and Privacy (Tim Davies; Open Data Research Lead at Web Foundation; November 3, 2014).

Participation in Event

Content co-ordination for the Panel Discussion on Crypto-Currencies (organized by the Law and Technology Society; November 15, 2014). Sharath Chandra Ram was a panelist and made a presentation Scalability and Security Issues in Distributed Trust based Cryto-Currency Systems like BITCOIN

Internet Governance

►Privacy

As part of our Surveillance and Freedom: Global Understandings and Rights Development (SAFEGUARD) project with Privacy International we are engaged in enhancing respect for the right to privacy in developing countries. During the month we published the following blog entries:

Blog Entries

White Paper on RTI and Privacy V1.2 (Vipul Kharbanda; November 9, 2014).
Introduction: About the Privacy and Surveillance Roundtables (Manoj Kurbet; November 27, 2014).

Event Organized

IOCOSE's talk at CIS (CIS, Bangalore; November 27, 2014). There was a presentation of the work of the artists group IOCOSE, current artists in residence at T.A.J./SKE Residency.

Upcoming Event

CPDP 2015 : The eighth international conference on computers, privacy and data protection will be held in Brussels from January 21 to 23, 2015. CIS is a moral supporter of CPDP.

Participation in Events

E-Consultation on Cyber Security, Justice, and Governance Begins! (Organized by the Hague Institute for Global Justice; November 4, 2014). Sunil Abraham facilitated the e-consultation on "Internet access, the freedom of expression online, and development in the Global South".
Learning Forum: Transparency and Human Rights in the Digital Age (Organized by Global Network Initiative; November 6, 2014). Pranesh Prakash gave a talk on transparency reports and their use and abuse in India; the Intermediary Liability Rules in India (and its non-provision of any transparency mechanism); and the need for transparency in private speech regulation, not just governmental speech regulation.
Fourth Discussion Meeting of the Expert Committee to Discuss the Draft Human DNA Profiling Bill (Organized by the Department of Biotechnology; New Delhi; November 10, 2014). Sunil Abraham was unable to participate because of technical problems.
Ground Zero Summit 2014 (Organized by India Infosec Consortium; November 13-14, 2014). Geetha Hariharan participated in this event.
Privacy, security and surveillance: tackling international dilemmas and dangers in the digital realm (Organized by Wilton Park; November 17-19, 2014). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist in the session "Beyond the familiar: how do other countries deal with security and surveillance oversight?"

►Free Speech

Under a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, CIS is doing research on the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government and contribute studies, reports and policy briefs to feed into the ongoing debates at the national as well as international level. As part of the project we bring you the following outputs:

Blog Entries

Good Intentions, Recalcitrant Text - II: What India's ITU Proposal May Mean for Internet Governance (Geetha Hariharan; November 1, 2014).
India's Statement at ITU Plenipotentiary Conference, 2014 (Geetha Hariharan; November 4, 2014).

Newspaper Article

The Socratic debate: Whose internet is it anyway? (Pranesh Prakash; Economic Times; November 18, 2014).

News & Media Coverage
CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Twitter users find several accounts suspended for unknown reasons (Vasudha Venugopal; Economic Times; November 2, 2014).
Several Indian Twitter users' accounts suspended due to tech glitch (Silky Malhotra; digit; November 3, 2014).
Game release cancelled over gay character (Jaison Lewis; Mumbai Mirror; November 19, 2014).
Leave the Net Alone (Businessworld; November 25, 2014).

Digital Humanities

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

Blog Entry

Mapping Digital Humanities in India - Concluding Thoughts (P.P.Sneha; November 30, 2014).

About CIS

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

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
Visit us at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge
E-mail: a2k@cis-india.org

► Support Us

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

► Request for Collaboration:

We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, atsunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director - Research, at nishant@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@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/november-2014-bulletin

PERVASIVE TECHNOLOGIES PROJECT WORKING DOCUMENT SERIES: DOCUMENT 1 - RESEARCH METHODOLOGY FOR A PAPER ON COMPETITION LAW + IPR + ACCESS TO < $100 MOBILE DEVICES

nehaa — 2015-10-04T02:51:06Z

This blog post is the research methodology for my research paper under the Pervasive Technologies Project. This is a work in progress and is likely to be modified from time to time.

See a subsequent version titled Pervasive Technologies: Working Document Series - Research Questions and a Literature Review on the Actor-Network Theory

Preliminary

The realization of the promise of the sub hundred dollar mobile device as a facilitator of access to knowledge is contingent inter alia on its availability in the market place. In turn, the market availability of the sub hundred dollar mobile device is influenced by the existence of an enabling environment for producers to produce, and consumers to consume. From a regulatory perspective, the enabling environment itself is a function of existing laws and policies, and the 'developmental effects' of certain laws and policies (Saraswati, 2012).

This research paper under the Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Market Place Project ("PT Project") examines one such legal and policy lever and the role of a regulator in the development of an enabling environment for access to sub hundred dollar mobile devices. This paper is founded on four assumptions: first, that access to sub hundred dollar mobile devices is influenced by their price; second, that the question of access necessitates conversation between the intellectual property regime and several other actors, sites and tools; third, that one of the fundamental goals of regulatory reform is the creation of a 'stable, open and future- proof environment' (Guermazi and Satola, 2005) that encourages access to these devices; and fourth, that there exist public law implications of intellectual property that justify the involvement of State actors and regulators in matters that may arise out of private transactions.

Research Questions

This research paper will examine whether there is a role to be played by one regulator, that is, the Competition Commission of India (“CCI”), in this narrative of innovation, intellectual property and access to sub hundred dollar mobile devices. Specifically, the following research questions will be addressed:

First, what is the relationship between intellectual property and competition law? Second, what are the competition law/antitrust concerns that arise around the licensing of intellectual property (standard essential patents)? Third, can existing mechanisms in competition law address concerns around the licensing of standard essential patents on sub hundred dollar devices, and is competition law a viable solution to address this issue? If so, which ones? Fourth, given the frequency of these litigations, is there a role to be played by an ex-post regulator, such as the CCI, or is there a need for ex-ante regulation?

Research Objects

In an attempt to address these research questions, this paper will examine the role of the Competition Commission of India and the Indian Judiciary. This paper will also examine the role of similarly placed institutions in the United States of America as well as some member states of the European Union.

This research paper will also examine select tools and sites sought to be used to create an enabling environment to facilitate access to these sub hundred dollar mobile devices: first, principles, legal frameworks and provisions of competition law/antitrust law; second, all relevant judicial decisions.

Research Method

First , this research paper will begin with establishing the case for the intervention of the regulator and/or the judiciary in the sub hundred dollar mobile device market by undertaking a review of primary and secondary literature [1]("literature"). Second, also through a literature review, the research will be contextualized to India in terms of the market, the actors involved and the legal framework. Third, a cross jurisdictional comparative legal search will be undertaken to understand the potential areas of intervention for the judiciary and the Competition Commission of India based on existing legal disputes in other jurisdictions; and the possible challenges that might ensue. Fourth, in a scenario building exercise, an attempt will be made to outline the role that the judiciary and the regulator might play in India, in order to ensure access to sub hundred dollar mobile devices is not impeded by litigation around standard essential patents.

Generally, in the writing of this paper, inputs will be sought from experts including MHRD Chair Professors, legal practitioners in India, academics in India and abroad and members of relevant departments of the Indian Government.

Research Communication

This research will be communicated through a series of blog posts- one every month from December, 2014 to December, 2015. A preliminary draft of a research paper will be produced by December, 2015, tentatively to be presented at the 4th Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest, New Delhi. The final output will be a research paper.

References

Bouthenia Guermazi and David Satola, Creating the "Right" Enabling Environment for ICT, in Robert Schware (ed.), E-development: From Excitement to Effectiveness (2005, World Bank Publications).
Jyoti Saraswati, Dot. Compradors- Power and Policy in the Development of the Indian Software Industry (2012, Pluto Press)

[1] Unless otherwise specified, for the purposes of this document, primary and secondary literature includes academic articles and books, newspaper articles and opinion pieces, blog posts, case law and other legal provisions.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/methodology-sub-hundred-dollar-mobile-devices-and-competition-law

Technology and Gender Based Violence

praskrishna — 2014-12-09T16:32:34Z

Rohini Lakshane was a speaker at this event organized by the Bachchao Project on November 24, 2014. Rohini spoke about various strategies that women use to respond to online harassment, such as reporting the abuser, and enlisting support from online followers, or friends or family in order to deal with the abuser.

Click to download the event report (PDF).

Date : 25/11/2014
Time : 6:15pm to 8:15 pm
No. of attendees : 14 ppl
Organisations Involved: The Bachchao Project , CIS , Amnesty International , Breakthrough , Take Back the Tech.Venue : Center for Internet and Society , Domlur

The Bachchao Project is a community effort to build Open Source Technologies with the following aims :

1. Personal Safety with focus on women.

2. Empowering prevention of Gender Based Violence.

3. Enabling fight against Gender Based Violence.

On 25th November we honored the UN’s “ End Violence against Women” day by conducting an event where we invited various NGOs and experts to come join us in our effort by :

1. showcasing how technology has been used to fight gender based violence

2. talk about how technology has added more mediums for gender based violence

3. And discuss how we could make better solutions to fight .

Talks given :

A show case of The Bachchao Project initiatives :

Speakers : Chinmayi S K , Ankitha Herurkar and Yogesh Londhe.

The Bachchao Project talked about their applications : ( thebachchaoproject.org)

Bachchao - A distress application used to send SOS msgs and record evidence in case of a distress
Pehara - A community monitoring system. Which sends distress and alert information in case of any distress reported by anyone in the community to friend , family and the police
i-rode : An Application used to rate public transit and display the safety of a public transit.
Gender Sensitivity of public space : an initiative to provide an interface to rate gender sensitivites of public spaces based on certain questions.
readytoreport.in, an initiative by Amnesty International :

Speaker : Gopika Bashi

Gopika Bashi from Amnesty International spoke about their effort to educate and encourage women to file an FIR when an incident occurs to them . readytoreport.in is a website which educates about all the legal option and the rights of a abused .It also provide answers to their minor questions.

How Breakthrough is using technology to solve problems :

Speaker : Manoj M

Manoj spoke about two of the many initiatives breakthrough has undertaken .

Board the Bus Campaign : This was a gamification solution used by breakthrough to encourage using public transport by women. Where in for every action the woman takes they were given some points which could be

converted into incentives.

Trainer App : This was used to interact with the various trainer at breakthrough who conduct sexual harassment seminars in various States of the country.

Online Harassment in the Indian context :

Speakers :(Rohini Lakshane and Chinmayi S K )

The speakers talked about various forms of Online Harassment . They spoke about the various contextual forms of Harassment in india because of the cultural practices . That included not understanding consent and not understanding the online spaces are an extension of Physical spaces.

Rohini spoke about various strategies that women use to respond to online harassment, such as reporting the abuser, and enlisting support from online followers, or friends or family in order to deal with the abuser. Very few women take legal recourse due to lack of faith in the law, or the time-consuming, emotionally taxing and financially draining nature of legal processes, or negative experiences with law enforcement and the police. Rohini also spoke about how laws don’t necessarily take into account the consent of women and that there are grey areas where it is difficult to distinguish between sexual expression, obscenity and pornography using the existing legal framework in India.

Chinmayi also spoke about take back the tech and how it is fighting online harassment.

Discussion Takeaways :

Panelists :

Ushashri TS - MD , Manhattan Associates , India

Gopika Bashi -Women's Rights Researcher & Campaigner at Amnesty International India

Rohini Lakshane - Researcher at the Centre for Internet and Society

Manoj M - Media and technology Consultant at breakthrough

“one plug fits all” - might not be a adage that might not be applicable for technology solutions in gender based violence
Response of the application or the device needs to be time bound depending upon the application need not be real time always
Application for crisis should be time bound , should consider the limitations like battery and should provide as much accuracy in terms of location.
Technology should take into consideration environments ( rural vs urban) , Cultural tendencies and interactions .
Applications needs to simple to use to make it universal
Validation should be an important part of the technology since there is a chance of a lot of garbage data .
Attitudinal changes will support the usage of technology in a proper way esp in a country like India .
Similar apps for the same purpose without seriously considering the quality of service and sustainability can be harmful .
Everything cannot be an application .
Technology needs acts like a service provider in solving the issues.
There is need and use of technology in counselling and education.
Some technologies should not be done like online FIR since then the authorities might shy away from responsibilities. But some people might have a need for such technologies hence the implementation and validation must be thought through. Also the police would not welcome digital avenues to file FIRs. This is because they try to gauge if the complaint is false by speaking with a complainant who pays a visit to the police station. This is their way of weeding out false and frivolous complaints, and sometimes of thwarting genuine complaints because more FIRs mean more work for the police. They lose this option when FIRs are submitted through digital channels.

Harass Map Egypt is an good example of how technological projects should be implemented with 1000 volunteers working on ground tirelessly to ensure the repeated mapping and stopping of street harassment.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/technology-gender-based-violence

Teaching in the Age of Wikipedia

vishnu — 2014-12-28T04:04:47Z

This course is conceived by CIS-A2K. It is currently envisaged as an add-on Certificate Course jointly offered by CIS-A2K and the Nirmala Institute of Education (NIE)-a premier teacher training establishment in Goa, India.

Read the original on Wikipedia page here.

Problem Statement

In India and in other developing countries a lot of emphasis is being laid of late on the use of ICT for improvement of literacy and education.

Massive efforts are afoot by the Government of India, provincial governments within each state, civil society organizations and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives to include ICT (especially digital technology and the internet) into the teaching learning process. Most of these approaches are techno-utopian and think that giving a tablet to a child will automatically transform the learning environment.

Thus, substantial focus is on either technology or digital content creation (lesson plans, etc.) and almost singularly focussed on the student. There is very little done to empower or train the teachers on how to use digital technology in the classroom. When teachers are not equipped to deal with a digital classroom, use of digital technology is not optimised.

There are instances where the students were given free laptops or tablets by the government and the teachers banned their use in the classroom. Is the average Indian teacher equipped to handle a class of students who are always gazing at their screens?

How will an average Indian teacher approach a class with access to Wikipedia? Do we need to re-imagine the classroom? If yes, how? Consequently, do we need to re-imagine the role of the teacher in the age of Wikipedia?

How does this course attempt to address this problem?

This course is a small step in the direction of empowering the teacher trainees (mostly digital immigrants) to get a grasp on how the digital and internet has changed our mode of learning and approach to knowledge. It will show the macro and bird's eye view of how we have moved on from a Tree of Knowledge to a Web of Knowledge. The course will also introduce them to practical experiments that are being done within the Indian and global context and to also critically evaluate the relevance of a digital knowledge platform like Wikipedia.

Background

The knowledge production, consumption, dissemination and distribution is undergoing a tectonic shift with the advent of digital technologies. Within this context of the digital turn, openness and transparency have gained new significance.

On the one hand, emerging participatory knowledge production models of openness like Wikipedia are increasingly pushing us to look beyond the traditional models of the past century; on the other hand, these models are being thought of to be effective in diverse fields like pedagogy, governance and policy making.

This has been impacting the way how teaching and learning happens at the school level. Open Educational Resources for instance is becoming a key asset for the students and educational institutions alike in imagining better pedagogy models.

This creates a pre-condition for the transformation of society into a ‘Knowledge Society’, wherein the student is increasingly repositioned from a ‘spectator’ to a ‘spect-actor’, from a consumer of knowledge to a “prosumer” (producer+consumer) of knowledge.

Within this context it becomes crucial that the teacher (a key pillar to building a robust knowledge society) is familiarized with the working of digital technology, especially within the context of the classroom.

Course Objectives

This certificate course is aimed at Teacher trainees and Teachers who teach up to High school in India. This course will give the Teacher participant:

a comprehensive understanding of the changes that are brought about by digital technology to the knowledge domain
an introduction to various openness movements that have informed the discourse on Open Educational Resources
exposure and training to participate on open knowledge platforms like Wikipedia
practical examples and best practices of using Wikipedia and sister projects within the classroom context.

Key Concepts

Digital, Digital literacy, FOSS, Internet, Knowledge, Knowledge Platforms, Mirrored Technology, Openness, Open Access, Open Educational Resources, Open-Data, Sugar, Wiki, Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wikitionary, Wikimedia Commons.

Course Design

The course will approach each of these issues within the context of Indian languages and school education, so that the teacher could take back the learning to his or her immediate pedagogic environment. The course will be delivered through lectures, demonstrations and hands-on training sessions. Every participant is expected to do 2 hours of pre-course work before coming for the first contact session. The face to face contact sessions will be done in two rounds with a gap of less than 40 days in between Round 1 and Round 2. The participant is expected to spend approximately 13 hours working on a real-time project with digital output.

Duration

This course involves 45 hours of effort.

30 hours face to face contact sessions
15 hours virtual contact

Resources

YouTube: Hindi Video Tutorials Play-list - FEEL FREE TO DOWNLOAD, REDISTRIBUTE AND REMIX THESE VIDEOS AS THEY ARE LICENSED UNDER CC-BY-SA 3.0.
YouTube: Kannada Video Tutorials Play-list - FEEL FREE TO DOWNLOAD, REDISTRIBUTE AND REMIX THESE VIDEOS AS THEY ARE LICENSED UNDER CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Registration

Step 1: All participants are expected to register themselves on Wikipedia. Please note that once you register on a Wikipedia project, you can use that 'Username' (i.e. same log-in details) across all Wikipedias and Wikimedia platforms. This should be done by September 4, 2014 (10.00 am). This tutorial will help you with Registration on Wikipedia: Registration Tutorial
Step 2: Once you create a Wikipedia user id, please fill up this form to complete the registration process.

Above: Flyer of the course to be held in November 2014 and January 2015

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/teaching-in-age-of-wikipedia

Odia author Nirmala Kumari Mohapatra's 21 books relicensed under CC-by-SA 4.0

subha — 2014-12-06T02:49:12Z

Twenty one books of renowned Odia author Nirmala Kumari Mohapatra will now be available under the Creative Commons License.

