Centre for Internet and Society

Digital Native: The e-wasteland of our times

nishant — 2018-05-06T03:21:49Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

sneha-pp — 2019-12-06T05:03:33Z

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

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

Abstract

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

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

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

Digital Native: Cause an Effect

nishant — 2018-06-26T15:21:01Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 2018 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2018-08-11T02:52:10Z

CIS newsletter for the month of June 2018.

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights

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

Articles

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

CIS in the News

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

Access to Knowledge

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

Wikipedia

Event Organized

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

Internet Governance

The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society has defined internet governance as the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles of shared principles, norms, rules, decision making procedures and programs that shape the evolution and use of the internet. CIS is engaged in two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and IDRC) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on restrictions that the Indian government has placed on freedom of expression online.

Privacy

Blog Entries

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

Submissions

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

Participation in Event

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

Free Speech & Expression

Blog Entry

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

Telecom

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

Submission

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

Researchers at Work

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

Participation in Event

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

Essay

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

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Follow us elsewhere

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

► Support Us

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

► Request for Collaboration

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

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

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/june-2018-newsletter

July 2018 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2018-08-11T02:50:52Z

CIS July 2018 newsletter.

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights

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

Articles

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

CIS in the News

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

Access to Knowledge

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

Wikipedia

Blog Entries

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

Events Organized

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

Internet Governance

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

Privacy

Submissions

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

Blog Entry

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

Participation in Events

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

Cyberspace and Cyber Security

Analysis

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

Blog Entry

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

Participation in Event

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

Free Speech & Expression

Blog Entries

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

Participation in Event

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

Telecom

Newspaper Column

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

About CIS

► Follow us elsewhere

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

► Support Us

► Request for Collaboration

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/july-2018-newsletter

Explainer | Tying and Bundling

Abhineet Nayyar and Isha Suri — 2024-12-23T11:05:31Z

Earlier this year, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs released the draft Digital Competition Bill for public comment. Although much has been written about the ex-ante process it proposes, there is little discussion of the nine Anti-Competitive Practices, or ACPs, that the draft Bill builds on. Even when it exists, this discussion is often accompanied by heavy jargon, thereby limiting its accessibility for small businesses, workers, and consumers who are most affected by these ACPs.

In this iteration of Explainer, we delve deeper into 'Tying and Bundling', one of these practices and unpack it not just for legal practitioners and antitrust authorities, but also for lay people whose reliance on BigTech platforms continues to increase every day.

Credits

Conceptualisation and research by Abhineet Nayyar and Isha Suri

Design by Chris

Click to read the research

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/explainer-tying-and-bundling

Datafication of the Public Distribution System in India

Sameet Panda — 2024-02-12T12:07:40Z

In this study, we look into the datafication of social protection schemes with a special focus on the Public Distribution System in India. Proponents of datafication claim that the benefits will reach the right person and curb leakages through the automation and digitisation of all PDS processes. Aadhaar is the most important link in the datafication; supporters claim that it makes technology people-centric. This study looks at the status of PDS datafication and its impact on the delivery of the scheme in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. We also try to understand to what extent the stated objective of portability has been met and how far the challenges faced by the rights holders of the PDS have been resolved.

Read the full report here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/datafication-of-the-public-distribution-system-in-india

Designing Domestic Work Platforms

Divyansha Sehgal and Yathrath — 2022-08-13T06:31:47Z

This research was conducted by The Center for Internet and Society (CIS) with funding from Association for Progressive Communication (APC) through the Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN), supported by International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The authors are deeply grateful to the platform workers who talked to us and shared their experiences of finding work through Urban Company. Their responses shaped our research and their insights guided the creation of this final report.

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), there are between 20 million and 80 million workers engaged in domestic work in India. Domestic work has traditionally been an informal sector with customers and workers depending on local and community networks to be connected with each other. Over the last few years, digital platforms have gained ground in connecting domestic workers with tech-savvy urban dwellers.

These platforms promise customers the ease and convenience of moving yet another aspect of their lives online, while they promise to give workers more flexibility, control over their time and increased earnings.

However, we show that this introduction of technology brings with itself the same problems that haunt other sectors of platform-mediated gig work. On-demand platforms seek to exert control over most points of the service delivery process, including job distributions, client selection, worker pay and performance evaluation, all the while relegating workers to an independent contractor status.

Click to download the full report

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/apc-cis-divyansha-sehgal-yathrath-designing-domestic-work-platforms

Platforms, Power and Politics: Digital Labour in India

ambika — 2021-07-20T02:42:47Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) invites you to a webinar wherein it will launch and present four research reports on digital labour in India. The webinar will be hosted on July 28, 2021 at 5 p.m. (IST) / 11.30 a.m. (UTC)

Click here to register for the Event Now

Download the brochure of the Event here

Few recent developments in labour and employment have attracted as much attention as the expansion of platform economies. Spanning a range of services and industries, digital platforms have become a permanent fixture in upper-class urban consumption in India.

In this webinar, we will launch and present four research reports on digital labour in India, hosted at the Centre for Internet and Society. Together, they uncover aspects of labouring in three dominant industries of platform work: logistics, transportation, and domestic and care work. These works were supported separately by the Azim Premji University and Foundation, and the Feminist Internet Research Network (incubated by the Association for Progressive Communications).

Informed by deep ethnographic work, these reports unpack the contours of power, control and resistance that shape the experience and outcomes of working for digital platforms. The reports arrive at the ways in which platforms, as moving techno-social assemblages [1] distribute risk and reward in ways that implicate the livelihoods, agency, and bargaining power of actors across digital platforms’ value chains.

Each of these reports also contributes towards developing a southern understanding platform work. In contexts where there is an increasing reliance on technology providers for developmental outcomes and provision of public services, and informality is the dominant labour market structure, what does it mean to work on digital platforms? By situating the histories of informal work in India, and the intersectional identities constituting informality, these reports highlight how digital platforms can both reinforce and reorient the transaction of informal service work.

With restrictions on public mobility and the “hygiene theatre”[2]resulting from the outbreak of covid-19, digital labour platforms have sought to entrench their position in urban India as providers of ‘essential services’. As digital platforms gain centre-stage in India’s various marketplaces, it becomes all the more urgent to collectively reflect upon languages of strategic intervention that can enable a worker-first and southern imagination of digital platform work, and grassroots as well as policy thought around it.

We invite researchers, practitioners, activists and students from across disciplines to join us in this venture.

The event will be segmented into 4 presentations (of 10-12 minutes each), with space for discussion and feedback at the end of each presentation. The detailed agenda, and a reading list are provided below.

