Centre for Internet and Society

Christ University Wikipedia Education Program Faculty Orientation Report

Ananth Subray — 2017-08-03T04:45:38Z

Christ University faculty were given an orientation for the upcoming year on the Wikipedia Education Program

Report on Christ University Wikipedia Education Program Faculty Orientation

Participants:

Rathi MT
Shivaprasad
Sebastian K A
Naga Lakshmi
George Joseph

This faculty training aimed to get more involvement of faculty in Wikipedia and teach them how to use the Dashboard tool for evaluation and monitoring of the work done by the students. The following things which are required for the students to complete their assignments weretaught to the faculty during the orientation; so that students' doubts could be immediately resolved by the faculty:

Google forms and sending confirmation emails.
Linking of email to Wikipedia account( helps to recover the password).
Basic editing of Wikipedia and Wikisource.
Enabling of the keyboard if students have disabled in preferences.
Usage of Visual editor.
Usage of referencing tool.
Editing toolbar.
Dashboard tool.

After the orientation, we were discussing the possible events which we can do for the current year and the faculty was interested in doing the following:

Wikipedia Edit-a-thon for the language faculty of different colleges in Karnataka.
Hack-a thon with help of computer science department at Christ University.
Photo walk/Photo contest with the help of media studies Christ University.
WEP review.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/christ-university-wikipedia-education-program-faculty-orientation-report

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — October 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-12-14T08:19:52Z

This is the second bulletin from the Access to Knowledge team of CIS in Delhi. This issue features education program updates of the Assamese, Malayalam and Gujarati Wiki communities, a hackathon held at BITS, Hyderabad, press coverage of the Odia Wikipedia workshop in Pune, and reports of workshops organised in Bangalore, Ghaziabad and Pune during the month of October.

Education Program Updates

Launch of Assamese Wikipedia Education Program at Guwahati University (by Nitika Tandon, October 22, 2012).
Malayalam Wikipedia Education Program: August to October Updates (by Shiju Alex, October 29, 2012).
Gujarat Wikipedia Education Program: Rajkot (by Noopur Raval, October 31, 2012).
Gujarati Wikipedia Article Competition – 10 schools, 200 students, 20 articles on Gujarati Wikipedia (by Noopur Raval, October 31, 2012).

Workshop Reports

Bengaluru: A Hub for Kannada and Sanskrit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, October 16, 2012).
Wikipedia workshop @ Inmantec College, Ghaziabad (by Nitika Tandon, October 19, 2012).
Bridging Gender Gap in Pune: WikiWomenDay 2012 Celebrated with Success! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, PAI International Learning Solutions, Azam Campus, Pune, October 28, 2012).

First Pune Odia Wikipedia Organized! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, October 31, 2012).

Event Organised

Wikipedia Hackathon at BITS Hyderabad (organized by CIS - A2K team and BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad, October 26 – 27, 2012).

Press Coverage

Odisha: Odia Wikipedia workshop organized in Pune to promote Odia language (OdishaDiary.com, October 31, 2012).

Team Updates

The A2K team consists of three members based in Delhi: Nitika Tandon, Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval.
We are seeking applications for the post of Programme Director (Access to Knowledge) for New Delhi office.
Shiju Alex, Programme Manager, Access to Knowledge is leaving the organisation. November 16, 2012 will be his last working day. We wish him success in all his future endeavours.

About CIS

CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom.

CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at http://cis-india.org

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-october-2012-bulletin

OCR and OER – update

subha — 2016-06-18T17:09:22Z

We welcome this short posting from Subhashish Panigrahi which updates a 2014 posting of his on Indic Language Wikipedias as Open Educational Resources at http://education.okfn.org/indic-language-wikipedias-as-open-educational-resources/

To read the blog post published by Open Education Working Group, see here.

Subhashish Panigrahi (@subhapa) is an educator, author, blogger, Wikimedian, language activist and free knowledge evangelist based in Bengaluru (often called Bangalore), India. After working for a while at the Wikimedia Foundation’s India Program he is currently at the Centre for Internet and Society‘s Access To Knowledge program. He works primarily in building partnership with universities, language research and GLAM (Gallery, Library, Archive and Museums) organizations for bringing more scholarly and encyclopedic content under free licenses, designs outreach programs for South Asian language Wikipedia/Wikimedia projects and communities. He wears many other hats: Editor for Global Voices Odia, Community Moderator of Opensource.com, and Ambassador for India in OpenGLAM Local. Subhashish is the author of a piece “Rising Voices: Indigenous language Digital Activism” in the book Digital Activism in Asia Reader.