Taking into consideration the request from the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K), Odia researcher, teacher and author Nirmala Kumari Mohapatra has signed a note to release 21 of her books under CC-by-SA 4.0 license. She came and attended the "Odisha Dibasa 2014" organized by Odia Wikimedia Community and CIS-A2K on March 29 in Bhubaneswar where we got 11 books of Dr. Jagannath Mohanty. Expressing her motivation for kindheartedly donating 21 out of her 35 books she tells us, "If Jagannath Mohanty's writings could go to millions of readers online why not I also open up my work. My life as a teacher has spent on researching on simplifying education. One of the 21 books she donated "Chandaka-Damapada Hasti Abhayaranya", is one of the rarest books that has ever been written on wildlife sanctuary. It is full of many observations about the elephants that reside in the Chandaka-Damapada wildlife sanctuary. Many interesting incidents from Odisha's history like a female barber shaving Gandhi during his Padayatra that are captured in her books would add to the richness of Odia Wikipedia. These books will soon be available on Odia Wikisource for digitization.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-author-nirmala-kumari-mohapatra-21-books-under-cc

Privacy vs. Transparency: An Attempt at Resolving the Dichotomy

sunil — 2015-03-08T06:26:21Z

The right to privacy has been articulated in international law and in some national laws. In a few countries where the constitution does not explicitly guarantee such a right, courts have read the right to privacy into other rights (e.g., the right to life, the right to equal treatment under law and also the right to freedom of speech and expression).

With feedback and inputs from Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Elonnai Hickok, Bhairav Acharya and Geetha Hariharan. I would like to apologize for not providing proper citation to Julian Assange when the first version of this blog entry was published. I would also like to thank Micah Sifry for drawing this failure to his attention. The blog post originally published by Omidyar Network can be read here. Also see http://newint.org/features/2015/01/01/privacy-transparency/

In other countries where privacy is not yet an explicit or implicit right, harm to the individual is mitigated using older confidentiality or secrecy law. After the Snowden affair, the rise of social media and the sharing economy, some corporations and governments would like us to believe that “privacy is dead”. Privacy should not and cannot be dead, because that would mean that security is also dead. This is indeed the most dangerous consequence of total surveillance as it is technically impossible to architect a secure information system without privacy as a precondition. And conversely, it is impossible to guarantee privacy without security as a precondition.

The right to transparency [also known as the right to information or access to information] – while unavailable in international law – is increasingly available in national law. Over the last twenty years this right has become encoded in national laws – and across the world it is being used to hold government accountable and to balance the power asymmetry between states and citizens. Independent and autonomous offices of transparency regulators have been established. Apart from increasing government transparency, corporations are also increasingly required to be transparent as part of generic or industry specific regulation in the public interest. For instance, India’s Companies Act, 2013, requires greater transparency from the private sector. Other areas of human endeavor such as science and development are also becoming increasingly transparent though here it is still left up to self-regulation and there isn’t as much established law. Within science and research more generally, the rise of open data accompanied the growth of the Open Access and citizen science movement.

So the question before us is: Are these two rights – the right to transparency and the right to privacy – compatible? Is it a zero-sum game? Do we have to sacrifice one right to enforce the other? Unfortunately, many privacy and transparency activists think this is the case and this has resulted in some conflict. I suggest that these rights are completely compatible when it comes to addressing the question of power. These rights do not have to be balanced against one another. There is no need to settle for a sub-optimal solution. Rather this is an optimization problem and the solution is as follows: privacy protections must be inversely proportionate to power and as Julian Assange says transparency requirements should be directly proportionate to power.[*]

In most privacy laws, the public interest is an exception to privacy. If public interest is being undermined, then an individual privacy can be infringed upon by the state, by researchers, by the media, etc. And in transparency law, privacy is the exception. If the privacy of an individual can be infringed, transparency is not required unless it is in the public interest. In other words, the “public interest” test allows us to use privacy law and transparency law to address power asymmetries rather than exacerbate them. What constitutes “public interest” is of course left to courts, privacy regulators, and transparency regulators to decide. Like privacy, there are many other exceptions in any given transparency regime including confidentiality and secrecy. Given uneven quality of case law there will be a temptation by the corrupt to conflate exceptions. Here the old common-law principle of “there is no confidence as to the disclosure of iniquity” – which prevents confidentiality law from being used to cover malfeasance or illegality – can be adopted in appropriate jurisdictions.

Around 10 years ago, the transparency movement gave birth to yet another movement – the open government data movement. The tension between privacy and transparency is most clearly seen in the open government data movement. The open government data movement in some parts of the world is dominated by ahistorical and apolitical technologists, and some of them seem intent on reinventing the wheel. In India, ever since the enactment of the Right to Information Act, 2003, 30 transparency activists are either killed, beaten or criminally intimidated every year. This is the statistic from media coverage alone. Many more silently suffer. RTI or transparency is without a doubt one of the most dangerous sectors within civil society that you could choose to work in. In contrast, not a single open data activist has ever been killed, beaten or criminally intimidated. I suspect this is because open data activists do not sufficiently challenge power hierarchies. Let us look a little bit closely at their work cycle. When a traditional transparency activist asks a question, that is usually enough to get them into trouble. When an open data activist publishes an answer [a dataset nicely scrubbed and machine readable, or a visualization, or a tool] they are often frustrated because nobody seems interested in using it. Often even the activist is unclear what the question is. This is because open data activist works where data is available. Open data activists are obsessed with big datasets, which are easier to find at the bottom of the pyramid. They contribute to growing surveillance practices [the nexus between Internet giants, states, and the security establishment] rather that focusing on sousveillance [citizen surveillance of the state, also referred to as citizen undersight or inverse surveillance]. They seem to be obsessed only with tools and technologies, rather than power asymmetries and injustices.

Finally, a case study to make my argument easier to understand – Aadhaar or UID, India’s ambitious centralized biometric identity and authentication management system. There are many serious issues with its centralized topology, proprietary technology, and dependence on biometrics as authentication factors – all of which I have written about in the past. In this article, I will explain how my optimization solution can be applied to the project to make it more effective in addressing its primary problem statement that corruption is a necessary outcome of power asymmetries in India.

In its current avatar – the Aadhaar project hopes to assign biometric-based identities to all citizens. The hope is that, by doing authentication in the last mile, corruption within India’s massive subsidy programmes will be reduced. This, in my view, might marginally reduce retail corruption at the bottom of the pyramid. It will do nothing to address wholesale corruption that occurs as subsidies travel from the top to the bottom of the pyramid. I have advocated over the last two years that we should abandon trying to issue biometric identities to all citizens, thereby making them more transparent to the state. Let us instead issue Aadhaar numbers to all politicians and bureaucrats and instead make the state more transparent to citizens. There is no public interest in reducing privacy for ordinary citizens – the powerless – but there are definitely huge public interest benefits to be secured by increasing transparency of politicians and bureaucrats, who are the powerful.

The Indian government has recently introduced a biometric-based attendance system for all bureaucrats and has created a portal that allows Indian citizens to track if their bureaucrats are arriving late or leaving early. This unfortunately is just bean counting [for being corrupt and being punctual are not mutually exclusive] and public access to the national portal was turned off because of legitimate protests from some of the bureaucrats. What bureaucrats do in office, who they meet, and which documents they process is more important than when they arrive at or depart from work. The increased transparency or reduced privacy was not contributing to the public interest.

Instead of first going after small-ticket corruption at the bottom of the pyramid, maximization of public interest requires us to focus on the top, for there is much greater ROI for the anti-corruption rupee. For example: constructing a digital signature based on audit trails that track all funds and subsidies as they move up and down the pyramid. These audit trails must be made public so that ordinary villagers can be supported by open data activists, journalists, social entrepreneurs, and traditional civil society in verification and course correction.

I hope open data activists, data scientists, and big data experts will draw inspiration from the giants of the transparency movement in India. I hope they will turn their attention to power, examine power asymmetries and then ask how the Aadhaar project can be leveraged to make India more rather than less equal.

Videos

Open Up? 2014: Risky Business: Transparency, Technology, Security, and Human Rights

Open Up? 2014: Data Collection and Sharing: Transparency and the Private Sector

The videos can also be watched on Vimeo:

[*].http://prospect.org/article/real-significance-wikileaks “Transparency should be proportional to the power that one has.”

Read the presentation on Risky Business: Transparency, Technology, Security and Privacy made at the Pecha Kucha session here. (ODP File, 35 kb)

Disclaimer: The views, opinions, and positions expressed by the author(s) of this blog are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or positions of Omidyar Network. We make no representations as to accuracy, completeness, timeliness, suitability or validity of any information presented by individual authors of the blogs and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries or damages arising from its display or use.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/privacy-v-transparency

55 Works of Iconic Indian writer released under Free Licence to benefit Wikisource

vishnu — 2014-11-14T13:29:48Z

Kannada is a language spoken by 40 million people in Karnataka – one of the four southern states of India.The Kannada Wikimedia community, in collaboration with CIS-A2K, are enthusiastic about having almost all of the works of Niranjana re-licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0 on the occasion of Kannada Rajyotsava.

The original post was published on Wikimedia Blog.

Niranjana was a prolific Indian author and activist, and wrote more than 60 books over the course of his career. These works will be digitized and made available on Kannada Wikisource, allowing Kannada speakers to freely access the diverse set of works. Niranjana’s works give a rich glimpse into social, political, and cultural history of Karnataka from the 1940s to 1990s; they can be used as a potential resource for creating and improving articles on Kannada Wikipedia.

Niranjana (1924-1992) was the pseudonym of Kulkund Shivarao, a prominent Kannada writer of the 20th century and a leading figure in the Progressive Writers’ Movement in Kannada. His prolific output, across nearly five decades, included novels, short stories, plays, biographies, political commentary, and translations. He was a regular columnist in the Kannada newspapers and magazines. Among his achievements as an editor are Jnana Gangotri, a 7-volume encyclopedia for young people, and a 25-volume compilation of the world’s greatest short stories.

A total of 55 Kannada books by Niranjana are re-licensed. “This is the single largest and most comprehensive individual collection of a writer to be released under CC-BY-SA 4.0 in any of the Indian languages so far,” says Kannada Wikimedian Omshivaprakash. Kannada Wikimedians and CIS-A2K have organized a formal event to celebrate Creative Commons efforts to cultivate free and open knowledge online in Kannada; specifically, Kannada Wikisource. It is important to also acknowledge the great initiative shown by Niranjana’s daughter, Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana (also CIS-A2K Advisor), in getting these works released under CC-BY-SA 4.0 licensing.

Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana says, “[Kannada] Wikisource is an excellent free and open knowledge platform for books in Indian languages and I am happy that my father’s works can now be accessed by [all] Kannadigas across the world. Let these writings have innumerable readers. What more could any author want?”

She is determined to release more work under CC licensing, and says, “[I] will be more than glad to get as many Indian works as possible under a free license as this will ensure that a lot of knowledge produced over the past many decades in India can easily be made accessible to the next generation of seekers of knowledge, who are digital natives.”

“This is the the single largest and most comprehensive individual collection of a writer to be released under CC-BY-SA 4.0 in any of the Indian languages so far,” says Omshivaprakash.

“KannadaWikipediaWorkshop 010″ by Pavanaja, under CC-BY-SA-3.0

Tejas Jain, another Kannada Wikimedian, was quick to co-write a blog in Kannada about this content donation. Jain says, “this is a bold step…and will act as motivation for other Kannada writers to release more content under CC-BY-SA 4.0.” He hopes to see “Kannda Wikisource grow as the comprehensive single digital resource for free Kannada books” and address “the fear of loosing the rich print heritage of Kannada to time.”

Omshivaprakash was surprised to realize that there is no article on such a prominent Kannada writer like Niranjana on English Wikipedia.This led to a Facebook discussion, and User Tito Dutta responded swiftly, but needed help with verifiable resources. Omshivaprakash chipped in with resources and a page on Niranjana (needs your Wiki Love) has now been started on English Wikipedia. While this is not a big achievement, it is a simple example of how the (Indian) English Wikipedians could collaborate with Indic Wikimedians in creating India focused content on English Wikipeida and how social media could be used for off-wiki collaboration by Wikimedians. Incidentally Tito and Omshivaprakash became friends on FB during the WMF’s India Community Consultation 2014 which was held recently in Bangalore.

Tejas Jain “This is a bold step[...]and will act as motivation for other Kannada writers to release more content under CC-BY-SA 4.0″

“Tejas Jain” by Visdaviva , under CC-BY-SA-4.0

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/55-works-of-iconic-indian-writer-released-under-free-licence-to-benefit-wikisource

Times Group wants TRAI to save the Internet from greedy telcos via Net Neutrality

praskrishna — 2014-12-05T00:52:23Z

In an especially strong attack against perceived threats to its Internet-based business, the Times of India group has sought regulatory intervention to ensure what is popularly called Net Neutrality, or the concept that internet service providers must charge only from the end consumer.

The article was published in Real Time News on November 10, 2014. Sunil Abraham gave his inputs.

In other words, the Times of India group wants TRAI to ensure that internet service providers and telecom companies do not take payments from certain websites to give favorable treatment to those websites on their networks.

Such a situation already exists in India’s cable business, where channels who do not pay cable operators are often simply blocked out by the cable operator and the consumer is not able to watch those channels.

The Times Group, which operates a host of websites under its Times Internet subsidiary, believes that rules should be put in place so that telecom operators and other Internet companies do not block out websites who do not pay money to them as has happened in the cable industry. This will prevent small websites and blogs from reaching their customers without paying money to telecom operators, it warned.

In a letter to the TRAI, the Times Group said there are certain trends in the Indian market in which some operators are already giving favorable treatment to certain websites.

“Given the lack of formal rules, the danger is that ISPs in India will violate the principal of Net Neutrality,” it said in a letter.

“There have already been some incidents where Indian ISPs have ignored net neutrality. This sets a precedent that broadband providers can choose the content you want to access, by making it easier or harder to get that content. On the Net, ISPs can use differential bandwidth caps, speed limits and pricing on broadband consumption.”

In recent months, operators like telecom operators have been pushing the regulator to allow them to charge websites and Internet-based services like WhatsApp. They argue that these services take up bandwidth on their networks and that they must be compensated for the bandwidth used by consumers for services like WhatsApp, Facebook etc..

“Telecom Operators in India are gearing up to push for a regulation to get websites to pay to allow consumers to access them. The telecom industry’s lobbying arm, the Cellular Operators Association of India, has listed “revenue sharing agreements” with telecom operators one of the five items on their wishlist for the new government,” Times Group said.

The debate around net neutrality started in the US where internet service providers started promoting their own websites and services by giving lower rates for accessing them.

“Services like Netflix and Hulu have revolutionized digital content consumption and given users enormous flexibility, but they are coming under pressure by copycat services developed by cable companies, such as Comcast Xfinity. These services take advantage of owning the cable connection by offering better, unlimited connectivity when using their service, while offering limited or capped connectivity when accessing Hulu or Netflix. This is an anti-competitive move that stifles innovation and competition,” Times Group said.

Other excerpts from Times Group’s submissions follow –

“Net Neutrality is the principle that the internet users should be able to access web content, download or upload files and communicate in methods of their choice without restrictions or limitations imposed by their Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Net Neutrality means an Internet that enables and protects free speech1 and equal opportunities. This means that Internet service providers should not block or discriminate against any applications or content that ride over those networks, and should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication or different speeds for different kinds of content.

“Underlying this, is the principle of whether or not India has enough safeguards to ensure that the ecosystem for content is a healthy and thriving one, and is not abused by distributors or last-mile operators aiming to create anti-competitive practices. This is a very real threat indeed, because while content may be king, distribution is God – and thousands of content owners are at the mercy of a few last mile owners who have become far more powerful than any media conglomerate could ever dream to be.

“It is hence critical that the government and regulators wake up to the fact that the only way to ensure a competitive media landscape with equal opportunities for all content-owners and their customers on Net and Mobile, is to ensure there are enough rules whereby customer connectivity is neutral to the content that rides on it. How net neutrality has shaped the internet : Net neutrality has shaped the internet in two fundamental ways: One, web users are free to connect to whatever website or service they want. ISPs do not bother with what kind of content is flowing from their servers.

“This has allowed the internet to grow into a truly global network and has allowed people to freely express themselves. For example, you can criticize your ISP on a blog post and the ISP will not restrict access to that post for its other subscribers, even though the post may harm its business. But more importantly, net neutrality has enabled a level playing field on the internet. To start a website, you don’t need lot of money or connections. Just host your website and you are good to go. If your service is good, it will find favour with web users.

“Unlike the cable TV where you have to forge alliances with cable connection providers to make sure that your channel reaches viewers, on the internet you don’t have to talk to ISPs to put your website online. This has led to the creation of Google, Facebook, Twitter and countless other services, all of which had very humble beginnings. They started as basic websites with modest resources. But they succeeded because net neutrality allowed web users to access these websites in an easy and unhindered manner. What will happen if there is no net neutrality : If there is no net neutrality, ISPs will have the power (and inclination) to shape internet traffic so that they can derive extra benefit from it.

“For example, several ISPs believe that they should be allowed to charge companies for services like YouTube and Netflix because these services consume more bandwidth compared to a normal website. Basically, these ISPs want a share in the money that YouTube or Netflix make. Without net neutrality, the internet as we know it, will not exist. Instead of free access, there could be “package plans” for consumers.

“For example, if you pay Rs 500, you will only be able to access websites based in India. To access international websites, you may have to pay more. Or there could be different connection speeds for different types of content, depending on how much you are paying for the service and what “add-on package” you have bought. This would clearly be a discriminatory practice between different websites and different kinds of content –and would men abuse of near-monopolistic powers of ISPs. Lack of net neutrality, would also spell doom for innovation on the web.