Agenda

5.00 p.m.: Introduction

5.05 p.m. Session 1: Perspectives from platformisation of domestic and care work in India - Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi, Centre for Internet and Society

5.25 p.m.: Session 2: Promise and prescriptions in the platformisation of food delivery work in Mumbai - Simiran Lalvani, University of Oxford

5.45 p.m.: Break

5.50 p.m.: Session 3: ‘Taxi’ nahi chalata hoon main (I don’t drive a Taxi): Flexibility and risk in the Ridehailing platform economy in Mumbai - Anushree Gupta, IIT Hyderabad

6.10 p.m.: Session 4: The unbearable lightness of being: Performing precarious cab-driving in Delhi - Sarah Zia, Independent researcher

6.30 p.m.: Discussion and Closing

Moderator: Noopur Raval, AI Now

Reading List

Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi (2021). Platforms, Power and Politics: Perspectives from Domestic and Care Work in India.
Through exhaustive platform-mapping and feminist ethnographic work, the authors uncovers the implications of digital platforms’ operations on domestic and care workers’ civil liberties, social protection, and gainful work outcomes. Access the full report here.
Simiran Lalvani (2019). Workers’ fictive kinship relations in Mumbai app-based food delivery.
This essay unpacks the kinship term bhai (brother) in order to understand the implications of such kinship sedimentations on food delivery work in Mumbai. Complicating the notion of an atomised worker, it details how having a fictive kinship ties with a bhai eases entry to platform work, upon joining ties guide negotiation with the discipline imposed by the employer and reflects on the experience of women workers. Read the essay here.
Sarah Zia (2019). Not knowing as pedagogy: Ride-hailing drivers in Delhi.
Ride-hailing platforms have “disrupted” public transport in India since their arrival but what hasn’t received enough attention is how these platforms create a deliberate regime of information invisibility and control to keep the drivers constantly on their toes which works to the companies’ advantage. This essay explores how the lack of transparency around algorithmic structures not only prohibits drivers from knowing completely and surely about their work (“why did I get this ride?”, “why did my ratings drop?”) but also how they build tactics of coping and earning from a place of unknowing. Read the essay here.
Anushree Gupta (2019). Ladies ‘Log’: Women’s Safety and Risk Transfer in Ridehailing.
Gig work produces new risks and safety concerns that require new mediations and negotiations. This post outlines the gendered cityscapes that drivers in the ride hailing sector navigate on an everyday basis. Building on insights from fieldwork in the ridehailing economy in Mumbai, the essay argues that drivers rely not only on their spatial knowledge of the city, but also on social knowledge that genders social exchange, predicates identities and draws boundaries. Analysing women’s presence as workers and passengers/customers, the author highlights the figure of the woman and the gendered forms of labour that underpin gig workers’ everyday realities. Read the essay here.
Noopur Raval (2019). Power Chronography of Food-Delivery Work.
This essay presents the observations around the design of temporality within app-based food-delivery platforms in India. It draws on semi-structured interviews by field-researcher Rajendra and his time spent “hanging out” with food-delivery workers who are also often referred to as “hunger saviors” and “partners” in the platform ecosystem in India. Read the essay here.
Simiran Lalvani (2021). Sexual contracts of app-based food delivery: An examination of social reproduction through feeding and being fed in Mumbai, India.
What happens to socially reproductive norms of feeding when apps seem to democratise work? How does this work mediate the tension between workers’, consumers’ choices and the prescription of dominant norms about feeding and being fed? This paper examines the socio-cultural burdens and risks that arise for workers and customers through 3 interrelated aspects – (i) household requirements of food delivery work, (ii) the definition, social meanings and anxieties associated with eating out and (iii) how platforms make anxiety inducing outside food popular, if not palatable. Read the chapter here.

[1] Edwards, D.W. and B. Gelms. (2018). ‘The rhetorics of platforms: Definitions, approaches, futures’, Present Tense: Special Issue on the Rhetoric of Platforms, 6(3).

[2] Thompson, D. (July 27, 2020). Hygiene Theater Is a Huge Waste of Time. The Atlantic. Available at https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/scourge-hygiene-theater/614599/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/platforms-power-and-politics-digital-labour-in-india

Data bleeding everywhere: a story of period trackers

sumandro — 2019-12-06T05:03:09Z

This is an excerpt from an essay by Sadaf Khan, written for and published as part of the Bodies of Evidence collection of Deep Dives. The Bodies of Evidence collection, edited by Bishakha Datta and Richa Kaul Padte, is a collaboration between Point of View and the Centre for Internet and Society, undertaken as part of the Big Data for Development Network supported by International Development Research Centre, Canada.

Please read the full essay on Deep Dives: Data bleeding everywhere: a story of period trackers

Sadaf Khan: Media Matters for Democracy and Twitter

...By now there are a number of questions buzzing around my head, most of them unasked. Are users comfortable with so much of their data being collected? Are there really algorithms that string together all this data into medically-relevant trends? How reliable can these trends be when usage is erratic? Are period tracking apps pioneering, fundamental elements of a future where medical aid is digital and reliable data is inevitably linked to the provision of medical services? And if so, are privacy and health soon to become conflicting rights?

I also want to find out how users understand data collection and privacy before giving apps consent to utilize their data and information as they will. Hareem says she gives apps informed consent. ‘If my data becomes a part of the statistics aiding medical research, why not? There is no harm in it. I am getting a good service, and if my data helps create a better understanding as a part of a larger statistical pool, they are welcome to use it.’

But is she really sure that this information will be used only as anonymised data for medical research? ‘Look at the kind of information that is being collected,’ she answers. ‘Dates, mood, consistency of mucus, basal temperature. What kind of use does one have for this data?’

Naila, in turn, says: ‘Honestly, I have never really thought about what happens to the data the application collects. Obviously I enter detailed information about my cycle and my moods and my sex life. But a), my account is under a fake name and b), even if it wasn’t, who would have any use for stuff like when my period starts and ends and what my mood or digestive system is like at any given moment?’

In fact, this sentiment is shared among all the women interviewed for this piece — what use would anyone have for this data?

As users, we often imagine our own data as anonymised within a huge dataset. But as users, we don’t have enough information about how our data is being used — or will be used in future. The open and at times vague language of a platform’s terms and conditions allows menstrual apps to use data in ways that I may not know of. Some apps continue to hold customer data even after an account is deleted. Even though I may technically ‘agree’ to the terms and conditions, is this fully informed consent?

One of the big concerns around this kind of medical information being collected is the potential for collaborations with big pharmaceuticals and other health service providers. With apps sitting on a goldmine of users’ fertility and health information, health service providers might mine their data for potential consumers and reach out directly to them. While this is like any targeted marketing campaign, the fact that the advertiser is likely to be offering medical services to women suffering from infertility and are at their most vulnerable, raises totally different ethical concerns.

And these apps and their businesses might grow in directions that users haven’t taken into consideration. Take Ovia’s health feature for companies to buy premium services for their employees. While the gesture is packaged as a goodwill one, it also means that an employer has access to extremely private and intimate medical information about their women employees. And while the data set is anonymised, it is still possible to figure out the identity of users based on specific information. For example, how many women in any company are pregnant at any given time?...