Google’s OCR and its use by Wikimedians in South Asia

Some time back on the OCR project support network, Google had announced that the Google drive could be used for Optical Character Recognition (OCR). The software now works for over 248 world languages (including all the major South Asian languages). Though the exact pattern of development of the software is not clear, some of the Wikimedians reported that there is improvement over time in the recognition of their native languages Malayalam and Tamil. The recent encounter has been with a simple, easy to to use and robust software that can detect most languages with over 90% accuracy.

The OCR technology extracts text from images, scans of printed text, and even handwriting to some extent, which means that the text can be extracted pretty much from any old book, manuscript, or image. This certainly brings hope to most Indian languages as there is a lot to digitize. Most of the major Indian languages have plenty of non-digitized literature and the existing OCR systems are not as good as Google when so many languages are concerned as a whole.

Google’s OCR engine is probably using aspects of Tesseract, an OCR engine released as free software, or OCRopus, a free document analysis and optical character recognition (OCR) system that is primarily used in Google Books. Developed as a community project during 1995-2006 and later taken over by Google, Tesseract is considered one of the most accurate OCR engines and works for over 60 languages. The source code is available on GitHub.

The OCR project support page offers additional details on preserving character formatting for things like bold and italics after OCR in the output text.

When processing your document, we attempt to preserve basic text formatting such as bold and italic text, font size and type, and line breaks. However, detecting these elements is difficult and we may not always succeed. Other text formatting and structuring elements such as bulleted and numbered lists, tables, text columns, and footnotes or endnotes are likely to get lost.

The user-end interaction of the OCR software currently is rather simple. The user has to upload an image of the scan in any image format (.jpg, .png, .gif, etc.) or PDF to the Google Drive. Upon completion of the uploading, opening the file in Google Drive shows both the image and the converted text in the same document.

One of the most popular free and open digitization platforms, Wikisource currently hosts hundreds or thousands of free books which are either out of copyright or under Creative Commons licenses (CC-by or CC-by-SA) allowing users to digitize.

While OCR works quite well for Latin based languages, many other scripts do not get OCRed perfectly. So, the Wikisourcers (Wikisource contributors) often have to type the text.

Thus the new Google OCR might be useful both for the Wikisource community and many others who are in the mission of digitizing old text and archiving them.

The image below shows a screen from a tutorial to convert text in the Odia language from a scanned image using Google’s OCR.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/education-okfn-subhashish-panigrahi-september-25-2015-ocr-and-oer-update

Strategic Issues Emerging from Open Access Dialogues - Final Report

sumandro — 2015-10-11T04:39:10Z

A series of discussions - on the Chat Literacy forum of ELDIS and on Twitter - was organised during November 2012 to March 2013 to identify the global challenges in 'Navigating the Complexities of Open Access'. The discussions were facilitated by Eve Gray and Kelsey Wiens, in partnership with The African Commons Project (South Africa) and the Centre for Internet and Society (India), through support from the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex. On behalf of CIS, Sumandro Chattapadhyay co-coordinated and contributed to these discussions.

The final report of the Open Access Dialogues was published by the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, and can be accessed here.

A sub-report summarising the experiences and arguments expressed by the Indian participants in the Dialogues was prepared by Sumandro, which can be read below or downloaded here.

Strategic issues emerging from the comments of Indian participants

1. Lacking OA awareness, even among scholarly communities

Many, if not all, commentators emphasised the unfortunate lack of awareness about the notion and possibilities of Open Access across India, including among the scholarly and/or higher education related communities. Often the notion of Open Access is quite familiar, especially among scholars, but without a clear understanding of its benefits and how to make one's scholarly works openly accessible.

2. Uneven geography of OA success stories

The above point must be read along with strong success stories emerging from Indian OA journals, mostly from science disciplines. A recent study reveals that 970 Indian OA journals are included in the 'Journals Citation Report 2011' (science), and the Impact Factors of these journals are on the rise. This indicates towards a very uneven geography of OA awareness and adoption in India, with the OA agenda being pursued successfully by specific scholarly communities but not translating into widespread support across the higher academia landscape.

