Centre for Internet and Society

Digital Native: The Future is Now

nishant — 2016-10-17T02:12:43Z

The digital is not just an addition but the new norm in our lives, and it might not be all good. There used to be a popular joke among technology geeks when Bluetooth arrived on our mobile devices — everything becomes better with Bluetooth.

The article was published in the Indian Express on October 16, 2016.

A cursory web search for things with Bluetooth have yielded toys, lunch boxes, hair clips, cushion covers and sex toys, just to name a few of the bewildering array of things that seemed to be better with a Bluetooth connection. As the projected future moves towards the Internet of Everything, we are in a similar position where we firmly believe that digital makes everything better. In the spirit of random search queries, one can easily find government, relationships, dating, shopping, shower gels, food and families as things that are enhanced by the digital. Advertisers have no qualms in declaring their products as “e-something” or “cyber-this”, emphasising the touch of technology in the most unexpected of things and processes.

The ubiquity of the digital is undeniable. However, as the digital becomes transparent and everywhere, it also seems to be going through a dramatic moment of invisibility and meaninglessness. There was a time when the digital invoked an image of a binary code flashing in black and green on heated computer screens. The presence of the digital made us cyborgs, with prostheses sticking out of our heads and wires sinuously entwined with our bodies. Digital was tied with precision, with the idea that robotic hands and machines performed tasks that were beyond human capacity or exercise. It gave the idea of acceleration, harnessing the power of high-process computing that helped tasks requiring complex logistics and systems management to be performed faster. It had a futuristic value, making us rethink the idea of intelligence, sapience, and a machine-aided life that would significantly alter the quality and habits of life and living.

Our present is the science fiction future that our pasts had imagined. The promises of the digital have already found fruition and its premises have changed so dramatically that our immediate past feels dated and slow when parsed through the lens of the present. The digital has been reconsidered as a fundamental right, being promoted through plans of universal connectivity like with the latest fanfare around Reliance Telecom’s Jio programme. When the digital becomes an all-encompassing force, it is fruitful to ask what exactly it means. Largely, the question needs asking because there is almost nothing left in our urban connected life that is not digitally mediated. From healthcare and childbirth to relationships and disbursement of rights and money, we depend on silent algorithms of work and survival almost without noticing it. Digital is a part of social, economic, cultural, political and biological production and reproduction and hence to call something digital, as if it is a marker of difference is fruitless.

If everything is digital, why do we still insist on using it as a special adjective to describe people, processes, and places? The answer is not in the digital divide, that quickly alerts us to the fact that the terrain of digitality is uneven and that there are still large swathes of world population that remain disconnected. Because, when we see the incredible efforts at digital connectivity infrastructure, we realise quickly that this is something that is going to be resolved sooner rather than later.

The answer is not in pitching the human against the machine, because we have already formed ecosystems where we live our cyborg, symbiotic lives, where each system of the human and the machine requires the other. The answer is not in a futuristic appeal, waiting for the digital to arrive because our future is now, and already in the making, if not quite there.

I would propose then, that we need the crutch of digital descriptors in order to hide the fact that in our quest for digitisation, we have stopped considering and caring about the human user in the digital networks. The human, alarmingly, has been reduced to nothing more than a node, a resource, a set of data, a flow of traffic, connected in these circuits of electronic communication, rescued from itself by the force of digital transformation.

As we look at the digital schemes, policies and programmes that we are nationally embracing, the human only becomes the end point — the last-mile consumer who has to be connected, the individual who has to be enrolled into a database, an information pod that needs to be harvested for data services.

Digital Everything is not just a benign description but a clear indication that the digital is not just an augmentation but the new norm. The digital has become the principle around which these shall be shaped, and, perhaps, it is time to worry, when we see “digital”, about what will happen to those who cannot or would not want to afford the promises and conditions of being digitally human.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-october-16-2016-nishant-shah-digital-native-future-is-now

Love in the Time of Tinder

nishant — 2016-10-17T02:07:05Z

Service providers and information aggregators mine our information and share it in ways that we cannot imagine.

The article was published in the Indian Express on October 2, 2016.

Last week, I met somebody who narrated their digital fairy tale to me. He was waiting in between trains, waiting at a train station, for the connection to arrive. Bored, he opened the dating app Tinder. He swiped right. There was a match. They started chatting. The conversation became interesting. She offered to leave work early and come to the train station to meet him for coffee. They had a five-hour long date. He missed many connections and stayed back with her to spend more time. When he left, they stayed connected using all the digital apps of connection that you can imagine. They started travelling weekends to be with each other. Three years later, he moved countries and jobs to be in the same city as her. Last week, they got engaged to be married. And everybody raised a toast to the resilience of their love, and how they have worked hard at being together. They thanked all the people who have been involved and supportive in helping them through this period. And at the end, she said, she wanted to thank Tinder and WhatsApp, without which they would have never met been able to continue this connection. They were being facetious, but they were also reminding us that we live in appified times.

Apps are everywhere and they have become so natural and ubiquitous that we have forgotten what it means to live without them. In the case of this fairy tale couple, their very meeting was ordained not by fate and destiny and romantic godmothers, but by a smart app. This app, based on algorithms that judged them to be a good match, drawing from what they like on Facebook and what they share with their friends, presented both of them to each other, causing the first swipe. The app, designed around the principle of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), made sure that in the 40 minutes that he was at the train station, both of them looked at their phones, swiped right and had the conversation that began it all. The app created habits that ensured that they trusted each other to meet after a 20-minute chat, to miss trains for the joy of the first extended date. People fell in love, and their love was managed entirely by smart apps.

These apps are designed to assist us in our mundane lives. Behind their seductive design and intuitive interfaces are scripts, norms, rules, protocols and intentions that are influenced and shaped by corporations and individuals, who have a specific interest in expanding their market domains. The creation of profiles on Tinder required both these people to give Tinder access to a wide variety of their personal activities and profiles. As their romance progressed, they involved more apps in their activities. Personal planners, reminders, e-shopping platforms, social media testimonies, deals to buy cheap tickets — all came into play. And even as they came together in a monogamous relationship, the apps encouraged them into data infidelity, wantonly sharing their data, making it speak with strangers, interact with unknown shadows in the dark, morphing and fusing with predatory algorithms that continued to not only follow them but also predict what their needs are. These smart apps might come with friendly interfaces and helpful suggestions, but they do it by making us transparent — they mine our information and distribute and share it in ways that we cannot imagine to ends that we cannot fathom.

As the apps become a daily part of our lives, holding our hands and comforting our souls, it is good to remember that behind the apps is a pipeline of service providers, data harvesters, information aggregators, who are learning more and more about us, and then without our consent, in the guise of being helpful, are sharing those secrets with things and people we do not know.

While they do help us celebrate the moments and make beautiful human connections, they also continue to make oily suggestions and innuendos, gently guiding us into buying more and consuming more. I came home from the engagement party and woke up the next morning with my face being tagged in about 30 pictures on four different social media apps. And each app suggested different things I can do to celebrate this event — buy a new suit for the wedding, buy an engagement gift for the happy couple, get help with planning a bachelor’s party, and get the services of a wedding planning app.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-october-2-2016-nishant-shah-love-in-the-time-of-tinder

Learning through Archives: A Colloquium on Digital Scholarship

praskrishna — 2016-11-05T11:27:10Z

FLAME University had invited Centre for Internet & Society to join a colloquium to delve into the opportunities and challenges of digital studies in India, with particular emphasis on pedagogy and the archive.

P.P. Sneha represented the Centre for Internet & Society in the event held at Pune on October 16, 2016. Asian Art Archive, Ashok Ranade Music Archive, National Film Archives of India, and National Museum also participated in the dialogue.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/learning-through-archives-a-colloquium-on-digital-scholarship

Mobilizing Online Consensus: Net Neutrality and the India Subreddit

Sujeet George — 2016-09-27T04:52:35Z

This essay by Sujeet George is part of the 'Studying Internet in India' series. The author offers a preliminary gesture towards understanding reddit’s usage and breadth in the Indian context. Through an analysis of the “India” subreddit and examining the manner and context in which information and ideas are shared, proposed, and debunked, the paper aspires to formulate a methodology for interrogating sites like reddit that offer the possibilities of social mediation, even as users maintain a limited amount of privacy. At the same time, to what extent can such news aggregator sites direct the ways in which opinions and news flows change course as a true marker of information generation responding to user inputs.

Introduction

It is almost an Internet truism that the comments section on any website is the cesspool that festers the basest of human instincts. Insults and abuses abound, users ‘call out’ each other’s opinions, their choice of words and, on a ~~bad~~ regular day, even each other’s parentage. The spectre of online anonymity, it has been suggested, affords the possibility of channelling opinion without being accountable for it. This is the more cynical outlook on how online opinion forums function; a viewpoint which although credible is limited as it sidelines the more engaging aspects of these forums. Such an interface dynamic has historically offered two modes of checks and balances: the original content to which users commented on was determined (and often written) by the administrators of the website, and in many cases the comments were moderated by those who ran the website.

Social news websites in the age of Web 2.0 have radically altered the means of production of content. By handing over to web-users the keys to the content generation storehouse, news aggregator websites like 4chan and Reddit have supposedly democratized the volume and direction of news flow. Users create (and recycle) content on which other users comment and add more content through memes, sharing of links, pictures and videos. Somewhere along the line, the original post (op) may trigger more specific discussions.

The content generated on a news aggregating website like Reddit can thus, theoretically, range across a broad spectrum. From discussions on current technology and sharing of world news to more specific conversations on gardening or anime, the website brings together diverse interests under a singular platform. Topic-based posts and discussions are categorised into subreddits, subcommunities which converge around similar interests. Thus, a subreddit like /r/cricket may serve as a platform for cricket enthusiasts to share news and views on the game. These subreddits together constitute Reddit as a whole. Only registered users can post submissions or comment on other posts, although unregistered users can access the submissions without being able to comment on them. Registered users can upvote and downvote both the posts submitted and the comments posted by other users.

Any registered Reddit user can create a subreddit to initiate submissions and discussions on a particular area of interest. Reddit has a series of default subreddits, including /r/AskReddit, /r/books, /r/history among others. When an unregistered user accesses the website they are likely to see the current top-voted posts from a combination of the default subreddits. The voting system is inextricably linked to visibility: the more the upvotes a post receives, the more likely it is to be top of the list on the self-proclaimed front page of the internet. The posts are thus sorted as a combination of top-voted submissions from an assortment of default subreddits. Comments on specific posts also follow a similar voting logic whereby users can upvote/downvote a specific comment based on how useful or relevant they find it to the original post. Registered users can curate their own page by subscribing to subreddits of their own interest, and unsubscribing from the default ones.

Being a registered user entails choosing a username under which a user’s submissions and comments are collated. Every user comment receives an aggregate score which is the sum of the upvotes and downvotes the comment has received. The cumulative comment scores for every user, called karma, is visible to every other user, and is often an indicator of the level of (in)activity of a specific user. Karma scores are the veritable fiat currency of the reddit space, with prolific users being visible on multiple popular threads attempting to scale their karma aggregate through comments that employ a combination of wit, hyperbole, cliché and outrage.

Reddit with its two-way dynamism—the users are the creators of content and the very people who comment on it—seemingly throws open the spectrum for content to be self-generated and moderated. Every subreddit has a set of moderators who attempt to maintain a modicum of direction amidst the chaos. Moderators are often users who are active on that particular subreddit, or have volunteered (or have been chosen by the subreddit community) to take up the task of maintaining the decorum and coherence of the subreddit. Reddit’s voting system, where users upvote and downvote submitted content, purports to ensure that the cream can constantly float above the morass. The infrastructural logic of Reddit—an algorithm that ensures that posts do not stagnate on the front page and get regularly refreshed by newer content—seeks to instill a participatory ethos where content created/submitted by users gains traction based on the extent of discussion that it generates among other users [1].

A characteristic of the reddit platform is the Ask Me Anything feature where notable individuals set a pre-determined time slot to answer questions raised by users of a subreddit community. The AMA format offers an interesting take on the possibilities of public engagement and publicity in the virtual domain. A unique feature of reddit, the popular AMAs are held on the default /r/IAMA subreddit. The earliest AMAs were coordinated by the founders as well as employees of the website; to an extent this is true even today although in recent times the public relations team of various celebrities have coordinated AMAs for their clients. It remains one of the most popular modes of user engagement, ironically functioning through external, mediated mechanisms. Most AMAs serve a dual purpose: celebrities offer to answer questions when they are ‘in the news’ or when they wish to publicize a new venture, which also serves as an endorsement of the popularity of the reddit platform in reaching out to a wide, primarily North American, audience. An early instance of an acknowledgement of the reach of the reddit platform was an AMA conducted by/for Barack Obama as he sought to be re-elected during the 2012 U.S. Presidential elections. Other notable ‘celebrity’ AMA sessions include those by Bill Gates, Madonna, and Edward Snowden. While celebrity AMAs remain a popular feature, the AMA format itself is utilised even by relatively less established personalities who have their own unique story to share. While /r/IAMA remains the default subreddit used to reach out to the reddit community, specific subreddits often conduct their own AMAs with personalities relevant to the group.

The India subreddit /r/India, the forum for content “directly about India and Indians,” has been a part of Reddit since 2008. At the time of writing this essay there are over 55000 registered Reddit users (including this writer) who subscribe to submissions posted on /r/India. Of course, there may be many more who ‘lurk’ around, a term for those who may not have subscribed but view submissions posted on the subreddit by visiting the subreddit page. /r/India typically draws in over 2 million page views every month. Over time the community has developed a vocabulary of its own, which is often self-referential and draws on submissions and comments that have been made at an earlier time. Many prolific users with characteristic usernames are recognized by fellow users, the sociality perhaps further strengthened through the annual city-based meet-ups that are planned as part of a larger Reddit tradition.

This essay looks at the mobilization of community opinion on /r/India on the issue of net neutrality, the efforts made by some of the users to raise awareness about it, and the ways in which the community responded and reacted to a wider online movement that sought to maintain a more egalitarian approach to Internet access and availability. Drawing on an analysis of a few posts submitted during a period that witnessed a flurry of activity in connection with the debates around net neutrality in India, the essay attempts to sketch out the contours of the debate around the axis of online activity and participation. It seeks to ponder on the extent to which a forum like the India subreddit offers the possibilities of a civic participation, of mobilizing public opinion and contributing to the decisions undertaken by policy makers. How do purportedly diverse online communities interact, draw consensus and stake a claim to the decision-making processes that involve multiple stakeholders often with conflicting interests?

The Social in the Virtual Rear-view Mirror

The form of any subreddit, with its defined purpose and rules of submission, ensures a certain coherence even amidst the cornucopia of memes, images and other web links that may be shared and commented upon. The governing logic of a particular subreddit accords it a certain hue, which most users attempt to conform to or occasionally subvert. The specificity of any subreddit, thus, is a mutually constitutive process where the original tech-interface guidelines are negotiated by the content submitted by users of the subreddit.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/4s5bpn/tragedy_of_india/.

User behaviour on new media platforms can be understood as a virtual manifestation of traits that are exhibited in the domain of the social in real life. Consider the discussion sparked off by a post that was submitted about 4 weeks back, and which has catapulted to the top of the all time top voted submissions on the subreddit [2]. It contrasts the shoddy construction by the Maharashtra government in 2013 of a section of a fort staircase, with the more stable lasting section built by Shivaji in the 17th century. The user who posted the image commented on the dubious nature of infrastructural work in the present day, blaming corruption for the disparity in the quality of work. Juxtaposing historical nostalgia with an apathy about the present state-of-affairs, the comments and discussions around the post veered from questions of the feasibility of implementing older construction methods, to the widespread nepotism and corruption prevalent in public work contracts in the present day. One user remarked, “I'm guessing Shivaji didn't hand out the contracts for building his forts to the lowest bidder.” Another chimed in that “[no] tender is clean. It's often created, mapped, prepared and executed by the company and middleman willing to shell out the most to the bureaucrats and politicians.”

A popular motif on many submissions on /r/India is a lamentation on the tangled mess between the bureaucracy and legislature. It extends the generic urban middle class antipathy towards governance and its deep suspicion of the probity of the administrative processes of the Indian State. One user-comment tried to explain the popularity of the submitted post—a common indicator of content popularity on Reddit is the number of upvotes it receives and the extent of user participation through comments—to the highly ‘relatable’ nature of the submission.

The character of an online forum, while being shaped by diverse user behaviour, is invariably crystallized by the more dominant modes of representation. The anonymity afforded by the online medium and the potential infinitude of the range of submissions should theoretically stretch the spectrum of representations. Yet user behaviour often conforms in a bid to confirm its own shared identity within the group. What is then understood as relatable is not necessarily a universal, but merely an accommodation of difference through consensus. In the following sections I attempt to make sense of the processes through which such a consensus is drawn by considering the trajectory of discussions on posts pertaining to debates on net neutrality [3].