Pregnant a year after my miscarriage, I initially downloaded multiple apps in a bid to find a good fit. I don’t know which one of these was in communication with Facebook. But almost immediately, my Facebook timeline started becoming littered with ads for baby stuff — clothes, shoes bibs, prams, cribs, ointments for stretch marks, maternity wear, the works.

It makes me think of those old school clockwork-style videos. You drop a ball and off it goes: making dominos fall, knocking over pots and pans, setting in motion absurd, synchronized mechanisms. Similarly, I drop my data and watch it hurtle into my life, on to other platforms, off to vendors. Maybe to stalkers? To employers? Who knows.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/sadaf-khan-data-bleeding-everywhere-a-story-of-period-trackers

Unpacking video-based surveillance in New Delhi

Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon — 2019-06-20T05:13:25Z

Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon presented at an international workshop on 'Urban Data, Inequality and Justice in the Global South', on 14 June 2019, at the University of Manchester. The agenda for the workshop and the slides from the presentation by Aayush and Ambika are available below.

Agenda of the workshop: Download (DOCX)

Slides from the presentation: Download (PDF)

The aim of the workshop was to present findings from case studies on urban data justice commissioned by the Sustainable Consumption Institute and Centre for Development Informatics at the University of Manchester, on aspects of justice in data systems in cities across the world. Aayush and Ambika presented their study on video-based surveillance in New Delhi, which was conducted across a period of 3 months earlier this year. The study aimed to assess the extent to which CCTV surveillance systems in Delhi support the needs of women in the city, including lower class women and those from informal settlements. The study will be published as a working paper by the University of Manchester in the coming months.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/unpacking-video-based-surveillance-in-new-delhi-urban-data-justice

Facebook sees its salvation with its cryptocurrency Libra

nishant — 2019-07-02T03:58:08Z

Facebook’s Libra is designed to take control of our digital lives.

The article by Nishant Shah was published in the Indian Express on June 30, 2019.

In the early days, when we were still discussing the possible implications of building a data-surveillance system like Aadhaar in India, one of the persistent narratives was that in return, Aadhaar will build the infrastructure that gives legal and financial identity to the homeless, underserved, and the unbanked populations of the country. I remember how, at one consultation, Nandan Nilekani had jokingly mentioned that the single entry login framework of Aadhaar is easy to understand as the “Facebook of government services”. There were actual rumours that Aadhaar was seeking to collaborate with Facebook to see if we could log in to the public delivery systems using Facebook’s technical infrastructure.

The probable Aadhaar-Facebook collaboration never happened, but the other idea of Aadhaar enabling mobile payment, financial inclusion through digital outreach, and the possibility of leapfrogging an entire demography into digital transactions, has a different take. Aadhaar did not necessarily build a public infrastructure for banking. However, in establishing a unique identity, it did pave the way for the notorious demonetisation that pushed people into virtual and cashless transactions, and ironically, opening up the Indian market for the Chinese-controlled Paytm app to take over. Paytm is a clear symptom of China’s digital global dominance where TenCents and Alibaba are monopolising the world financial systems by becoming the de facto digital financial delivery systems for the emerging financial inclusion markets.

A little late in the game, but perhaps with a blockchain advantage, Facebook has entered this business of converting unique identification and engagement into a financial service, with the announcement of their new cryptocurrency endeavour, Libra. Much like those early days of Aadhaar, Facebook has positioned Libra as a pro-poor facilitator of financial inclusion for the large user base who are going to be connected to the Internet for the first time. The progressions of its interest in becoming the naturalised platform for all digital activities, as opposed to its presence as a space for sharing cute cat pictures and passive aggressive videos of relationships, is clear.

By launching Libra — the details are still scarce, but it seeks to create its own currency for the next generation, in collaboration with companies like Uber and Visa — Facebook has thrown its hat into a complete Black Mirror control of our digital lives. They want the user to first get connected to the Internet through Internet.org. Next, they want to control the websites that the users can use for free, by making Facebook the default entry point into digital data sharing. They would then collect and sell the data mined from these free services, and target the users to buy and consume using money developed by Libra. It is a fascinating, if not an ominous, cradle-to-grave scenario.

Currently, Facebook, in its humanitarian guise, is putting forth Libra as a .org service that selflessly seeks to transform the lives of financially excluded populations, who, in one fell swoop, would be online, on Facebook, and using Facebook’s currency in one single access point. However, it is clear to see that Libra is not a service for social good — Facebook is converting its advertisement-based exploitation of user data into clear financial goals. Remember, how we darkly used to laugh that data is the new currency? Well, here is Facebook’s Libra proving that data is not just the new currency, it can be the currency.

Facebook’s wealth has entirely been predicated on data as currency and attention as economy. The last few years have been a revelation of how Facebook has capitalised on its data and attention monopoly. In this new step, Facebook is no longer interested in using data to facilitate the financial expansion — with Libra, Facebook is going to become an actual broker of the money that we use. And once we have bought enough of this currency and use it in our everyday transactions, it can never devalue, because if it’s false, the biggest loser will always be the newly banked individual whose first financial identity is not going to be a banking account but Facebook.

In Libra, Facebook sees its salvation. It has long been critiqued that Facebook is facing obsolescence and threat from other social media networks and Libra is yet another way by which Facebook diversifies its portfolio and secures its future by making it the default service for how we live, work, talk, and love.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-june-30-2019-facebook-sees-its-salvation-with-its-cryptocurrency-libra

Making Humanities in the Digital: Embodiment and Framing in Bichitra and Indiancine.ma

sneha-pp — 2018-06-25T12:50:36Z

The growth of the internet and digital technologies in the last couple of decades, and the emergence of new ‘digital objects’ of enquiry has led to a rethinking of research methods across disciplines as well as innovative modes of creative practice. This chapter authored by Puthiya Purayil Sneha (published in 'Making Things and Drawing Boundaries: Experiments in the Digital Humanities' edited by Jentery Sayers) discusses some of the questions that arise around the processes by which digital objects are ‘made’ and made available for arts and humanities research and practice, by drawing on recent work in text and film archival initiatives in India.

Through an exploration of an online film archive, Indiancine.ma, and a digital variorum of Rabindranath Tagore’s works, Bichitra, developed at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, the chapter engages with the processes of making and studying digital objects as creative and analytical, affective, and embodied. Drawing also on observations from a study on mapping digital humanities work in India, the chapter explores conceptual and material processes of the digital to understand how they affect research and practice in the humanities. These also allow for a new perspectives to understand the condition of digitality we inhabit today, as well as the possibilities it offers for the humanities.