“It is possible that ISPs will charge web companies to enable faster access to their websites. Those who don’t pay, may see that their websites opening slowly. This means bigger companies like Google would be able to pay more to make access to Youtube or Google+ faster for web users but a startup that wants to create a different and better video hosting site, may not be able to do that and lose its business. Instead of an open and free internet, without net neutrality we are likely to get a web that has silos in it and to enter each silo, you will have to pay some “tax” to ISPs.

“The bottom line is that lack of net neutrality is an anti-consumer practice that will stifle competition and innovation in the digital economy, leaving power in the hands of telecom operators and broadband providers, rather than the thousands of emerging entrepreneurs in India. How Internet Neutrality may be jeopardized by ISPs, Telecom providers or other players in collusion: The case of Net and Mobile ISPs or Telecom players offering internet may try to get Internet companies to pay tolls and threaten to block or delay them if they don’t. They may do exclusive deals or other arrangements which may result in Internet blackouts or smaller websites being caught in the crossfire –, or websites, tweets, emails and texts may be mysteriously delayed or dropped, Videos would load slowly, if at all or the websites may end up working fine one minute, and time out another.

“More dangerously, this would enable a company to slow down its competitors or block political opinions it disagrees with. ISP would claim it is not their fault, and users would have no idea whom to blame –especially as there are currently no protections for Internet users. Further there is no competition in broadband, and even if there is, all ISPs may end up playing this game. On the Net, ISPs can use differential bandwidth caps, speed limits and pricing on broadband consumption. But on mobile, telecom operators can offer further favouritism towards preferred services, with additional benefits like selective billing integration and marketing/promotion.

“And since bandwidth on mobile is more limited than over broadband, restrictions or favouritism in bandwidth consumption offer telecom operators an even stronger, anti-competitive advantage. Worse, it sets a precedent that broadband providers can choose the content you want to access, by making it easier or harder to get that content. Further if freed from any legal restraints, ISPs can monitor everything users do and say online — and sell the information to the highest bidder. ISPs will have something that companies like Facebook and Google don’t: direct control over users’ connections to the Internet and the devices user use to connect to it. What is at stake is innovation and creativity, market competition, information availability and freedom of expression –and it is essential to protect thews ehard won freedoms only via Net Neutrality. International Scenario: Net neutrality has become a very heated issue in US and Europe, with significant momentum across civic groups, regulators and governments….

“While the internet only has 50-60 million users, its users can access vast amounts of content even as industries like e- commerce and travel have blossomed, creating economic value and real utility to consumers. Compare it to the MVAS world, where despite over 900 million users, the most common consumer sentiment is that they are being unfairly billed for irrelevant services. So what is the difference? On the internet, anyone can start a company and compete fairly for the consumers’ attention, spurring innovation and value. But in the mobile VAS world, only five major telecom operators control the services and choose the MVAS companies they want to patronize –even as they pay them rock bottom rates in revenue shares. The result is much less competition, and operators selling the same services (like caller ringback tones) increasingly aggressively to their customers, but with little or no innovation…

“As connectivity grows across the internet and mobiles, it is crucial that the government allows the same flourishing, open liberal ecosystem that has currently existed on the Web to continue across devices. India’s huge population and strong technical talent have the potential for global scale entrepreneurship and innovation, and can create a new dynamic India in the way IT had done in the 1990s. But it requires an infrastructure and atmosphere that is not controlled by last-mile connectivity providers who abuse their dominance.

“One should not confuse this with cross-media ownership –which is a non-issue, prompted by political motivations that fear a strong media. The real issue is whether or not we have enough safeguards to ensure that the ecosystem for content is a healthy and thriving one, and is not abused by distributors or last-mile operators aiming to create anti-competitive practices by expanding into content. This is a very real threat indeed, because while content may be king, distribution is God – and the thousands of content owners are at the mercy of a few last mile owners who have become far more powerful than any media conglomerate could ever be.

“It is high time, then, that the government and regulators wake up to the fact that the only way to ensure a competitive media landscape with equal voice for all content, is to ensure there are enough rules whereby customer connectivity is neutral to the content that rides on it. Survival of Net Neutrality : Net neutrality was earlier being implemented as a sort of a gentlemen’s agreement. It has survived so far because few people realized the potential of internet when it took off around 30 years ago. But now when the internet is not just an integral part of the society but an incredibly powerful –and disruptive— force as well,, ISPs across the world are trying to get the power to shape and control the traffic.

“But there are ways to keep net neutrality alive. Consumers should demand that ISPs continue their hands-off approach from the internet traffic. If consumers see a violation of net neutrality, they ought to take a proactive approach and register their displeasure with the ISP. They should also reward ISPs that uphold the net neutrality. At the same time, it is crucial to ensure that TRAI comes out with a set of clear and precise rules that protect the net neutrality.

“‘We have started seeing ISPs trying to take control of the traffic that flows from their servers but TRAI can regulate them. It can keep the internet open and consumer-friendly by forming rules that protect net neutrality. These are early days so it is easy to do. If ISPs manage to change the system, it may become too late,’ Sunil Abraham, director of Centre for internet and Society in Bangalore says.

“Conclusion: Internet has thrived because of its freedom of competition and ability for anyone with an internet connection to change the world. It is necessary to have safeguards – laws and checks and balances on the last mile of the consumer – to ensure last mile neutrality, which has now become the global movement across mediums. Taking advantage of last mile ownership throttles such innovation and competition.”

RTN's Take

We believe telecom operators and internet service providers should be allowed to offer ‘special offerings’ such as ‘Free Facebook’ by tying up with Facebook if companies like Facebook want to pay the internet access charges on behalf of the consumer.

However, such services should not be marketed as ‘Internet’ or ‘Web Access’ and must be clearly marketed as ‘Facebook Access’ or ‘Walled Garden Access’. Conversely, any consumer who pays for ‘Internet’ access should get neutral and unmanipulated access to all websites on an equal footing. There should be no behind-the-scenes tinkering with the traffic in such cases.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/news/rtn-asia-november-10-2014-times-group-wants-trai-to-save-internet-from-greedy-telcos-via-net-neutrality

Getting Strategic about Openness and Privacy

praskrishna — 2014-11-09T09:19:23Z

This blog post by Tim Davies, Open Data Research Lead at Web Foundation was published in Open Up? on November 3, 2014.

Click to read the original post here. Sunil Abraham gave his inputs.

Information is powerful. And in a world where the amount of information generated, captured and stored has grown exponentially in recent decades, getting hold of the information you need, when you need it, relies upon having access to the data that describes it. That makes the control of data especially powerful.

Modern transparency initiatives, promoting the idea of open data, have been seeking to break the data-monopoly of privileged actors within the state — unlocking key datasets and making them available for public scrutiny and reducing the information inequalities that undermine open public discourse. Opening up government data is *one* way in which citizens can reclaim some power and reestablish the principle that “they work for us”. Open government data gives us power to know how the government is spending money, what companies are getting public sector contracts and licenses, who owns these companies, what profits they make and what royalties and taxes they pay. Yet, progress has been slow, and we have faced substantial challenges in securing reliable and standardised flows of public data that can be joined-up to give a true picture of how public resources are being used, and key decisions made. Although millions of public datasets have been placed online, the most politically salient are often lacking. The 2013 Open Data Barometer found fewer than 1 in 10 accountability datasets were truly open.

At the same time, advocates of building a more open government need to grapple with three other trends that are shaping discussions of data, power and the state:

Firstly, and most important, the revelations brought to our attention by whistleblower Edward Snowden have confirmed the extent of the secret state and the profound imbalance of power between citizens and their state created through mass surveillance. Whilst projects to disclose even basic data on the state like public spending are underfunded and ad hoc, billions of dollars are poured into tools and technologies that violate basic human rights and that threaten trust and security on the Web. Fundamentally the problem with secret mass surveillance is that it destroys the checks and balances that are meant to limit the power of the state over citizens.
Secondly, and in part due to the discussion spared by Snowden, public awareness of the data, and consequently power, held by corporations has grown. The Web has become increasingly centralised, and large companies now harvest large amounts of data on any individual technology user. In parallel, in some countries such as the UK, governments have sought to use open data agendas as cover for increased proprietary sharing of public data with private firms, seeking to go around established principles of consent to share publicly held health, tax or student records with profit-making firms. Such data-sharing is not inherently wrong if there are public benefits, but building citizen trust in the state’s stewardship of personal data, and ensuring safeguards are in place to warrant that trust, is a major challenge.
Thirdly, concerns have been raised that some of the data released through open data initiatives may also affect the privacy of citizens. Some aggregated and anonymised datasets can be combined with other data to reverse engineer identifiable information. Although early calls for “raw data now” were clear that they were not calling for open personal information, in practice the divide between personal and public can be a narrow one.

So, do these trends mean we should be more cautious about opening up? Should the balance swing back towards a focus on protecting privacy? Ultimately, a simple opposition of privacy and openness is a false dichotomy. The question is not should we focus on openness, or should we protect privacy: but is Who should be open? And how? And whose privacy should be protected, and how?

Sunil Abraham, of the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, has offered a key solution in the idea that:

“Transparency should be proportional to power, privacy inversely so.”

It is on this basis that organisations working for a fairer future, with more vibrant public discourse, greater freedom, and better governments, can campaign for both privacy and openness together. Those who occupy public office, own companies, or tender for public contracts must accept that there is a legitimate public interest in information about their activities in these roles, whilst independent citizens must be afforded space to form views and live lives without constant state surveillance. Companies should not be considered to have a right to privacy: their interests are already protected by other laws and provisions.

To deliver effective openness through open data, the Web Foundation is working to understand how data gets used on the ground in different settings across the world, and, with Omidyar support, is working on the creation of inclusive open data standards for public contracting data. Standards like the Open Contracting Data Standard are part of building a new infrastructure of open governance, making it possible to join-up data from different places, helping tilt the balance of power towards citizens when it comes to scrutinising governments and corporations. Through the Open Data Barometer we keep track of the availability of key datasets that can be used for accountability, and we’re co-chairing the Open Government Partnership Open Data Working Group, seeking to set high standards for relevant and usable data disclosures by governments.

By focussing on the civic use of data, we can better identify those datasets that must be in the public domain. And by thinking about relative power when considering privacy we can address genuine privacy concerns, whilst not allowing corporations claiming privacy rights, or public figures trying to hide their financial interests, from diminishing the power of data to enable accountability.

At the same time, the Web Foundation leads the Web We Want campaign, challenging mass surveillance and seeking to secure a Web where individuals have the right to privacy, and the tools to secure it. And increasingly transparency of what the state and companies do with personal data can help increase the capacity of citizens to respond to threats to their autonomy, and can increase oversight and safeguards on state or corporate capacity.

Ultimately, our ongoing efforts to open up, and to protect individual freedoms, have to be strategic. And keeping an analysis of power, and Sunil’s maxim, in mind, provides a good starting point to guide the strategy.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/open-up-tim-davies-november-3-2014-getting-strategic-about-openness-and-privacy

White Paper on RTI and Privacy V1.2

vipul — 2014-11-09T02:53:51Z

This white paper explores the relationship between privacy and transparency in the context of the right to information in India. Analysing pertinent case law and legislation - the paper highlights how the courts and the law in India address questions of transparency vs. privacy.

Introduction

Although the right to information is not specifically spelt out in the Constitution of India, 1950, it has been read into Articles 14 (right to equality), 19(1)(a) (freedom of speech and expression) and 21 (right to life) through cases such as Bennet Coleman v. Union of India,[1] Tata Press Ltd. v. Maharashtra Telephone Nigam Ltd.,[2] etc. The same Articles of the Constitution were also interpreted in Kharak Singh v.State of U.P.,[3] Govind v. State of M.P., [4] and a number of other cases, to include within their scope a right to privacy. At the very outset it appears that a right to receive information -though achieving greater transparency in public life - could impinge on the right to privacy of certain people. The presumed tension between the right to privacy and the right to information has been widely recognized and a framework towards balancing the two rights, has been widely discussed across jurisdictions. In India, nowhere is this conflict and the attempt to balance it more evident than under the Right to Information Act, 2005 (the "RTI Act").

Supporting the constitutional right to information enjoyed by the citizens, is the statutorily recognized right to information granted under the RTI Act. Any potential infringement of the right to privacy by the provisions of the RTI Act are sought to be balanced by section 8 which provides that no information should be disclosed if it creates an unwarranted invasion of the privacy of any individual. This exception states that there is no obligation to disclose information which relates to personal information, the disclosure of which has no relationship to any public activity or interest, or which would cause unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the individual unless the larger public interest justifies the disclosure of such information. [5] The Act further goes on to say that where any information relating to or supplied by a third party and treated by that party as confidential, is to be disclosed, the Central Public Information Officer or State Public Information Officer has to give written notice to that party within five days of receiving such a request inviting such third party (within ten days) to make its case as to whether such information should or should not be disclosed.[6]

A plain reading of section 11 suggests that for the section to apply the following three conditions have to be satisfied, i.e. (i) if the PIO is considering disclosing the information (ii) the information relates to the third party or was given to a Public Authority by the third party in confidence; and (iii) the third party treated the information to be a confidential. It has been held that in order to satisfy the third part of the test stated above, the third party has to be consulted and therefore a notice has to be sent to the third party. Even if the third party claims confidentiality, the proviso to the section provides that the information cannot be withheld if the public interest in the disclosure outweighs the possible harm or injury that may be caused to the third party, except in cases of trade or commercial secrets.[7] The Courts have also held that section 11 should be read keeping in mind the exceptions contained in section 8 (discussed in detail later) and the exceptions contained therein. [8]

This principle of non disclosure of private information can be found across a number of common law jurisdictions. The United Kingdom's Freedom of Information Act, 2000 exempts the disclosure of information where it would violate the data protection principles contained in the Data Protection Act, 1998 or constitute an actionable breach of confidence.[9] The Australian Freedom of Information Act, 1982 categorizes documents involving unreasonable disclosure of personal information as conditionally exempt i.e. allows for their disclosure unless such disclosure would be contrary to public interest.[10] The Canadian Access to Information Act also has a provision which allows the authorities to refuse to disclose personal information except in accordance with the provisions of the Canadian Privacy Act. [11]

An overview of the RTI Act, especially sections 6 to 8 seems to give the impression that the legislature has tried to balance and harmonize conflicting public and private rights and interests by building sufficient safeguards and exceptions to the general principles of disclosure under the Act. [12] This is why it is generally suggested that section 8, when applied, should be given a strict interpretation as it is a fetter on not only a statutory right granted under the RTI Act but also a pre-existing constitutional right. [13] Logical as this argument may seem and appropriate in some circumstances, it does present a problem when dealing with the privacy exception contained in section 8(1)(j). That is because the right to privacy envisaged in this section is also a pre-existing constitutional right which has been traced to the same provisions of the Constitution from which the constitutional right of freedom of information emanates.[14] Therefore there is an ambiguity regarding the treatment and priority given to the privacy exception vs. the disclosure mandate in the RTI Act, as it requires the balancing of not only two competing statutory rights but also two constitutional rights.

The Privacy Exception

As discussed earlier, the purpose of the RTI Act is to increase transparency and ensure that people have access to as much public information as possible. Such a right is critical in a democratic country as it allows for accountability of the State and allows individuals to seek out information and make informed decisions. However, it seems from the language of the RTI Act that at the time of its drafting the legislature did realize that there would be a conflict between the endeavor to provide information and the right to privacy of individuals over the information kept with public authorities, which is why a privacy exception was carved into section 8(1)(j) of the Right to Information Act. The Act does not only protect the privacy of the third party who's information is at risk of being disclosed, but also the privacy of the applicant. In fact it has now been held that a private respondent need not give his/her ID or address as long as the information provided by him/her is sufficient to contact him/her.[15]

It is interesting to note that although the RTI Act gives every citizen a right to information, it does not limit this right with a stipulation as to how the information shall be used by the applicant or the reason for which the applicant wants such information. [16] This lack of a purpose limitation in the Act may have privacy implications as non sensitive personal information could be sought from different sources and processed by any person so as to convert such non-sensitive or anonymous information into identifiable information which could directly impact the privacy of individuals.

The exception in S. 8(1)(j) prohibits the disclosure of personal information for two reasons (i) its disclosure does not relate to any public activity or interest or (ii) it would be an unwarranted invasion into privacy. The above two conditions however get trumped if a larger public interest is satisfied by the disclosure of such information.

One interesting thing about the exception contained in section 8(1)(j) is that this exception itself has an exception to it in the form of a proviso. The proviso says that any information which cannot be denied to the central or state legislature shall not be denied to any person. Since the proviso has been placed at the end of sub-section 8(1) which is also the end of clause 8(1)(j), one might be tempted to ask whether this proviso applies only to the privacy exception i.e. clause 8(1)(j) or to the entire sub-section 8(1) (which includes other exceptions such as national interest, etc.). This issue was put to rest by the Bombay High Court when it held that since the proviso has been put only after clause 8(1)(j) and not before each and every clause, it would not apply to the entire sub-section 8(1) but only to clause 8(1)(j), thus ensuring that the exceptions to disclosure other than the right to privacy are not restricted by this proviso.[17]

Scope of Proviso to section 8(1)(j)
Though the courts have agreed that the proviso is applicable only to section 8(1)(j), the import of the proviso to section 8(1)(j) is a little more ambiguous and there are conflicting decisions by different High Courts on this point. Whereas the Bombay High Court has laid emphasis on the letter of the proviso and derived strength from the objects and overall scheme of the Act to water down the provisions of section 8(1)(j), [18] the Delhi High Court has disagreed with such an approach which gives "undue, even overwhelming deference" to Parliamentary privilege in seeking information. Such an approach would render the protection under section 8(1)j) meaningless, and the basic safeguard bereft of content.[19] In the words of the Delhi High Court:

" The proviso has to be only as confined to what it enacts, to the class of information that Parliament can ordinarily seek; if it were held that all information relating to all public servants, even private information, can be accessed by Parliament, Section 8(1)(j) would be devoid of any substance, because the provision makes no distinction between public and private information. Moreover there is no law which enables Parliament to demand all such information; it has to be necessarily in the context of some matter, or investigation. If the reasoning of the Bombay High Court were to be accepted, there would be nothing left of the right to privacy, elevated to the status of a fundamental right, by several judgments of the Supreme Court. "

The interpretation given by the Delhi High Court thus ensures that section 8(1)(j) still has some effect, as otherwise the privacy exception would have gotten steamrolled by parliamentary privilege and all sorts of information such as Income Tax Returns, etc. of both private and public individuals would have been liable to disclosure under the RTI Act.