The Anatomy of an Online Mobilization

The discussions around questions of net neutrality, Facebook’s Free Basics, differential data pricing, and restricted access to OTT services have captured the Indian public imagination in the last 18-odd months. Multiple consultation papers shared by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) have served as a rallying point for domain experts, media policy analysts and the general public. The series of consultation papers and the questions that have arisen over specific practices of telecom companies are imagined through the essay as a single event punctuated by temporal fissures. It has its own prehistory, a call to arms, and the eventual (fleeting) redemption. The differing discourse around the issue is contextually singular even if separated by chronology.

On February 8 this year, an /r/India user shared a news report about TRAI declaring zero-rated products as illegal [4]. Months of collaboration among faceless internet users had managed a key victory in what was repeatedly termed a battle to save the Internet. User comments highlighted the scale of the task accomplished as “a bunch of folks on the Internet [stopped] a $300 billion market cap corporation [Facebook] and a bunch of telecoms with strong lobbying capabilities.” Some users could not see past the irony of the Internet itself serving as a means for the public to halt rapacious tech companies in their stride. The David v/s Goliath analogy seemed apt. The task, though, had just begun, as one user presciently noted: “Mobilizing people is hard. Mobilizing people against a better funded lobby, and on a dry technical topic ? really hard. We are probably going to need a dedicated NGO, mailing lists, donations and members for this and similar issues.”

The debates surrounding net neutrality have sparked a diverse range of questions related to Internet access, differential pricing, restraints on technology, impediments to freedom of expression and questions of consumer choice. The range of issues and stakeholders encompassed within the policy regulation has simultaneously atomised and collectivised the problematic of Internet. As an increasingly everyday technology for many urban Indians, Internet usage has carried the possibility of innovative and easy access to a range of services and information while circumventing hitherto static structures of the administrative machinery. Internet usage in the Indian context can be regarded as both a symbol of egalitarianism and privilege; a conflation of the larger ideal of enterprise espoused by the technological boom and a reluctantly understated reflection of the very technology being of limited wider accessibility. The debates on Internet usage through the very medium thus contains some of the tensions that were echoed in the responses to the questions on net neutrality that were raised on the Indian subreddit.

These debates, circulating across news mediums both print and digital, found their way into the /r/India cosmos through efforts to raise awareness about the issue and to bring about a greater collective bargaining momentum to the efforts in the digital space. A post on December 25, 2014 announced the efforts being undertaken by various media practitioners through the creation of the website http://netneutrality.in/ which later became http://www.savetheinternet.in/ [5]. As a submission in the early life of the net neutrality event the post garnered enough attention to find its way into the vocabulary of the subreddit.

It was, however, not until three months later that perhaps the most comprehensive early exhortation came through a post titled Let's fight for Net Neutrality before it becomes necessary. E-Mail the TRAI now [6]. submitted on March 28, 2015 by one of the subreddit moderators. The post called for users to mail the TRAI and join in the efforts to influence upon policy makers on the need for a neutral Internet. User comments ranged from a creating email templates to a brief primer on the meaning and scope of net neutrality. That the public counter fight was still in the planning stage is evident in the numerous user comments volunteering to craft an email template to be sent.

The possibilities of a collaborative enterprise were much more evident in another mod-post, submitted on April 8, 2015 titled Fight for Net Neutrality: The way forward [7]. The post assembled the increasing momentum that the net neutrality movement had garnered in the Indian virtual space. Varying email templates to be shared among peer groups were presented, enterprising users created memes and infographics, while more sinister minds listed out companies that openly flouted net neutrality rules. The aim was not just to organise, but to also synchronize the efforts of a purportedly disparate group of users.

Even as user efforts were directed towards raising awareness about net neutrality among a wider audience, the sheer scale of the task and improbable hurdles on the road where highlighted by some. One post speculated on the connection between the timing of TRAI’s consultation paper and the fact that the Director of TRAI was due to retire in May 2015 [8]. The user feared that “the decision on TRAI proposal has already been made. The public is asked to comment on the OTT proposal because it is required by norm (not sure about law). They are waiting for Mr Khullar to retire, so they can blame him for the colossal backlash that will happen when the proposal is ratified.”

In the next few months the momentum of the movement ebbed and flowed, with diligent users posting regular updates on the progress. Even as the Internet rights discourse on the forum sought to be balanced with the logic of the market, there emerged a series of reactionary submissions that seemed to combine a distrust of large telecoms with the emancipatory spirit of a virtual civil disobedience.

Zero Rating the Zero-Rated Apps

Concurrent with the efforts at the level of governance, /r/India users employed creative means to show their displeasure towards companies who seemed to oppose the tenets of net neutrality. One such instance was when a user galvanised forum opinion to down-rate the Flipkart and Airtel apps on their phones. Flipkart CEO Sachin Bansal’s justification for zero-rated apps as sound business practice was turned inside-out as users gave a zero rating to the Flipkart app on their phones. The impact was ostensibly evident as the daily average ratings for the app saw a sharp fall [9].

Diatribes against telecom companies and their profit-driven enterprise have now become a regular feature on the forum. The mobile network Airtel, which has been at the forefront of the anti-net neutrality lobby, has faced its share of the community ire. Branded Chortel—an (un)imaginative coinage characterizing the supposed thieving policies of the company—the company along with Flipkart has been subject to a series of memes that invoke ridicule and hint at the sense of disconnect between consumers and the products on offer. The image shown above contrasts a popular biscuit brand Parle-G with the recently launched Airtel 4G Internet [10]. It employs Parle’s long unblemished reputation as a brand of reliability; its iconicity a signifier of a purported business of ethics that feels anachronistic in comparison to the business practices of the telecom companies.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/3r25gr/chortel_four_g/.

The movement to generate awareness about Internet policy also sought to initiate dialogues with administrators who are in a position to ensure that the community’s voices are heard. Thus Independent Rajya Sabha member Rajeev Chandrasekhar did an AMA at the height of the net neutrality discussions [11]. Since the person doing the AMA can choose to answer or ignore from the range of questions posed by the community, the supposed mutuality of participation is often minimal. Nevertheless, Chandrasekhar’s AMA not just points to the interactive (propagandist) possibilities of reddit or any other social media platform but it also asserts the relevance of the medium as a significant domain where policy regulation impacts people whose voices need to be acknowledged. As an entrepreneur who has previously worked in the technology sector, Chandrasekhar symbolizes /r/India’s imagined ideal scenario of a ‘rule of experts’ in matters of governance. That a sitting MP would seek a dialogue with an online forum also hints at the relevance of such mobilizations, where enterprising tech-savvy politicians understand the potential to stir public action through the domain of the virtual.

Consensus in/and New Media

At one level, it could be suggested that the discussions which emerged on the India subreddit around the debates on net neutrality hint at the potentials of virtual mobilization of the public. Social media, the Internet and social networking forums like Reddit could potentially widen the level of information access and dissemination where the early groundwork has been laid by the RTI Act. But at stake in the whole discussion is not merely the extent to which an online community can modify the direction of a policy discourse. Even as the development of a ‘networked public sphere’ has transformed the means of consensus building, the elements of its discontent are difficult to ignore. The formation of a public sphere in a virtual environment presents the possibilities of conformity as much as of consensus.

The discourse around net neutrality on /r/India forum is notable for the wide-ranging consensus that it managed to appropriate from the community. Such a consensus could be interpreted in at least two ways. The form of any subreddit as a forum for all things related to a specific context—be it a common activity, nationality, gender identity—contains within itself the language of adequate acceptance and rebuttal. At the same time, the algorithmic technique of determining the visibility of a post through upvotes and downvotes renders real the possibility of consensus through conformity.

It is more interesting to look beyond the veneer of consensus and question the supposed diversity of the group and its implications, rather than infer collective action as a signifier of the rightness of the action. One could suggest that the terms of the debate, of limiting the control that mega-telecos wield over internet policy in India, offered an easy medium to galvanise opinion on the subreddit. Any nuanced stance will however need to read collective action in relation to the (im)possibility of individual opinion-making in a structured environment of an online forum.

An online platform with a voting system linked to visibility offers a peculiar type of consensus. A majority of the top-voted submissions and comments pertaining to the net neutrality debate on /r/India fall within a broad overlap of consensus linked to a participatory, egalitarian technological ethos which is characteristic of the post-liberalization Indian milieu. The possibility of dissent, or even voicing differing viewpoints, is structured in a limited spectrum since what will be shared/read is inextricably linked to what users understand as acceptable within the forum. Such an understanding can inadvertently suggest a consensus, or worse offer a monochromatic presentation of an issue. This is not to discount the possibility of informed discussion, or exaggerate the ‘hive mind’ of reddit. But the link between visibility and popularity of content often ensures that the nuances of a debate get sidelined and unidimensional. Thus, even though aspects of differential pricing may be understood as a means to wider access, or as a way to open Internet services to the vagaries of the market rather than State whims, such viewpoints find less credibility when articulated within a forum like /r/India [12]. While discussions may emerge which consider the issue beyond the limited rhetoric of free speech and consumer choice, they often get presented in the ‘anti net neutrality’ garb or as afterthoughts to a debate the terms of which have ostensibly been settled [13].

Communicative technologies, as Lisa Gitelman notes, often converge around an overlapping mental landscape that seeks to make sense of an act/event through synchronized ontologies of representation. Consensus in such an instance is not to be seen as a final validation of the community’s stance on an issue. It should prompt us to be wary of the pitfalls of online mobilization that could be travelling in an echo chamber. The task then would not be to debunk actions drawn on consensus, but to be aware of the limits of inclusivity of such online forums [14]. Further research has to consider ways in which individual users negotiate the possibility of presenting an individual stance to the community within interface-induced limitations to the possibility of such an enunciation. This would involve interviews with a pool of /r/India users, examine the types of news outlets and viewpoints that gain credence within the community, look at voting patterns, and perhaps undertake a more thorough examination of a wider range of concerns relevant to the community. This essay has attempted a preliminary gesture towards such an endeavour by picking a particular event and the community’s response to it. Reddit, in contrast to Facebook for instance, offers the possibility of peering into an online space where anonymity commingles with community enterprise and the meaning of accountability is extended beyond individual motive of mere sociality or recognition. As such, it could potentially offer an understanding of online behaviour beyond the limits of the individual-liberal paradigm of action orientation and widen the debate on the functioning of social news websites by being acutely aware of the thin line between the individual and the social.

Disclaimer

The writer has been a frequent lurker on Reddit, and the India subreddit since 2011. Beyond voraciously consuming the submissions on /r/India he does not claim to have contributed in any meaningful manner to the online discussions referred to in the essay.

Endnotes

[1] The literature on reddit is a fast growing domain, with innovative research looking at Reddit’s voting patterns, user behaviour, and news outlets linked to glean an understanding of the news aggregating website. For an examination of questions of identity and anonymity on Reddit see, Shelton, M., Lo, K., Nardi, B. (2015). Online Media Forums as Separate Social Lives: A Qualitative Study of Disclosure Within and Beyond Reddit. In iConference 2015 Proceedings. For an engagement with questions on what motivates Reddit user to contribute see, Bogers, T., & Nordenhoff Wernersen, R. (2014). How 'Social' are Social News Sites? Exploring the Motivations for Using Reddit.com. In Proceedings of the iConference 2014. (pp. 329-344). IDEALS: iSchools.

[2] See: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/4s5bpn/tragedy_of_india/. Last accessed on August 2, 2016. Unless stated otherwise, all links posted hereafter have also been accessed on the same day.

[3] My understanding of social media and the social dimension of new media has been shaped from my reading of Dijck, José Van. The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. For an examination of social media practices see, Ellison, N. B. & boyd, d. (2013). Sociality through Social Network Sites. In Dutton, W. H. (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Internet Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 151–172.

[4] See: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/44qddb/trai_to_make_zero_rated_products_illegal/.

[5] See: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/2qcvhp/i_created_a_site_to_educate_people_about_airtel/.

[6] See: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/30lz1p/lets_fight_for_net_neutrality_before_it_becomes/.

[7] See: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/31vvf2/fight_for_net_neutrality_the_way_forward/.

[8] See: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/322iv8/trai_asking_for_feedback_on_their_proposal_is_a/. For Kullar’s own views on the issue, see: http://thewire.in/1624/lets-be-practical-about-net-neutrality/.

[9] See: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/31ykxj/flipkart_and_airtel_are_fucking_with_your/.

[10] See: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/3r25gr/chortel_four_g/.

[11] See: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/387req/hi_rindia_i_am_rajeev_chandrasekhar_member_of/.

[12] CIS’s note on its position on net neutrality points to the multilayered nature of the policy: http://www.hindustantimes.com/columns/net-neutrality-war-is-not-just-facebook-versus-internet-mullahs/story-s9eZpZnomaaiz4De8fYfaK.html. Last accessed on September 9, 2016.

[13] Consider the discussions that emerged in two separate posts: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/31peb4/lets_respond_to_this_anti_net_neutrality_piece/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/336u8f/woke_up_to_this_pro_internetorg_article_in/.

[14] Gitelman, Lisa. Always Already New: Media, History and the Data of Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. Especially chapter 3.

Author Profile

Sujeet George has an M.Phil from the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. His research interests are in histories of science and commodities, and new media and digital humanities. He has previously worked with the Mumbai City Museum and The Southasia Trust.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_mobilizing-online-consensus-net-neutrality-and-the-india-subreddit

Internet Researchers' Conference 2017 (IRC17) - Call for Sessions

sumandro — 2016-12-12T13:40:08Z

It gives us great pleasure to announce that the second Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC17) will take place in Bengaluru on March 03-05, 2017. It will be organised by the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in partnership with the Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy at the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-B). It is a free and open conference. Sessions must be proposed by teams of two or more members on or before Friday, October 28. All submitted session proposals will go though an open review process, followed by each team that has proposed a session being invited to select ten sessions of their choice to be included in the Conference agenda. Final sessions will be chosen through these votes, and be announced on January 09, 2017.

IRC17 Call for Sessions: Download (PDF)

IRC17 Selection of Sessions: http://cis-india.org/raw/irc17-selection

Deadline for submission was Friday, October 28.

IRC17: Key Provocations

Two critical questions that emerged from the conversations at the previous edition of the Conference (IRC16) were about the digital objects of research, and the digital/internet experiences in Indic languages. As we discussed various aspects and challenges of 'studying internet in India', it was noted that we have not sufficiently explored how ongoing research methods, assumptions, and analytical frames are being challenged (if at all) by the becoming-digital of the objects of research across disciplines: from various artifacts and traces of human and machinic interactions, to archival entries and sites of ethnography, to practices and necessities of collaboration.

We found that the analyses of such digital objects of research often tend to assume either an aesthetic and functional uniqueness or sameness vis-à-vis the pre-/proto-digital objects of research, while neither of these positions are discussed in detail. Further, we tend to universalise the English-speaking user's/researcher's experience of working with such digital objects, without sufficiently considering their lives and functions in other (especially, Indic) languages.

These we take as the key provocations of the 2017 edition of IRC:

How does the becoming-digital of the research objects challenge our current research practices, concerns, and assumptions?
How do we appreciate, study, and theorise the functioning of and meaning-making by digital objects in Indic languages?
What research tools and infrastructures are needed to study, document, annotate, analyse, archive, cite, and work with (in general) digital objects, especially those in Indic languages?

Call for Sessions

We invite teams of two or more researchers and practitioners to propose sessions for IRC17. We do understand that finding team members for a session you have in mind might be difficult in certain cases. Please feel free to share initial sessions ideas on the researchers@cis-india mailing list [1]. Also, please keep an eye on the list to see what potential topics are being discussed.

All sessions will be one and half hours long, and will be fully designed and facilitated by the team concerned, including moderation (if any). The sessions are expected to drive conversations on the topic concerned. They may include presentation of research papers but this is not at all mandatory.

If you plan to organise a session structured around presentation of research papers, please note that we are exploring potential publication outlets for a collection of full-length research papers. If your session is selected for IRC17, we will notify you of guidelines to be followed for the submission and review of full-length papers prior to the conference. If you are interested in this publication possibility, please indicate that in your session proposal submission.

Sessions that involve collaborative work (either in group or otherwise), including discussions, interactions, documentation, learning, and making, are most welcome.

Further, we look forward to sessions conducted in Indic languages. The proposing team, in such a case, should consider how participants who do not understand the language can participate in it. IRC organisers and other participants will play an active role in making such engagements possible.