This chapter authored by Puthiya Purayil Sneha was published in Making Things and Drawing Boundaries: Experiments in the Digital Humanities (2017), edited by Jentery Sayers, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, London.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/making-humanities-in-the-digital-embodiment-and-framing-in-bichitra-and-indiancine.ma

Indic Scripts and the Internet

Dibyajyoti Ghosh — 2015-07-10T04:23:35Z

This post by Dibyajyoti Ghosh is part of the 'Studying Internets in India' series. Dibyajyoti is a PhD student in the Department of English, Jadavpur University. He has four years of full-time work experience in projects which dealt with digital humanities and specially with digitisation of material in Indic scripts. In this essay, Dibyajyoti explores the effects the English language has on the Internet population of India.

Internet Usage Statistics in India

According to the latest statistics [1], while the rural mobile tele-density in India is 47.78%, the urban tele-density for mobile phones is 143.08% (which means, more than one registered SIM card per person and this phenomenon is thus also reflected in the rural figures). On the other hand, roughly only 6.5% of the population has access to ‘broadband’ Internet (>= 512 kbps) through a phone or a dongle and only 1.23% has access to a wired-broadband connection. However, roughly 20% of India’s population is roughly connected to the Internet [2]. Thus, roughly 12% of the population has access to low-speed Internet. What these figures do not reveal is the quantum of consumption of data. It can be safely assumed given the comparatively high costs of mobile Internet usage and the difficult method of feeding large tracts of data through a mobile phone, that the quantum of consumption is significantly higher in the case of computer Internet users as opposed to mobile users. Though as these statistics reveal, the chances of India being connected to the Internet depends largely on mobile phones, rather than desktop/ laptop computers.

Thus, the status of the Internet in India is still that of a niche medium. Other than the cost-factor of having access to a device which can access the Internet and paying for the Internet data package, some other factors also hinder the growth of the Internet in India. One of them is the issue of language. Whereas the 1990s saw an over-domination of English on the Internet given the linguistic communities which were developing the world of computers and the world of the Internet [3], by 2015, some of the disparity with offline linguistic patterns has been reduced [4]. However, for Indic scripts, much less development has taken place. If one is studying the Internet in India, chances are one is studying it in English.

Languages the Indian Internet User Encounters Both Online and Offline

What does this hold for the future of these Indic scripts? Given the multi-lingual skills of Indian school-goers and the increasing amount of daily reading time of those connected to the Internet (which is somewhere between 12% and 20% of the population) being devoted to reading on the Internet, chances are reading is increasingly in English.

The importance of English-language skills in India, as indeed in the rest of the world, in 2015 is undeniable [5]. English is also a signifier of class in India. However, despite the three-language policy adopted by schools, schools which offer courses primarily in other Indian languages suffer from an inherent disadvantage that students face when these students enter colleges and universities where the medium of teaching is usually English, and later on take up jobs which require official reports to be written in English. Thus, Indian languages other than English offer much less incentive for parents and students to encourage their study. Whereas oral conversation among the Indian population is largely conducted in languages other than English, written conversation is increasingly being conducted in English. Language is not only a political issue but also a subject of social study, not to mention the issues of linguistics. The larger socio-political issues of language are perhaps too vast to be discussed in connection to Indic scripts and the Internet. Thus, apart from this basic point about the bias towards English, I am not delving into it further.

Indic Script Software and Data Entry

Let me start with discussing natively-digital material. In the digital domain, entering text in Indic scripts is a difficult task. Indic scripts are primarily abugida scripts, which are writing systems ‘in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as a unit: each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel notation is secondary’ [6]. This contrasts with the Latin script used to write English, in which vowels have status equal to consonants, and with abjad scripts such as the script used to write Arabic, in which vowel marking is absent or optional. Similar difficulty is also encountered in entering texts in other non-Latin scripts such as Chinese. Mandarin Chinese may be the world’s most-spoken language and China may be one of the software and hardware giants, but supposedly even Chinese is not particularly amenable to the Internet [7]. Entering Indic scripts on a computer is difficult because it usually involves the addition of new software or tweaking existing software which is slightly difficult for the novice/ casual user.

ISIS, developed by Gautam Sengupta of the University of Hyderabad and sponsored by the Government of India, is an early example of Indic script input software [8]. It is available online for free. It is not fully phonetic. iLEAP, developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), a Government of India funded agency, is now no longer extant but CDAC have produced other input software thereafter. Google too offers an Indic language input tool now [9]. For languages such as Bengali, there have been software such as Bijoy, which was made by Mustafa Jabbar of Ananda Computers, Dhaka, Bangladesh, and is sold commercially [10] and the free softwares BanglaWord and Avro. Avro was created in 2003 by Mehdi Hasan Khan of Mymensingh, Bangladesh, and subsequently developed by a team at Omicron Lab, Dhaka [11]. Such software exists for other individual Indic languages. Operating systems such as Windows [12] and Ubuntu [13] offer Indic script input as well, and make use of the InScript keyboard [14] too.

When it comes to mobile phones, prior to the introduction of touchscreen smartphones, text messaging had little option to use the Indic script. With the introduction of multiple keyboards in touchscreen smartphones, there are a few options to use the Indic script. Both Android and iOS offer Indic script keyboards. Yet these are even less easy to use than computer keyboards as one needs to toggle between several sets of keyboards to access all the characters required for Indic script input. Google has recently started handwriting input which supports Indic scripts [15]. It remains to be seen how much the feature is used.

In spite of this availability of input tools in recent years, the most common method of entering Indic language is through transliteration. Just like Pinyin for the Chinese script, Indic scripts too have official transliteration standards. The Indian National Bibliography (Kolkata: Central Reference Library, 2004) maintains one such standard. However, such transliteration mechanisms require diacritical marks, which are again difficult to enter. Thus, more often than not, these transliteration standards are not followed except when one is maintaining strict academic standards.

The point that I am trying to make is that despite the availability of tools for entering Indic scripts and even well-defined standards for transliterating Indic words in the Latin script, neither is universally followed. The reason is it involves extra labour, as opposed to simple transliteration without any standards. Thus, what often one ends up with in casual written communication (which outnumbers formal written communication by a wide margin) in the digital domain, be it in the form of SMSes, messages in Whatsapp or other instant messaging applications or emails, is Indic words in non-standard transliteration into the Latin alphabet. The introduction of SMS lingo and standards two decades back had already prepared the way for the wider acceptance of Indic words in non-standard transliteration into the Latin alphabet. When one comes to a semi-casual/ semi-formal medium, such as blogs and social networks, where the receiver of the message is usually more than one, the forms of expression are slightly different.