3. Global businesses of scholarly works and complicity of Indian researchers

The role of global businesses of scholarly works in impending the Open Access agenda in the India was mentioned by most of the commentators. The publication, and especially distribution, of publicly funded research is dominated by global publication houses. Additionally, the complicity of Indian researchers in reinforcing the culture of exclusive and 'prestigious' journals published by global publishers is also well understood and criticised.

4. Citation Indexes as necessary evil

While the discussants argued against an over-emphasis on Impact Factors in judging a quality and success of journals, especially for IF being biased against new journals, and thus against newly started OA journals. At the same time, measurement of citations remains a crucial way of understanding readership and impact of scholarly works. There was a strong recommendation of article-level metrics as opposed to journal-level ones. Studies were suggested to argue that article-level impact increases with OA journals. Another concern is bibliographic malpractices, including biases against citing works from Indian (or, developing world) scholars and against citing works published in non-'prestigious' journals.

5. Open Access must not only be about access to journals

A strongly expressed opinion was that the OA agenda must move beyond journal publications. The journal-centric approach emphasises the supply side of knowledge but fails to appreciate the demand of knowledge, especially in a country like India where primary and secondary education remain vital challenges. Further, even within higher academic circles, OA agenda must expand into other forms of scholarly works beyond journal essays, such as primary data and other research materials, especially since all such forms are also produced by public funds. Open Access to 'gray literature' (produced by private and non-profit research organisations) is also crucial, as much policy-making tends to be shaped by such works.

6. Open Access and the consumers of knowledge

The commentators emphasised the nature of OA to knowledge as a public good. The OA agenda must address the consumers of knowledge outside the university system, and especially across socio-economic classes. While open university education and participation in MOOC-models of learning are on the rise in India, there is a threat that this digital-centric approach reinforced existing digital divides in access to knowledge.

Policy Suggestions

1.'Mainstreaming' the OA agenda: Instead of locating OA as a separate agenda, it will be useful to 'mainstream' it within larger development/research related funding initiatives by making OA publications of research outcomes a necessary grants condition.

2.OA as the entry point to a broader 'open' agenda: The OA agenda can build upon its existing institutional and governmental acceptance and implementation to promote a broader 'open' agenda, including open sharing of research data, open formats for and sharing of bibliographic data etc.

3.Moving the OA discussion and knowledge organisation beyond higher education communities: Addressing non-university circuits of learning, of both institutional (primary and secondary education) and non-institutional (informal learning groups around MOOC courses) varieties, is a crucial challenge for the OA agenda in the developing world. Another crucial community of potential OA supporters would be the non-governmental and non-profit organisations working in the field of education in particular, and development in general.

4.Removing policy biases against Open Access journals in academic administration: Combined global and local efforts remains important to reshape national academic administration policies to stop discrimination against OA publication of scholarly works, such as higher academic benefit for publication in closed 'prestigious' journals.

5.Encouraging and supporting scholarly communities (often with a disciplinary and/or thematic common ground) to undertake OA knowledge production: Promoting the OA agenda must also adopt a bottom-up strategy in the developing world, and this would require capacity and community building exercises involving local and global scholarly colleagues and enthusiasts gathered around thematic and/or disciplinary focii, as well as institutional and governmental recognition and support.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/strategic-issues-emerging-from-open-access-dialogues-final-report

Transformaking 2015 : International Summit on Critical and Transformative Making, Yogyakarta

sharath — 2016-06-18T18:00:08Z

Transformaking 2015 brought together makers, scientist, hackers, bricoleurs, researchers, artists, designers and other interdisciplinary practitioners from across the globe in a series of Residency and Research Program, Symposium, Exhibition, Fair, and Satellite Projects. It was held from August 10 to September 20, 2015. Transformaking 2015 was organized by HONF Foundation & CATEC (Culture Arts Technoloy Empowerment Community) in partnership with the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS), Common Room, Crosslab, and Nicelab.

More information on the event can be accessed on this website. I presented a talk Open Spectrum and Open Science – Policy and Future Opportunities. I was also a speaker in a panel Encouraging Innovations through Communication and Open Source Culture with fellow panelists Tom Rowlands (Future Everything), Gustav Hariman (Common Room, Bandung) and Colette Tron (Alphabetville) and moderated by Sachet Manandhar of Karkhana Labs, Nepal.