The only eligibility criteria for proposing sessions are that they must be proposed by a team of at least two members, and that they must engage with one (or more) of the three key provocations mentioned above. Further, the teams whose sessions are selected for IRC17 must commit to producing at least one post-conference essay/documentation on the topic of their session.

The deadline for submission of sessions proposals for IRC17 is Friday, October 28.

To propose a session, please send the following documents (as attached text files) to raw[at]cis-india[dot]org:

Title and Description of the Session: The session should be named in the form of a hashtag (check the IRC16 sessions for reference [2]). The description of the session should clearly state what the key focus of the session is, and which of the three central concerns it will address. The description should be approximately 300 words long.
Session plan: This should describe how the session will be conducted and moderated. Any specific requirements (technical, language support, etc.) of the session should also be noted here. This should not be more than 200 words long. If your session plan involves presentation of research papers, please indicate whether you would be interested in having these papers considered for academic publication.
Documentation plan: This should indicate how documentation will be done during the session, and more importantly what form the post-conference essay/documentation will take and what issue(s) it will address. This should not be more than 100 words long.
Short Abstracts (Only for Sessions with Paper Presentations): If your session involves presentation of research papers, please share a 250 words abstract for each paper.
Details of the Team: Please share brief biographic notes of each member of the session team, and contact details.

Session Selection Process

October 28: Deadline of submission of session proposals.

October 31: All submitted sessions will be posted on the CIS website, along with the names, biographic brief, and contact details of the members of the session teams.

November 01 - December 24: Open review period. All session teams, as well as other interested contributors, may review the submitted proposals and share comments directly with the session teams, or discuss the session on the researchers@cis-india list. The session teams may fully and continuously edit the proposal during this period, including adding/changing session teams.

December 25: Open review ends and voting begins. All session teams will select 10 sessions to be included in the IRC17 programme. The votes will be anonymous, that is which session team has voted for which set of sessions will not be made public.

January 05: Voting ends.

January 09: Announcement of selected sessions.

February 12: Deadline for selected session teams to submit a detailed session plan, information about which will be shared later. If a selected session involves presentation of papers, then the draft papers are to be submitted by this date (no need to submit a detailed session plan in that case).

Venue, Accommodation, and Travel

The conference will take place at the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-B) during March 03-05, 2017 [3].

The conference does not have any participation fees. The organisers will cover all costs related to accommodation and hospitality during the conference. We look forward to offer a limited number of (domestic) travel fellowships for students and other deserving applicants. We will also confirm this on January 02, 2017.

About the IRC Series

The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme [4] at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) initiated the Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC) series to address these concerns, and to create an annual temporary space in India, for internet researchers to gather and share experiences.

The IRC series is driven by the following interests:

creating discussion spaces for researchers and practitioners studying internet in India and in other comparable regions,
foregrounding the multiplicity, hierarchies, tensions, and urgencies of the digital sites and users in India, accounting for the various layers, conceptual and material, of experiences and usages of internet and networked digital media in India, and
exploring and practicing new modes of research and documentation necessitated by new (digital) objects of power/knowledge.

The first edition of the Internet Researchers' Conference series was held in February 2016 [5]. It was hosted by the Centre for Political Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University [6], and was supported by the CSCS Digital Innovation Fund [7]. The Conference was constituted by eleven discussion sessions (majority of which were organised around presentation of several papers), four workshop sessions (which involved group discussions, activities, and learnings), a book sprint over three sessions to develop an outline of a (re)sourcebook for internet researchers in India, and a concluding round table. The audio recordings and notes from IRC16 are now being compiled into an online Reader. A detailed reflection note on the IRC16 has already been published [8].

Endnotes

[1] See: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers.

[2] See: http://cis-india.org/raw/irc16.

[3] See: http://iiitb.ac.in/.

[4] See: http://cis-india.org/raw/.

[5] See: http://cis-india.org/raw/irc16.

[6] See: http://www.jnu.ac.in/SSS/CPS/.

[7] See: http://cis-india.org/raw/cscs-digital-innovation-fund.

[8] See: http://cis-india.org/raw/iirc-reflections-on-irc16.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/irc17-call

How Green is the Internet? The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Aishwarya Panicker — 2016-09-23T05:02:50Z

This essay by Aishwarya Panicker is part of the 'Studying Internet in India' series. The author draws attention to the fact that there is little data, debate, analysis, and examination of the environmental impact of the internet, which is true especially for India. She explores four central issue areas. First, as the third highest country in terms of internet use, what is the current environmental impact of internet usage in India? Second, are there any regulatory provisions that give prescriptive measures to data centres and providers? Third, do any global standards exist in this regard and finally, what future steps can be taken (by the government, civil society and individuals) to address this?

Introduction

Groceries at your doorstep, data on your fingertips, an Uber at the tap of a button and information overload- human negotiations with the internet have definitely changed drastically over the past few decades. Research in the area, too, has transformed-covering not just its evolution and impact, but also assessing innovative and revolutionary ideas in terms of access, internet infrastructure as well as governance to name a few. With over 3.2 Billion internet users in the world [1], and over 400 million of these from India [2], this is no surprise. How can we move beyond particular fascinations with the internet and engage holistically with it? - by moving towards a dimension of internet infrastructure studies that has large policy and sustainable development benefits. This paper, then, will seek to elucidate one central issue area: as the third highest country in terms of internet use, what is the current environmental impact of internet usage in India?

It is widely recognized that India still has miles to go before it reaches complete internet connectivity – be it at the rural or urban geographies. With millions still on the fringes of the online/offline world, it does seem that having access to the internet is still a privilege. However, with over 400 million (around 35 % of the total population) active users, and a fast growing young user base, the implications are vast. The message here is clear, India’s communications reality is changing, and it is changing at warp speed; second, there are constant reassurances to convince us of its growth. At a policy level, the national government has put in place an $18 billion Digital India Initiative that has an outlay of ₹70,000 crore for creating a high-speed Internet grid that will help bridge the rural-urban online divide. At a consumer level, more people are beginning to realise the benefits of using the net for their own daily needs. This should mean that more people will be able to avail the multitude of benefits from this wide web (using less paper, banking online, travelling less for shopping, for example), doing things that are obviously good for the environment, right? Yes, and no.

Measuring or assessing environment impact, for any particular product or service, requires a look into the cost foregone by using that particular product or service. In order to get a wider look into the environmental impact of the internet, we need to check the data available for hardware usage and waste generation, infrastructure provisions and finally, accurate data generation.

Climate change and carbon footprints are terms that have been used as buzzwords to death this past decade, but while environmental sustainability remains at the forefront of many-a-government, there is little data/ debate/ analysis/ examination of the environmental impact of communication systems connected to the net. This is true especially for India. In 2011, Joel Gombiner wrote an academic paper [3] on the problem of the Internet’s carbon footprint, with a premise based on the lesser known fact that the ICT industry has been ‘responsible for two to four percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions’- an area that the Climate Group’s Smart 2020 report [4] had focused on back in 2008 as well. Clearly this is a war on the environment that is yet to receive large-scale attention.

“What a Waste”

‘By 2020, a third of the global population will own a PC, 80% will own a mobile phone, and one in 20 households will have a broadband connection’ [5]. What does this mean? It means that as demand increases for internet-capable machines, it is vital to look at cycles of ownership and disposal. Wifi access routers, mobile phones, laptops, desktops, optic fibre infrastructure, Ethernet cables- all of these products individually and together, add to the constant waste creation cycle. With mobile ownership at a massive 1009.46 million (as of May 2015), and 2G/3G/4G services on the rise, in addition to the already 400 million strong online community owning laptops/desktops, e-waste is now regarded as one of the largest growing problems in India. While about ‘2.7 million tons of electronic waste are being generated annually’, a large portion of this is from mobile phones/laptops/desktops. With high turnover of new products, as well as obsolete machines, and largely unregulated practices of waste collection, there are areas of where extremely hazardous contents are entering the air, underground water and soil from our city landfills. About 80 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions are produced by India currently-these emissions only add on to the total carbon dioxide and other noxious emissions created at the manufacturing stage as well as from the use of devices. While several recycling factories have come up to tackle the gargantuan task of using e-waste, there are of, course, other areas that require immediate attention- this includes mining safety, human rights of workers, natural mineral resource excavation and risk control measures. While rules are in place for the re-use and sorting of e waste (which include suggestions that plants be set up for the sorting, dismantling and processing of waste so that hazardous parts can be treated while the rest is recycled), the reality is far from it. E waste landfills are usually “processed” or mined by manual labor who wear little to no protection from the tiny parts/components that can cause them bodily harm- often causing them musko-skeletal, respiratory or gastro intestinal illnesses. A study done by the NGO Chintan, which studied over 2000 wastepickers, found that they had no idea about the health risks their livelihood poses [6]. This urban informal workforce are at the forefront of the waste management cycle and but their current status raises the question- whose responsibility is it to make e-waste recycling safe? The contractors who hire the manual workers, the recycling plants who buy the materials from them, or the manufacturers who create the products?

Order in Chaos – The Internet Infrastructure Landscape

Another way to assess environmental impact is by understanding the current internet infrastructure landscape – the supply structure. Under the Digital India initiative, the Central government plans to lay 700,000 km (434,960 miles) of broadband cable connecting 250,000 village clusters in the next three years and constructing 100 new "Smart Cities" by 2020 [7]. More connectivity also equals more data centres, larger servers, network equipment, cooling equipment, constant electricity usage and generators. A report by Gartner stated that data centres on average, ‘account for a quarter of the energy consumed by the entire ICT sector’.

As more and more data is generated- what is called our digital footprint- more information is sent back and forth to servers within data centres.

More data = more servers = more electricity = more emissions.

Data storage is being called one of the ‘primary drivers of emissions’ in the ICT industry. According to Gartner, about 6.6 million sq feet of data centre capacity exists today in India. Of course, their benefits do seem to override the electrical cost- using big data for research, social networking, new forms of information processing are just some of them. In addition, some steps are being taken by companies to cut down their environmental (and financial) cost by merging to form collocation spaces. In India, there are, in total, over a hundred collocation data centres in India [8]. These collocation spaces are data centers in which businesses can rent space for their servers and other computing needs.

For the mobile broadband industry, connecting millions more to the Internet also means a jump in the device emissions through routers, modems, cell towers etc. These cell towers and data centres perform at a sub optimal level due to the pervasive power deficit across India. Increasing times for load shedding in the semi-urban and rural areas also means a greater burden on generators which are usually diesel, and tend to greatly increase energy costs. Telecom towers, a study (ibid) says, consumes 2 billion litres of diesel a year, accounting for almost 5 million tons of CO2 annually [9].

However, studies are being done on programs that uses renewable energy to power these towers- potentially cutting down emissions considerably. With the growth of Smart Power Grids, Energy Proportional Behavior and the rise of internal ‘Green Code’ with ICT companies, there is hope for energy efficiency methods to allow for greater utilization of machines and infrastructure at lower environmental cost.

Data Aggregation

Having tried a few websites that allow you to trace your own carbon footprints [10], (depending on which household item/ type of transport/ you want to check it for) it does still seem to be quite complicated and opaque. Especially since most of these websites ignore the usage of particular technology/ other products that leave a footprint, and are hence, skewed in the data they provide. I was unable to pinpoint a footprint for my history of computer/laptop usage, and while HP and other companies do maintain online calculators, magnifying this to all gadgets that utilize the internet across entire populations that use it, is definitely a gargantuan task. Until this area is more user friendly and accurate, it will be quite impossible to research this aspect of the internet’s impact on the countless products owned by individuals.

Besides inaccurate and vague data generated at an individual level, there is also little to no information on a per-click basis, what an individuals’ contribution is. What does my time surfing the internet truly imply? Does my constant connectivity to the net from my phone/ laptop for over 15 hours a day mean something more than what I use it for? The information I found zeroed in on the terms direct and indirect emissions- that the company manufacturing my phone or laptop have resulted in direct emissions but that there are indirect emissions as well, all the things that happen for the laptop/mobile to have reached me have an impact, the hundreds of websites I scour in a week have an impact, right down to the staff of software companies I have downloaded from, have an impact. While this seems too minute to calculate, too cumbersome to pin down, it brings us to the point where any metric to have a final and definite number attached to our internet usage can never be accurate. In their book, The Burning Question, Duncan Clark and Mike Berners-Lee put forth the view that it is because of the infrastructure and mental lock - in that the world has put itself in, a state which disallows a wider understanding of real issues, that prevents any new energy efficiency technologies to be put in place.

India has become a big player in ICT industry worldwide- especially in the research and development areas. With our participation in the Global ICT Standardization Forum, it is vital that there is continued effort towards sustainable methods of tackling e-waste, ensuring that the growth of internet infrastructure and governance follow particular guidelines. The internet, of course, plays a crucial role in bringing us closer to a low-CO2 based world-but do its environmental benefits outweigh the end impact? Maybe/ Maybe not. While there are increasing number of advocates of the low- energy impact of the web [11], it is not possible to live in a vacuum of its benefits, but to also engage with the wider web of its functioning and operations. The significance of well informed opinions and actions should be based on correct data - more in depth research in this field is how we can come closer to it. If sustainable and inclusive development has to go hand in hand with Smart cities, and if India is serious about it, it is high time we made ICT a more environment friendly industry as well as a research friendly industry. Should you as an individual stop everything you do with the internet? No! But it is time to think, talk, question and research about it.

Endnotes

[1] International Telecommunications Union. 2015. ‘ICT Facts & Figures- The World in 2015’ https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/facts/ICTFactsFigures2015.pdf.

[2] IAMAI. 2015. http://www.iamai.in/media/details/4490.

[3] Gombiner, Joel. http://www.consiliencejournal.org/index.php/consilience/article/viewFile/141/57 (last accessed on 01/08/2016).

[4] Global E-Sustainability Initiative. 2008. http://www.smart2020.org/publications/.

[5] Singh, Om Pal & Pratibha Singh. IJERMT. 2015. http://www.ermt.net/docs/papers/Volume_4/12_December2015/V4N12-190.pdf.

[6] India Climate Dialogue. 10th December, 2015. http://indiaclimatedialogue.net/2015/12/10/indias-rising-tide-of-e-waste/.

[7] Financial Express. ‘Govt has grand IT Plans for India’. April 2015. http://www.financialexpress.com/economy/it-plans-suffer-from-power-cuts-congestion-and-monkeys-in-pm-narendra-modis-varanasi/59770/.

[8] http://www.datacentermap.com/profile.html.

[9] Smarter 2020 - The Role of ICT in Driving a Sustainable Future. http://gesi.org/assets/js/lib/tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce/plugins/ajaxfilemanager/uploaded/SMARTer%202020%20-%20The%20Role%20of%20ICT%20in%20Driving%20a%20Sustainable%20Future%20-%20December%202012.pdf.

[10] For example - http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx.

[11] Think Progress. ‘Debunking the myth of internet as an energy hog’. June, 2010. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2010/06/21/206254/internet-energy-use-myth/.

Author Profile

Aishwarya Panicker is currently an Independent Consultant, with over 5 years of experience in the development and policy space in India. She has an undergraduate degree in Sociology from Lady Shri Ram College, and a graduate degree in Global Politics (specializing in Political Economy) from the London School of Economics.

She works closely on the institutional problems of service delivery in the rural and urban contexts - looking at social sector policies, technology, governance, and their impact on citizen-state interactions in India. Prior to becoming an Independent Researcher, she worked at the Centre for Policy Research for three years. She has also worked with CKS, CII, and FICCI in the past.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_how-green-is-the-internet-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly

Who Owns Your Phone?

nishant — 2016-09-18T16:18:35Z

The capacity of companies to defy standards that work tells an alarming story of what we lose when we lose control of our devices.

The article was published in Indian Express on September 18, 2016.

We have a conflicted relationship with our digital devices. On the one hand, everything we own is cutting-edge — your regular smartphone does computation that is more advanced and powerful than the computers currently functioning on the space probe on Mars. On the other, everything that we own, is almost on the verge of becoming old — by the time you are used to your phone, a new model with a different letter or a number is in the market. The TV screen which was the crowning glory of your house now feels old because it is not thin enough, sleek enough or big enough; waiting to be replaced by the Next Big Thing.

Strangely, the Next Big Thing is never really big enough for it to have longevity. The next phone that you buy, the new laptop you covet, the app that you update, will already feel temporary. Patricia Fitzpatrick, a historian of new media, calls this phenomenon “Planned Obsolescence”. It means that private corporations think of their digital products as fast-moving and ready to die. They might sell the phone with a 10-year guarantee, but the only guarantee that exists is that in 10 years, they will have discontinued all support for that phone, and you will have forgotten that you owned that device. Planned Obsole-scence is a marketing strategy, where everything that is introduced as a technological innovation has a limited shelf-life and is made to be replaced by something new.