Mimetic Desires on Public Platforms

Digital, crowd-sourced public platforms, such as blogs and largely social networks, offer a different kind of discourse. On the one hand, private habits spill into the public realm. Thus, Indic words in non-standard transliteration into the Latin alphabet are a common practice. On the other hand, the public nature of such platforms offers a space for a kind of mimetic desire. Despite the availability of the user-interface of the most commonly accessed sites such as Gmail and Facebook in Indic languages, most prefer to retain their user-interface in the default English mode [16]. It is a different issue that enabling browsers to render Indic scripts correctly is often a difficult task and sometimes despite following every instruction in the manual, the problem remains unsolved. The overall English language and English script overdose on social networks such as Facebook generate a kind of desire to mingle in with the crowd. Thus, instead of typing Indic words in non-standard transliteration into the Latin alphabet, the data entered is actually more often than not in English. Often, other than formal job reports and letters, social networks are the only platform that a lot of Indians get where they can produce verbal communication in English. Thus, in addition to a mimetic desire to fit in with the English-writing crowd, social networks also offer a semi-public platform to write one’s thoughts in English, a platform which for a lot of Indians was perhaps last available to them when they had to write essays for their compulsory English-language paper in high school. Both of these desires further hamper the incentive to write on the Internet using Indic scripts.

Blogs occupy a space somewhere in between formal websites and casual for-the-nonce social network posts. Both the structure of blogs (more structured than a social network but less structured than a website) and the status of blogs lie somewhere in between these two major platforms. Also, with the rise of social networks, the rate of growth of blogs has decreased. Thus, blogs are usually less popular than both websites as well as social networks. On blogs, the content is usually more formal, as is the presentation. Also, the mimetic desire generated by a social network is perhaps less heightened in the case of blogs. Blogs present a more one-to-many approach as opposed to a social network which largely presents a many-to-many structure.

Spelling Skills in Indic Languages

At the other hand of the social class in India, is the class which went to an English-medium school and writes predominantly in English. Oral communication is often carried out in other Indian languages but these languages are not often used for written communication. Even when casual written communication in the digital domain, such as SMSes and other instant messaging applications or emails, is carried out using Indic words, it is in non-standard transliteration into the Latin alphabet. For this class, the problem is the lack of exposure to reading and writing in Indian languages other than English. Thus, even this minimal writing in transliteration mode may further weaken their spelling skills in these Indian languages.

There are of course other categories into which one can group Internet users in India. The equally strong multi-lingual Indian, the equally weak multi-lingual Indian and the Indian strong in one language are three such categories. Irrespective of which class the Indian Internet user belongs to, the Internet user’s exposure to material written in Indic scripts on the Internet is low. So far I have discussed natively-digital resources.

Digitisation of Pre-Digital Resources

Let me now turn to digitsation of pre-digital resources. Digitisation of such resources is a task involving a lot of money and labour. There are several organisations in India which are involved in such tasks. The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) is one such organisation. The School of Cultural Texts and Records at Jadavpur University, Kolkata is another such organisation [17]. The Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata too is actively involved in digitisation of such material [18]. The West Bengal Public Library repository on Dspace [19] and the Digital Library of India [20] are also significant repositories, as is the portal of the National Archives of India, titled Abhilekh Patal [21]. There are some digital archives focussed on the output of a specific person, such as the MK Gandhi portal [22]. There have been a few instances of making public searchable text files from such digitised material, such as those by the Society for Natural Language Technology Research [23] and Bichitra: Online Tagore Variorum [24]. Other digitisation programmes are in progress, such as the long-running National Mission for Manuscripts [25]. Yet, in spite of this, such efforts are miniscule compared to databases, albeit commercial and not open-access, such as Early English Books Online or Eighteenth Century Collections Online. The Internet, while it offers the opportunity for an equitable digitisation of pre-digital resources in English as well as Indic scripts, does not contain as many resources in Indic scripts as it does in the Latin script. The reasons are because whereas Indic script resources are primarily digitised by Indian organisations where the money needed for such tasks is not available in great amounts, resources in English are digitised from a number of economies with a high per capita GDP. Given the more basic needs of enhancing the reach and level of primary, secondary and tertiary education in the country, an economy with a low per capita GDP such as India does not have the financial means to digitise vast quantities of pre-digital resources, be they in the Latin script or in Indic scripts.

When it comes to electronic books in Indic scripts, the refusal of major platforms such as Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing to list books in Indic scripts [26] is a major barrier for individuals to create e-books in Indic scripts. Whereas most major newspapers in Indic scripts have online editions, the case is not so for major book publishers. Unlike a newspaper which primarily relies on advertising for its revenue, book publishers depend on book sales. There is no infrastructure in place for selling electronic books in Indic scripts. The publishers perhaps also feel that the market for consumption of e-books in such languages is not of a significant scale, and thus do not feel incentivised enough to encourage the creation of e-books. Thus, the entire Kindle reading population in India (which is not very large in the first place [27]) is deprived of the chance of buying e-books in Indic scripts. If they read e-books in Indic scripts on Kindles and tablets, then such e-books are usually pirated scanned copies. There are some sites which make available pirated scanned copies of books printed in Indic scripts. However, such sites and the number of such books is so small, that they make no major dent to the revenues of the Indic-languages publishing industry.

Effects on the Indian Internet User

As a result, casual Indian Internet researchers and readers often depend on material written in English instead of material written in Indic languages. It is true that the serious researcher will of course make the effort of visiting physical libraries and archives to access books in Indic languages. But for casual reading and research, it is too much of a trouble. For such Internet users, not only are undigitised Indic verbal texts invisible, but the lack of engagement with such texts lead to the effacement of such texts from the public discourse and domain.

For Indian school students studying in schools where the medium of instruction is not English, the absence of such texts from the Internet means that they engage less with the Internet for academic purposes. For them, the Internet becomes more of a resource meant for non-academic purposes if they have trouble reading texts in English. It is true that English is one of the three languages that school students learn yet as the state of education goes, it is not fully satisfactory [28]. On the other hand, given the English language and English script overdose on social networks, the mimetic desire forces students to generate texts in English, not only the script but also the language. As a result, what is generated is often English of a less than satisfactory standard. A political strain of thought treats the language that people generate as ‘the language’. Measuring such an output against other standards of English is considered politically incorrect. In fact, the regional acceptance of such local sub-groups of English has led to the wider acceptance of English and its growing presence across the world. Yet, as the notion of class in India based on the command over English shows, such sub-grouping also leads to the creation of separate classes.

Effects of the Internet on Indic Scripts

Does the Internet alleviate or exacerbate the problem caused by the hierarchy of English over other Indic languages? I guess that the answer is not a simple nod in either direction. On the other hand, I conclude that the Internet increases the mimetic desire to generate written communication in English. Failure to communicate in English according to certain standards of English further exacerbates the creation of the classes based on the command over English. While the Internet, to a certain extent, helps in improving English spelling skills owing to a greater exposure to English, at the same time, it leads to a greater deterioration in spelling skills in Indic languages. Owing to the lack of availability of pre-digital resources in Indic scripts in the digital domain, there is a slow effacement of such resources from the public discourse at large.