Unfortunately, the RTI Act does not describe the terms "personal information" or "larger public interest" used in section 8(1)(j), which leaves some amount of ambiguity in interpreting the privacy exception to the RTI Act. Therefore the only option for anyone to understand these terms in greater depth is to discuss and analyse the case laws developed by the Hon'ble Supreme Court and the High Courts which have tried to throw some light on this issue.

We shall discuss some of these landmark judgments to understand the interpretations given to these terms and then move on to specific instances where (applying these principles) information has been disclosed or denied.

Personal Information
The RTI Act defines the term information but does not define the term "personal information". Therefore one has to rely on judicial pronouncements to understand the term a more clearly. Looking at the common understanding and dictionary meaning of "personal" as well as the definition of "information" contained in the RTI Act it could be said that personal information would be information, information that pertains to a person and as such it takes into its fold possibly every kind of information relating to the person. Now, such personal information of the person may, or may not, have relation to any public activity, or to public interest. At the same time, such personal information may, or may not, be private to the person. [20]

The Delhi High Court has tried to draw a distinction between the term "private information" which encompasses the personal intimacies of the home, the family, marriage, motherhood, procreation, child rearing and of the like nature and "personal information" which would be any information that pertains to an individual. This would logically imply that all private information would be part of personal information but not the other way round. [21] The term 'personal information' has in other cases, been variously described as "identity particulars of public servants, i.e. details such as their dates of birth, personal identification numbers",[22] and as including tax returns, medical records etc.[23] It is worth noting that just because the term used is "personal information" does not mean that the information always has to relate to an actual person, but may even be a juristic entity such as a trust or corporation, etc.[24]

Larger Public Interest
The term larger public interest has not been discussed or defined in the RTI Act, however the Courts have developed some tests to determine if in a given situation, personal information should be disclosed in the larger public interest.

Whenever a Public Information Officer is asked for personal information about any person, it has to balance the competing claims of the privacy of the third party on the one hand and claim of public interest on the other and determine whether the public interest in such a disclosure satisfies violating a person's privacy. The expression "public interest" is not capable of a precise definition and does not have a rigid meaning. It is therefore an elastic term and takes its colors from the statute in which it occurs, the concept varying with the time and the state of the society and its needs. This seems to be the reason why the legislature and even the Courts have shied away from a precise definition of "public interest". However, the term public interest does not mean something that is merely interesting or satisfies the curiosity or love of information or amusement; but something in which a class of the community have some interest by which their rights or liabilities are affected.[25]

There have been suggestions that the use of the word "larger" before the term "public interest" denotes that the public interest involved should serve a large section of the society and not just a small section of it, i.e. if the information has a bearing on the economy, the moral values in the society; the environment; national safety, or the like, the same would qualify as "larger public interest".[26] However this is not a very well supported theory and the usage of the term "larger public interest" cannot be given such a narrow meaning, for example what if the disclosure of the information could save the lives of only 10 people or even just 5 children? Would the information not be released just because it violates one person's right to privacy and there is not a significant number of lives at stake? This does not seem to be what all the cases on the right to privacy, right from Kharak Singh[27] all the way to Naz Foundation, [28] seem to suggest. Infact, in the very same judgment where the above interpretation has been suggested, the Court undermines this argument by giving the example of a person with a previous crime of sexual assault being employed in an orphanage and says that the interest of the small group of children in the orphanage would outweigh the privacy concerns of the individual thus requiring disclosure of all information regarding the employee's past.

In light of the above understanding of section 8(1)(j), there seem to be two different tests that have been proposed by the Courts, which seem to connote the same principle although in different words:

1. The test laid down by Union Public Service Commission v. R.K. Jain:

(i) The information sought must relate to „Personal information‟ as understood above of a third party. Therefore, if the information sought does not qualify as personal information, the exemption would not apply;

(ii) Such personal information should relate to a third person, i.e., a person other than the information seeker or the public authority; AND

(iii) (a) The information sought should not have a relation to any public activity qua such third person, or to public interest. If the information sought relates to public activity of the third party, i.e. to his activities falling within the public domain, the exemption would not apply. Similarly, if the disclosure of the personal information is found justified in public interest, the exemption would be lifted, otherwise not; OR (b) The disclosure of the information would cause unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the individual, and that there is no larger public interest involved in such disclosure. [29]

2. The other test was laid down in Vijay Prakash v. Union of India, but in the specific circumstances of disclosure of personal information relating to a public official:

(i) whether the information is deemed to comprise the individual's private details, unrelated to his position in the organization;

(ii) whether the disclosure of the personal information is with the aim of providing knowledge of the proper performance of the duties and tasks assigned to the public servant in any specific case; and

(iii) whether the disclosure will furnish any information required to establish accountability or transparency in the use of public resources. [30]

Constitutional Restrictions
Since there is not extensive academic discussion on the meaning of the term "larger public interest" or "public interest" as provided in section 8(1)(j), one is forced to turn to other sources to get a better idea of these terms. One such source is constitutional law, since the right to privacy, as contained in section 8(1)(j) has its origins in Articles 14,[31] 19(1)(a) [32] and 21[33] of the Constitution of India. The constitutional right to privacy in India is also not an absolute right and various cases have carved out a number of exceptions to privacy, a perusal of which may give some indication as to what may be considered as 'larger public interest', these restrictions are:

a) Reasonable restrictions can be imposed on the right to privacy in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence; ^{^[34]}

b) Reasonable restrictions can be imposed upon the right to privacy either in the interests of the general public or for the protection of the interests of any Scheduled Tribe;^{^[35]}

c) The right to privacy can be restricted by procedure established by law which procedure would have to satisfy the test laid down in the Maneka Gandhi case.^{^[36]}

d) The right can be restricted if there is an important countervailing interest which is superior; ^{^[37]}

e) It can be restricted if there is a compelling state interest to be served by doing so; ^{^[38]}

f) It can be restricted in case there is a compelling public interest to be served by doing so; ^{^[39]}

g) The Rajagopal tests - This case lays down three exceptions to the rule that a person's private information cannot be published, viz. i) person voluntarily thrusts himself into controversy or voluntarily raises or invites a controversy, ii) if publication is based on public records other than for sexual assault, kidnap and abduction, iii) there is no right to privacy for public officials with respect to their acts and conduct relevant to the discharge of their official duties. It must be noted that although the Court talks about public records, it does not use the term 'public domain' and thus it is possible that even if a document has been leaked in the public domain and is freely available, if it is not a matter of public record, the right to privacy can still be claimed in regard to it.^{^[40]}

Section 8(1)(j) in Practice

The discussion in the previous chapter regarding the interpretation of section 8(1)(j), though (hopefully) helpful still seems a little abstract without specific instances and illustrations to drive home the point. In this chapter we shall endeavor to briefly discuss some specific cases regarding information disclosure where the issue of violation of privacy of a third party was raised.

Private Information of Public Officials
Some of the most common problems regarding section 8(1)(j) come up when discussing information (personal or otherwise) regarding public officers. The issue comes up because an argument can be made that certain information such as income tax details, financial details, medical records, etc. of public officials should be disclosed since it has a bearing on their public activities and disclosure of such information in case of crooked officers would serve the interests of transparency and cleaner government (hence serving a larger public interest). Although section 8(1)(j) does not make any distinction between a private person and a public servant, a distinction in the way their personal information is treated does appear in reality due to the inherent nature of a public servant. Infact it has sometimes been argued that public servants must waive the right to privacy in favour of transparency.[41] However this argument has been repeatedly rejected by the Courts, [42] just because a person assumes public office does not mean that he/she would automatically lose their right to privacy in favour of transparency.

If personal information regarding a public servant is asked for, then a distinction must be made between the information that is inherently personal to the person and that which has a connection with his/her public functions. The information exempted under section 8(1)(j) is personal information which is so intimately private in nature that the disclosure of the same would not benefit any other person, but would result in the invasion of the privacy of the third party.[43] In short, the Courts have concluded that there can be no blanket rule regarding what information can and cannot be disclosed when it comes to a public servant, and the disclosure (or lack of it) would depend upon the circumstances of each case.

Although the earlier thinking of the CIC as well as various High Courts of the country was that information regarding disciplinary proceedings and service records of public officials is to be treated as public information in order to boost transparency,[44] however this line of thinking took almost a U-turn in 2012 after the decision of the Supreme Court in Girish Ramchandra Deshpande v. Central Information Commissioner,[45] and now the prevailing principle is that such information is personal information and should not be disclosed unless a larger public interest is would be served by the disclosure.

It would also be helpful to look at a list of the type of information regarding public servants which has been disclosed in the past, gleaned from various cases, to get a better understanding of the prevailing trends in such cases:

(i) Details of postings of public servants at various points of time, since this was not considered as personal information; [46]

(ii) Copies of posting/ transfer orders of public servants, since it was not considered personal information; [47]

(iii) Information regarding transfers of colleagues cannot be exempted from disclosure, since disclosure would not cause any unwarranted invasion of privacy and non disclosure would defeat the object of the RTI Act;[48]

(iv) Information regarding the criteria adopted and the marks allotted to various academic qualifications, experience and interview in selection process for government posts by the state Public Service Commission;[49]

(v) Information regarding marks obtained in written test, interview, annual confidential reports of the applicant as well as the marks in the written test and interview of the last candidate selected, since this information was not considered as personal information; [50]

(vi) Information relating to the appointment and educational certificates of teachers in an educational institution (which satisfies the requirements of being a public authority) was disclosed since this was considered as relevant to them performing their functions. [51]

The performance of an employee/officer in an organization is primarily a matter between the employee and the employer and normally those aspects are governed by the service rules which fall under the expression "personal information", the disclosure of which has no relationship to any public activity or public interest. To understand this better below is a brief list of the type of information that has been considered by the Courts as personal information which is liable to be exempt from disclosure under section 8(1)(j):

(i) (a) Salary details, (b) show cause notice, memo and censure, (c) return of assets and liabilities, (d) details of investment and other related details, (e) details of gifts accepted, (f) complete enquiry proceedings, (g) details of income tax returns;[52]

(ii) All memos issued, show cause notices and orders of censure/punishment etc. are personal information. Cannot be revealed unless a larger public interest justifies such disclosure;[53]

(iii) Disciplinary information of an employee is personal information and is exempt under section 8(1)(j); [54]

(iv) Medical records cannot be disclosed due to section 8(1)(j) as they come under "personal information", unless a larger public interest can be shown meriting such disclosure;[55]

(v) Copy of personnel records and service book (containing Annual Confidential Reports, etc.) of a public servant is personal information and cannot be disclosed due to section 8(1)(j);[56]

(vi) Information regarding sexual disorder, DNA test between an officer and his surrogate mother, name of his biological father and step father, name of his mother and surrogate step mother and such other aspects were denied by the Courts as such information was considered beyond the perception of decency and was an invasion into another man's privacy.[57]

It is not just the issue of disclosure of personal details of public officials that raises complicated questions regarding the right to information, but the opposite is equally true, i.e. what about seemingly "public" details of private individuals. A very complicated question arose with regard to information relating to the passport details of private individuals.

Passport Information of Private Individuals
The disclosure of passport details of private individuals is complicated because for a long time there was some confusion because of the treatment to be given to passport details, i.e. would its disclosure cause an invasion of privacy since it contains personally identifying information, specially because photocopies of the passport are regularly given for various purposes such as travelling, getting a new phone connection, etc. The Central Information Commission used a somewhat convoluted logic that since a person providing information relating to his residence and identity while applying for a passport was engaging in a public activity therefore such information relates to a public activity and should be disclosed. This view was rejected by the Delhi High Court in the case of Union of India v. Hardev Singh,[58] and the view taken inHardev Singh was later endorsed and relied upon in Union of India v. Rajesh Bhatia, [59] while hearing a number of petitions to decide what details of a third party's passport should be disclosed and what should be exempt from disclosure.

A list of the Courts conclusions is given below:

Information that can be revealed:

(i) Name of passport holder;

(ii) Whether a visa was issued to a third party or not;

(iii) Details of the passport including dates of first issue, subsequent renewals, dates of application for renewals, numbers of the new passports and date of expiry;

(iv) Nature of documents submitted as proof;

(v) Name of police station from where verification for passport was done;

(vi) Whether any report was called for from the jurisdictional police;

(vii) Whether passport was renewed through an agent or through a foreign embassy;

(viii) Whether it was renewed in India or any foreign country;

(ix) Whether tatkal facility was availed by the passport holder;

Information that cannot be revealed:

(i) Contents of the documents submitted with the passport application;

(ii) Marital status and name and address of husband;

(iii) Whether person's name figures as mother/guardian in the passport of any minor;

(iv) Copy of passport application form;

(v) Residential address of passport holder;

(vi) Details of cases filed/pending against passport holder;

(vii) Copy of old passport;

(viii) Report of the police and CID for issuing the passport;

(ix) Copy of the Verification Certificate, if any such Verification Certificate was relied upon for the issue of the passport.

Other Instances

Apart from the above two broad categories of information that has been the subject of intense judicial discussion, certain other situations have also arisen where the Courts have had to decide the issue of disclosure under section 8(1)(j), a brief summary of such situations is given below:

(i) names and details of people who received money as donations from the President out of public funds was considered as information which has a definite link to public activities and was therefore liable to be disclosed;[60]

(ii) information regarding the religion practiced by a person, who is alleged to be a public figure, collected by the Census authorities was not disclosed since it was held that the quest to obtain the information about the religion professed or not professed by a citizen cannot be in any event; [61]

(iii) information regarding all FIRs against a person was not protected under section 8(1)(j) since it was already a matter of public record and Court record and could not be said to be an invasion of the person's privacy;[62]

(iv) information regarding the income tax returns of a public charitable trust was held not to be exempt under section 8(1)(j), since the trust involved was a public charitable trust functioning under a Scheme formulated by the District Court and registered under the Bombay Public Trust Act as such due to its character and activities its tax returns would be in relation to public interest or activities.[63]

Conclusion

A discussion of the provisions of section 8 and 11 of the RTI Act as well as the case laws under it reveals that the legislature was aware of the dangers posed to the privacy of individuals from such a powerful transparency law. However, it did not want the exceptions carved out to protect the privacy of individuals to nullify the objects of the RTI Act and therefore drafted the legislation to incorporate the principle that although the RTI Act should not be used to violate the privacy of individuals, such an exception will not be applicable if a larger public interest is to be served by the disclosure. This principle is in line with other common law jurisdictions such as the U.K, Austalia, Canada, etc. which have similar exceptions based on privacy or confidentiality.

However it is disappointing to note that the legislature has only left the legislation at the stage of the principle which has left the language of the exception very wide and open to varied interpretations. It is understandable that the legislature would try to keep specifics out of the scope of the section to make it future proof. It is obvious that it would be impossible for the legislature or the courts to imagine every single circumstance that could arise where the right to information and the right to privacy would be at loggerheads. However, such wide and ambiguous drafting has led to cases where the Courts and the Central Information Commission have taken opposing views, with the views of the Court obviously prevailing in the end. This was illustrated by the issue of disclosure of passport details of private individuals with a large number of CIC cases taking different views till the High Court of Delhi gave categorical findings on the issue in the Hardev Singh and Rajesh Bhatia cases. Similar was the issue of service details of public officials since before the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Girish Ramchandra Deshpande in 2012 the prevailing thinking of the CIC was that details of disciplinary proceedings against public officials are not covered by section 8(1)(j), however this thinking has now taken a U-turn as the Supreme Court's understanding of the right to privacy has taken stronger roots and such information is now outside the scope of the RTI Act, unless a larger public interest in the disclosure can be shown.

The ambiguity that arises in application when trying to balance the right to privacy against the right to information is a drawback in incorporating only a principle and leaving the language ambiguous in any legislation. This paper does not advocate that the legislature try to list out all the instances of this problem that are possibly imaginable, this would be too time consuming and may even be counterproductive. However, it is possible for the legislature to adopt an accepted practice of legislative drafting and list certain instances where there is an obvious balancing required between the two rights and put them as "Illustrations" to the section. This device has been utilised to great effect by some of the most fundamental legislations in India such as the Contract Act, 1872 and the Indian Penal Code, 1860. An alternative to this approach could be to utilize the approach taken in the Australian Freedom of Information Act, where the Act itself gives certain factors which should be considered to determine whether access to a particular document would be in the public interest or not.

List of References

Primary Sources

1. Australia Freedom of Information Act, 1982.

2. Bennet Coleman v. Union of India, AIR 1973 SC 106.

3. Bhagat Singh v. Chief Information Commissioner, 2008 (64) AIC 284 (Del).

4. Calcutta High Court, WP (W) No. 33290 of 2013, dated 20-11-2013.

5. Canadian Access to Information Act.

6. Canara Bank v. Chief Information Commissioner, 2007 (58) AIC Ker 667

7. Constitution of India, 1950.

8. Govind v. State of M.P., Supreme Court of India, WP No. 72 of 1970, dated 18-03-1975.

9. Haryana Public Service Commission v. State Information Commission, AIR 2009 P & H 14.

10. Jamia Millia Islamia v. Sh. Ikramuddin, Delhi High Court, WP(C) 5677 of 2011 dated 22-11-2011.

11. Jitendra Singh v. State of U.P., 2008 (66) AIC 685 (All).

12. Kharak Singh v. State of U.P., AIR 1963 SC 129.

13. Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India, Supreme Court of India, WP No. 231 of 1977, dated 25-01-1978.