What is interesting about this strategy is that it doesn’t mean that your device has become redundant. In fact, even as you desire the new, you know perfectly well that your existing device has many years of functionality. Hence, the companies often produce the new as path-breaking, innovative and futuristic. They want you to feel primitive or out-of-touch by introducing features that you don’t need, transforming the familiar and the habitual device with something that becomes alien, enchanting and mystical.

While planned obsolescence has its value — it propels innovation and pushes at the boundary of what is possible — it also needs to be understood as a marketing strategy that keeps us consuming as part of our digital habits. One of the best examples to understand this trend is Apple’s latest announcement that it has removed the standard earphone jack from its new iPhone7 and is presenting us with wireless earplugs that work with the new phone. Apple insists that this is the future, and in its hyperbolic presentation, announced that by removing one of the most enduring industry standard for audio hardware, they are revolutionising the future of music listening.

This comes particularly as a shock because ever since the 1990s, Apple’s iconic presence in the music industry has been the white dangling ear-bud wire against black silhouettes, marking the Apple music device as a sign of privacy, maturity, creativity, and elite affordability. By replacing recognisable image with a new one is the company’s way of signalling that every Apple device you now own is ready for trash. It is letting you know that your older Apple music player now needs to be replaced by a new one that uses the wireless ear buds. That the only way you can now listen to music on an Apple iPhone is on Apple’s own standards, so that the regular industry hardware will no longer work with this unique phone that eschews universal standards and seeks to create private monopolies.

The missing headphone jack in the iPhone 7 is a resounding testimony to what happens when we make our digital hardware subject to closed development and production. Instead of building phones that are more durable, more efficient, more connected, more affordable, and more versatile, Apple just showed us how a private company can arrogantly define the future, by turning almost every existing device into “primitive” or “incompatible” with the new phones that it is making. The capacity of companies like Apple to defy standards that work and build their own unique hardware tells an alarming story of what we lose when we lose control of our devices. The digital cultures scholar Wendy Chun had once sagaciously written, “the more our devices turn transparent, the more opaque they become”. And Apple’s move towards making your new iPhone seamless and without holes, mimics how the phone is being designed to both kill fast and die early, promoting corporate ambitions over public interest.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-september-18-2016-who-owns-your-phone

IIIT Delhi Workshop on Center for IT and Society

sumandro — 2016-09-17T14:40:26Z

A workshop on the upcoming Center for IT and Society in IIIT-Delhi was organised today, September 17, in the institute. The workshop highlights on the process of establishing a center on IT and Society, which will focus on studying relationships and impact of ICTs and Internet on society and the role that society plays in shaping them, particularly in India. The center will bring together faculty in various humanities and social sciences disciplines, and would also initiate interdisciplinary taught programme in IT and Social Sciences. Sumandro Chattapadhyay was invited to participate in this workshop.

URL: https://www.iiitd.ac.in/it-society.

Participants:

Dheeraj Sanghi, Dean Academics, IIIT-Delhi
Itty Abraham, National University of Singapore
Ravinder Kaur, IIT Delhi
Aaditeshwar Seth, IIT Delhi
Shreekant Gupta, Delhi University
Satish Deshpande, Delhi University
Geetha Venkataraman, Ambedkar University, Delhi
Rohit Negi, Ambedkar University, Delhi
Anindya Chaudhuri, Global Development Network, Delhi
Vibodh Parthasarathi, Jamia Millia Islamia
Suboor Bakht, Heidelberg Centre South Asia, Delhi
Dinesh Sharma, Centre for Media Studies, New Delhi
Odile Henry, Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH), Delhi
Marine Al Dahdah, Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH), Delhi
Biswajit Das, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi
Deepak Kumar, Jawahar Lal Nehru University
Ravi Sundaram, Centre for the study of developing societies
Rajshree Chandra, Delhi University
Sumandro Chattapadhyay, The Centre for Internet and Society, Delhi
Dibyendu Maiti, DSE, Delhi University
Balaji Parthasarathy, IIIT Bangalore
Anirban Mondal, Shiv Nadar University
Ashokankur Datta, Shiv Nadar University
Ravi Shukla, India Development Centre, Netvision Corporation
Yogendra Singh (professor emeritus), Jawahar Lal Nehru University
Rajiv George Aricat, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Arani Basu, Institute fuer Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften, Berlin
Arunima S Mukherjee, Health Information Systems Project
Pankaj Vajpayee, IIIT-Delhi
Raj Ayyar, IIIT-Delhi
Amrit Srinivasan, IIIT-Delhi
Akshay Kumar, IIIT-Delhi
Ganesh Bagler, IIIT-Delhi
Samaresh Chatterjee, IIIT-Delhi
Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, IIIT-Delhi

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/iiit-delhi-workshop-on-center-for-it-and-society

Sequoia India’s Designathon 2016

sumandro — 2016-09-17T13:39:12Z

Along with their annual hackathon, Sequoia India organised a designathon in Bangalore on September 10-11, 2016. The participants picked one of three tracks - gamification, information visualisation, and smart acceleration - and developed an interface design or clickable prototype or a demo video. Sumandro Chattapadhyay was invited to participate as a mentor for the information visualisation track.

URL: http://www.sequoiahack.com/sequoia-design/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/sequoia-india-designathon-2016

7 Ways to Con/fuse the Internet with Analogy (Intergalactic Mix) - Talk by Surfatial

sneha-pp — 2018-07-02T18:33:42Z

Surfatial, a trans-local collective that works with text and sound will talk about their essay which was recently published. The talk will also address concerns on how the internet can be used in alternate contexts including presenting work in alternative formats and using the internet for synchronous collaborative cultural production.

The talk will be held at the Centre for Internet & Society's office in Bangalore on September 26 at 6.00 p.m.

Abstract

Surfatial will present their work as a trans-local collective that works with text and sound. They will talk about their essay which was recently published on the RAW blog, as well as concerns of how the internet can be used in alternate contexts. As a continuation from their essay 101 ways of Starting an ISP: No. 53- Conversation Content and Weird Fiction they are interested in exploring alternate formats of presenting the work they produce and in using the internet for synchronous collaborative cultural production.

They structure this talk as a storytelling session and will share stories of how the internet is used on other planets. Stories of the internet on seven planets will be shared. Each story will describe its specific conditions of operation. These stories are seven ways of doing so. How will an external search engine index these stories? Will they be fact or fiction? The external archive of the search engine will be ways to con/fuse the internet with our narratives.

Speakers

Surfatial is a trans-local collective that operates through the internet. They use conversations to aid learning outside established structures. They are concerned with enabling dis-inhibition through the internet, for expressing what may not be feasible in physical reality. They organise internet-based audio conferences called study-groups where they deal with philosophical questions and a self-reflective exchange of individual experiences. They have previously presented their work at Soundphile 2016, Delhi; play_book (in collaboration with Thukral & Tagra), Gurgaon; CONA, Mumbai, and Mumbai Art Room. Their upcoming engagement is with ZK/U, Berlin.

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/surfatial
Website - http://www.museumofvestigialdesire.net/offices/surfatial
Twitter - https://twitter.com/surfatial

Surfatial is Malavika Rajnarayan, Prayas Abhinav and Satya Gummuluri.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/7-ways-to-con-fuse-the-internet-with-analogy-intergalactic-mix-talk-by-surfatial-september-26-6-pm

Quarter Life Crisis: The World Wide Web turns 25 this year

nishant — 2016-09-16T13:25:38Z

With the unexplained ban on websites, the state seems to have stopped caring for the digital rights of its citizens.

The article was published in the Indian Express on September 3, 2016.

The World Wide Web turned 25 this year. A quarter of a century ago, the first website went live, and since then, the world as we know it has changed. The internet is probably the fastest way a new technology has become old. There are generations who have never known the world without it being connected. And yet, it is safe to say that if put into a corner, most of us might have a tough time trying to exactly describe what the World Wide Web is, and how it operates. Like many massification technologies, the internet has quickly evolved from being the playground for geeks to tinker with and build digital networks, into a blackbox that we access through our seductively designed interfaces.

At a technological level, the internet was a standardisation protocol that allowed for distributed databases on remote computers to interact with each other using digital connections. At the heart of the internet was the impulse to share, and to share safely, new information that would lead to collaborative knowledge production and stronger network communities. The World Wide Web saw this potential of sharing information quickly as one of the most promising aspects of human futures. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, in his first vision of the WWW, had proposed that the capacity to share information, without loss of quality, would create new societies of equality and equity. In this vision, the website was a way of sharing information, expression, political desire, personal longing and social ideas, thus creating connected societies that would be able to consolidate the sum total of all human experience.

That historical moment of the technological architecture and the ideological articulation of the internet and the WWW are critical because as the internet has become increasingly privatised, with intermediaries, Internet Service Providers, and content producers claiming more and more of the digital turf, we have seen continued attack on the principles of sharing. We have, in the last few years, seen draconian crackdowns on people sharing their political views on social media, arresting young people for their political dissent online. We have witnessed the emergence of paywalls that close down content, criminalising students trying to access new knowledge towards their education. We have seen the policing of online creative spaces, monitoring users who engage in cultural production, forcing them into repressive intellectual property regimes that they do not necessarily want.

Most of these attacks on sharing have been fuelled by private companies who see the economic benefits of creating media monopolies out of the internet. These attacks have been particularly vicious because they also recognise the potentials of digital connectivity to completely disrupt the extraordinary powers of crowds who can co-create the biggest encyclopaedia in the word and undermine the corporatisation of cultural objects. And yet, in the interest of profits, there has been persistent lobbying from the private owners of the public goods of the internet, to crack down on sharing and access through legal punishment.

Like many developing countries, India has been resisting the enforcing of Intellectual Property Rights promoted by private lobbyists. In doing so, it recognises that emerging geographies need more open, universal and affordable access to information and that the true potential of digitisation lies in the capacity of the web to enable unfettered access to knowledge and cultural artefacts. Despite pressure from global lobbies, the Indian state has continued to emphasise that access for public good overrides the interest of private right holders, and has favoured the digital user’s right to access material which they might not always have the economic rights for. Some scholars say that this is where the state emphasises that the moral rights of access to information supersede the legal rights that close the possibilities of access.

Or at least, the Indian state recognised the need of its still-being-connected population to have free access till recently. With the new law that enforces a block on torrent and file sharing sites, warnings of punitive action, and an unexplained ban on websites that most users have been using for knowledge and cultural products, the state seems to have buckled under private lobbying and also stopped caring for the rights of its citizens. There will always be a split vote when it comes to figuring out the pros and cons of piracy, and it is important to recognise the right of the cultural and knowledge producer to protect their economic interests. The debates have been interesting because it was difficult to take sides and required a balancing act of negotiation between different parties.

However, with this new intervention, the Indian government seems to have taken sides, and made up its mind, that for the future of Digital India, it is going to favour the corporation, the company, the private profit making entity over the individual, the collective, and the public that sought to access information through the fundamental principle of the digital web — sharing.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-september-3-2016-nishant-shah-quarter-life-crisis-the-world-wide-web-turns-25-this-year

IIRC: Reflections on IRC16

sumandro — 2016-09-06T09:28:51Z

The first edition of the Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC) series was held on February 26-28, 2016. It was hosted by the Centre for Political Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and was supported by the CSCS Digitial Innovation Fund. Here we share our reflections on the Conference, albeit rather delayed, and lessons towards the next edition to be held in March 2017.

Note: IIRC stands for 'if I remember correctly' in ancient internet acronym culture. Thanks to Sebastian for the inspiration.

For several months, we have been trying to organise our thoughts, as well as post-conference documentation efforts, emerging from the Internet Researchers' Conference 2016. We have not been very successful in either till now. And like most unsuccessful ventures, it has been a robust learning experience. We are working on giving the IRC16 Reader a final shape, before it becomes more of an academic legend. We hope to launch the beta version of the Reader in mid-September. Here, let me quickly share my reflections on IRC16, at least what I remember of it.

A Game of Selections

The Conference departed from most other academic conferences in two obvious ways: 1) the sessions were not selected by a programme committee but through votes cast by all the teams that proposed a session, and 2) the Conference programme consisted of both panel discussions and workshop sessions, and there was no requirement for the panel discussions to be structured around papers (though some sessions did involve presentation of papers). At the feedback session of the Conference, and also in conversations afterwards, it was pointed out that this manner of session selection (not based on paper abstracts, and through voting by peers) is perhaps “too democratic / too wiki-like,” which undermines the ability to curate the Conference effectively. Several participants also presented the opposite viewpoint – that a more peer-driven selection of sessions better reflects the immediate interests and priorities of the community of internet researchers who are gathering at the Conference. As one participant articulated: “we must have faith in our ignorance.”

We at CIS are still confident about this mode of selection but at the same time we do recognise three key concerns in conducting the selection process:

Anonymity: The anonymous selection process breaks down since we expect the potential participants of the Conference to share early ideas about their potential sessions, and scout for potential session team members, through the mailing list (and elsewhere) before actually submitting the panel proposal. We still prefer that participants discuss the session before proposing it, so perhaps we will have to live with the incomplete anonymity when it comes to the session selection process. Perhaps we can make the votes non-anonymous too to keep parity – that is, all the proposed sessions would be published with the names of their proposers, and all the teams will publicly indicate which other sessions they are voting for.
Disciplinary capture: While peer-based voting works very well when it comes to reflecting the interests of the community, it might quite easily break down if there is a concentration of teams coming from a specific disciplinary background. How we approach research objects and questions, and hence how we appreciate how exciting a research object or question is, can be quite intimately shaped by our disciplinary locations. A dominance of a specific discipline among the peer-group (that is among all the teams that have proposed sessions) can potentially lead to a 'capture' of the Conference by research objects and questions of interest to specific disciplines. This is something we have to be more aware of when casting our votes.
Peer-review before peer-votes: The process followed last year only allowed a session team to vote on the sessions proposed by other teams, but not to review and comment on those proposals. This review process is not only useful to infuse the session proposals with ideas and concerns coming from other disciplinary and methodological locations, but also to support the teams to revisit their articulation and structuring of the session before their peers start to cast votes. This is something we must aspire to do during the selection process for IRC17.

A Clash of Disciplines

Continuing from the “disciplinary capture” point above, the presence of researchers and practitioners from various fields and disciplines was, according to me, the most exciting part of the IRC16, and also the part that led to significant frustration. I felt that we were able to gather people from various disciplinary backgrounds – academic and otherwise – but could not provide sufficient space or time for the inter-disciplinary conversations to a take more fuller form. We saw clear disagreements emerging between researchers coming from different disciplinary locations, though most of them did not have the opportunity to be developed into a detailed discussion.

This is quite a high ambition for a conference of this kind; that is given the conference was not focused narrowly on a set of topics. Nonetheless, this remains one of the key objectives of the IRC series, and we need to understand how better to create opportunities for participants to communicate their disciplinary concerns and create inter-disciplinary discussions.

One possible way to create context for more inter-disciplinary conversations is by requesting all the sessions’ teams to include members from different disciplines. Also, we can try to keep more open discussion space (but that means less selected sessions) to provide time for the discussions spilling over from the sessions. Thirdly, we can think of including “inter-disciplinary conversations” as one of the key themes for potential sessions of IRC17.

Further, though we experienced several clashes of disciplines, methods, and approaches, these were all limited to a completely anglophone intellectual environment. We failed substantially, as was pointed out by a participant at the feedback session, to create space at the Conference for Indic language practices and concerns – both for researchers and practitioners working in these languages, and the criticisms of anglophone academic framings and practices coming from such researchers and practitioners. This is something we must address proactively during the future editions of the Conference.

A Storm of Sessions

One of the often heard criticisms of the conference was regarding the decision to have parallel sessions. While the decision was taken purely to accommodate as many sessions as possible, this of course imposed an undesirable burden upon the participants to choose between two rather desirable sessions. We as organisers of IRC16 faced the same tough decision of choosing between sessions that should both be part of the Conference agenda, and conveniently decided to let the participants choose (instead of us choosing for them). It is quite likely that we would do this again, or at least would like to do this again – that is, we expect that for IRC17 too we would receive a lot of wonderful sessions and decide against a fully single-track conference.

The question of sessions, however, is not only one of tracks. It is also about formats. In the feedback session, there was a clear recognition of the value of “workshop” sessions – that is sessions that involved all the participants doing something – in a conference like this, which is explicitly interested in the conceptual and technical challenges of digital media research. There was also a demand that we have more workshop sessions in IRC17, as opposed to “discussion” sessions that involved paper presentations. While the original plan was that all the participants will primarily be learning or doing something at a workshop session, and will not be talking, as the discussion sessions were primarily meant for talking, the actual sessions in the Conference differed from each other essentially in terms of whether papers were presented or not.