Possible Measures to Enhance the Status of Indic Scripts on the Internet

These are some of the effects that the Internet in India has had on Indic scripts. Given that the Internet is a niche medium and those shaping the general discourse are more likely to have access to the Internet in the first place, the low visibility of Indic scripts on the Internet is a cause for concern. However, it is true that with the growing accessibility of the Internet in India, the resources in Indic scripts are bound to increase. It is perhaps dependent primarily on those in power, such as the central and state governments to ensure that their websites and mobile phone applications are in Indic scripts as well and the Indic script versions of their digital resources do not lack any feature of the English-language version of such resources. The private sector, especially the publishing industry also needs to create a market for electronic publication in Indic scripts. Just like e-commerce in India did not come after the entire infrastructure was in place, but rather the infrastructure kept building up as e-commerce kept growing, similarly the publishing industry also needs to create a digital Indic-script market, and then keep building it up. E-commerce, which perhaps has the greatest incentive to build resources, can also significantly alter the scenario by offering e-commerce in Indic scripts. Snapdeal has very limited components of their website in two Indic scripts. Other major e-commerce companies have not followed suit and neither is Snapdeal’s inclusion particularly effective. Yet, as the Flipkart-owned apparel company Myntra’s recent decision to go app-only and completely do away with their website has shown, e-commerce has its ways of incentivising customers to change their habits in a drastic manner. It is with such hope that I would have liked to end this brief essay on studying the Internet in India. Yet, as the language of this essay shows, such hopes are not particularly strong, as most scholarly writing in India on the Internet continues to be in English. Scholarly journals and research platforms in Indic scripts on the Internet continue to be so limited in number that it is hard to find particularly high-impact publications from among them. If one is studying the Internet in India, chances are one is both studying and writing in English.

Endnotes

[1] http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/PressRealease/Document/PR-34-TSD-Mar-12052015.pdf

[2] http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users-by-country

[3] Daniel Pimienta, Daniel Prado and Álvaro Blanco, Twelve years of measuring linguistic diversity in the Internet: balance and perspectives, UNESCO publications for the World Summit on the Information Society (2009), http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001870/187016e.pdf

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_used_on_the_Internet and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers

[5] https://hbr.org/2012/05/global-business-speaks-english

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abugida

[7] http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117608/chinese-number-websites-secret-meaning-urls

[8] http://isis.keymankeyboards.com/

[9] http://www.google.com/inputtools/

[10] http://www.bijoyekushe.net/

[11] https://www.omicronlab.com/

[12] http://www.bhashaindia.com/ilit/

[13] https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ibus

[14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InScript_keyboard

[15] http://googleresearch.blogspot.in/2015/04/google-handwriting-input-in-82.html

[16] There is no open-access data for this from either Google or Facebook. Third-parties conduct such studies. A study can be found here: http://www.oneskyapp.com/blog/top-10-languages-with-most-users-on-facebook/

[17] http://www.jaduniv.edu.in/view_department.php?deptid=135

[18] http://www.savifa.uni-hd.de/thematicportals/urban_history.html

[19] http://dspace.wbpublibnet.gov.in:8080/jspui/

[20] http://www.dli.ernet.in/

[21] http://www.abhilekh-patal.in/

[22] https://www.gandhiheritageportal.org/

[23] http://www.nltr.org/

[24] http://bichitra.jdvu.ac.in/index.php

[25] http://www.namami.org/index.htm

[26] https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A9FDO0A3V0119

[27] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Ebook-readers-fail-to-kindle-sales-in-India/articleshow/45802786.cms

[28] Annual Status of Education Report (Rural) 2014, facilitated by Pratham, pp. 81-82, 86, 88-89, http://img.asercentre.org/docs/Publications/ASER%20Reports/ASER%202014/fullaser2014mainreport_1.pdf

The post is published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, and copyright is retained by the author.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_indic-scripts-and-the-internet

Users and the Internet

Purbasha Auddy — 2015-07-10T04:20:54Z

This post by Purbasha Auddy is part of the 'Studying Internets in India' series. Purbasha is a SYLFF PhD fellow at the School of Cultural Texts and Records (SCTR), Jadavpur University, with more than eight years of work experience in digital archiving. She has also been teaching for the last two years in the newly-started post-graduate diploma course in Digital Humanities and Cultural Informatics offered by the SCTR. In this essay, Purbasha explores the constructions of the ideas of the Indian Internet users through the advertisements that talk about data packages, mobile phones or apps.

A baby [1] is refusing to be born as (as we learn later, ‘his’) parents cannot afford high-speed internet for smartphones but wi-fi plans offered by an internet service provider satisfy the baby as if the baby is being born for the internet.

The baby [2] comes out of the womb, searches the net on a smartphone, cuts his own umbilical cord, takes a selfie with the nurse, opens every possible social media- account, takes his blue baby boy balloons and finds his own way out of the building leaving behind dumbstruck parents.

The two unreal situations that are described above are the two storylines of two advertisements of the same company trying to sell an internet connection. No, this article will not talk about the aesthetic appeal of these ads, but will look into such creative ways to locate the explanation of the internet and its users instead; to be precise internet and its Indian users.

The two ads described at the beginning do not show any Indian-ness but makes the viewer wonder about how far this ‘born for the internet’ baby can travel with an internet-enabled smartphone. Are these two ads trying to define the internet as a smart product or are they trying to classify the users of the internet rather as smart? Moreover how does one define the internet? It means more than a conglomeration of networks. At this point as I am trying to coin a definition of the internet on my own, my thought-process is occupied with the activities I do on the net but I fail to define it.

A personal note…

In 1995, when VSNL launched the internet in India, I was 10, and engrossed in story books and comics. As I was growing up, I was discovering the world around through books, television, radio and newspapers. I was totally unaware of the practicality of the internet and it remained a fact of general knowledge. Not only me! Not a single friend of mine happened to use the internet or discussed keenly about it. My school did not offer a computer course either. After my +10 board exam, I requested (read demanded) my parents to enroll me in a computer training center which was near my house and had a government affiliation. I learnt basics of computer applications, the programming language Foxpro and basics of the internet. I even got to know how to create a basic webpage. Only when I was required to write a dissertation for my graduation, did I start going to a cyber café to type my dissertation and surf the internet. My parents were really apprehensive about what I was doing in a cyber café which was costing 30 rupees per hour!

Though my parents are still uneasy with the fact that ‘my generation’ remains glued to the internet most of the time, they are amazed on the other hand; how we do net banking, shop online, study, Facebook, exchange email, call a cab or order pizza etc. from the internet. They are happy to remain on the other side of the digital divide.