As with many other societies, Indonesia has a distinct maker culture that goes back centuries. The rise of collective movements in the network culture following the digital revolution — with associated terms such as DIY (do-it-yourself), DIWO (do-it-with-others), open source, maker and hacker spaces — only reinvigorates and replicates traditional production practices at the grass-roots level: verbal passing of knowledge both vertical (between generations) and horizontal (among community members), voluntary communal division of labour, inventiveness to overcome limited infrastructures, driven by the need to find solutions for a better life rather than personal profit. Our forefathers were the genuine makers.

The burgeoning maker movement has been receiving growing recognition as it demonstrates great potential to address concerns and provide innovative solutions at a local, citizen level where established socio-political systems fail. As the makers and associated maker culture come into contact with large industries, they run the risk of being reduced into commodities. A critical attitude is essential to keep the maker movement genuine with lessons from our forefathers in mind and catalyze practices create solutions and sustainable implementations in a process of transformative making — or Transformaking.

The summit aimed to:

Create a forum for all stakeholders to discuss views, practices, questions, and issues in the realm of critical making movement
Exhibit projects that create tangible, transformative solutions at a citizen level
Produce usable tools and define dissemination strategies for catalyzing local transformations globally

The following is a note on the Conception of the Summit:

Conception of the Summit - Why 'Transformaking'?

The act of Making is not new, and has been an ongoing process over centuries of mankind, ever since the invention of Neanderthal tools, the wheel, cultural artifacts and practices, to the modern day space shuttle and modes of communication. Today’s networked knowledge society is catalyzing and affecting the process of Making and knowledge production in interesting ways by mediating the co-located and instantaneous access, dissemination and sharing of information amongst people across vast distances.

The notion of free labour accompanying a rising participation in the gift economy of network culture, is loaded with words such as DIY, Open Knowledge, Open Data, Free & Open Source, that blurs the lines of distinction between production & consumption, labour & cultural expression, and has transcended both the puritan new left movement on one hand and the neo-liberal free market ideology on the other.

There has evidently been a marked shift in the site of labour — from the factory to society, that autonomists have called ‘the social factory’ which challenges the very notion of capitalism from the inside. In Pierre Lévy’s own words — A shift from the Cartesian model of thought based on the singular idea of cogito (I think) to a collective or plural cogitamus (we think), seems to be the unifying goal represented by various models and spaces for thinking such as Makercultures, Think Tanks, Maker Movements, Maker Labs & Hacker/Maker Spaces.

This change in the process of making and knowledge production is further underlined by contextualized maker activity geared towards fueling change, thereby challenging traditional modes of production and consumption, creative and cultural expression, structures of societal organization, ownership, access, intellectual property and copyright regimes, models of participative democracy, citizen science and civic governance in a process of Transformative Making or –what we call – ‘Transformaking’.

Transformaking: The International Summit on Critical and Transformative Making 2015 shall bring together makers, hackers, bricoleurs, educators, researchers, theorists, artists and designers to:

A Symposium to self reflect, debate and put forth views with regards to their respective practices and dissect various complexities and questions that surround the areas of Critical and Transformative Making.
An Exhibition on Critical Making featuring completed and contextualized projects and productions.
Produce a tangible outcome, of the first International Summit, that focuses on collating diverse views, practices and usable tools along with strategizing modes of academic publication and dissemination for furthering meaningful local transformations, globally.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/transformaking-2015-international-summit-on-critical-and-transformative-making-yogyakarta

CIS Participated in T20 Mumbai, Regional Consultation Meeting, October 19, 2015

praskrishna — 2015-10-20T13:54:39Z

This is the first time that a T20 event, which is a series of preparatory meetings towards G20 summits, is taking place in India. Sumandro Chattapadhyay represented CIS in this consultation, and was a discussant in the session on Technology, Services, and Skills.

"On 19 October 2015, over 50 experts from foreign and Indian think tanks, business leaders from India, and government representatives from the G20 countries will gather at Gateway House in Mumbai to discuss issues of global economic governance and foreign economic policy at India’s first Think20 (T20) meeting. The keynote address for the meeting, “Global Economy and Challenges for Multilateral Policies” will be delivered by Dr. Raghuram Rajan, Governor, Reserve Bank of India. This is a Think-20 (T20) regional consultation meeting. The G20 is a multilateral forum comprising the world’s 20 major economies, and is recognized as the “premier global economic governance platform”. This year, Turkey is the president of the G20 forum (2015). The T20 is an official sub-forum of the G20 process, responsible for contributing ideas and research to the G20 on global economic issues.