Thus, it perhaps makes sense, for the IRC17 call for sessions, to not to separate out these session types in terms of workshop/discussion but in terms of paper-driven/non-paper-driven. Maybe this separation itself is avoidable and all that we need to say is that the Conference is fundamentally interested in sessions that drive conversations, both intra- and inter-disciplinary. While presentation of papers can surely drive conversations, they are not necessary at all.

A Feast for Researchers and Practitioners

A key objective, if not the key objective, of IRC16 was to build a temporary space for researchers and practitioners studying internet and society in India (though not necessarily from or located in India) to gather and share thoughts. While we felt that the conference has been quite effective in doing that, we have been rather clueless when it comes to sustaining the momentum of interactions that was achieved at the Conference, or documenting the various kinds and threads of conversations taking place there.

The first problem, we may say, is not something that CIS (as the organiser of the conference series) should be concerned with too much, since our aim and responsibility is to make possible this temporary space and not to host all conversations and collaborations coming out of it. In fact, we should not be interested in hosting and/or facilitating all such initiatives. The second problem, however, is a serious one for us. Since the Conference is not organised around pre-written papers, we will have to depend on the efforts by the participants either during, or after (or both) the Conference to produce an output that documents, narrates, and/or reflects on the conversations that took place. Such an approach, thus, is fundamentally based upon the trust that the participants will prepare and share these materials after the Conference. On a lighter note, we also hope that social embarrassment and pressure will also play a role here (but that only works when the majority of the participants are actually sharing).

There are two connected points here:

While the majority of the documentation happens either at the Conference or after that, what kind of pre-Conference efforts (by the participants) would be useful in ensuring productive sessions?
Who all contribute to this post-Conference Reader? Should it be restricted to teams/people whose sessions were selected, or all who proposed a session, and/or took part in the Conference?

A recommendation at the feedback session of IRC16 touched upon the first question, while the second question is derived from a critical question posed at the same session. The recommendation was that the teams whose sessions get selected for the Conference should share a more detailed session agenda note before the Conference to better inform the participants about the content and approach of the same. The critical question mentioned earlier was regarding the imagination of the community of researchers and practitioners being gathered at the Conference, and if it is only limited to the people whose sessions got selected. In our minds it is clear that everyone gathering at these conferences, and those who proposed sessions but could not attend, are all part of this imagined community, and thus should also contribute to the post-Conference Reader.

A Dance with Sustainability

IRC16 was supported very generously by the Centre for Political Studies at JNU (as part of an ongoing project titled UPE2 Project: Politics on Social Media), the CSCS Digital Innovation Fund, and CIS. The first provided us with the conference venue and accommodation, the second provided financial support towards food and travel expenses (and bit of accommodation too), and the third picked up all the remaining expenses and efforts. While we will keep doing what it takes to organise the next editions of IRC, we are dependent on academic and other institutes that are willing to host the event and accommodate the participants, and on various sources of funding that may be available to cover the miscellaneous expenses.

When we started planning for IRC16, we decided not to conceptualise this as part of an ongoing or future project – that is, the conference series should not itself become a deliverable under a project at CIS. While this gives us intellectual and functional independence, it entails serious financial limitations. We are of course open to the conference series becoming a site for developing or communicating a deliverable under an ongoing project at CIS or any other involved actor (especially the host and funding agencies) but such matters, we feel, are best discussed in a case-to-case basis. The bottom line remains that we need financial and human support to take this conference series forward. This is definitely something to be discussed further at IRC17.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/iirc-reflections-on-irc16

Report on Understanding Aadhaar and its New Challenges

Japreet Grewal, Vanya Rakesh, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, and Elonnai Hickock — 2019-03-16T04:42:52Z

The Trans-disciplinary Research Cluster on Sustainability Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University collaborated with the Centre for Internet and Society, and other individuals and organisations to organise a two day workshop on “Understanding Aadhaar and its New Challenges” at the Centre for Studies in Science Policy, JNU on May 26 and 27, 2016. The objective of the workshop was to bring together experts from various fields, who have been rigorously following the developments in the Unique Identification (UID) Project and align their perspectives and develop a shared understanding of the status of the UID Project and its impact. Through this exercise, it was also sought to develop a plan of action to address the welfare exclusion issues that have arisen due to implementation of the UID Project.

Report: Download (PDF)

This Report is a compilation of the observations made by participants at the workshop relating to myriad issues under the UID Project and various strategies that could be pursued to address these issues. In this Report we have classified the observations and discussions into following themes:

1. Brief Background of the UID Project

2. Legal Status of the UIDAI Project

Procedural issues with passage of the Act
Status of related litigation

3. National Identity Projects in Other Jurisdictions

Pakistan
United Kingdom
Estonia
France
Argentina

4. Technologies of Identification and Authentication

Use of Biometric Information for Identification and Authentication
Architectures of Identification
Security Infrastructure of CIDR

5. Aadhaar for Welfare?

Social Welfare: Modes of Access and Exclusion
Financial Inclusion and Direct Benefits Transfer

6. Surveillance and UIDAI

7. Strategies for Future Action

Annexure A Workshop Agenda

Annexure B Workshop Participants

1. Brief Background of the UID Project

In the year 2009, the UIDAI was established and the UID project was conceived by the Planning Commission under the UPA government to provide unique identification for each resident in India and to be used for delivery of welfare government services in an efficient and transparent manner, along with using it as a tool to monitor government schemes. The objective of the scheme has been to issue a unique identification number by the Unique Identification Authority of India, which can be authenticated and verified online. It was conceptualized and implemented as a platform to facilitate identification and avoid fake identity issues and delivery of government benefits based on the demographic and biometric data available with the Authority.

The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016 (the “Act”) was passed as a money bill on March 16, 2016 and was notified in the gazette March 25, 2016 upon receiving the assent of the President. However, the enforceability date has not been mentioned due to which the bill has not come into force.

The Act provides that the Aadhaar number can be used to validate a person’s identity, but it cannot be used as a proof of citizenship. Also, the government can make it mandatory for a person to authenticate her/his identity using Aadhaar number before receiving any government subsidy, benefit, or service. At the time of enrolment, the enrolling agency is required to provide notice to the individual regarding how the information will be used, the type of entities the information will be shared with and their right to access their information. Consent of an individual would be obtained for using his/her identity information during enrolment as well as authentication, and would be informed of the nature of information that may be shared. The Act clearly lays that the identity information of a resident shall not be sued for any purpose other than specified at the time of authentication and disclosure of information can be made only pursuant to an order of a court not inferior to that of a District Judge and/or disclosure made in the interest of national security.

2. Legal Status of the UIDAI Project

In this section, we have summarised the discussions on the procedural issues with the passage of the Act. The participants had criticised the passage of the Act as a money bill in the Parliament. The participants also assessed the litigation pending in the Supreme Court of India that would be affected by this law. These discussions took place in the session titled, ‘Current Status of Aadhaar’ and have been summarised below.

Procedural Issues with Passage of the Act

The participants contested the introduction of the Act in the form of a money bill. The rationale behind this was explained at the session and is briefly explained here. Article 110 (1) of the Constitution of India defines a money bill as one containing provisions only regarding the matters enumerated or any matters incidental to the following: a) imposition, regulation and abolition of any tax, b) borrowing or other financial obligations of the Government of India, c) custody, withdrawal from or payment into the Consolidated Fund of India (CFI) or Contingent Fund of India, d) appropriation of money out of CFI, e) expenditure charged on the CFI or f) receipt or custody or audit of money into CFI or public account of India. The Act makes references to benefits, subsidies and services which are funded by the Consolidated Fund of India (CFI), however the main objectives of the Act is to create a right to obtain a unique identification number and provide for a statutory mechanism to regulate this process. The Act only establishes an identification mechanism which facilitates distribution of benefits and subsidies funded by the CFI and this identification mechanism (Aadhaar number) does not give it the character of a money bill. Further, money bills can be introduced only in the Lok Sabha, and the Rajya Sabha cannot make amendments to such bills passed by the Lok Sabha. The Rajya Sabha can suggest amendments, but it is the Lok Sabha’s choice to accept or reject them. This leaves the Rajya Sabha with no effective role to play in the passage of the bill.

The participants also briefly examined the writ petition that has been filed by former Union minister Jairam Ramesh challenging the constitutionality and legality of the treatment of this Act as a money bill which has raised the question of judiciary’s power to review the decisions of the speaker. Article 122 of the Constitution of India provides that this power of judicial review can be exercised to look into procedural irregularities. The question remains whether the Supreme Court will rule that it can determine the constitutionality of the decision made by the speaker relating to the manner in which the Act was introduced in the Lok Sabha. A few participants mentioned that similar circumstances had arisen in the case of Mohd. Saeed Siddiqui v. State of U.P. [1].

where the Supreme Court refused to interfere with the decision of the Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly speaker certifying an amendment bill to increase the tenure of the Lokayukta as a money bill, despite the fact that the bill amended the Uttar Pradesh Lokayukta and Up-Lokayuktas Act, 1975, which was passed as an ordinary bill by both houses. The Court in this case held that the decision of the speaker was final and that the proceedings of the legislature being important legislative privilege could not be inquired into by courts. The Court added, “the question whether a bill is a money bill or not can be raised only in the state legislative assembly by a member thereof when the bill is pending in the state legislature and before it becomes an Act.”

However, it is necessary to carve a distinction between Rajya Sabha and State Legislature. Unlike the State Legislature, constitution of Rajya Sabha is not optional therefore significance of the two bodies in the parliamentary process cannot be considered the same. Participants also made another significant observation about a similar bill on the UID project (National Identification Authority of India (NIDAI) Bill) that was introduced before by the UPA government in 2010 and was deemed unacceptable by the standing committee on finance, headed by Yashwant Sinha. This bill was subsequently withdrawn.

Status of Related Litigation

A panellist in this session briefly summarised all the litigation that was related to or would be affected by the Act. The panellist also highlighted several Supreme Court orders in the case of KS Puttuswamy v. Union of India [2] which limited the use of Aadhaar. We have reproduced the presentation below.

KS Puttuswamy v. Union of India - This petition was filed in 2012 with primary concern about providing Aadhaar numbers to illegal immigrants in India. It was contended that this could not be done without a law establishing the UIDAI and amendment to the Citizenship laws. The petitioner raised concerns about privacy and fallibility of biometrics.
Sudhir Vombatkere & Bezwada Wilson [3] - This petition was filed in 2013 on grounds of infringement of right to privacy guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution of India and the security threat on account of data convergence.
Aruna Roy & Nikhil Dey [4] - This petition was filed in 2013 on the grounds of large scale exclusion of people from access to basic welfare services caused by UID. After their petition, no. of intervention applications were filed. These were the following:
Col. Mathew Thomas [5] - This petition was filed on the grounds of threat to national security posed by the UID project particularly in relation to arrangements for data sharing with foreign companies (with links to foreign intelligence agencies).
Nagrik Chetna Manch [6] - This petition was filed in 2013 and led by Dr. Anupam Saraph on the grounds that the UID project was detrimental to financial service regulation and financial inclusion.
S. Raju [7] - This petition was filed on the grounds that the UID project had implications on the federal structure of the State and was detrimental to financial inclusion.
Beghar Foundation - This petition was filed in 2013 in the Delhi High Court on the grounds invasion of privacy and exclusion specifically in relation to the homeless. It subsequently joined the petition filed by Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey as an intervener.
Vickram Crishna – This petition was originally filed in the Bombay High Court in 2013 on the grounds of surveillance and invasion of privacy. It was later transferred to the Supreme Court.
Somasekhar – This petition was filed on the grounds of procedural unreasonableness of the UID project and also exclusion & privacy. The petitioner later intervened in the petition filed by Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey in 2013.
Rajeev Chandrashekhar– This petition was filed on the ground of lack of legal sanction for the UID project. He later intervened in the petition filed by Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey in 2013. His position has changed now.
Further, a petition was filed by Mr. Jairam Ramesh initially challenging the passage of the Act as a money bill but subsequently, it has been amended to include issues of violation of right to privacy and exclusion of the poor and has advocated for five amendments that were suggested to the Aadhaar Bill by the Rajya Sabha.

Relevant Orders of the Supreme Court

There are six orders of the Supreme Court which are noteworthy.

Order of Sept. 23, 2013 - The Supreme court directed that: 1) no person shall suffer for not having an aadhaar number despite the fact that a circular by an authority makes it mandatory; 2) it should be checked if a person applying for aadhaar number voluntarily is entitled to it under the law; and 3) precaution should be taken that it is not be issued to illegal immigrants.
Order of 26th November, 2013 – Applications were filed by UIDAI, Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, Govt of India, Indian Oil Corporation, BPCL and HPCL for modifying the September 23rd order and sought permission from the Supreme Court to make aadhaar number mandatory. The Supreme Court held that the order of September 23rd would continue to be effective.
Order of 24th March, 2014 – This order was passed by the Supreme Court in a special leave petition filed in the case of UIDAI v CBI [8] wherein UIDAI was asked to UIDAI to share biometric information of all residents of a particular place in Goa to facilitate a criminal investigation involving charges of rape and sexual assault. The Supreme Court restrained UIDAI from transferring any biometric information of an individual without to any other agency without his consent in writing. The Supreme Court also directed all the authorities to modify their forms/circulars/likes so as to not make aadhaar number mandatory.
Order of 16th March, 2015 - The SC took notice of widespread violations of the order passed on September 23rd, 2013 and directed the Centre and the states to adhere to these orders to not make aadhaar compulsory.
Orders of August 11, 2015 – In the first order, the Central Government was directed to publicise the fact that aadhaar was voluntary. The Supreme Court further held that provision of benefits due to a citizen of India would not be made conditional upon obtaining an aadhaar number and restricted the use of aadhaar to the PDS Scheme and in particular for the purpose of distribution of foodgrains, etc. and cooking fuel, such as kerosene and the LPG Distribution Scheme. The Supreme Court also held that information of an individual that was collected in order to issue an aadhaar number would not be used for any purpose except when directed by the Court for criminal investigations. Separately, the status of fundamental right to privacy was contested and accordingly the Supreme Court directed that the issue be taken up before the Chief Justice of India.
Orders of October 16, 2015 – The Union of India, the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan, and authorities including SEBI, TRAI, CBDT, IRDA , RBI applied for a hearing before the Constitution Bench for modification of the order passed by the Supreme Court on August 11 and allow use of aadhaar number schemes like The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme MGNREGS), National Social Assistance Programme (Old Age Pensions, Widow Pensions, Disability Pensions) Prime Minister's Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) and Employees' Providend Fund Organisation (EPFO). The Bench allowed the use of aadhaar number for these schemes but stressed upon the need to keep aadhaar scheme voluntary until the matter was finally decided.

Status of these orders
The participants discussed the possible impact of the law on the operation of these orders. A participant pointed out that matters in the Supreme Court had not become infructuous because fundamental issues that were being heard in the Supreme Court had not been resolved by the passage of the Act. Several participants believed that the aforementioned orders were effective because the law had not come into force. Therefore, aadhaar number could only be used for purposes specified by the Supreme Court and it could not be made mandatory. Participants also highlighted that when the Act was implemented, it would not nullify the orders of the Supreme Court unless Union of India asked the Supreme Court for it specifically and the Supreme Court sanctioned that.

3. National Identity Projects in Other Jurisdictions

A panellist had provided a brief overview of similar programs on identification that have been launched in other jurisdictions including Pakistan, United Kingdom, France, Estonia and Argentina in the recent past in the session titled ‘Aadhaar - International Dimensions’. This presentation mainly sought to assess the incentives that drove the governments in these jurisdictions to formulate these projects, mandatory nature of their adoption and their popularity. The Report has reproduced the presentation here.

Pakistan

The Second Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan in 2000 established the National Database and Regulation Authority in the country, which regulates government databases and statistically manages the sensitive registration database of the citizens of Pakistan. It is also responsible for issuing national identity cards to the citizens of Pakistan. Although the card is not legally compulsory for a Pakistani citizen, it is mandatory for:

Voting
Obtaining a passport
Purchasing vehicles and land
Obtaining a driver licence
Purchasing a plane or train ticket
Obtaining a mobile phone SIM card
Obtaining electricity, gas, and water
Securing admission to college and other post-graduate institutes
Conducting major financial transactions

Therefore, it is pretty much necessary for basic civic life in the country. In 2012, NADRA introduced the Smart National Identity Card, an electronic identity card, which implements 36 security features. The following information can be found on the card and subsequently the central database: Legal Name, Gender (male, female, or transgender), Father's name (Husband's name for married females), Identification Mark, Date of Birth, National Identity Card Number, Family Tree ID Number, Current Address, Permanent Address, Date of Issue, Date of Expiry, Signature, Photo, and Fingerprint (Thumbprint). NADRA also records the applicant's religion, but this is not noted on the card itself. (This system has not been removed yet and is still operational in Pakistan.)