14. Naz Foundation Delhi High Court, WP(C) No.7455/2001 dated 02-07-2009.

15. P.C. Wadhwa v. Central Information Commission, Punjab and Haryana High Court, LPA No. 1252 of 2009 dated 29-11-2010.

16. Paardarshita Public Welfare Foundation v. Union of India and others, AIR 2011 Del 82.

17. President's Secretariat v. Nitish Kumar Tripathi, Delhi High Court, WP (C) 3382 of 2012, dated 14-06-2012.

18. Public Information Officer v. Andhra Pradesh Information Commission,2009 (76) AIC 854 (AP).

19. R. Rajagopal v. Union of India, Supreme Court of India, dated 7-10-1994.

20. Rajendra Vasantlal Shah v. Central Information Commissioner, New Delhi, AIR 2011 Guj 70.

21. Rajinder Jaina v. Central Information Commission, 2010 (86) AIC 510 (Del. H.C.).

22. Right to Information Act, 2005

23. Secretary General, Supreme Court of India v. Subhash Chandra, Delhi High Court - Full Bench, LPA No.501/2009, dated 12-01-2010.

24. Srikant Pandaya v. State of M.P., AIR 2011 MP 14.

25. Surendra Singh v. State of U.P, AIR 2009 Alld. 106.

26. Surup Singh Hyra Naik v. State of Maharashtra, 2007 (58) AIC 739 (Bom).

27. Tata Press Ltd. v. Maharashtra Telephone Nigam Ltd., (1995) 5 SCC 139.

28. U.K. Freedom of Information Act, 2000.

29. UCO Bank v. Central Information Commissioner and another, 2009 (79) AIC 545 (P&H).

30. Union Centre for Earth Science Studies v. Anson Sebastian, AIR 2010 Ker. 151

31. Union of India v. Hardev Singh WP(C) 3444 of 2012 dated 23-08-2013.

32. Union of India v. Rajesh Bhatia WP(C) 2232/2012 dated 17-09-2013.

33. Union Public Service Commission v. R.K. Jain, Delhi High Court W.P.(C) 1243/2011 & C.M. No. 2618/2011 ( for stay), dated 13-07-2012.

34. Vijay Prakash v. Union of India, 2009 (82) AIC 583 (Del).

Secondary Sources

1. "Country Report for U.K.", Privacy International, available at https://www.privacyinternational.org/reports/united-kingdom.

2. "Country Report for Australia", Privacy International, available at https://www.privacyinternational.org/reports/australia.

3. "Country Report for Canada", Privacy International, available at https://www.privacyinternational.org/reports/canada.

[1] AIR 1973 SC 106. This case held that the freedom of the press embodies in itself the right of the people to read.

[2] (1995) 5 SCC 139.

[3] AIR 1963 SC 129.

[4] Supreme Court of India, WP No. 72 of 1970, dated 18-03-1975.

[5] Section 8(1) in its entirety states as follows:

(1) Notwithstanding anything contained in this Act, there shall be no obligation to give any citizen,-

(a) information, disclosure of which would prejudicially affect the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the State, relation with foreign State or lead to incitement of an offence;

(b) information which has been expressly forbidden to be published by any court of law or tribunal or the disclosure of which may constitute contempt of court;

(d) information including commercial confidence, trade secrets or intellectual property, the disclosure of which would harm the competitive position of a third party, unless the competent authority is satisfied that larger public interest warrants the disclosure of such information;

(e) information available to a person in his fiduciary relationship, unless the competent authority is satisfied that the larger public interest warrants the disclosure of such information;

(f) information received in confidence from foreign Government;

(g) information, the disclosure of which would endanger the life or physical safety of any person or identify the source of information or assistance given in confidence for law enforcement or security purposes;

(h) information which would impede the process of investigation or apprehension or prosecution of offenders;

(i) cabinet papers including records of deliberations of the Council of Ministers, Secretaries and other officers:

Provided that the decisions of Council of Ministers, the reasons thereof, and the material on the basis of which the decisions were taken shall be made public after the decision has been taken, and the matter is complete, or over:

Provided further that those matters which come under the exemptions specified in this section shall not be disclosed;

(j) information which relates to personal information the disclosure of which has no relationship to any public activity or interest, or which would cause unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the individual unless the Central Public Information Officer or the State Public Information Officer or the appellate authority, as the case may be, is satisfied that the larger public interest justifies the disclosure of such information:

Provided that the information which cannot be denied to the Parliament or a State Legislature shall not be denied to any person.

[6] Section 11 of the RTI Act.

[7] The Registrar General v. A. Kanagaraj, (Madras High Court, 14 June 2013, available at http://www.indiankanoon.org/doc/36226888/.

[8] Arvind Kejriwal v. Central Public Information Officer, (Delhi High Court, 30 September 2011, available at http://www.indiankanoon.org/doc/1923225/.

[9] Sections 40 and 41 of the U.K. Freedom of Information Act, 2000.

[10] Section 11A read with section 47-F of the Australia Freedom of Information Act, 1982.

[11] Section 19 of the Canadian Access to Information Act.

[12] Public Information Officer v. Andhra Pradesh Information Commission,2009 (76) AIC 854 (AP).

[13] Bhagat Singh v. Chief Information Commissioner, 2008 (64) AIC 284 (Del).

[14] Articles 14, 19(1)(a) and 21 of the Constitution of India, 1950.

[15] Calcutta High Court, WP(W) No. 33290 of 2013, dated 20-11-2013.

[16] Jitendra Singh v. State of U.P., 2008 (66) AIC 685 (All).

[17] Surup Singh Hyra Naik v. State of Maharashtra, 2007 (58) AIC 739 (Bom).

[18] Surup Singh Hyra Naik v. State of Maharashtra, 2007 (58) AIC 739 (Bom), para 14. Where the Court held that since the medical records of a convict cannot be denied to Parliament or State legislature therefore they cannot be exempted from disclosure under the Act.

[19] Vijay Prakash v. Union of India, 2009 (82) AIC 583 (Del).

[20] Union Public Service Commission v. R.K. Jain, Delhi High Court W.P.(C) 1243/2011 & C.M. No. 2618/2011 ( for stay), dated 13-07-2012.

[21] Union Public Service Commission v. R.K. Jain, Delhi High Court W.P.(C) 1243/2011 & C.M. No. 2618/2011 ( for stay), dated 13-07-2012.

[22] Vijay Prakash v. Union of India, 2009 (82) AIC 583 (Del).

[23] Secretary General, Supreme Court of India v. Subhash Chandra, Delhi High Court - Full Bench, LPA No.501/2009, dated 12-01-2010.

[24] Jamia Millia Islamia v. Sh. Ikramuddin , Delhi High Court, WP(C) 5677 of 2011 dated 22-11-2011.

[25] Union Public Service Commission v. R.K. Jain, Delhi High Court W.P.(C) 1243/2011 & C.M. No. 2618/2011 ( for stay), dated 13-07-2012.

[26] Union Public Service Commission v. R.K. Jain, Delhi High Court W.P.(C) 1243/2011 & C.M. No. 2618/2011 ( for stay), dated 13-07-2012.

[27] AIR 1963 SC 129.

[28] Delhi High Court, WP(C) No.7455/2001 dated 02-07-2009.

[29] Union Public Service Commission v. R.K. Jain, Delhi High Court W.P.(C) 1243/2011 & C.M. No. 2618/2011 (for stay), dated 13-07-2012. This ruling was overturned by a Division Bench of the High Court relying upon a subsequent Supreme Court ruling, however, it could be argued that the Division Bench did not per se disagree with the discussion and the principles laid down in this case, but only the way they were applied.

[30] Vijay Prakash v. Union of India, 2009 (82) AIC 583 (Del).

[31] Right to equality.

[32] Freedom of speech and expression.

[33] Right to life.

[34] Article 19(2) of the Constitution of India, 1950.

[35] Article 19(5) of the Constitution of India, 1950.

[36] Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India, Supreme Court of India, WP No. 231 of 1977, dated 25-01-1978. The test laid down in this case is universally considered to be that the procedure established by law which restricts the fundamental right should be just, fair and reasonable.

[37] Govind v. State of M.P., Supreme Court of India, WP No. 72 of 1970, dated 18-03-1975.

[38] Govind v. State of M.P., Supreme Court of India, WP No. 72 of 1970, dated 18-03-1975.

[39] Govind v. State of M.P., Supreme Court of India, WP No. 72 of 1970, dated 18-03-1975. However the Court later used phrases such as "reasonable restriction in public interest" and "reasonable restriction upon it for compelling interest of State" interchangeably which seems to suggest that the terms "compelling public interest" and "compelling state interest" used by the Court are being used synonymously and the Court does not draw any distinction between them. It is also important to note that the wider phrase "countervailing interest is shown to be superior" seems to suggest that it is possible, atleast in theory, to have other interests apart from public interest or state interest also which could trump the right to privacy.

[40] R. Rajagopal v. Union of India , Supreme Court of India, dated 7-10-1994. These tests have been listed as one group since they are all applicable in the specific context of publication of private information.

[41] Vijay Prakash v. Union of India, 2009 (82) AIC 583 (Del).

[42] Secretary General, Supreme Court of India v. Subhash Chandra, Delhi High Court - Full Bench, LPA No.501/2009, dated 12-01-2010. Also see Vijay Prakash v. Union of India, 2009 (82) AIC 583 (Del).

[43] Canara Bank v. Chief Information Commissioner, 2007 (58) AIC Ker 667. This case also held that information cannot be denied on the ground that it would be too voluminous.

[44] Union Centre for Earth Science Studies v. Anson Sebastian, AIR 2010 Ker. 151; Union Public Service Commission v. R.K. Jain, Delhi High Court W.P.(C) 1243/2011 & C.M. No. 2618/2011 (for stay), dated 13-07-2012

[45] 2012 (119) AIC 105 (SC).

[46] Girish Ramchandra Deshpande v. Central Information Commissioner, 2012 (119) AIC 105 (SC).

[47] Girish Ramchandra Deshpande v. Central Information Commissioner, 2012 (119) AIC 105 (SC).

[48] Canara Bank v. Chief Information Commissioner, 2007 (58) AIC Ker 667.

[49] Haryana Public Service Commission v. State Information Commission, AIR 2009 P & H 14.

[50] UCO Bank v. Central Information Commissioner and another, 2009 (79) AIC 545 (P&H).

[51] Surendra Singh v. State of U.P, AIR 2009 Alld. 106.

[52] Girish Ramchandra Deshpande v. Central Information Commissioner, 2012 (119) AIC 105 (SC).

[53] Girish Ramchandra Deshpande v. Central Information Commissioner, 2012 (119) AIC 105 (SC).

[54] R.K. Jain v. Union Public Service Commission, Delhi High Court, LPA No. 618 of 2012, dated 12-11-2012.

[55] Secretary General, Supreme Court of India v. Subhash Chandra, Delhi High Court - Full Bench, LPA No.501/2009, dated 12-01-2010.

[56] Srikant Pandaya v. State of M.P., AIR 2011 MP 14.

[57] Paardarshita Public Welfare Foundation v. Union of India and others, AIR 2011 Del 82. It must be mentioned that this case was not exactly under the procedure prescribed under the RTI Act but was a public interest litigation although the courts relied upon the provisions of the RTI Act.

[58] WP(C) 3444 of 2012 dated 23-08-2013.

[59] WP(C) 2232/2012 dated 17-09-2013.

[60] President's Secretariat v. Nitish Kumar Tripathi, Delhi High Court, WP (C) 3382 of 2012, dated 14-06-2012.

[61] P.C. Wadhwa v. Central Information Commission, Punjab and Haryana High Court, LPA No. 1252 of 2009 dated 29-11-2010.

[62] Rajinder Jaina v. Central Information Commission, 2010 (86) AIC 510 (Del. H.C.).

[63] Rajendra Vasantlal Shah v. Central Information Commissioner, New Delhi, AIR 2011 Guj 70.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/white-paper-on-rti-and-privacy-v-1.2

Central Guidelines and Schemes

anandi — 2014-11-06T14:59:31Z

The Department of Disability Affairs under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment is responsible for the welfare of persons with disabilities in India. The office of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities has been set up under the Ministry to safeguard the rights of persons with disabilities.

Certification of Disability

1.1 The Persons with Disabilities Amendment Rules, 2009[1] provide detailed guidelines for issue of disability certificates. The Rules lay down that disability certificates may be issued either by a medical authority competent to issue disability certificates in the district of residence of the applicant or by the concerned medical authority in the government hospital where the applicant has undergone or is undergoing treatment in connection to the disability.

The certificate issued by the Medical Board makes a person eligible to apply for facilities, concessions and benefits admissible under schemes of the Government or Non-Governmental Organisations, subject to such conditions as the Central or the State Government may impose.

1.2 The Government has notified the guidelines for evaluation of locomotor, blindness, low vision, hearing, mental retardation and multiple disabilities and the procedure for certification vide notification No. 16-18/97-NI I dated 1st June, 2001. As per the guidelines, the Director General of Health Services, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Nirman Bhawan, New Delhi is the final authority for any controversy / doubt regarding the interpretation of the definitions/classifications / evaluations tests etc.

1.3 Procedure for Certification 2002[2] via Notification No. 16-18/97-NI dated 18 February 2002 provides guidelines for Evaluation and Assessment of Mental Illness.

Sl. No.	Description	Authority	Date
1.	Guidelines for Assessment and Certification of various disabilities	Department of Disability Affairs - MSJE	2001
2.	Guidelines for Assessment and Certification of Mental Illness	Department of Disability Affairs - MSJE	2002

Education

2.1 Article 41 of the Constitution of India titled Right to Work, to education and to public assistance in certain cases states that the State shall, within the limits of its economic capacity and development, make effective provision for securing the right to work, to education and to public assistance in cases of unemployment, old age, sickness and disablement, and in other cases of undeserved want.

2.2 The 86^th Amendment to the Constitution introduced a new Article 21-A that made the right to education a fundamental right of all children from the age of six to 14 years. It also substituted Article 45 as Provision of early childhood care and education of children below the age of six years that states that the state shall endeavour to provide early childhood care and education for all children until they complete the age of six years.

2.3 Section 26 of the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act 1995 (PWD Act) provides that the appropriate Governments and the local authorities shall-

(a) Ensure that every child with a disability has access to free education in an appropriate environment till he attains the age of eighteen years;

(b) Endeavour to promote the integration of students with disabilities in the normal schools;

(c) Promote setting up of special schools in Government and private sector for those in need of special education, in such a manner that children with disabilities living in any part of the country have access to such schools;

(d) Endeavour to equip the special schools for children with disabilities with vocational training facilities.

2.4 Section 27 of the PWD Act provides that the appropriate Governments and the local authorities shall by notification make schemes for-

(a) Conducting part-time classes in respect of children with disabilities who having completed education up to class fifth and could not continue their studies on a whole-time basis;

(b) Conducting special part-time classes for providing functional literacy for children in the age group of sixteen and above;

(c) Imparting non-formal education by utilizing the available manpower in rural areas after giving them appropriate orientation;

(d) Imparting education through open schools or open universities;

(e) Conducting class and discussions through interactive electronic or other media;

(f) Providing every child with disability free of cost special books and equipments needed for his education.

2.5 Section 28 of the PWD Act provides that the appropriate Governments shall initiate or cause to be initiated research by official and nongovernmental agencies for the purpose of designing and developing new assistive devices, teaching aids, special teaching materials or such other items as are necessary to give a child with disability equal opportunities in education.

2.6 Section 29 of the PWD Act provides that he appropriate Governments shall set up adequate number of teachers' training institutions and assist the national institutes and other voluntary organizations to develop teachers' training programmes specializing in disabilities so that requisite trained manpower is available for special schools and integrated schools for children with disabilities.

2.7 Section 30 of the PWD Act provides that without prejudice to the foregoing provisions, (be appropriate Governments shall by notification prepare a comprehensive education scheme which shall make Provision for-

(a) Transport facilities to the children with disabilities or in the alternative financial incentives to parents or guardians to enable their children with disabilities to attend schools.

(b) The removal of architectural barriers from schools, colleges or other institution, imparting vocational and professional training;

(d) The grant of scholarship to students with disabilities;

(e) Setting up of appropriate fora for the redressal of grievances of parent, regarding the placement of their children with disabilities;

(f) Suitable modification in the examination system to eliminate purely mathematical questions for the benefit of blind students and students with low vision;

(g) Restructuring of curriculum for the benefit of children with disabilities;

(h) Restructuring the curriculum for benefit of students with hearing impairment to facilitate them to take only one language as part of their curriculum.

2.8 Section 31 of the PWD Act provides that all educational institutions shall provide or cause to be provided amanuensis to blind students and students with low vision.

2.9 Section 39 of the PWD Act provides that all Government educational institutions and other educational institutions receiving aid from the

Government, shall reserve not less than three per cent seat for persons with disabilities.

2.10 Right of Children to free and compulsory Education (RTE) Act 2009 provides that every child has the right to full time elementary education of satisfactory and equitable quality in a formal school that satisfies certain essential norms and standards.

Schemes:

2.11 SSA - Sarva Shiksha Abhyan:

SSA[3] is a flagship central scheme that provides for free and compulsory education for children in the age group of six to 14 years including coverage of children with special needs under special focus groups. SSA will ensure that children with disabilities are provided education in appropriate environment and will adopt a zero rejection policy that will ensure that no child is left out of the education system.

2.12 Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhyan (RMSA)[4]:

RMSA aims to enhance access to secondary education and improve its quality. This scheme subsumes the earlier Integrated Education for the Disabled at Secondary Stage (IEDSS)[5] scheme under its umbrella and supports children with disabilities aged 14 or above for completing their secondary education from Class 9 to Class 12 in government, local body and government aided schools.