The T20 Mumbai event will be co-hosted by Gateway House, in collaboration with the leading Turkish think tank – Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV). TEPAV is the official Turkish Think Tank responsible for coordinating the activities of the T20 in 2015 with think tanks from all the G20 member countries.

India will join the T20 group for the first time, by hosting the meeting in Mumbai, and Gateway House is honoured to initiate this select event. Observations and recommendations from the dialogue will be officially submitted to the Turkish G20 presidency, and incorporated into the discourse for the G20 Leaders Summit scheduled for 15-16 November, 2015, Antalya, Turkey."

This meeting is significant for India: it reinforces India’s role as a key participant in multilateral economic fora and contributor of solutions for global economic issues...

Participants will include Gateway House members comprising business leaders and individuals from India. The Indian government will be represented by the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of External Affairs, the Reserve Bank of India, and EXIM Bank. Diplomatic representation is expected from G20 countries, SAARC countries and several multilateral financial institutions.

The sessions will commence with a keynote by Dr. Raghuram Rajan, Governor, Reserve Bank of India, followed by a joint think tank and business session on the impact of geopolitics and business. Starting at noon will be five working sessions for the think tank experts to discuss a range of global economic issues under the G20 mandate such as global trade and investments, inclusive business models, financing sustainable infrastructure and building skills for a technology and services-driven economy."

Press release: http://www.gatewayhouse.in/press-release-indias-first-think20-t20-meeting/

Event page: http://www.gatewayhouse.in/t20mumbai/

Agenda: http://www.gatewayhouse.in/t20mumbai/agenda/

Notes from Sumandro's Statement

The problem of creating meaningful and sustainable employment opportunities in today's technology-mediated global economy is not simply one of skill-enabling the existing and emerging workforce to take part in the growing service sector.
It is crucial to recognise that the contemporary growth of service sector in economies across countries is being fundamentally shaped by access to technology, and access to information and services via technological devices and networks.
A key barrier to effective access to technology in the developing world is the rent-seeking business strategies that permeate global technological industries: from technologies of communication, to those of agriculture, to those of medicine.
Apart from removing such barriers, global and national strategies towards skill development for achieving meaningful and sustainable employment must focus on two things: 1) enabling self-learning through open educational resources, and public infrastructures supporting the same, and 2) a broad-based national innovation system that incentivises businesses to create and effectively use intellectual properties, as appropriate for the local context.
Skill-enabling of new entrants to the labour market (or existing one) must not be understood in terms of special purpose vocational training, that is narrow education for presently existing job opportunities. Neither can online self-learning programmes succeed without building public infrastructures for social learning.
Various recent commentators, most famously The Economist, have flagged the ineffectiveness, and even negative impacts, of the global intellectual property rights regime. An effective and democratic national innovation system must neither treat innovation in a sector-specific manner, nor as a general strategy driven by the needs of particular industries in a particular stage of their development of operations and IP ownership.
Skilling of the existing and emerging workforce must enable them to take part in the global knowledge economy, and its technological basis, in a holistic way.
Openness in policy-making and collaborative implementation, not only between public and private agencies but also between public agencies, are absolutely essential for the success of any such initiative to develop skills of the national workforce.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/cis-participated-in-t20-mumbai-oct-19-2015

Commemorating Chandan Chiring (1990-2024)