United Kingdom

The Identity Cards Act was introduced in the wake of the terrorist attacks on 11th September, 2001, amidst rising concerns about identity theft and the misuse of public services. The card was to be used to obtain social security services, but the ability to properly identify a person to their true identity was central to the proposal, with wider implications for prevention of crime and terrorism. The cards were linked to a central database (the National Identity Register), which would store information about all of the holders of the cards. The concerns raised by human rights lawyers, activists, security professionals and IT experts, as well as politicians were not to do with the cards as much as with the NIR. The Act specified 50 categories of information that the NIR could hold, including up to 10 fingerprints, digitised facial scan and iris scan, current and past UK and overseas places of residence of all residents of the UK throughout their lives. The central database was purported to be a prime target for cyber attacks, and was also said to be a violation of the right to privacy of UK citizens. The Act was passed by the Labour Government in 2006, and repealed by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government as part of their measures to “reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties under the Labour Government and roll back state intrusion.”

Estonia

The Estonian i-card is a smart card issued to Estonian citizens by the Police and Border Guard Board. All Estonian citizens and permanent residents are legally obliged to possess this card from the age of 15. The card stores data such as the user's full name, gender, national identification number, and cryptographic keys and public key certificates. The cryptographic signature in the card is legally equivalent to a manual signature, since 15 December 2000. The following are a few examples of what the card is used for:

As a national ID card for legal travel within the EU for Estonian citizens
As the national health insurance card
As proof of identification when logging into bank accounts from a home computer
For digital signatures
For i-voting
For accessing government databases to check one’s medical records, file taxes, etc.
For picking up e-Prescriptions
(This system is also operational in the country and has not been removed)

France

The biometric ID card was to include a compulsory chip containing personal information, such as fingerprints, a photograph, home address, height, and eye colour. A second, optional chip was to be implemented for online authentication and electronic signatures, to be used for e-government services and e-commerce. The law was passed with the purpose of combating “identity fraud”. It was referred to the Constitutional Council by more than 200 members of the French Parliament, who challenged the compatibility of the bill with the citizens’ fundamental rights, including the right to privacy and the presumption of innocence. The Council struck down the law, citing the issue of proportionality. “Regarding the nature of the recorded data, the range of the treatment, the technical characteristics and conditions of the consultation, the provisions of article 5 touch the right to privacy in a way that cannot be considered as proportional to the meant purpose”.

Argentina

Documento Nacional de Identidad or DNI (which means National Identity Document) is the main identity document for Argentine citizens, as well as temporary or permanent resident aliens. It is issued at a person's birth, and updated at 8 and 14 years of age simultaneously in one format: a card (DNI tarjeta); it's valid if identification is required, and is required for voting. The front side of the card states the name, sex, nationality, specimen issue, date of birth, date of issue, date of expiry, and transaction number along with the DNI number and portrait and signature of the card's bearer. The back side of the card shows the address of the card's bearer along with their right thumb fingerprint. The front side of the DNI also shows a barcode while the back shows machine-readable information. The DNI is a valid travel document for entering Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. (System still operational in the country)

4. Technologies of Identification and Authentication

The panel in the session titled ‘Aadhaar: Science, Technology, and Security’ explained the technical aspects of use of biometrics and privacy concerns, technology architecture for identification and inadequacy of infrastructure for information security. In this section, we have summarised the presentation and the ensuing discussions on these issues.

Use of Biometric Information for Identification and Authentication

The panelists explained with examples that identification and authentication were different things. Identity provides an answer to the question “who are you?” while authentication is a challenge-response process that provides a proof of the claim of identity. Common examples of identity are User ID (Login ID), cryptographic public keys and ATM or Smart cards while common authenticators are passwords (including OTPs), PINs and cryptographic private keys. Identity is public information but an authenticator must be private and known only to the user. Authentication must necessarily be a conscious process and active participation by the user is a must. It should also always be possible to revoke an authenticator. After providing this understanding of the two processes the panellist then explained if biometric information could be used for identification or authentication under the UID Project. Biometric information is clearly public information and it is questionable if it can be revoked. Therefore it should never be used for authentication, but only for identity verification. There is a possibility of authentication by fingerprints under the UID Project, without conscious participation of the user. One could trace the fingerprints of an individual from any place the individual has been in contact with. Therefore, authentication must certainly be done by other means. The panellist pointed out that there were five kinds of authentication under the UID Project, out of which two-factor authentication and one time password were considered suitable but use of biometric information and demographic information was extremely threatening and must be withdrawn.

Architectures of Identification

The panelists explained the architecture of the UID Project that has been designed for identification purposes, highlighted its limitations and suggested alternatives. His explanations are reproduced below.

Under the UID Project, there is a centralised means of identification i.e. the aadhaar number and biometric information stored in one place, Central Identification Data Repository (CIDR). It is better to have multiple means of identification than one (as contemplated under the UID Project) for preservation of our civil liberties. The question is what the available alternatives are. Web of trust is a way for operationalizing distributed identification but the challenge is how one brings people from all social levels to participate in it. There is a need for registrars who will sign keys and public databases for this purpose.

The aadhaar number functions as a common index and facilitates correlation of data across Government databases. While this is tremendously attractive it raises several privacy concerns as more and more information relating to an individual is available to others and is likely to be abused.

The aadhaar number is available in human readable form. This raises the risk of identification without consent and unauthorised profiling. It cannot be revoked. Potential for damage in case of identity theft increases manifold.

Under the UID Project, for the purpose of information security, Authentication User Agencies (“AUA”) are required to use local identifiers instead of aadhaar numbers but they are also required to map these local identifiers to the aadhaar numbers. Aadhaar numbers are not cryptographically secured; in fact they are publicly available. Hence this exercise for securing information is useless. An alternative would be to issue different identifiers for different domains and cryptographically embed a “master identifier” (in this case, equivalent of aadhaar number) into each local identifier.

All field devices (for example POS machines) should be registered and must communicate directly with UIDAI. In fact, UIDAI must verify the authenticity (tamper proof) of the field device during run time and a UIDAI approved authenticity certificate must be issued for field devices. This certificate must be made available to users on demand. Further, the security and privacy frameworks within which AUAs work must be appropriately defined by legal and technical means.

Security Infrastructure of CIDR

The panelists also enumerated the security features of the UID Project and highlighted the flaws in these features. These have been summarised below.

The security and privacy infrastructure of UIDAI has the following main features:

2048 bit PKI encryption of biometric data in transit
End-to-end encryption from enrolment/POS to CIDR
HMAC based tamper detection of PID blocks
Registration and authentication of AUAs
Within CIDR only a SHA 1 Hash of Aadhaar number is stored
Audit trails are stored SHA 1 encrypted. Tamper detection?
Only hashes of passwords and PINs are stored. (biometric data stored in original form though!)
Authentication requests have unique session keys and HMAC
Resident data stored using 100 way sharding (vertical partitioning). First two digits of Aadhaar number as shard keys
All enrolment and update requests link to partitioned databases using Ref IDs (coded indices)
All accesses through a hardware security module
All analytics carried out on anonymised data

The panellists pointed out the concerns about information security on account of design flaws, lack of procedural safeguards, openness of the system and too much trust imposed on multiple players. All symmetric and private keys and hashes are stored somewhere within UIDAI. This indicates that trust is implicitly assumed which is a glaring design flaw. There is no well-defined approval procedure for data inspection, whether it is for the purpose of investigation or for data analytics. There is a likelihood of system hacks, insider leaks, and tampering of authentication records and audit trails. The ensuing discussions highlighted that the UIDAI had admitted to these security risks. The enrolment agencies and the enrolment devices cannot be trusted. AUAs cannot be trusted with biometric and demographic data; neither can they be trusted with sensitive user data of private nature. There is a need for an independent third party auditor for distributed key management, auditing and approving UIDAI programs, including those for data inspection and analytics, whitebox cryptographic compilation of critical parts of the UIDAI programs, issue of cryptographic keys to UIDAI programs for functional encryption, challenge-response for run-time authentication and certification of UIDAI programs. The panellist recommended that there was a need to to put a suitable legal framework to execute this.

The participants also discussed that information infrastructure must not be made of proprietary software (possibility for backdoors for US) and there must be a third party audit with a non-negotiable clause for public audit.

5. Aadhaar for Welfare?

The Report has summarised the discussions that took place in the sessions on ‘Direct Benefits Transfers’ and ‘Aadhaar: Broad Issues - II’ where the panellists critically analysed the claims of benefits and inclusion of Aadhaar made by the government in light of the ground realities in states where Aadhaar has been adopted for social welfare schemes.

Social Welfare: Modes of Access and Exclusion

Under the Act, a person may be required to authenticate or give proof of the aadhaar number in order to receive subsidy from the government (Section 7). A person is required to punch their fingerprints on POS machines in order to receive their entitlement under the social welfare schemes such as LPG and PDS. It was pointed out in the discussions that various states including Rajasthan and Delhi had witnessed fingerprint errors while doling out benefits at ration shops under the PDS scheme. People have failed to receive their entitled benefits because of these fingerprint errors thus resulting in exclusion of beneficiaries [9]. A panellist pointed out that in Rajasthan, dysfunctional biometrics had led to further corruption in ration shops. Ration shop owners often lied to the beneficiaries about functioning of the biometric machines (POS Machines) and kept the ration for sale in the market therefore making a lot of money at the expense of uninformed beneficiaries and depriving them of their entitlements.

Another participant organisation also pointed out similar circumstances in the ration shops in Patparganj and New Delhi constituencies. Here, the dealers had maintained the records of beneficiaries who had been categorized as follows: beneficiaries whose biometrics did not match, beneficiaries whose biometrics matched and entitlements were provided, beneficiaries who never visited the ration shop. It had been observed that there were no entries in the category of beneficiaries whose biometrics did not match however, the beneficiaries had a different story to tell. They complained that their biometrics did not match despite trying several times and there was no mechanism for a manual override. Consequently, they had not been able to receive any entitlements for months. The discussions also pointed out that the food authorities had placed complete reliance on authenticity of the POS machines and claim that this system would weed out families who were not entitled to the benefits. The MIS was also running technical glitches as a result there was a problem with registering information about these transactions hence, no records had been created with the State authority about these problems. A participant also discussed the plight of 30,000 widows in Delhi, who were entitled to pension and used to collect their entitlement from post offices, faced exclusion due to transition problems under the Jan Dhan Yojana (after the Jandhan was launched the money was transferred to their bank accounts in order to resolve the problem of misappropriation of money at the hands of post office officials). These widows were asked to open bank accounts to receive their entitlements and those who did not open these accounts and did not inform the post office were considered bogus.

In the discussions, the participants also noted that this unreliability of fingerprints as a means of authentication of an individual’s identity was highlighted at the meeting of Empowered Group of Ministers in 2011 by J Dsouza, a biometrics scientist. He used his wife’s fingerprints to demonstrate that fingerprints may change overtime and in such an event, one would not be able to use the POS machine anymore as the machine would continue to identify the impressions collected initially.

The participants who had been working in the field had contributed to the discussions by busting the myth that the UID Project helped to identify who was poor and resolve the problem of exclusion due to leakages in the social welfare programs. These discussions have been summarised below.

It is important to understand that the UID Project is merely an identification and authentication system. It only helps in verifying if an individual is entitled to benefits under a social security scheme. It does not ensure plugging of leakages and reducing corruption in social security schemes as has been claimed by the Government. The reduction in leakage of PDS, for instance, should be attributed to digitization and not UID. The Government claims, that it has saved INR 15000 crore in provision of LPG on identification of 3.34 crore inactive accounts on account of the UID Project. This is untrue because the accounts were weeded by using mechanisms completely unrelated to the UID Project. Consequently, the savings on account of UID are only of INR 120 crore and not 15000 crore.
The UID Project has resulted in exclusion of people either because they do not have an aadhaar number, or they have a wrong identification, or there are errors of classification or wilful misclassification. About 99.7% people who were given aadhaar numbers already had an identification document. In fact, during enrolment a person is required to produce one of 14 identification documents listed under the law in order to get an aadhaar number which makes it very difficult for a person with no identity to become entitled to a social welfare scheme.

A participant condemned the Government’s claim that the UID Project had helped in removing fake, bogus and duplicate cards and said that these terms could not be used synonymously and the authorities had no clarity about the difference between the meanings of these terms. The UID Project had only helped in removal of duplicate cards but had not helped in combating the use of fake and bogus cards.

Financial Inclusion and Direct Benefits Transfer

The participants also engaged in the discussions about the impact of the UID project on financial inclusion in India in the sessions titled ‘Aadhaar: Broad Issues - I & II’. We have summarised these discussions below.

The UID Project seeks to directly transfer money to a bank account in order to combat corruption. The discussions highlighted that this was nothing but introducing a neo liberal thrust in social policy and that it was not feasible for various reasons. First, 95% of rural India did not have functioning banks and banks are quite far away. Second, in order to combat this dearth of banks the idea of business correspondents, who handled banking transactions and helped in opening of bank accounts, had been introduced which had created various problems. The Reserve Bank of India reported that there was dearth of business correspondents as there was very little incentive to become one; their salary is merely INR 4000. Third, there were concerns about how an aadhaar number was considered a valid document for Know Your Customer (KYC) checks. There was a requirement for scrutiny and auditing of documents submitted during the time of enrolment which, in the present scheme of things, could not be verified. Fourth, there were no restrictions on number of bank accounts that could be opened with a single aadhaar number which gave rise to a possibility of opening multiple and shell accounts on a single aadhaar number. Therefore, records only showed transactions when money was transferred from an aadhaar number to another aadhaar number as opposed to an account-to-account transfer. The discussion relied on NPCI data which shows which bank an aadhaar number is associated with but does not show if a transaction by an aadhaar number is overwritten by another bank account belonging to the same aadhaar number.

6. Surveillance and UIDAI

The participants had discussed the possibility of an alternative purpose for enrolling Aadhaar in the session titled ‘Privacy, Surveillance, and Ethical Dimensions of Aadhaar’. The discussion traced the history of this project to gain insight on this issue. We have summarised below the key take aways from this discussion.

There are claims that the main objective of launching the UID Project is not to facilitate implementation of social security schemes but to collect personal (financial and non-financial) information of the citizens and residents of the country to build a data monopoly. For this purpose, PDS was chosen as a suitable social security scheme as it has the largest coverage. Several participants suggested that numerous reports authored by FICCI, KPMG and ASSOCHAM contained proposals for establishing a national identity authority which threw some light on the commercial intentions behind information collection under the UID Project.

It was also pointed out that there was documented proof that information collected under the UID Project might have been shared with foreign companies. There are suggestions about links established between proponents of the UID Project and companies backed by CIA or the French Government which run security projects and deal in data sharing in several jurisdictions.

7. Strategies for Future Action

The participants laid down a list of measures that must be taken to take the discussions forward. We have enumerated these recommendations below.

Prepare and compile an anthology of articles as an output of this workshop.
Prepare position papers on specific issues related to the UID Project
Prepare pamphlets/brochures on issues with the UID Project for public consumption
Prepare counter-advertisements for Aadhaar
Publish existing empirical evidence on the flaws in Aadhaar.
Set up an online portal dedicated to providing updates on the UID Project and allows discussions on specific issues related to Aadhaar.
Use Social Media to reach out to the public. Regularly track and comment on social media pages of relevant departments of the government.
Create groups dedicated to research and advocacy of specific aspects of the UID Project.
Create a Coordination Committee preferably based in Delhi which would be responsible for regularly holding meetings and for preparing a coordinated plan of action. Employ permanent to staff to run the Committee.
Organise an advocacy campaign against use of Aadhaar in collaboration with other organisations and build public domain acceptance.
The campaign must specifically focus on the unfettered scope of UID and expanse, misrepresentation of the success of Aadhaar by highlighting real savings, technological flaws, status of pilot programs and increasing corruption on account of the UID Project
Prepare a statement of public concern regarding the UID Project and collect signatures from eminent persons including academics, technical experts, civil society groups and members of parliament.
Organise events and discussions on issues relating to Aadhaar and invite members og government departments to speak and discuss the issues.
Write to Members of Parliament and Members of Legislative Assemblies raising questions on their or their parties’ support for Aadhaar and silence on the problems created by the UID Project.
Organise public hearings in states like Rajasthan to observe and document ground realities of the UID Project and share these outcomes with the state government and media.
Plan a national social audit and public hearing on the working of UID Project in the country.
File Contempt Petitions in the Supreme Court and High Courts against mandatory use of Aadhaar number for services not allowed by the Supreme Court.
Reach out to and engage with various foreign citizens and organisations that have been fighting on similar issues. The organisations and individuals who could be approached would include EPIC, Electronic Frontier foundation, David Moss, UK, Roger Clarke, Australia, Prof. Ian Angel, Snowden, Assange and Chomsky.
Work towards increasing awareness about the UID Project and gaining support from the student and research community, student organisations, trade unions, and other associations and networks in the unorganised sector.