The scheme provides for identification of children with disabilities moving from elementary school to secondary and providing them with aids and appliances for their disabilities, access to learning material, transport facilities, hostel facilities, scholarships, books, assistive technologies and provision of scribes and readers.

2.13 Scheme of National Scholarship for Persons with Disabilities:[6]

Scholarship is awarded for pursuing post matric / professional / technical courses of duration more than one year. For students with autism / cerebral palsy / mental retardation / multiple disabilities the scholarship is provided from Class 9 onwards. Advertisements are placed in all national dailies and on the MSJE website in the month of June. Applicants are eligible if they have disability above 40 per cent and the total family income does not exceed Rs. 15,000 per month.

Category	Day Scholars	Hostellers
Graduate / PG courses in Professional / Technical	Rs. 700	Rs. 1000
Diploma / Certificate level professional courses	Rs. 400	Rs. 700

Fees up to Rs. 10,000 are reimbursed every year.

Financial assistance is provided for procuring computer with editing software for students with visual impairment / hearing impairment pursuing graduate / post graduate professional courses and support access software for students with cerebral palsy.

2.14 Rajiv Gandhi Fellowship scheme:

This scheme provides scholarships to persons with disabilities to pursue higher education such as M Phil / Ph D. The scheme offers 200 fellowships every year and covers all the universities and institutions covered by the University Grants Commission. All students with disabilities admitted to M. Phil / Ph. D programmes of any university or academic institution are eligible to receive the fellowship provided they meet the requirements of the scheme. The fellowship will be awarded for a maximum of five years.

2.15 The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has amended its examination by-laws for students with disabilities. [7] The amended by-laws are listed below:

o Rule 23 of Chapter 4 that provides exemption from the third language has been amended to include students with visual impairment, hearing and speech impairment, dyslexia and all other types of disabilities as defined in the PWD Act 1995.

o Rule 24 of Chapter 4 has been amended to permit students with visual impairment, physical disability, dyslexia, autism and other disabilities as defined in the PWD Act 1995 appearing for Secondary School examination or Senior School Certificate Examination, to use amanuensis and is permitted extra time at the rate of

For paper of 3 hours duration 60 minutes

For paper of 2½ hours duration 50 minutes

For paper of 2 hours duration 40 minutes

For paper of 1½ hours duration 30 minutes

o Students with visual impairment, hearing and speech impairment, spastic, dyslexia, autism and other types of disabilities have the option of studying one compulsory language instead of two.

Sl. No.	Description	Authority	Date
1	Sarva Shiksha Abhyan (SSA)	Department of Disability Affairs - MSJE	2001
2	Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhyan (RMSA)	Ministry of Human Resource Development	2013
3	Scheme of National Scholarship for Persons with Disabilities	Department of Disability Affairs - MSJE	2013
4	Rajiv Gandhi Fellowship to pursue higher education	Department of Disability Affairs - MSJE	2012
5	CBSE Amended Examination By-laws	Central Board of Secondary Education	2008

Employment

3.1 Section 32 of the PWD Act provides that appropriate Governments shall:

(a) Identify posts, in the establishments, which can be reserved for the persons with disability;

(b) At periodical intervals not exceeding three years, review the list of posts identified and up-date the list taking into consideration the developments in technology.

3.2 Section 33 of the PWD Act provides that every appropriate Government shall appoint in every establishment such percentage of vacancies not less than three per cent for persons or class of persons with disability of which one per cent. Each shall be reserved for persons suffering from-

(i) Blindness or low vision;

(ii) Hearing impairment;

(iii) Locomotor disability or cerebral palsy, in the posts identified for each disability:

Provided that the appropriate Government may, having regard to the type of work carried on in any department or establishment, by notification subject to such conditions, if any, as may be specified in such notification, exempt any establishment from the provisions of this section.

3.3 Section 36 of the PWD Act provides that where in any recruitment year any vacancy under section 33, cannot be filled up due to nonavailability of a suitable person with disability or, for any other sufficient reason, such vacancy shall be carried forward in the succeeding recruitment year and if in the succeeding recruitment year also suitable person with disability is not available, it may first be filled by interchange among the three categories and only when there is no person with disability available for the post in that Year, the employer shall fill up the vacancy by appointment of a person, other than a person with disability: Provided that if the nature of vacancies in an establishment is such that a given category of person cannot be employed, the vacancies may be interchanged among the three categories with the prior approval of the appropriate Government.

3.4 Section 38 of the PWD Act provides that the appropriate Governments and local authorities shall by notification formulate schemes for ensuring employment of persons with disabilities, and such schemes may provide for:

(a) The training and welfare of persons with disabilities

(b) The relaxation of upper age limit

(d) Health and safety measures and creation of a non-handicapping environment in places where persons with disabilities are employed

(e) The manner in which and the person by whom the cost of operating the schemes is to be defrayed

(f) Constituting the authority responsible for the administration of the scheme.

3.5 Section 47 (1) of the PWD Act provides that no establishment shall dispense with or reduce in rank, an employee who acquires a disability during his service.

Provided that, if an employee, after acquiring disability is not suitable for the post he was holding, could be shifted to some other post with the same pay scale and service benefits.

Provided further that if it is not possible to adjust the employee against any post, he may be kept on a supernumerary post until a suitable post is available or he attains the age of superannuation, whichever is earlier.

3.6 Section 40 of the PWD Act provides that the appropriate Governments and local authorities shall reserve not less than three per cent in all poverty alleviation schemes for the benefit of persons with disabilities.

3.7 Section 43 of the PWD Act provides that the appropriate Governments and local authorities shall by notification frame schemes in favour of persons with disabilities, for the preferential allotment of land at concession] rates for:

(b) Setting up business

(f) Establishment of factories by entrepreneurs with disabilities

3.8 The government has established special employment exchanges for persons with disabilities in all state capitals and special employment cells have been set up in all district headquarters for recruitment to government posts reserved for persons with disabilities. In places where special employment exchanges have not been established, special employment cells have been set up within regular employment exchanges. Persons with disabilities are required to register themselves with the special employment exchanges / cells to be eligible for government employment under reservation. Special employment registrations can also be done at the 17 vocational rehabilitation centres for persons with disabilities.

3.9 Scheme to provide incentive to private employers:

The government provides for employment of persons with disabilities in the private sector through incentives to employers. [8] The government pays the employer's contribution of the disabled employee's provident fund and employee state insurance up to three years for employment of persons with disabilities to a maximum salary of Rs. 25,000 per month.

3.10 NHFDC schemes:

The National Handicapped Finance and Development Corporation provides loans to persons with disabilities for self employment. [9] The details of the schemes are given as under:

i. for setting up small business in service / trading sector - loan of Rs. 3,00,000 (Three lakh)

ii. For setting up small business in sales / trading sector - Rs. 5,00,000 (five lakh)

iii. For agriculture / allied activities - Loan of up to Rs. 10,00,000 (ten lakh)

iv. Purchase of vehicle for commercial hiring - Loan of Rs. 10,00,000 (ten lakh)

v. For setting up small industries unit - Loan of Rs. 25,00,000 (25 lakh)

vi. For professionally educated / trained persons with disabilities for self-employment - Rs. 25,00,000 (25 lakh)

vii. For building business premises on own land for employment - Rs. 3,00,000 (three lakh)

The business for which financial assistance is sought should be directly operated by the applicant. In case of persons with autism, cerebral palsy or mental retardation, the parent / spouse / legal guardian of the applicant is authorised to enter into contract with NHFDC on behalf of the applicant.

Applicant should fulfil the following eligibility criteria:

Should have a disability of minimum 40 percent

Should be an Indian citizen

Should have the required professional / technical qualification for the business undertaken

Loans should be repaid by a maximum of 10 years.

3.11 Swarna Jayanthi Gram Swarozgar Yojna[10]

This initiative from the Ministry for Rural Development was launched as an integrated self employment programme for the rural poor on 1^st April 1999. The scheme involves establishment of Self Help Groups (SHGs) for social mobilisation, training, capacity building and provision of income generating assets through bank credit and government subsidy. Three per cent reservation is provided to persons with disabilities under this scheme.

The subsidy allowed under SJGSY for persons with disabilities is 50% of project cost subject to a maximum of Rs. 10,000.

In case of persons with disabilities, SHGs may be formed with a minimum of five members.

3.12 Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojna (SJSRY):[11]

This is a scheme by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation initiated to provide self employment and wage employment for the urban poor living below the urban poverty line.

Under the Urban Self Employment Programme, three per cent reservation is provided to persons with disabilities under this programme.

This scheme is not applicable to persons educated beyond the 9^th standard.

3.13 Scheme for providing financial assistance to set up new enterprises under PMEGP (Prime Minister Employment Generation Programme): [12]

This scheme initiated by the Ministry of Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) is implemented through the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) as the nodal body at the national level and through state KVIC Directorates, state Khadi and Industries Boards and Districts Industries Centres and banks at the state level.

The maximum cost of the project/unit admissible under manufacturing sector is 25 lakh and under business/service sector is 10 lakh.

For persons with disabilities: Beneficiaries contribution of project cost is 0.5%;

Rate of subsidy of project cost: 25% in urban areas; 35% in rural areas

The balance amount of the total project cost will be provided by Banks as term loan as well as working capital.

Sl. No.	Description	Authority	Date
1	Identification of jobs	Department of Disability Affairs - MSJE	2013
2	Incentives for private employers	Department of Disability Affairs - MSJE	2008
3	Financial assistance from NHFDC	National Handicapped Finance & development Corporation	2013
4	Swarna Jayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojna (SGSY)	Ministry of Rural Development	1999
5	Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojna (SJSRY)	Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation	2013
6	Scheme providing financial assistance for new enterprises	Ministry of MSME	2014

Social Security

A. Schemes under the Department of Disability Affairs for persons with disabilities

4.1 Assistance to Disabled Persons for Purchase /Fitting of Aids and Appliances

(ADIP ) Scheme:

The main objective of the scheme is to assist needy persons with disabilities in procuring durable sophisticated and scientifically manufactured, modern, standard aids and appliances that can promote their physical, social and psychological rehabilitation by reducing the effects of disabilities and enhance their economic potential. Aids and appliances which do not cost less than Rs. 50 and not more than Rs. 10,000 are covered under the scheme. The scheme also covers travelling expenses for the beneficiary with one escort to the nearest medical centre for fitting of aids / appliances, cost of surgical / medical intervention before the fitting, and boarding and lodging expenses to a maximum of 15 days.[13]

4.2 Deendayal Disabled Rehabilitation Scheme (DDRS):

This scheme replaced the earlier 'Scheme to Promote Voluntary Action for Persons with Disabilities' on 01.04.2009. Under this scheme financial assistance is provided through NGOs for various projects for providing education, vocational training and rehabilitation of persons with disabilities. It is a scheme to promote voluntary action for persons with disabilities. The maximum level of support could be up to 90% of the eligible amount of grant for the project.

4.3 Scheme of National Awards for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities: In order to recognise their effort and encourage others to strive to achieve excellence in this field, separate awards are being presented to the most efficient/outstanding employees with disabilities, best employers, best placement agency/officer, outstanding individuals, outstanding institutions, role models, outstanding creative disabled individuals and for outstanding technological innovation and adaptation of innovation to provide cost effective technology. Awards are also given to Government Sector, Public Sector Undertakings and private enterprises for creating barrier free environment for the persons with disabilities, the best district in the field of disability rehabilitation, best Local Level Committee of the National Trust and to the best State Channelising Agency (SCA) of the National Handicapped Finance and Development Corporation (NHFDC). Preference is given to the placement of women with disabilities, particularly, from the rural areas and self-employed women.[14]

4.4 Composite Regional Centres for Persons with Disabilities (CRCs): Due to lack of adequate facilities for rehabilitation of Persons with Disabilities, the Ministry has set up multiple Composite Regional Centres for Persons with Disabilities at Srinagar, Sundernagar (Himachal Pradesh), Lucknow, Bhopal, Kozhikode, Ahmedabad (No. 6-9/2009-NIS) and Guwahati to provide both preventive and promotional aspects of rehabilitation like education, health, employment and vocational training, research and manpower development, rehabilitation for persons with disabilities etc.

4.5 District Disability Rehabilitation Centres (DDRCs): The Ministry with active support of State Governments is facilitating setting up District Disability Rehabilitation Centres (DDRCs) to provide rehabilitation services to persons with disabilities. Centres are being set up in unreached and unserved districts of the country in a phased manner. These centres are to provide services for prevention and early detection, referral for medical intervention and surgical correction, fitment of artificial aids and appliances, therapeutical services such as physiotherapy, occupational and speech therapy, provision of training for acquisition of skills through vocational training, job placement in local industries etc. at district headquarters and local camps.

B. Schemes under the Ministry of Rural Development for persons with disabilities

4.6The Indira Gandhi National Disability Pension Scheme :[15] This was inserted as a component of the National Social Assistance Programme on 17^th February, 2009 by the Secretary, Ministry for Rural Development. Under IGNDPS, central assistance of Rs. 300 p.m. per beneficiary is provided to persons with severe or multiple disabilities in the age group of 18-79 years and belonging to a household living BPL as per criteria prescribed by Government of India.

4.7 Indira Awaas Yojana: It is a centrally sponsored housing scheme for providing dwelling units free of cost to the rural poor living below the poverty line at a unit cost of Rs. 20,000 in plain areas and Rs. 22, 000 in the hill/difficult areas. Three percent of its funds are reserved for the benefit of disabled persons living below the poverty line in rural areas.

Sl. No.	Description	Authority	Date
1	ADIP Scheme	Department of Disability Affairs - MSJE	2013
2	DDRS Scheme	Department of Disability Affairs - MSJE	2009
3	National awards for empowerment of persons with disabilities	Department of Disability Affairs - MSJE	2012
4	Composite Regional Centres for Persons with Disabilities (CRCs)	Department of Disability Affairs - MSJE	2013
5	District Disability Rehabilitation Centres (DDRCs)	Department of Disability Affairs - MSJE	1995
6	Indira Gandhi National Disability Pension Scheme	Ministry of Rural Development	2009
7	Indira Awaas Yojana	Ministry of Rural Development	1985

Accessibility

Accessibility is a measure of the extent to which a product or service can be used by a person with a disability as effectively as it can be used by a person without that disability.[16]

5.1 Article 15 (2) (a) of the Constitution of India States that no citizen shall, on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them, be subject to any disability, liability, restriction or condition with regard to access to shops, public restaurants, hotels or places of public entertainment.

5.2 Section 44 of the PWD Act states that establishments in the transport sector shall, within the limits of their economic capacity and development for the benefit of persons with disabilities, take special measures to-

(a) Adapt rail compartments, buses. Vessels and aircrafts in such a way as to permit easy access to such persons;

(b) Adapt toilets in rail compartments, vessels, aircrafts and waiting rooms in such a way as to permit the wheel chair users to use them conveniently.

5.3 Section 45 of the PWD Act provides that the appropriate Governments and the local authorities shall, within the limits of their economic capacity and development. Provide for-

(a) Installation of auditory signals at red lights in the public roads for the benefit of persons with blindness or low vision;

(b) Causing curb cuts and slopes to be made in pavements for the easy access of wheel chair users;

(d) Engraving on the edges of railway platforms for the blind or for persons with low vision;

(e) Devising appropriate symbols of disability;

(f) Warning signals at appropriate places.

5.4 Section 46 of the PWD Act provides that the appropriate Governments and the local authorities shall, within the limits of their economic capacity and development, provide for-

(a) Ramps in public buildings;

(b) Braille symbols and auditory signals in elevators or lifts;

(d) Ramps in hospitals, primary health centres and other medical care and rehabilitation institutions.

5.5 Section 48 (e) of the PWD Act provides that the appropriate Governments and local authorities shall promote and sponsor research, inter alia, in the area of site modifications in offices and factories.

5.6 Section 30 (B) of the PWD Act provides that the appropriate Governments shall by notification prepare a comprehensive education scheme which shall make Provision for the removal of architectural barriers from schools, colleges or other institutions imparting vocational and professional training.

5.7 Guidelines and Space Standards for Barrier Free Built Environment for Disabled and Elderly Persons: [17]

In order to create a barrier free environment in consonance with the provisions of the PWD Act, the Government of India, Ministry of Urban Affairs & Employment (MUAE) is currently engaged in the process of amending/modifying the existing building bye-laws which would be applicable to all buildings and facilities used by the public. With this intention to ensure that everyone, including the physically disabled and elderly persons will have equal access in everyday life in the city, the MUAE has constituted a committee under the chairmanship of DG (W), CPWD for the purpose of developing comprehensive Guidelines and space Standards for barrier free built environment for disabled and elderly persons. The office of the Chief Commissioner of Persons with Disabilities has also developed guidelines for planning barrier free environment for persons with disabilities. The chapter on accessibility in the National Building Code published by the Indian Bureau of Standards also provides guidelines for creating accessible infrastructure.

5.8 National Policy on Universal Electronic Accessibility:

The Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Ministry of Information Technology has notified the National Policy on Universal Electronic Accessibility to regulate the provision of accessible electronics and ICTs services & products, and universal design concepts for persons with disabilities.

Sl. No.	Description	Authority	Date
1	Guidelines for Space Standards for Barrier Free Built Environment for Disabled and Elderly Persons	Central Public Works Department	1998
2	Guidelines for Planning Barrier Free Environment	O/O CCPD

6. Tax Concessions

6.1 Persons with disabilities are eligible for income tax deduction under Section 80U of the Income Tax Act. [18] Persons with disabilities in the range of 40% to 80% are eligible for a deduction of Rs. 50,000. Persons with more than 80% disability are eligible for a deduction of Rs. 1,00,000.

6.2 Legal guardians of dependant persons with disabilities are eligible for income tax deduction under section 80DD of Income Tax Act for expenditures incurred on medical care, training and rehabilitation expenses or annuity paid.[19] Deduction of Rs. 50,000 can be claimed for dependents with 40 per cent to 80 per cent disability and deduction of Rs. 1,00,000 can be claimed for dependants with 80 per cent or more disabilities.