Nayan Jyoti Nath and Ajay Das — 2024-05-07T23:51:28Z

"ৱিকিপ্ৰকল্পসমূহৰ সম্পাদনাৰ দুৱাৰ সকলোৰে বাবে মুকলি। ই কোনো নিৰ্দিষ্ট সংখ্যাত্মক লক্ষ্য আগত ৰাখি কৰা কাম নহয়। ই এক নিৰৱচ্ছিন্ন প্ৰক্ৰিয়া। বৰ্তমান সময়ত অসমীয়া ৱিকিপিডিয়াত লিখিবলগীয়া বিষয় আছে অগণন, ৱিকিউৎসত সন্নিৱিষ্ট কৰিবলগীয়া গ্ৰন্থও আছে অগণন। সেইদৰে ৱিকিউদ্ধৃতিত সন্নিৱিষ্ট কৰিবলগীয়া লেখাৰ সংখ্যাও গণিব নোৱাৰা। ৱিকিউদ্ধৃতিয়ে পূৰ্ণাংগ ৰূপ পোৱাৰ পিছত এতিয়া আমি অন্যান্য ৱিকিপ্ৰকল্প যেনে ৱিকিঅভিধান, ৱিকিগ্ৰন্থ, ৱিকিসংবাদ আদিলৈয়ো মন মেলিব পাৰোঁ। কিন্তু ইয়াৰ বাবে আমাক লাগিব আমাৰ মাতৃভাষাটোৰ প্ৰতি আন্তৰিক দায়িত্ববোধ, এক শক্তিশালী কৰ্মদল আৰু সাংগঠনিক কাৰ্যকৰিতা। ইয়াৰ লগতে আমি এই কথাত গুৰুত্ব দিব লাগিব যে খৰধৰকৈ অপৈণত বহু কাম কৰাতকৈ নিয়মিতভাৱে উন্নত মানৰ কাম কৰি কিদৰে অসমীয়া ৱিকিপ্ৰকল্পসমূহৰ গুণগত মান বজাই ৰাখিব পৰা যায়।"
- চন্দন চিৰিং ফুকন

(Editing WikiProjects is open to everyone, without specific numerical goals in mind, as it's a continuous process. Currently, there are countless articles awaiting creation on the Assamese Wikipedia, numerous books to be added to Wikisource, and an endless amount of content for Wikiquotes. Once the Wikiquotes project gains its complete form, we can shift attention to other projects like Wiktionary, Wikibooks, and Wikinews. However, achieving this requires a genuine sense of responsibility toward one's mother tongue, a robust workforce, and effective organization. Moreover, maintaining the quality of Assamese wiki projects necessitates consistent, high-quality contributions, rather than rushing to produce a large quantity of immature work.
Chandan Chiring Phukan)

With a heavy heart, I am deeply saddened to share the news of the passing of Chandan Chiring Phukan at 11:30 pm on Saturday, April 27th. Chandan Chiring was born on November 14, 1990, in Titabor, Jorhat district of Assam. He completed his primary and higher secondary education in Titabor and obtained Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Commerce from B Barooah College and KC Das Commerce College, Guwahati. After completing his education, he started his career in a private institution and moved on to work as a District Account Manager in the ASSAM STATE RURAL LIVELIHOOD MISSION (ASRLM) department of the Government of Assam owing to his talent. He began his career as a government employee in Barpeta district of Assam and was transferred to Majuli in July 2023 after two years. Chandan entered the world of literature at an early age and published his poems in several Assamese children's magazines ever since he was in school. Chandan always carried the ocean of Assamese art and culture in his heart. He was also interested in Indigenous food cultures, especially South Asian cuisine. He had a special place in his heart for Indian as well as Greek mythology and the Harry Potter films. He cherished an interest in gardening and photography. Despite his busy schedule, he enjoyed reading books and spending time on wikis.

After the transfer, he was affected with chronic dysentery, which gradually developed multiple internal infections, and experienced decreased immunity. He was under treatment for three months and was unable to walk. He slowly recovered and took care of his body at home for a few days. One day after Bahag Bihu, he started having fever and his health deteriorated, leading to his passing on April 27th.

Feeling that Chandan had recovered from his illness, he became more aware of his tastes. He dreamt of publishing a book of children's poems and fairy tales from around the world, but this dream didn’t become reality.

Chandan Da's passing hits close to home for me, as he was not just a fellow Wikimedian but a dear friend within my small circle of trusted individuals, a circle I hold tightly due to my introverted nature. Despite never meeting him in person, Chandan Da became a guiding light in my Wikimedia journey. His commitment to quality over quantity was evident in the 583 pages he created in Assamese Wikipedia despite the challenges of limited typing tools and keyboards around 2012, when he joined. His dedication extended to editing, with a remarkable 12,893 edits on Assamese Wikipedia, 1090 on Assamese Wikisource, and 1289 on Assamese Wikiquote, where he also served as an administrator. Chandan Da's contributions weren't confined to his native language; he uploaded 632 images and documents to Commons and participated in numerous Wiki workshops and conferences, including the Wiki Tea table meet at Assam College of Engineering on October 25, 2014, the Assamese Wikimedians' Conference and Workshop at Pragjyotish College on January 2, 2022, and a significant Train the Trainer (TTT) event in Kerala from September 28 to October 1, 2023. His total global edits amounted to an impressive 19,520. His impact reverberates through the Wikimedia community, inspiring newcomers and veterans alike.