Annexure A – Workshop Agenda

May 26, 2016

9:00-9:30	Registration
9:30-10:00	Prof. Dinesh Abrol - Welcome Self-introduction and expectations of participants Dr. Usha Ramanathan - Overview of the Workshop
10:00-11:00	Session 1: Current Status of Aadhaar Dr. Usha Ramanathan, Legal Researcher, New Delhi - What the 2016 Law Says, and How it Came into Being S. Prasanna, Advocate, New Delhi - Status and Force of Supreme Court Orders on Aadhaar Discussion
11:00-11:30	Tea Break
11:30-13:30	Session 2: Direct Benefits Transfers Prof. Reetika Khera, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi - Welfare Needs Aadhaar like a Fish Needs a Bicycle Prof. R. Ramakumar, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai - Aadhaar and the Social Sector: A critical analysis of the claims of benefits and inclusion Ashok Rao, Delhi Science Forum - Cash Transfers Study Discussion
13:30-14:30	Lunch
14:30-16:00	Session 3: Aadhaar: Science, Technology, and Security Prof. Subashis Banerjee, Dept of Computer Science & Engineering, IIT, Delhi - Privacy and Security Issues Related to the Aadhaar Act Pukhraj Singh, Former National Cyber Security Manager, Aadhaar, New Delhi - Aadhaar: Security and Surveillance Dimensions Discussion
16:00-16:30	Tea Break
16:30-17:30	Session 4: Aadhaar - International Dimensions Joshita Pai, Center for Communication Governance, National Law University, Delhi - Biometrics and Mandatory IDs in Other Parts of the World Dr. Gopal Krishna, Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties - International Dimensions of Aadhaar Discussion
17:30-18:00	High Tea

May 27, 2016

9:30-11:00	Session 5: Privacy, Surveillance and Ethical Dimensions of Aadhaar Prabir Purkayastha, Free Software Movement of India, New Delhi - Surveillance Capitalism and the Commodification of Personal Data Arjun Jayakumar, SFLC - Surveillance Projects Amalgamated Col Mathew Thomas, Bengaluru - The Deceit of Aadhaar Discussion
11:00-11:30	Tea Break
11:30-13:00	Session 6: Aadhaar - Broad Issues I Prof. G Nagarjuna, Homi Bhabha Center for Science Education, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai - How to prevent linked data in the context of Aadhaar Dr. Anupam Saraph, Pune - Aadhaar and Moneylaundering Discussion
13:00-14:00	Lunch
14:00-15:30	Session 7: Aadhaar - Broad Issues II Prof. MS Sriram, Visiting Faculty, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore - Financial lnclusion Nikhil Dey, MKSS, Rajasthan - Field witness: Technology on the Ground Prof. Himanshu, Centre for Economic Studies & Planning, JNU - UID Process and Financial Inclusion Discussion
15:30-16:00	Session 8: Conclusion
16:00-18:00	Informal Meetings

Annexure B – Workshop Participants

Anjali Bhardwaj, Satark Nagrik Sangathan

Dr. Anupam Saraph

Arjun Jayakumar, Software Freedom Law Centre

Ashok Rao, Delhi Science Forum

Prof. Chinmayi Arun, National Law University, Delhi

Prof. Dinesh Abrol, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Prof. G Nagarjuna, Homi Bhabha Center for Science Education, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai

Dr. Gopal Krishna, Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties

Prof. Himanshu, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Japreet Grewal, the Centre for Internet and Society

Joshita Pai, National Law University, Delhi

Malini Chakravarty, Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability

Col. Mathew Thomas

Prof. MS Sriram, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore

Nikhil Dey, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan

Prabir Purkayastha, Knowledge Commons and Free Software Movement of India

Pukhraj Singh, Bhujang

Rajiv Mishra, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Prof. R Ramakumar, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

Dr. Reetika Khera, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi

Dr. Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali

S. Prasanna, Advocate

Sanjay Kumar, Science Journalist

Sharath, Software Freedom Law Centre

Shivangi Narayan, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Prof. Subhashis Banerjee, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi

Sumandro Chattapadhyay, the Centre for Internet and Society

Dr. Usha Ramanathan, Legal Researcher

Note: This list is only indicative, and not exhaustive.

[1] Civil Appeal No. 4853 of 2014

[2] WP(C) 494/2012

[3] . WP(C) 829/2013

[4] WP(C) 833/2013

[5] WP (C) 37/2015; (Earlier intervened in the Aruna Roy petition in 2013)

[6] WP (C) 932/2015

[7] Transferred from Madras HC 2013.

[8] SLP (Crl) 2524/2014 filed against the order of the Goa Bench of the Bombay HC in CRLWP 10/2014 wherein the High Court had directed UIDAI to share biometric information held by them of all residents of a particular place in Goa to help with a criminal investigation in a case involving charges of rape and sexual assault.

[9] See :http://scroll.in/article/806243/rajasthan-presses-on-with-aadhaar-after-fingerprint-readers-fail-well-buy-iris-scanners

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/report-on-understanding-aadhaar-and-its-new-challenges

The Curious Incidents on Matrimonial Websites in India

Abhimanyu Roy — 2016-08-30T10:52:50Z

This essay by Abhimanyu Roy is part of the 'Studying Internet in India' series. The author explores how the curious interplays between the arranged marriage market in India the rise of matrimonial sites such as Jeevansathi.com and Shaadi.com. The gravity of the impact that such web-based services have on the lives of users is substantially greater than most other everyday web-enabled transactions, such as an Uber ride or a Foodpanda order. From outright fraud to online harassment, newspaper back pages are filled with nightmare stories that begin on a matrimonial website. So much so that the Indian government has set up a panel to regulate matrimonial sites. The essay analyses the role of matrimonial websites in modern day India, and the challenges this awkward amalgamation of the internet and love gives rise to.

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.
— Mignon McLaughlin [1]

People say ours is an arranged marriage. In a way, our meeting was arranged by our parents but eventually it was the two of us who decided on the marriage. We met and went out together for a few times. We dated for a while and then agreed to marry...
— Madhuri Dixit [2]

Mignon McLaughlin was a pioneer American journalist. Madhuri Dixit is one of the most popular Indian film actresses in recent memory. They are both women who have led very public lives and they have also had long and happy marriages. Yet, their quotes offer an insight into the very different ways in which they began their marital lives. Unlike the West, love is not inextricably linked to marriage in India. A number of factors such as class, race, caste and financial considerations come into the picture in matrimony – it is not far-fetched to think Ms. Dixit’s parents would not have introduced her to her future groom if he did not fulfill certain criteria.

This makes internet-enabled disruption extremely complex. Any system that aims to disrupt needs to take into consideration systemic elements. E.g. Uber needs to consider fuel prices, regulations, economic fluctuations and real-time demand while setting their prices. However, when unpredictable emotions, sociology and psychological states of not just the individuals involved in the union but also others such as their families come into the picture, things become incredibly complicated. This gives rise to a number of unwanted situations from fraud to blackmail. At the same time, websites such as Jeevansathi.com and Shaadi.com continue to gain more users – an indication that a lot of people have found their life partners on these platforms. To gain an understanding of this situation, let us first ask a question – who is the modern Indian?

Identity Crash

In their contribution to the 2002 book Building Virtual Communities, Dorian Wiszniewski and Richard Coyne first put forth the concept of the mask in the context of online interactions. The authors stated that idiosyncrasies of internet interactions – lack of physical presence, relative anonymity etc. – allowed individuals to reveal more about self-identity than conventional social interactions [3]. In particular, the authors point out that the choices that online contributors make regarding their profiles, style of writing and topics that they follow represent an ideal version of themselves as opposed to their offline social identity which depends more on the perceptions of others about the individual.

Perhaps no-where is this more evident than the modern online media landscape in India. A look at some of the most popular content on the Indian sub-sections of Buzzfeed, Huffington Post and YouTube presents a revealing picture of modern young India that runs counter to the conventional notion of family-centricity and social conservatism. Channels such as Being Indian on YouTube that has videos asking Bengaluru citizens about penis sizes and Mumbaikars on office romances, content produced by popular Buzzfeed authors such as Rega Jha and Sahil Rizwan and hard-hitting editorials from outlets such as Quartz and Huffington Post regarding love, marriage, sexuality and abuse reflect an undercurrent of social liberalism that is unseen in conventional social circles.

But for all that online liberalism, a 2013 survey commissioned by the Taj Group of Hotels and carried out by market research agency IPSOS revealed that 75% of Indians in the age group of 18 to 35 preferred arranged marriages [4]. What explains this apparent cognitive dissonance? A possible answer comes from a study commissioned by the UK government in 2013. The study called ‘What is the relationship between identities that people construct, express and consume online and those offline?’ posits that it is easier to deconstruct online identities compared to offline ones – upload pictures, share content, post status updates. The offline identity, on the other hand, has a sense of permanence associated with it and more difficult to rebuild. In clash between a malleable identity and a permanent one, the permanent one wins out [5].

This gives rise to an interesting conundrum – is it possible for one to take a decision for their offline identity based on information provided by someone who is representing their online self?

Shaadi

Anupam Mittal was working in a business intelligence firm in America during the dot com boom. Every year he used to visit his family back in India. On one of these visits in 1997, he had a chance meeting with a match-maker. After wriggling his way out of the encounter (there were many uncomfortable personal questions for his liking), he came up with an idea for a portal where prospective brides and grooms would be able to upload their profiles and cut out the middleman in India’s marriage ecosystem. This idea led to sagaai.com, which would eventually become shaadi.com [6].

By 2008, Shaadi.com was one of India’s five most popular websites. It had over 300 million page views each month and 6000 profiles were added every day [7]. Since then, the online matrimony market has become more segmented and numerous clones have cropped up – most notably, Jeevansaathi.com and BharatMatrimony.com. While this has somewhat taken the sheen off from Shaadi’s dominance, the portal still remains the market leader in India.

In the numerous interviews that Mittal has given since the launch of Shaadi, he always attributes the success of the portal to one attribute – it makes the process of marriage easier [8]. This statement, however simple it may seem on the surface, actually encompasses a number of factors – a wider pool of prospective spouses, circumventing match-makers, objective representation, and testimonials of satisfied clients. However, collating a large number of prospective brides and grooms and facilitating the union is not a new phenomenon. It has been around for years in India – centuries in fact.

For a very long time, parents who wanted their children to be wedded in India would contact a marriage broker. This individual (or in some cases, agency) would keep on record the details of a large number of prospective life partners. Thereafter, much like a recruitment agency, they would match the details to the request of their clients and arrange a meeting. As news media began to grow in prominence in the nation, matrimony-seekers started to find a way around marriage brokers. This led to the emergence of matrimonial ads in newspapers [9]. The main advantage that matrimonial ads had was that they allowed people access to a huge number of prospective spouses – a much larger pool than those of marriage brokers [10].

To understand why matrimonial websites supplanted both brokers and newspaper advertisements one has to look at the deficiencies in both systems. Brokers while primarily only facilitating introductions actually impact every facet of the wedding [11]. They would make the wedding arrangements, find the purohit (priest), fix the guest list, determine astrological suitability and (in the past) even negotiate the dowry. In each of these transactions, the broker has a profit motive, which is what makes brokers a very troubling medium – they have an incentive to do what is best for them and not for their clients. At its best, this might involve getting more expensive flowers for the ceremony. At its worst, they may knowingly push a bride into a marriage they know is unsuitable but would yield them greater profits.

Of course, if one wanted to not get into this system, they could always put out a matrimony ad in the newspaper. Except, the greatest advantage of matrimonial ads is also their greatest weakness. While it’s true that putting out an ad in a newspaper opened up a large number of choices for a man or woman, it also opened them up to the general public [12]. Instead of having a broker narrow down their options to a few people, the advertisers would now have to sift through a plethora of propositions – many of which they would never even consider. Shaadi was a game-changer in both these aspects. Customizability allowed users to pick and choose who was able to view their profiles on the website – thus eliminating solicitors who did not meet their criteria for a spouse [13]. At the same time, Shaadi’s revenue model limited its operations to only facilitating a meeting between the two parties. This kept in check the profit incentive that was inherent to brokers [14]. By identifying weak points in both models and catalyzing a beneficial change for the user, Shaadi.com (and other matrimonial websites) were able to gain a foothold in India’s marriage industry.

With over 2 million unions that were initiated online since the inception of Shaadi.com, it would seem as though online matrimony is a success [15]. However, there is a dark side to this phenomenon – a 2012 report by the Economic Times found that almost half the divorces in metros were by couples who met through a matrimony website. Unsurprisingly, the main reason for this was misrepresentation of details on online profiles [16].

While the increasing acceptance of online matrimony points to its popularity and the success of decision-making based on the representation of the self-identity of individuals, the high number of divorces suggests that there are clear gaps in the system that can lead to some very uncomfortable situations. An examination of the decision-making process for internet-based tractions is required to understand why online matrimony-seekers make the decisions that they do and the consequences of those choices when it comes to marriage.

Choices

Economic theory bases decision-making on the principle of utility maximization [17]. Fundamentally, given a set of choices we would pick the option that gives us the greatest benefit for the lowest cost. Individuals weigh benefits on a set of criteria that are subjective in nature and differ from person to person – Akash may like 2 chocolates and 1 ice cream for Rs. 10 but Megha might prefer 2 ice creams and 1 chocolate for Rs. 10 instead.

The basic assumption in this model is that the choices are well-defined, i.e. there is no hidden information that might change the decision-maker’s opinion. Any hidden information changes the context within which the decision is taken – Megha certainly would not prefer to have ice creams if it was very cold that day. This has serious implications for a medium where decision-making is governed by trust on the parties furnishing the decision-maker with the facts upon which to make their choice.

Although there are many factors upon which an online suitor would base their decision to pursue a potential spouse, evidence from the operation of matrimonial websites has found that there are actually six criterions that matter the most – education, religion, age, height, work area and caste.[18] Evidence about misrepresentation among these six factors in Indian matrimony is sparse. However, research into western dating websites suggests that most of the fudging tends to occur for height, age and weight [19]. It should come as no surprise that these are the hardest factors to verify – a bride’s family may ask to see proof of the groom’s employment and education but would think twice before asking to measure his height or test his age.

Ensuring honesty on a matrimonial website is a difficult proposition. The profile creators are governed by the same economic theory of decision-making that was laid out earlier. If a prospective suitor thinks he would get a better spouse by increasing their height by a couple of inches or decreasing their age by a few years, why wouldn’t they lie? On the operators’ end, verifying the truth behind any of the claims is also problematic – how do you gauge the veracity of someone’s age by a picture? The problem on the operators’ end goes much deeper though and this is where the situation starts to get murky.

While physical characteristics are the easiest ones to be deceptive about one can also lie about their educational and employment credentials. The mandate of matrimonial websites is to connect brides and grooms. The onus of verifying the truth behind the claims made by either party lies on the opposite group and not on the operators of the medium [20]. Besides, verifying whether someone went to a particular university or not or is employed in the same capacity as their claims requires resources that matrimonial websites do not possess. This gives rise to the most troubling aspect of such websites – fraud.

Deception

In 2014, a Mumbai-based woman met a man named Michael Williams who claimed to be based in the United Kingdom on BharatMatrimony.com. After some weeks of courtship, Williams had swept her off her feet. In late July of that year, he informed her that he would be visiting India but upon his arrival, he informed her that he had been detained by the customs department for carrying excessive foreign currency and would require an ‘anti-terrorist certificate’ in order to be allowed in the country. He asked her for some money – the customs department required Indian currency – and she obliged. However, after receiving her assistance she did not hear from him again. Williams had duped her out of 2.93 lakhs.

Upon contacting BharatMatrimony.com, the portal informed her that they had suspended Williams’ profile and the responsibility of verifying his claims lay with her. After a protracted legal case, the Mumbai High Court ruled that the portal was not liable for fraud [21].