[1] http://socialjustice.nic.in/disabrules.php

[2] http://www.ccdisabilities.nic.in/page.php?s=reg&p=guide_mental&t=pb

[3] http://ssa.nic.in/ssa-framework/coverage-of-special-focus-groups

[4] http://mhrd.gov.in/rmsa

[5] http://mhrd.gov.in/inclusive_education

[6] http://socialjustice.nic.in/nsawardadv0809.php

[7] http://www.cbse.nic.in/circulars/amendment-exam-bye-law-020109.doc

[8] http://socialjustice.nic.in/incentdd.php

[9] http://nhfdc.nic.in/

[10] http://rural.nic.in/sites/programmes-schemes-sgsy.asp

[11] http://mhupa.gov.in/programs/upa/nsdp/sjsry/sjsryintro.htm

[12] http://msme.gov.in/Web/Portal/Scheme.aspx

[13] http://socialjustice.nic.in/pdf/adiprevised010414.pdf

[14] http://socialjustice.nic.in/pdf/nawardeng2012.pdf

[15] http://nsap.nic.in/

[16] http://e-accessibilitytoolkit.org/toolkit/eaccessibility_basics/accessibility_and_the_purposes_of_icts#what

[17] cpwd.gov.in/Publication/Buildings_aged.pdf

[18] http://law.incometaxindia.gov.in/DIT/HtmlFileProcess.aspx?FooterPath=D:%5CWebSites%5CDITTaxmann%5CAct2010%5CDirectTaxLaws%5CITACT%5CHTMLFiles%5C2010&DFile=section80u.htm&tar=top#

[19] http://law.incometaxindia.gov.in/DitTaxmann/incometaxacts/2007itact/sec_080dd.htm

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/central-guidelines-and-schemes

ನಿರಂಜನರ ಕೃತಿಗಳು CC-BY-SA 4.0 ಪರವಾನಗಿಯೊಂದಿಗೆ ಮರುಪ್ರಕಟಗೊಳ್ಳಲಿವೆ

Omshivaprakash and Tejas Jain — 2014-11-03T15:04:23Z

ಕನ್ನಡ ರಾಜ್ಯೋತ್ಸವದ ಸಂದರ್ಭದಲ್ಲಿ ನಿರಂಜನರ ಬಹುಪಾಲು ಕೃತಿಗಳು CC-BY-SA 4.0 ಪರವಾನಗಿಯೊಂದಿಗೆ ಮರುಪ್ರಕಟಗೊಳ್ಳಲಿವೆಯೆಂದು ಸಿಐಎಸ್-ಎ೨ಕೆಯ ಸಹಯೋಗದೊಂದಿಗೆ ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಬಳಗವು ಹಂಚಿಕೊಳ್ಳಲು ಹರ್ಷಿಸುತ್ತದೆ.

The article by Omshivaprakash and Tejas Jain was published in ನನ್ ಮನ on November 1, 2014.

ನಿರಂಜನ (೧೯೨೪-೧೯೯೨) , ಇದು ಕುಳಕುಂದ ಶಿವರಾವ್ ಅವರ ಲೇಖನಾಮ. ಇವರು ೨೦ನೇ ಶತಮಾನದ ಪ್ರಮುಖ ಲೇಖಕ ಮತ್ತು ಪ್ರಗತಿಪರ ಚಳವಳಿಯ ಮುಂದಾಳು. ಅವರ ಸುಮಾರು ಐದು ದಶಕಗಳ ಸಂಮೃದ್ಧವಾದ ಕೃತಿಗಳು ಕಾದಂಬರಿ, ಸಣ್ಣ ಕಥೆಗಳು, ನಾಟಕಗಳು, ಜೀವನ ಕಥನಗಳು, ರಾಜಕೀಯ ವ್ಯಾಖ್ಯಾನಗಳು ಮತ್ತು ಭಾಷಾಂತರಗಳನ್ನು ಒಳಗೊಂಡಿವೆ. ಅವರು ಕನ್ನಡ ವಾರ್ತಾಪತ್ರಿಕೆ ಮತ್ತು ನಿಯತಕಾಲಿಕಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ನಿಯತ ಅಂಕಣಕಾರರಾಗಿದ್ದರು. ಅವರ ಸಾಧನೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಯುವಕರಿಗಾಗಿ ೭ ಸಂಪುಟಗಳ ಜ್ಞಾನ ಗಂಗೋತ್ರಿ ಮತ್ತು ೨೫ ಸಂಪುಟಗಳ ಪ್ರಪಂಚದ ಮಹತ್ತರವಾದ ಕಥೆಗಳ ಸಂಕಲನಗಳು ಸೇರಿವೆ.

ನಿರಂಜನರ ಒಟ್ಟು ೫೫ ಕೃತಿಗಳು ಮರುಪ್ರಕಟಗೊಳ್ಳಲಿವೆ. ಇದು CC-BY-SA 4.0 ಪರವಾನಗಿಯೊಂದಿಗೆ ಭಾರತೀಯ ಭಾಷೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಪ್ರಕಟಗೊಳ್ಳುತ್ತಿರುವ ಒಬ್ಬನೇ ಲೇಖಕನ ಕೃತಿಗಳ ಅತಿ ದೊಡ್ಡ ಸಂಗ್ರಹವಾಗಿರಬಹುದು. ಇದನ್ನು ಆಚರಿಸಲು ಒಂದು ಔಪಚಾರಿಕ ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮವನ್ನು, ಕ್ರಿಯೇಟೀವ್ ಕಾಮನ್ಸ್ ಪಾಮುಖ್ಯತೆಯ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಒಂದು ಅಭಿಶಿಕ್ಷಣದ ಜೊತೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ೨೦೧೪ನೇ ನವೆಂಬರ್ ತಿಂಗಳಿನ ಮೊದಲ ವಾರದಲ್ಲಿ ನೆಡೆಸಲು ಯೋಚಿಸುತ್ತಿದ್ದೇವೆ. ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮದ ಕರಾರುವಾಕ್ಕಾದ ವಿವರಗಳನ್ನು ಸಧ್ಯದಲ್ಲೇ ಹಚಿಕೊಳ್ಳಲಾಗುವುದು.ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಬಳಗ ಮತ್ತು ಸಿಐಎಸ್-ಎ೨ಕೆಯು ನಿಮ್ಮನ್ನು ಸಮಾರಂಭದಲ್ಲಿ ನೋಡಲು ಸಂತಸಪಡುತ್ತದೆ. ಕೆಳಗಿನ ಪುಸ್ತಕಗಳು CC-BY-SA 4.0 ಪರವಾನಗಿಯೊಂದಿಗೆ ಮರುಪ್ರಕಟಗೊಳ್ಳಲು ಸಿಐಎಸ್-ಎ೨ಕೆಯ ಸಲಹೆಗಾರರೂ ಆಗಿರುವ ತೇಜಸ್ವಿನಿ ನಿರಂಜನರ ಮಹತ್ತರವಾದ ಆರಂಭಿಕ ಕೆಲಸವನ್ನು ನಾವು ಸ್ಮರಿಸುತ್ತೇವೆ.

ಲೇಖನದ ಕನ್ನಡ ಅನುವಾದ: ತೇಜಸ್ ಜೈನ್

ಚಿತ್ರ, ಇನ್ಫೋಬಾಕ್ಸ್ ಮತ್ತು ಇತರೆ ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಮೂಲ: ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ

About the Authors

OmShivaprakash and Tejas Jain are long time Kannada Wikimedians and enthusiasts of free and open knowledge in Kannada.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/kannada-work-released-under-cc-by-sa

Good Intentions, Recalcitrant Text – II: What India’s ITU Proposal May Mean for Internet Governance

geetha — 2014-11-03T07:07:16Z

The UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is hosting its Plenipotentiary Conference (PP-14) this year in South Korea. At PP-14, India introduced a new draft resolution on ITU's Role in Realising Secure Information Society. The Draft Resolution has grave implications for human rights and Internet governance. Geetha Hariharan explores.

Disclaimer and update (2 November 2014): India's Draft Resolution was discussed during the meeting of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Internet-related Resolutions at the ITU Plenipot on the evening of November 1, 2014 (KST). After the discussion, India revised the text of the resolution, seeking to address concerns raised by ITU member states. The revised resolution may be found here. However, this blog post was written with reference to the original text of India's Draft Resolution.

***

As I mentioned in my last post, India’s Draft Resolution on ‘ITU’s Role in Realising Secure Information Society’ raises security and equity concerns. The Draft Resolution has 3 security concerns: (i) security weaknesses in the network architecture that permit “camouflaging the identity of the originator of the communication” and make “tracing of communication difficult”; (ii) non-systematic, non-contiguous allocation of naming, numbering and addressing resources on the Internet, which makes it difficult to identify both the users and what states the IP addresses are located in; (iii) non-local routing and address resolution relating to traffic originating and terminating in the same country. Op. §§1, 3-7 seek to address these. It also identifies the present system of allocation of naming, numbering and addressing resources as inequitable, unfair, unjust and undemocratic (Op. §2 of the Draft Resolution offers a solution). I discussed some human rights implications of India’s Draft Resolution in my last post.

In this post, I explore the implications of the Draft Resolution for Internet governance and multi-stakeholder approaches (most notably, an equal footing model).[1] Given the uncertainties around defining multi-stakeholderism for Internet governance, this is rather ambitious. So I will try to point to concerns with certain textual interpretations of the Draft Resolution, map that against the positions India’s representatives have taken on Internet governance in the past, and the motivations/concerns that underlie the tabling of the Draft Resolution. This Resolution may not be the best way to allay India's concerns, for there are technical and rights implications. But the concerns it raises are worth discussion and knowledge, and at forums where concerns are heard, acknowledged and discussed collectively. The text of the Draft Resolution and its attendant implications are not, then, the sole subjects of this post.

The Draft Resolution and Internet governance:

The text of the Draft Resolution is problematic. Many of its clauses may be seen as taking positions against multi-stakeholder approaches to Internet governance. Introducing such a resolution at the ITU may itself bring back memories of the controversies surrounding Resolution 3 of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), 2012.[2] In 3 ways, the text of the Draft Resolution has indications for multi-stakeholder approaches.

First, the Draft Resolution frames issues primarily from the perspective security. In its preamble, the Draft Resolution makes several references to security threats posed by and on the Internet. For instance, it points to the ability of the network to “camouflage the identity of the originator of the communication” (Pream. §(e) [recognizing]), as well as national security concerns in the present-day system of routing Internet traffic through multiple countries (Pream. §§(f) and (g), [recognizing]). The apparent difficulty in tracing IP addresses, due to their random allocation, is another concern (Pream. §(h), [recognizing]). Among the “significant public policy issues” identified in telecom/ICT management, “security and safety of the Telecom/ICTs” is specifically noted (Pream. §(i) [considering]). In the Context note to the Draft Resolution and in several places in the Preamble, there are references to ITU Resolution 130 (‘Strengthening the role of ITU in building confidence and security in the use of information and communication technologies’) and ITU’s Cyber-security Agenda. Given the (legitimate or otherwise) disproportionate involvement of governments and not other stakeholders in matters of cyber-security, the framing of issues from a security perspective may lend itself to worries for multi-stakeholderism. Specifically, the Draft Resolution notes: “ensuring security of ICT networks is sovereign right of Member States” (Pream. §(b) [recognizing]).

Second, the Draft Resolution emphasizes the sovereign right of states to regulate and control telecom/ICT. It says, for instance, “it is the sovereign right of each state to regulate its telecommunication” (Pream. §(b) [considering]). With regard to the Internet, the Context note to the Draft Resolution (page 1) considers the Internet to be synonymous with telecom/ICTs: “the Telecom/ICTs, which in common lexicon is used interchangeably many times as Internet…”. Public telecom networks managed by telecom service providers, interconnected with other networks, are necessary for “proper functioning of a telecom network resources namely, among others, naming, numbering and addressing” (Pream. §(k) [considering]). It is worth noting that the sovereign authority of states over Internet public policy issues is settled text from §35 of the Tunis Agenda, though expressing it as synonymous with telecom may lead to possibilities of licensing and registration, which Bulgaria, for instance, does not do.

Third, the Draft Resolution identifies issues of equity and fairness in the allocation of Internet resources such as naming, numbering and addressing (Pream. §(g) [consdering], Op. §2). It states that to correct this inequity, “facilitation and collaboration among international, inter-governmental organizations and individual member states to ensure planning, implementation, monitoring and cooperation in its policies” is required (Pream. §(g) [considering]). In operative paragaphs, our Draft Resolution calls for collaboration with “all the concerned stakeholders including International and intergovernmental organizations to develop policies for allocation, assignment and management of IP resources including naming, numbering and addressing which is systematic, equitable, fair, just, democratic and transparent” (Op. §2). One may pay attention to the oversight over implementation and the necessity of inter-governmental involvement in planning and monitoring as problematic to iterations of multi-stakeholderism.

These concerns are valid and legitimate, and it is desirable that the text of the resolution be altered to address them. The text should also be altered to address the human rights concerns I point out in my previous post. But human rights enforcement or implementation is within the domain of states, though civil society may be a careful watchdog. The Draft Resolution's text, most certainly, will face certain oppositions: for instance, that it is outside the scope and mandate of the ITU. That the ITU does not deal with content regulation – and this issue touches upon content – will be mentioned. That Internet governance is already being discussed and performed in multiple other multi-stakeholder fora, such as ICANN, the NRO and RIRs, IGF and WSIS, will be emphasized. That the Draft Resolution implicates national security concerns will be mentioned as well. But as an aside, on national security: under international law, states always mention their prerogative over national security, and so as a matter of international custom, national security is outside the scope of agreements unless expressly surrendered.

At the same time, debates around the role of ITU in Internet governance are not new, and those familiar will remember the ITU’s views right before the creation of ICANN (also see Mueller, Ruling the Root 145-48 (2002)), Resolution 3 of the WCIT, and the constant tug-of-war since then. The new Secretary-General of the ITU, Mr. Houlin Zhao, wrote a note in October 2004, before the Tunis phase of the WSIS, justifying ITU’s involvement in Internet governance, advocating that IPv6 address blocks be allocated to countries. Mr. Zhao describes, with specific examples, ITU's role in the development and widespread growth of the Internet. He takes the examples of standards developed within the ITU and ITU's policy role in liberalisation and spread of telecommunications (such as Articles 4 & 9 of the 1988 ITRs).

Mr. Zhao’s concrete proposals are rendered inapplicable by the creation of the NRO and RIRs, and the growth and entrenchment of ICANN. But it may be argued that his principled justifications for ITU involvement remain. It is these that India hopes to highlight, I was told, along with the inequities in resource allocation (IPv4 was spoken of), and the disproportionate weight some states enjoy in Internet governance. Her concerns are, I am told, also shared by some other states. Given that the text exhibits a less-than-friendly approach to multi-stakeholderism, India's previous positions on the issue are of interest. While this would not correct the snags in the Draft Resolution's text, allaying these concerns may be ideal to craft an inclusive and transparent multi-stakeholder model for Internet governance.

India and Multi-stakeholderism in Internet Governance:

India’s position on multi-stakeholder models for Internet governance is a matter of some obscurity. Statements at various forums exhibit a certain disagreement – or at the least, lack of engagement – among India’s ministries on our position on multi-stakeholder approaches, particularly the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), the Department of Telecommunications (DOT) and the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), both within the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT). While both the MEA and DOT have been cautious supporters of a diluted form of multi-stakeholderism (they have repeatedly emphasized §35 of the Tunis Agenda), DeitY has been more open in entertaining multi-stakeholder approaches for Internet governance.

At the 66^th session of UN General Assembly, Mr. Dushyant Singh, Member of India’s Parliament from the Bharatiya Janata Party, presented our proposal for a Committee on Internet-related Policies. The proposal sought the establishment of a UN committee comprising 50 member-states, with advisory groups including the private sector and civil society, to deal with Internet-related matters.[3] Though India was not opposed to multi-stakeholder advisories in its CIRP proposal, it was less than inviting in this regard.

At NETmundial (April 2014), the Indian government’s contribution document highlighted §35 of the Tunis Agenda, which delineates ‘roles and responsibilities’ of ‘respective stakeholders’ – i.e., governments (with whom reside “sovereign policy authority”), the private sector (technical and economic development of the Internet) and civil society (grassroots participation). At NETmundial, Mr. Vinay Kwatra of the MEA echoed this, also noting the lack of consensus on what multi-stakeholderism means for Internet governance (page 64).

Admittedly, this is a legitimate concern. Internet governance at various fora does not seem to have a clear answer on what multi-stakeholderism means. The debate was/is alive, for instance, at NETmundial 2014, the ICANN-convened IANA transition process, the World Economic Forum’s new NETmundial Initiative, and in the many calls and suggestions (pages 38-46) made over the years on strengthening the IGF (see also, Malcolm, Multi-stakeholder Governance and the IGF (2008), chapter 6). It is hardly surprising then, that India and other states raise this as a concern.

With regard to multi-stakeholderism, the DeitY in India has been the outlier. Speaking at the 2014 IGF in Istanbul, Mr. R.S. Sharma, Secretary (DeitY), expressed “no doubt that Internet Governance mechanism require the involvement of all the stakeholders, since the evolution of Internet has been a product of many different diverse groups working together in a loosely coordinated manner”, advocating strengthening of the IGF and pointing to India’s proposed India-IGF as an example of multi-stakeholderism at home. Most interestingly, Mr. Sharma did not focus on international Internet-related policies being the “sovereign policy authority of states”. Also in the transcripts of the four meetings of the Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation under the Committee for Science, Technology and Development (CSTD), I have been unable to find outright rejections of multi-stakeholder approaches, though India has not advocated multi-stakeholderism unequivocally either.