It has been twenty years that the Indian society has seen the ‘wrong side’ of the internet like hacking, phishing and other grave matters related to social networks. India is a complex society and so is the internet. But India, being the one of the largest potential markets, various services related to the internet are encouraging the probable consumers. Through the advertisements and publicity measures, they are trying to cleanse away the negative notions. They are capturing stories and characters that one can relate herself or himself to, very promptly. Even the ideas of Indian-ness, national integrity and the dreams of aspiring Indians are getting linked with the internet as mobile internet is penetrating very fast to balance the digital divide. Various events of online forgery, hacking and getting access to dicey websites (read pornography) and those matters which came as some sort of a cultural shock, made people less confident to use the internet.

Overcoming the fear…

Recently, these notions have been countered by commercials by an antivirus company. The commercial shows a mother [3] who is no longer anxious to let her son surf the internet because now the antivirus allows her to enable parental control. It is helping the mother as she no longer has to keep constant vigil on the internet-related activities of her son. Other commercial shows a retired old man [4] is not sceptical anymore that his son sends money using online banking. His son and the man use the antivirus which offers safe online banking.

There are two more advertisements I want to describe; the first one features a young man [5] shopping online and updating the viewers that an antivirus protection means safe online transactions. In the second ad, a fashion designer [6] is not bothered to use pendrives as the antivirus scan will protect her computer. These four commercials attempt to confront the fear that pesters the minds of the potential consumers. No beautiful models, male or female, no beyond the world creativity, but simple and set with regular characters discussing vital issues were chosen to reach out to these potential customers.

The next commercial I would like to refer to is about an antivirus for smart phones. The ad creates a euphoria that portrays a bunch of college goers [7] who have the power to protect themselves from spyware and malware and can download various applications seamlessly. Thus the point of overcoming the ‘fear’ of the unknown and the uncontrollable is very important. Maybe the two ads featuring the ‘born for the internet’ baby I begun with, find relevance here. And the question should be asked here again: that how far can one travel along the path of life by means of a smartphone with an internet connection? The adverts suggest a very intelligent and exciting life for those who can access to internet. Everything is sorted if you can stay online. A lonely individual [8] can be a Twitter celebrity. Someone can showcase her or his talent [9] through social media; like one ad shows a girl becoming an online singing sensation by garnering lots of ‘likes’ and ‘shares’.

As mobile phones remains with us most of the time, accessing the internet from it is easier (compared to a computer) and a mobile phone is thus able to furnish prompt services. There are quite a few service providers that woo us with different approaches. Compared to selling internet connections, it is perhaps far less complicated to produce campaigns for fast moving consumer goods. At least in the case of FMCG it is easier to explain the product which is within range of our four senses. But it is quiet a troublesome project to explain the internet given the social back drop in a country like India. This article will not take names of any of the service providers. Instead it will point out the strategies they are adopting to touch an emotional chord for the probable consumers keeping the existing ones. Furthermore, it would like to find out the nature and meaning of the internet and outlook of its users in the Indian scenario.

Power redefined…

The internet providers proclaim through the advertisements that an internet connection on one’s mobile is a ‘power’ for her or him. The power that has the ability to bring all the nuances that is available around. Only the burning questions are:

How to use the power? Whether to play online games, immerse oneself in social networking, and use a search engine to search for the unknown or perhaps read an academic article from Jstor? There are immense possibilities to the power.
How long can the power be used (read limited or unlimited connection)?
How much time does it take to get the result of the power (read the speed of the connection)?
And lastly and very importantly how much does this power cost?

These uncertainties are answered by adverts with creativity and almost 20% of the Indian population tries to grab this power. But of course a large segment is still to be included (inclusion may be harder due to various socio-economic conditions that are deep-rooted within the Indian scenario) in the benefit-circle of this power called the internet. The following storyline of another television commercial shows the power called the internet which can allow pictures or videos to be exchanged instantaneously. An ad shows that the internet is a great help for a mother as she sends a picture of her wailing son after a hair-cut, to her husband. As soon as the mother reaches home with her sad boy, the father having got the same hair-cut also returns and is ready to soothe the boy.

Confidence building apparatus…

Thus, through creative commercials, internet service providers are trying to tell that one should keep an internet connection handy to be confident so that Indians cannot be fooled by anybody anywhere. Several adverts are showcasing the following events that will not occur if one has a mobile internet connection. Such events are quite common and thus one can easily associate oneself with them.

Not a single person on earth can fool you [10].
A corrupt political leader cannot go way without fulfilling the promises s/he made [11].
Baseless prediction of religious leaders can be countered [12].
And one of the ads went even further ahead to suggest that the population of India can be controlled if married couples spend time doing various activities that the internet has to offer [13]!

Self-learning tool…

The ads promote that one of the activities could be self-learning. There is an enormous package of everything available and it is a flexible way to learn. A slow learner [14] in school may not be given special attention in order to overcome learning difficulties but the internet is very patient and it will not complain. Learn how to write poems [15], how to cook, how to make a drone [16], learn French [17]. Furthermore these ads suggest that an internet user is a self-sufficient human being who can find her or his own way using a Google map! Just like two friends learning culinary skills from internet and opening up a restaurant.

An institution…

At this point, the creative pursuit of the commercials take a leap and declare the internet (or the internet connection the particular company is providing) as an institution which is very much inclusive in nature. Those who are barred from getting admission in schools, colleges or universities, are welcome to learn through the institution called the internet and can establish themselves in mainstream society or can learn for the sake of learning. In this case, these ads have pointed out girls are not allowed [18] to go to school, a eunuch [19] is refused everywhere. But they are learning from the internet and compete with the more privileged in mainstream society. Other cases show a mother could not complete [20] her study in law, and her daughter is encouraging her to complete it through the internet. Lastly, these ads try to convince that the institution of the internet is cheaper than regular institutions.

Utility…

Besides the ambitions of the internet stated above, the internet influences human minds in several other aspects. For example, generation gap can be healed if the society takes the bridge of the internet. About two years ago a commercial was produced with the one-liner: ‘Made for the young’ [21]. This ad shows an old man who parties with young boys, has a social network account, plays online games late at night, does video chat. These activities of the elderly character, who has a very optimistic approach towards life, are set in a mundane surrounding. Here it seems, the internet is bridging the generation gap by bringing into its fold and into the mainstream those people who might not have thought of using the internet in real life.

The notion of a huge expense that is incurred in maintaining an internet connection was busted when some service providers brought out ads which said that it was letting people watch a video for only one rupee. Very precisely, this one rupee campaign enacted the frequent quarrels [22] between a taxi-driver and his passenger over loose change and the taxi driver somehow not returning one rupee but instead showing a popular video to the passenger from his phone in lieu of that one rupee. The basic point of all the campaigns is to intensify the market and push the consumers to pay for it anyhow as an internet connection can bring magic to the consumers’ lives as the service providers claim. But who will pay for the internet connection? So they bring out campaign such as a family plan campaign [23] in which the earning member of the family is being encouraged to pay the cost for the internet packs of the other mobile connections in the family which are also provided by the same mobile service operator. These adverts show a family consisting of a super-lazy boy, an ever-angry father, a protective mother and a sweet, little sister needing the internet more than any other services like roaming, calls, or SMS [24].