This is not a unique case. Several cases of fraud, sexual abuse and harassment have occurred on matrimony websites [22]. Users have tried several mechanisms to verify the details that they are provided with on these sites. From asking probing questions to discern any possible duplicity to even hiring detectives to find the truth about their possible spouses and (more recently) checking social media profiles, men and women on matrimonial sites go to extreme lengths to determine the veracity of the information that they have been provided with [23]. However, not everyone is as vigilant and quite a few times terrible experiences ranging from theft to sexual assault have begun through a meeting on a matrimonial website [24] [25] [26].

The lack of clear regulation and policy coupled with India’s lax laws governing online transactions make it difficult to draw a line where the responsibility of the websites end and that of the users begin. Fortunately, this situation is changing.

Oversight

Governments in most countries have an unusually significant role to play in an institution that is supposed to be between two people. From inheritance laws to prohibition of certain types of unions – most prominently and controversially the Defense of Marriage Act in the United States – governments straddle a complicated middle ground between having too much influence in marital affairs to having too little.

Even so, the Indian government’s involvement in marriage in especially extensive. From anti-dowry legislation to prohibition of child marriage, the government has always had a vital role to play.

In November 2015, the Indian government decided to set up a panel that would make recommendations for the regulation of matrimonial websites in order to check abuse [27]. The initiative is an undertaking of the Women and Child Development (WCD) ministry. The panel consists of members from the WCD ministry, Home ministry and Department of Electronics and Information Technology along with representatives from matrimonial websites such as Shaadi.com and Jeevansathi.com. Ministry officials pointed out that the growing number of cases of fraud and abuse occurring on such websites was the prevailing reason for the formation of the panel.

In June 2016, the panel made its recommendations. It was now mandatory for websites to keep track of the IP addresses of its users. Documentation from users would now also be solicited to verify their identity and curb instances of fraud. Matrimonial websites are also required to now explicitly spell out that they are for matrimony and not for dating [28].

While the government has cited that these regulations are to protect users of these websites, the operators of these websites have so far declined to comment on the guidelines (at the time of writing of this essay, the full list of guidelines has not yet been made public and have not formally been presented to the operators of matrimonial websites) [29]. However, any protestations from operators notwithstanding, regulation will be an integral part of the future of matrimonial websites in India. This brings us to an important question – what indeed is the future of these websites? Will they withstand the crime that occurs on them or will they become an irreplaceable part of life in India?

Future

The online matrimony industry in India is estimated to be worth $225 million by 2017 [30]. In 2013 over 50 million new subscribers registered across these websites [31]. Despite, the stories of fraud and abuse that start on these portals and end in courts, matrimonial websites are growing and are here to stay.

Operators of these websites are undertaking various market development exercises to bring in new customers. The most visible of these is the segmentation of the market – BharatMatrimony and Shaadi, have launched a number of targeted community driven portals such as PunjabiMatrimony.com, EliteMatrimony.com, Bengalishaadi.com among others [32].

In an interview of February 2015, Gourav Rakshit Chief Operating Officer of Shaadi.com laid out operational changes that the market leader is contemplating implementing. To prevent deceptive information provided by users, stricter guidelines regarding the upload of photographs on the website are being implemented as well as the implementation of a screening procedure for profiles and the development of a stronger relationship with the cyber-crime branch of law enforcement agencies [33].

The final cog in the future of matrimony websites is technology. Mobile and real-time engagement strategies are being actively considered by these websites in their quest to drive up their user base and find new streams of revenue [34].

But this not where the journey of matrimony websites ends. As with every great voyage, its conclusion is the beginning of another great expedition. Just as Shaadi.com and others had rode the early wave of disruption in the Indian wedding industry, so too are a number of new and upcoming internet-based services. Companies such as 7Vachan, Big Indian Wedding and ShaadiMagic offer a host of options for banquet halls, priests, makeup artists, photographers etc. These startups simplify the long process that is planning an Indian wedding. Would-be brides and grooms or their families can easily connect with vendors, make their final choices and organize every aspect of the wedding in a pristine manner instead of the general chaos that ensues while planning a wedding. As these companies prove, the disruption of the wedding industry that was started by matrimonial websites will continue in the foreseeable future [35].

Conclusion

In the March 2005 issue of New York magazine, a New York-based author of Indian-origin chronicles her and her family’s trysts with arranged marriage [36]. The article titled ‘Is Arranged Marriage any worse than Craigslist?’ is an examination of the experiences of the Indian diaspora with an institution that is deeply ingrained in their identity. In it, the author recalls an experience from her childhood wherein she had fallen out of the window of their home as a baby and had broken her arm. According to her father, the primary concern of her mother was that they should never mention this incident to anyone as it would greatly increase the dowry her family would have to pay her husband. Aside from being an event that shows the contradictions that Indian expats face in a western countries, it also shows how deeply the institution of marriage is rooted in Indians’ identity.

According to UNICEF, 90% of marriages in India are arranged [37]. Parents center their children’s lives on the event right from the outset. To industrialize an environment that has such deep emotional connections within it is fraught with dangers and the online matrimony business has had to deal with fraud and abuse. But along the way, they have permanently disrupted the way Indians get married. The growing popularity of these websites are a testament not just to their efficacy but also to the spirit of a new India. Government intervention and the oversight of website operators is bringing about greater improvements in fraud detection and abuse prevention on these websites. As the market continues to evolve, bring in more users and cater to new audiences, online matrimony will continue to thrive in India for a very long time to come.

Endnotes

[1] Anonymous. (n.d.). Mignon McLaughlin. In Wikipedia. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mignon_McLaughlin.

[2] Anonymous. (n.d.). Madhuri Dixit Quotes. In BollyNook. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://www.bollynook.com/en/madhuri-dixit-quotes.

[3] Renninger, K. A., & Shumar, W. (2002). Building virtual communities: Learning and change in cyberspace. Cambridge University Press.

[4] IANS. (March 20, 2013). Indians swear by Arranged Marriage. In India Today. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/indians-swear-by-arranged-marriages/1/252496.html.

[5] Miller, D. (2012). What is the relationship between identities that people construct, express and consume online and those offline?.

[6] Anonymous. (May 11, 2012). Shaadi.com’s Anupam Mittal: A Bachelor Finds Success as an Online Matchmaker. In Knowledge@Wharton. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/shaadi-coms-anupam-mittal-a-bachelor-finds-success-as-an-online-matchmaker/.

[7] Challapalli, S. (October 2, 2008). Online matrimonial services open new tech fronts. In The Hindu Business Line. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/todays-paper/online-matrimonial-services-open-new-tech-fronts/article1638067.ece.

[8] Pratap, R. (April 18, 2014). Right Click. In The Hindu Business Line. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/work/right-click/article5925468.ece.

[9] Anonymous. (March 2015). History of Matrimonial Sites. In HatkeShaadi. Retrieved August 24, 2016, from www.hatkeshaadi.com/blog/2015/03/history-of-matrimonial-sites/.

[10] Anonymous. (May 17, 2016). Are you contemplating Marriage? If Yes, Then Find A Soul-Mate via Amar Ujala. In myAdvtCorner.com. Retrieved August 24, 2016, from http://blog.myadvtcorner.com/matrimonial-newspaper-advertisement/are-you-contemplating-marriage-if-yes-then-find-a-soul-mate-via-amar-ujala/.

[11] Anonymous. (April 14, 2014). Matrimonial India sites are better than marriage brokers. In Bharat Bhasha. Retrieved August 24, 2016, from http://www.bharatbhasha.com/marriage.php/440432.

[12] Ahmed, A. (March 19, 2012). Online Matrimonial Sites versus Conventional Matrimonial Methods. In Bharat Bhasha. Retrieved August 24, 2016, from http://www.bharatbhasha.com/marriage.php/356114.

[13] Anonymous. (n.d.). Understand SimplyMarry Better. In SimplyMarry.com. Retrieved August 24, 2016, from http://www.simplymarry.com/matrimonial/faq.

[14] Anonymous. (April 14, 2014). Matrimonial India sites are better than marriage brokers. In Bharat Bhasha. Retrieved August 24, 2016, from http://www.bharatbhasha.com/marriage.php/440432.

[15] Albright, J. M., & Simmens, E. (2014). Flirting, Cheating, Dating, and Mating. The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality, 284.

[16] Julka, H. and Vishwanath, A. (June 26, 2013). Matrimony portals making serious efforts to counter rising tide of divorces, ensure lasting unions. In Economic Times. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-06-26/news/40206906_1_portals-online-bharatmatrimony-com.

[17] Margalit, L. (July 4, 2014). The Rational Model and Online Decision Making. In Psychology Today. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/behind-online-behavior/201407/the-rational-model-and-online-decision-making.

[18] Anonymous. (May 11, 2012). Shaadi.com’s Anupam Mittal: A Bachelor Finds Success as an Online Matchmaker. In Knowledge@Wharton. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/shaadi-coms-anupam-mittal-a-bachelor-finds-success-as-an-online-matchmaker/.

[19] Hodge, G. (December 10, 2012). The Ugly Truth of Online Dating: Top 10 Lies Told by Internet Daters. In Huffington Post. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/online-dating-lies_b_1930053.

[20] Dhawan, H. (February 2, 2016). ID proof may become mandatory for registering on Shaadi websites. In Times of India. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/ID-proof-may-become-mandatory-for-registering-on-Shaadi-websites/articleshow/50814355.cms.

[21] Khan, A. (March 29, 2015). HC quashes FIR filed by ‘duped’ woman against matrimonial site. In The Indian Express. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/hc-quashes-fir-filed-by-duped-woman-against-matrimonial-site/.

[22] Nair, S. (November 19, 2015). Government panel to check fraud on matrimonial websites. In The Indian Express. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/govt-panel-to-check-fraud-on-matrimonial-websites/.

[23] Hema. (September 15, 2012). Tips for assessing genuineness of a matrimonial profile. In Matrimonial Blog. Retrieved August 24, 2016, from http://matrimonialblog.com/general/2012/tips-for-assessing-genuineness-of-a-matrimonial-profile-stop-fraud/.

[24] Praveen, P. (July 11, 2015). The web of deceit. In Deccan Chronicle. Retrieved August 28, 2016, from http://www.deccanchronicle.com/150710/lifestyle-relationship/article/web-deceit.

[25] Aman, S. (November 24, 2014). Fraud and Cheats Rule Matrimonial Sites. In The New Indian Express. Retrieved August 28, 2016, from http://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/hyderabad/2014/11/24/Fraud-and-Cheats-Rule-Matrimonial-Sites/article2537595.ece.

[26] Ameer, T. (August 12, 2015). Matrimonial portals set to face the music over dubious profiles. In Millenium Post. Retrieved August 28, 2016, from http://millenniumpost.in/NewsContent.aspx?NID=145048.

[27] Philip, S. (June 3, 2016). No casual hookups on matrimonial sites as govt lays down rules. In Live Mint. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://www.livemint.com/Politics/1PFh6Uakl1mhEaQTxzGZuK/No-casual-hookups-on-matrimonial-sites-as-government-lays-do.html.

[28] Philip, S. (June 3, 2016). No casual hookups on matrimonial sites as govt lays down rules. In Live Mint. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://www.livemint.com/Politics/1PFh6Uakl1mhEaQTxzGZuK/No-casual-hookups-on-matrimonial-sites-as-government-lays-do.html.

[29] Philip, S. (June 3, 2016). No casual hookups on matrimonial sites as govt lays down rules. In Live Mint. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://www.livemint.com/Politics/1PFh6Uakl1mhEaQTxzGZuK/No-casual-hookups-on-matrimonial-sites-as-government-lays-do.html.

[30] PTI. (December 17, 2013). Online matrimony business likely to touch Rs. 1,500 cr by 2017. In The Hindu Business Line. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/online-matrimony-business-likely-to-touch-rs-1500-cr-by-2017/article5470871.ece.

[31] Ganapathy, N. (June 15, 2016). More fraud cases as India embraces marriage sites. In Straits Times. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/more-fraud-cases-as-india-embraces-marriage-sites.

[32] afaqs! News Bureau. (September 9, 2009). Bharatmatrimony.com unveils 250 community based matrimonial sites. In afaqs!. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://www.afaqs.com/news/story/24904_Bharatmatrimonycom-unveils-250-community-based-matrimonial-sites.

[33] Nair, S. (February 16, 2015). Mobile will disrupt matrimonial space in India, says Gourav Rakshit of Shaadi.com. In First Post. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://www.firstpost.com/business/corporate-business/mobile-will-disrupt-matrimonial-space-in-india-says-gourav-rakshit-of-shaadi-com-2097637.html.

[34] Nair, S. (February 16, 2015). Mobile will disrupt matrimonial space in India, says Gourav Rakshit of Shaadi.com. In First Post. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://www.firstpost.com/business/corporate-business/mobile-will-disrupt-matrimonial-space-in-india-says-gourav-rakshit-of-shaadi-com-2097637.html.

[35] Soni, S. (September 19, 2015). The great Indian wedding is now an online affair . In Entrepreneur India. Retrieved August 24, 2016, from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/250863.

[36] Jain, A. (March 2005). Is Arranged Marriage Really Any Worse Than Craigslist?. In New York Magazine. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/culture/features/11621/index1.html.

[37] Lai, J. (June 1, 2012). Arranged Marriage: CNN Examines The Age-Old Practice In India. In Huffington Post. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/arranged-marriage_n_1560049.

Author's Profile

Abhimanyu Roy is a researcher who specializes in the social applications of emerging technologies for the urban poor. His work has been featured at conferences at MIT and the World Bank and in publications by Harvard University.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/the-curious-incidents-on-matrimonial-websites-in-india

Do I Want to Say Happy B’day?

nishant — 2016-08-22T09:53:03Z

When it comes to greeting friends on their birthdays, social media prompts are a great reminder. So why does an online message leave us cold?

This article was published in Indian Express on August 7, 2016

Every morning, I wake up to a Facebook notification that reminds me of the birthdays in my friends group. A simple click takes me to a calendar view that shows me people who are celebrating the day, prompting me to wish them and let them know that I am thinking of them. Just so that I don’t miss the idea, the notifications are surrounded by ribbons and balloons in gold and blue. The message is simple. Somebody I know has a birthday. Social convention says that I should wish them and Facebook has designed a special interface that makes the communication so much simpler, faster, easier.

And yet, every morning I seem to face a small crisis, not sure how to respond to this prompt. Now, I am notorious for forgetting dates and numbers, so I do appreciate this personalised reminder which has enabled me to wish people I love and care for. But I generally find myself hovering tentatively, trying to figure out whether I want to greet these people.

This has perplexed me for a while now. Why would I hesitate in leaving a message on Facebook for people who I have added as “friends”? Why would I not just post on their wall, adding to the chorus of greetings that would have also emerged from the automated reminder on Facebook? I went on to the hive-mind of the social web to figure out if this was a unique problem, customised to specific neuroses, or whether this is more universal. It was a great surprise (and relief) to realise that I’m not alone.

When trying to figure out our conflicted sociality on social media, several conversations pointed to three things worth dwelling on. Almost everybody on that long discussion thread pointed out that the entire process is mechanised.

It feels like Facebook has a script for us, and we are just supposed to follow through. There is very little effort spent in crafting a message, writing something thoughtful, and creating a specific connection because it is going to get submerged in a cacophony of similar messages. Also, the message, though personal, is public. So anything that is personal and affective just gets scrubbed, and most people end up mechanically posting “Happy Birthday” with a few emojis of choice, finding the whole process and the final performance devoid of the personal.

Another emerging concern was that social media sustains itself on reciprocity. However, it is almost impossible to expect the birthday person to respond to every single message and post that comes their way. In fact, as somebody pointed out, if your friend spends their entire day on Facebook, responding to 500 comments and thanking everybody who spent three seconds writing a banal post, you should stage an intervention because it is a clear cry for help. You should have been a better friend and made their day more special by being with them. So the message feels like shouting in a ravine, expecting an echo and getting nothing. This lack of reciprocity, even when expected, is still disconcerting enough for people to shy away from it.

The most frequent experience that was shared was by people who wanted to make the person feel special and cherished. Facebook and the social media sites are now so quotidian and pedestrian that it seems an almost uncaring space. It was intriguing to figure out that people made choices of whom to wish based on their actual proximity and intimacy with the person. If it is a colleague, a distant acquaintance, or just a companion at work, they throw a quick greeting on their wall and move on. But for actual friends, loved ones, families, they take the prompt but then refuse to follow the script. They take that moment to call, to write, to meet, but not perform it on Facebook.

This need for connectivity and the suspicion of its meaning continues to mark our social media interaction. If it were not for social media networks, a lot of us would feel distinctly disconnected, unable to get glimpses in the lives of the large number of people we know.

At the same time, this thinned out connection that characterises most of social media also seems to make us realise that not all friends are the same friends, and that Facebook might be social media, but it isn’t quite personal media.

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