But this – the emphasis on “sovereign policy authority of states” in Internet governance – has been a consistent position for India, especially the MEA and DOT. Here at the ITU PP-14 as well, members of the Indian delegation also emphasized states’ sovereign monopoly over policy matters. “Why not take this to the ITU”, I was asked, as “many governments are uncomfortable” with the way Internet governance is being conducted at other fora. There are grave concerns, I was told, about the possibility of excessive control some governments have over both user and government data of other states (government-speak, of course, for the Snowden revelations).

These are, of course, concerns similar to those of authoritarian governments, or those reluctant to open up to multi-stakeholderism and looking for excuses to retain/increase government control. But it is equally possible that these concerns need not be limited only to such states. Perhaps for developing countries as well, these are real concerns. In conversation with members of the Indian delegation at the ITU Plenipot, I was able to discern 3 broad concerns. First, the definition of multi-stakeholderism in Internet governance. India has not shown herself comfortable with an all-out endorsement of multi-stakeholderism. This is troubling. Civil society and the private sector in India will attest to the difficulties in engaging with our government at all levels. For instance, seeking a place on India's delegation for the Plenipot proved a disheartening exercise for some members of India's civil society.

But there are also conflicting indications. India is in the process of instituting an India-IGF, and CIS' Executive Director, Sunil Abraham, is on the MAG. India expressed agreement, at least in informal conversation, to opening up ITU documents to the public on grounds of public interest. The Law Commission of India recently conducted a multi-stakeholder consultation on media laws in India, and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) regularly conducts consultations, though the private sector is more active there. What is lacking in India, however, is a set of clear procedures and processes for multi-stakeholder engagement, particularly on Internet issues. Clear, public, accessible, foreseeable and predictable set of rules or processes on participation from civil society, private sector and academia would make a world of difference to multi-stakeholderism within India. But this lack should not blind states or other stakeholders to the genuineness of privacy/security or equity concerns - for instance, of the protection of our information from mass surveillance or the feasibility and actual participation of developing countries at many Internet governance fora.

Second, members of the delegation expressed concern over inequalities in the allocation of naming, numbering and addressing resources. While I am uncertain how IPv6 allocation falls within this concern, the inequalities of IPv4 allocations are well documented. To gather a sense of this, it would be useful to read chapter 5 of Professor DeNardis’ Protocol Politics, and to glance at Figure 5.7 (page 173). Africa controls, for instance, a mere 1% of all available IPv4 addresses, while North America and Europe control about 63%. A study on engagement from the Asia-Pacific in Internet standards organisations shows, for instance, greater participation from Western countries and from some states like Japan.[4] India and other states from Asia and Africa have lesser participation. Even at ICANN, with efforts to increase participation, meaningful engagement is still from a majority of Western countries. Perhaps states and other stakeholders on the other side of the table can address these concerns through clear, inclusive, non-discriminatory commitments and implementation.

Third, India emphasized how the Draft Resolution does not propose that ITU be involved in content management or resources control, but only seeks to systematize allocation by asking the ITU Secretary General to collaborate and coordinate with other Internet governance organisations to create a set of principles for fair, equitable, transparent and democratic - as well as secure - allocation of resources. ITU Resolution 101 already instructs the Secretary General to collaborate with relevant Internet governance organisations, and the Draft Resolution merely seeks to spell out his tasks. However, as I pointed out in my previous post, the text of the Draft Resolution is at odds with this intention of India's. By dint of its drafting, it gravely implicates human rights, as well as touching upon resource allocation oversight ("needs to be adhere to" in Op. §2). To reflect the above stated intention, the Draft Resolution would need to be redrafted.

Finally, the text of the Draft Resolution exhibits, unfortunately, a certain disregard for existing network architecture and efficiency within the Internet, and to the principles of a free, open and inter-operable and unified Internet, when it seeks to develop a network architecture that facilitates (domestic) localization of traffic-routing, address resolution and allocation of naming, numbering and addressing. An argument may, of course, be made in favour of efficiency and costs, including reduced latency. But it is clear that this has the potential to increase domestic surveillance capabilities and government censorship of content. In any case, traffic localization (if not local address resolution) can be achieved without ITU coordination: through Internet Exchange Points, and through more efficient and better-negotiated peering and transit arrangements (pages 14-17). Internationally coordinated rules for localized traffic routing is not necessary; you just need to have a more efficient Internet Exchange Point. How to get more ISPs to interconnect through India’s National Internet Exchange (NIXI) is one of the very questions that India’s Telecom Regulatory Authority has taken up in its recent consultation on expanding broadband access (page 49). So it is possible that India's concerns could be addressed without ITU involvement, though I am unsure of its impact on the global Internet.

The Draft Resolution will be discussed at the ITU Plenipot today. The discussion will allow India and sympathetic countries to raise several of their concerns relating to the present system of Internet governance, and the direction of its progress. I will report on these discussions upon their completion.

A Note on Limitations:

The aim of this post is to clarify. I would caution against its being the last word on anything, much less India’s positions on Internet governance. An issue as important as this needs far greater access to and confirmation from India’s government – and a more in-depth understanding of the politics – than I do, at the moment.

At the same time, India has not been a model for civil society engagement, as illustratively, the Narmada Bachao Andolan and/or P. Sainath’s evaluation of government policies in Everybody Loves a Good Drought reveal. It has been harder to effectively engage with India’s government than in many states in North America, Latin America and Europe. But I believe the complex dynamics of that is not unique to India. The NSA and GCHQ revelations (as an example of governmental trust deficit of unmatched proportions) have shown that where governments want to keep everyone out and oblivious, they do it well.

I am not in favour of a purely multilateral approach to Internet governance. But at the same time, I share concerns over definition and the evolution of processes as well, as I am sure others in civil society also do. Particularly on the issue of Internet governance and multi-stakeholderism, evidence reveals inconsistency among India’s various ministries. Until this is addressed by our government (hopefully in consultation with all concerned stakeholders), an open mind would probably be the best thing we - including states - could keep.

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Sunil Abraham, Pranesh Prakash, Rishabh Dara, Arun Sukumar, Anja Kovacs and Parminder Jeet Singh for the freedom to bounce ideas, feedback and the many discussions about multi-stakeholder approaches and Internet governance. I also wish to acknowledge Samir Saran’s article in CFR, which offers an interesting perspective on India’s Draft Resolution.

[1] For this post, I will use ‘multi-stakeholder approaches’ as an umbrella term, but would urge readers to keep in mind the many uncertainties and disagreements about defining multi-stakeholderism for Internet governance. These disagreements exist among and within all stakeholders, including government and civil society. In addition to various iterations of the ‘equal footing model’, the model proposed in §35 of the Tunis Agenda is also multi-stakeholder, albeit in a different – and for many in civil society, less desirable – sense.

[2] For those unacquainted with WCIT, see Mueller, ITU Phobia: Why WCIT was derailed, Internet Governance Blog (18 December 2012), http://www.internetgovernance.org/2012/12/18/itu-phobia-why-wcit-was-derailed/; Kleinwächter, WCIT and Internet governance: Harmless resolution or Trojan horse?, CircleID Blog (17 December 2012), http://www.circleid.com/posts/20121217_wcit_and_internet_governance_harmless_resolution_or_trojan_horse/.

[3] For a commentary, see Mueller, A United Nations Committee for Internet-related Policies? A Fair Assessment, Internet Governance Blog (29 October 2011), http://www.internetgovernance.org/2011/10/29/a-united-nations-committee-for-internet-related-policies-a-fair-assessment/.

[4] Contreras, Divergent Patterns of Engagement in Internet Standardization: Japan, Korea and China. I am unable to find this paper online. Please email me for information.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/good-intentions-recalcitrant-text-2013-ii-what-india2019s-itu-proposal-may-mean-for-internet-governance

October 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2014-11-23T16:40:23Z

Welcome to the tenth issue of the newsletter (October 2014).

We at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcome you to the tenth issue of the newsletter (October 2014). Archives of our newsletters can be accessed at: http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters

Highlights

CIS sent its comments and recommendations on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill, 2014. It was submitted to the Parliamentary Standing Committee in October 2014.
CIS has published the Central Guidelines and Schemes.
CIS was one of the signatories of a letter sent to the Prime Minister of India Shri Narendra Modi sharing its concerns on India's position on intellectual property, particularly in the context of bilateral relations between the United States of America and India. The letter was sent on October 22, 2014.

In 2013, the Indian Patent Office released Draft Guidelines for the Examination of Computer Related Inventions, in an effort to clarify some of the ambiguity. Shashank Singh analyses the various responses by the stakeholders to these Guidelines and highlights the various issues put forth in the responses.

Subhashish Panigrahi wrote an op-ed in the Samaja (Odia daily) on the hurdles that the Odia language has been facing and the potential aspects of the language including it being used massively on the Internet, Wikipedia and other media platforms.

International Telecommunications Union is hosting its Plenipotentiary Conference this year in South Korea. India introduced a new draft resolution on ITU's Role in Realising Secure Information Society. The Draft Resolution has grave implications for human rights and Internet governance. Geetha Hariharan analyses this.

Vipul Kharbanda analyses the possible implications of the public interest litigation that has been placed before the Supreme Court petitioning for the establishment of a DNA database in respect to unidentified bodies in his latest blog entry.
In a blog post published in Lila Interactions P.P.Sneha explores the possibilities of redefining the idea of access through the channels of education and learning.

►Job

Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge - Institutional Partnerships): CIS is seeking applications for the post of Programme Officer for its Access to Knowledge (A2K) Programme. The position will be based in its Bangalore office. Programme Officer will collaboratively work with the A2K Team and would report to the Programme Director, Access to Knowledge at CIS.

Accessibility and Inclusion

Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing two projects. The first project is on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. CIS in partnership with CLPR (Centre for Law and Policy Research) compiled the National Compendium of Policies, Programmes and Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (29 states and 6 union territories). The updated draft is being reviewed by the Office of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities. The draft chapters and the quarterly reports can be accessed on the project page. The second project is on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

►NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Update

October 2014 Report (Suman Dogra; October 31, 2014).

►Other

Submission

Comments to the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill , 2014 (Nirmita Narasimhan and Anandhi Viswanathan; October 30, 2014).

Blog Entries

Central Guidelines and Schemes (Anandhi Viswanathan, October 14, 2014).
The Legal Framework for Enforcement of Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CLPR; October 14, 2014).

Media Coverage

Communication technology opens 'doors' for everyone, not only people with disabilities (John D. Kemp and Brandon M. Macsata, The Hill, October 13, 2014).

Access to Knowledge

Blog Entries

Letter to the Prime Minister on Indo-US Bilateral Relations on Intellectual Property (Nehaa Chaudhari; October 22, 2014).
Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions: Mapping the Stakeholders' Response (Shashank Singh; October 29, 2014).

►Wikipedia

Blog Entries

ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ବିକାଶରେ ପ୍ରତିବନ୍ଧକ ଓ ସମ୍ଭାବନା (Subhashish Panigrahi, Samaja; October 13, 2014).
Bharat Majhi Writings Now Available Under a Creative Commons License (Subhashish Panigrahi; October 14, 2014).
More Than 40 Million People Await the Launch of Odia Wikisource (Subhashish Panigrahi, Global Voices and Wikimedia Blog; October 21, 2014).
Odia Littérateur Ramakrushna Nanda's 4 Books Now Available Under a Creative Commons License (Subhashish Panigrahi; October 22, 2014).
Open Access Platform to Save the Odia Indian Language (Subhashish Panigrahi, Opensource.com; October 22, 2014).
Odia Wikisource Goes Live! (Subhashish Panigrahi; October 26, 2014).
Samskrita Vaibhavam (Sanskrit Wiki Outreach Program) (Shubha and Sayant Mahato; October 30, 2014).
Tulu Wikipedia Workshop cum Editathon at Udupi (Dr. U.B.Pavanaja, October 31, 2014). The event was covered by V4News.com and Mangalore Today.
Converting from nonUnicode (Nudi, Baraha, ...) font encoding to Unicode Kannada (Dr. U.B.Pavanaja; October 31, 2014).

Events Co-organized

Sangeet Baithak: A Hindustani Music Resource Donation Event in Mumbai (Organized by CIS-A2K and Khayal Trust; Shivaji Park, Dadar, Mumbai; October 7, 2014).
Indian Women in Science Wiki edit-a-thon (Organized by IndoBioScience and CIS-A2K; Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore; October 11, 2014).
Ada Lovelace Edit-a-thon 2014 (Organized by IndoBioScience and CIS-A2K; Urban Solace; October 14, 2014).

News and Media Coverage

CIS-A2K team gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Enliven the Tulu Viki Fidia first and then add Tulu to the 8th Schedule : Dr.UG Pavanaja, Bangalore Rep. in Udupi (V4News.com; October 15, 2014).
Wikipedia can establish Tulu in a wider way (Mangalore Today; October 17, 2014).
Pushing women scientists (Renuka Phadnis; Hindu; October 19, 2014).
Wiki Media Foundation keen on developing Urdu Wikipedia (Nisar Ahmed Syed; October 22, 2014).
Wiki Media Foundation keen on developing Urdu Wikipedia (Siasat Daily; October 24, 2014).

Participation in Event

Barcamp Bangalore (Organized by SAP Labs; Bangalore; October 12, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja and Rahmanuddin Shaik took part in the event.

Internet Governance

►Privacy

As part of our Surveillance and Freedom: Global Understandings and Rights Development (SAFEGUARD) project with Privacy International we are engaged in enhancing respect for the right to privacy in developing countries. We have produced the following outputs during the month although these may not be part of the SAFEGUARD project:

Blog Entries

The Gujarat High Court Judgment on the Snoopgate Issue (Vipul Kharbanda; October 27, 2014).
DNA Database for Missing Persons and Unidentified Dead Bodies (Vipul Kharbanda; October 31, 2014).

Upcoming Event

CPDP 2015 : The eighth international conference on computers, privacy and data protection will be held in Brussels from January 21 to 23, 2015. CIS is a moral supporter of CPDP.

Participation in Events

Training for Internet Governance Activists (Organized by Global Partners Digital, UK; Cambridge; September 23 - 24, 2014). Geetha Hariharan attended the event. The event was held in September and the details published in October.
The India Conference on Cyber Security and Cyber Governance (Organized by FICCI and CYFY; October 15 - 17, 2014; New Delhi). CIS was a knowledge partner. Sunil Abraham was a panelist in the session "Privacy is Dead".
Expert Consultation on Cyber Security, Justice and Governance (Organized by Hague Institute for Global Justice, Observer Research Foundation and STIMSON; October 18, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker in the session "Internet Access, Freedom Online, and Development in the Global South".

►Free Speech

Good Intentions, Recalcitrant Text - I: Why India's Proposal at the ITU is Troubling for Internet Freedoms (Geeta Hariharan; October 28, 2014).
Good Intentions, Recalcitrant Text - II: What India's ITU Proposal May Mean for Internet Governance (Geeta Hariharan; November 1, 2014).

News & Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Is India the next frontier for Facebook? (Rama Lakshmi; Washington Post; October 9, 2014).
If MNCs make early inroads, they will keep market share: Sunil Abraham, CIS (J.Anand; Financial Express; October 23, 2014).

Digital Humanities

Blog Entry

Rethinking Conditions of Access (P.P.Sneha, Lilainteractions; October 15, 2014).

About CIS

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
Visit us at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge
E-mail: a2k@cis-india.org

► Support Us

► Request for Collaboration:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/october-2014-bulletin

Converting from nonUnicode (Nudi, Baraha, ...) font encoding to Unicode Kannada

pavanaja — 2016-10-23T15:36:25Z

People have been using computers for typing and printing Kannada text for more than 25 years. Most of the usage of Kannada on computers was limited to the DTP arena.

People made use of packages like PageMaker (Version 6.5 or 7) to type and compose pages. Even now, many people still use these packages for Kannada DTP work. The text entered into these packages is stored as font glyph codes rather than character encodings. Non-Unicode truetype fonts like Nudi, Baraha, ShreeLipi, Akruti, etc, are some of the most popular fonts being used.

The system does not understand these characters as Kannada characters. Any text based operations like search, replace, sorting, spell-check, text-to-speech, etc, are not possible with this kind of text. Employing Unicode for all digitisation works of Kannada text solves this problem. Usage of Unicode for Kannada has become prominent only recently. All websites like Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Wikisource, etc, want the text only in Unicode. There is still a large amount of text entered and stored with old non-Unicode font based encodings. These are mostly present in the form of PageMaker files. This blog post explains the process of converting the text present in PageMaker into Kannada Unicode text.

The Kannada and Culture Department of the Government of Karnataka have released Unicode complaint open-type fonts and Unicode based software for Kannada under GPL. These are available for free download on their website (http://kannadasiri.co.in/index/software). Download and
install “Ascii to Unicode Kannada Converter” from this page. This software works only in Windows. Now you are ready to convert the text from PageMaker file into Unicode.

Open the PageMaker file. Select the Text tool depicted by a big “T” shaped icon. Click anywhere in the text area. Select the entire text (Ctrl-A followed by Ctrl-C). Now open Notepad and paste this text into that (press Ctrl-V). The text will appear gibberish in Notepad. Don’t worry about it. Save the file as plain text file (.TXT file). Remember where you have saved the file.

Now run the “Kannada ASCII Unicode Converter” software. In the first textbox enter the name of the ASCII file to be converted (the file you just saved from Notepad). In the bottom textbox enter a filename for the Unicode text file that will be created by the software. Select the default “GOK (Kuvempu Nudi Baraha)”, or other encoding as the case may be, as the encoding from which the text has to be converted. Click on the button written “ಪರಿವರ್ತಿಸಿ”. It will show the progress of conversion.

Once the conversion is complete, it will display an appropriate message to indicate completion of the conversion. If you open the text file created by the software, it will have the text converted into Unicode. This text can be used in Wikisource, Wikipedia, etc.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/converting-from-non-unicode-nudi-baraha-font-encoding-to-unicode-kannada