Service provides are also trying to entice the consumers by providing some utilitarian services which are needed in day to day life. The following are examples of the storylines of a few other advertisements that help its service-takers to transfer money without even going to the banks. The service provider keeps the notion of flexibility of the internet, which can be used according to the need of the people of every segment of the society: a taxi driver [25] from the city sends money to his father in the village; a husband sends money to his pregnant wife [26], a college-going boy [27] requesting his elder brother to send money for mending his scooter. These characters are common and can be found in our everyday surroundings but such characters may be afraid to use such an online service for transferring money. The soothing and caring tone of theses adverts try to assure people to use the service.

As some of the adverts aim to clear the dilemma among prospective consumers, another set of ads celebrate friendship and urge consumers to go back to their roots. In this regard, a storyline of another commercial can be taken into consideration. It tells a story about some school friends [28] who become successful in their own vocations and who remain connected with the help of smartphones and internet connections. One of them locates an old ice-cream vendor in front of the school they used to study in. They came together to meet that vendor from whom they used to buy ice-cream to help him in his business. Here the online activities result in something meaningful.

This article tried to weave one narrative out of many narratives created by several internet service providers. The main intention of the article was to find out how the internet has been defined in the Indian context and how the users are being defined in the commercials. It is found that the internet may seem super-real (if we are not aware of the technical aspects, it is a real wonder!) at first glance but the commercials through the dramatizing efforts are trying to prove its usefulness in many ways. Just like when a young woman [29] finds out someone is retiring from her office, she starts sending photos of the man to their colleagues and instantly it creates a chain of forwarded messages and then everybody gathers to arrange a surprise farewell party. A happy picture indeed!

However something not bright and prosperous also needs to be mentioned. The internet service providers have been offering high speed internet and portray a happy smart life of Indians irrespective of social background and vocation but almost 80% of India remains untouched and are yet to receive the benefits of an internet connection.

Endnotes

[1] MTS India. 2014. "MTS Internet Baby Full Version." YouTube. February 24. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rg37kafMsWk.

[2] Premium Adverts. 2015. "Baby - MTS TV Commercial Ad." YouTube. February 18. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3krdHUji8A.

[3] Mukherjee, Pamela. 2014. "Quick Heal - TVC (Hin) Mother’s VO." YouTube. November 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so-bjUuErBQ.

[4] Thoughtshop Advertising & Film Productions Pvt. Ltd. 2014. "QUICK HEAL 'OLD MAN.'" YouTube. July 16. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1kOcz_1Ra8.

[5] Thoughtshop Advertising & Film Productions Pvt. Ltd. 2014. "QUICK HEAL 'COOL DUDE.'" YouTube. July 16. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2ot0J4ps4A.

[6] Subarna Enterprise. 2014. "Stay protected from virus infected pendrives with Quick Heal Total Security." YouTube. April 10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rLh0ng70Lc.

[7] Quick Heal. 2013. "Quick Heal Mobile Security TVC (Hindi)." YouTube. March 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWiomVUHVHk.

[8] MTS India. 2012. "MTS MBLAZE ‘Always On’ LATEST TVC - Anupam Mukerji." YouTube. July 24. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWfyHMbKtsg.

[9] afaqs. 2012. "MTS MBLAZE TVC - Shraddha Sharma." YouTube. July 17. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsaJtPYTUF8.

[10] Idea. 2014. "Idea ‘No Ullu Banaoing’ Anthem TVC." YouTube. August 8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZhXSnJ8sXY.

[11] Idea. 2014. "Idea ‘No Ullu Banaoing’ Politician TVC." YouTube. March 13. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OahDrQDU24k.

[12] Idea. 2014. "Idea ‘No Ullu Banaoing’ Baba TVC." YouTube. May 11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf2hYaHtBF4.

[13] Celeburbia Entertainment Media. 2011. "Idea 3G Funny Ad Campaign - India Over Population - Abhishek Bachchan Sir Ji Ad Series." YouTube. July 23. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqtB-IaeEo8.

[14] Idea. 2015. "Idea Internet Network (IIN) Slow Learner 25 sec TVC." YouTube. May 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXFk4VL9rWM.

[15] Idea. 2015. "Idea Internet Network (IIN) Military 25 sec TVC." YouTube. May 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwAP6PmGzRs.

[16] Neela, Pradeep. 2015. "Idea Internet Network IIN TV Ad - Drone wala." YouTube. January 11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPTC945gsDo.

[17] Idea. 2015. "Idea Internet Network IIN Guide 20 sec TVC." YouTube. May 5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkQma9Tyt8E.

[18] Falguni, Vineet. 2015. "Idea Internet Network IIN Haryanvi 25 sec TVC." YouTube. January 20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdVRGxw4ROI.

[19] iDiotube. 2015. "Idea Internet Network IIN Eunuch 25 second TVC HD." YouTube. April 26. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIZS_-Qm5Ro.

[20] Idea. 2015. "Idea Internet Network IIN Mother Daughter 20 sec TVC." YouTube. May 5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBHtLU7QGbE.

[21] Indian Tv Commercials. 2013. "Vodafone Commercial(Sep 2013)-Network(Latest Indian TV Ad)." YouTube. September 28. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6ULTFCWBQw.

[22] Airtel India. 2013. "airtel Re 1 Mobile Video - Taxi Ad (TVC)." YouTube. May 22. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hpi2sOOfeIw.

[23] Airtel India. 2015. "Airtel my plan Coffee TVC." YouTube. February 5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ElCIhsobXc.

[24] Airtel India. 2014. "airtel money TVC - Pay Electricity Bills." YouTube. January 19. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFHurfXS9uI.

[25] Vodafone India. 2015. "Vodafone m-pesa™– Babuji – HD." YouTube. March 16. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktgDPTlFxsU.

[26] Vodafone India. 2014. "Vodafone m-pesa™ - Cable TV – HD." YouTube. June 12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIMYZDzyHeM.

[27] Vodafone India. 2014. "Vodafone m-pesa™ - Scooter – HD." YouTube. June 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQAtnQktHLI.

[28] Advartisement. 2015. "Uncle’s Ice Cream Airtel Network In India." YouTube. March 27. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFsG1G7Ombo.

[29] Nirvana Films. 2015. "VODAFONE – Farewell." YouTube. March 19. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqZVO815MiM.

The post is published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, and copyright is retained by the author.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_users-and-the-internet