Chandan Da's message for the community was published in the Assamese wikipatrika in September 2012, November 2015, May 2016, and May 2023 editions. He actively participated in publishing the wikipatrika regularly, starting from its first issue in September 2012. For his tireless efforts, he received many barnstars and accolades, totalling 34 barnstars, including The Original Barnstar, The Tireless Contributor Barnstar, Asian Month 2023 Barnstar, and The Teamwork Barnstar. He possessed great leadership qualities, always pushing others to contribute and do something for their mother tongue. He single-handedly contributed to getting a domain for Assamese Wikiquote and tirelessly contributed while encouraging others to do the same. Despite being hospitalized for around three months and facing difficulties in speaking and seeing clearly, he participated in the feminism and folklore campaign, creating 47 articles and becoming the fourth highest contributor from Assamese.

Although advised to rest after gaining strength, he fell ill again, but even on his deathbed, he was organizing an edit-a-thon on Assamese Wikiquote from April 22nd to April 28th. Unfortunately, he passed away on April 27th at 11:30 pm. We shared almost everything, discussing vast topics from films to mythology, personal matters to serious issues, and from food to travel. All of these conversations will be missed dearly. Since joining the service, I hardly had time to contribute to Wiki, but he always insisted that I contribute in any form. His encouragement and inspiration were the driving forces behind my recent activity on Wiki. He also consistently reminded me to attend the monthly Wiki meet, which I shamefully avoided many times due to my nature. His impact on the Assamese Wiki community cannot be forgotten. His loss is deeply felt not only by the Assamese wiki community but by the entire Indic wiki community. Today, the entire Assamese wiki family mourns his loss as Asomi Aai lost one of her dearest sons. As Jean-Paul Sartre said, "The only way to deal with death is to transform everything that precedes it into art." Chandan Da's contributions to Wiki, his poems, his dreams—all are art that will eternally remain in our hearts. May his departed soul find peace.

This article was written by Nayan Jyoti Nath, an Assamese Wikimedian. Ajay Das is the co-author.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/commemorating-chandan-chiring

Wikipedia Workshop in Mangalore — Report in Kannada Prabha

praskrishna — 2013-04-16T04:11:11Z

A workshop was conducted for students of Sahyadri College of Engineering and Management, Mangalore by Dr. U.B.Pavanaja on April 9, 2013. Kannada Prabha published a report about this on the following day, April 10, 2013.

Below is a scanned version of the report published in Kannada Prabha on April 10, 2013:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/kannada-prabha-april-10-2013-mangalore-wikipedia-workshop-report

Upload More Kannada Articles on Wikipedia

pavanaja — 2015-09-13T06:09:34Z

Uploading information in Wikipedia helps to develop language, said Indian Languages Programme Manager U B Pavanaja here on Saturday. The article was published in Indian Express (Mangaluru edition) on July 5, 2015.


Above: A scanned version of the article that appeared in Indian Express on July 5, 2015.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/indian-express-july-5-2015-upload-more-kannada-articles-on-wikipedia

Wikipedia edit-a-thon in Mangalore to bring Tulu Wikipedia live

pavanaja — 2015-09-15T09:07:24Z

A Wikipedia edit-a-thon was organised in Mangalore, Karnataka this 14th to encourage more Tulu-language speakers to contribute to Tulu Wikipedia. Tulu Wikipedia is is currently in the Incubator but the enthusiastic editor community is putting their best effort to bring it live out of Incubator. This edit-a-thon is one of the many activities the Tulu Wikimedia community has organised.

30 Wikipedia editors participated and created about 89 new articles. Interestingly, 12 of these 30 participants crossed more than 10 edits. Some of the new participants faced problems with using the input methods and the Wiki-markup. It is important to note that because of the lack of addition of Tulu-alphabet code points in the Unicode chart, and the speakers being well conversant in Kannada, they are using Kannada script for Tulu Wikipedia Incubator project. There is a plan to organise a monthly meetup and/or edit-a-thon to continue the momentum these editors have brought in. Tulu Sahitya Academy has kindly supported the event.

More details in the event page (in Tulu).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/wikipedia-edit-a-thon-in-mangalore-to-bring-tulu-wikipedia-live

"Sau Dhuni Teen" project: Wikipedia workshop in TISS, Mumbai

garule — 2016-03-16T11:31:36Z

A two-day multilingual Wikipedia workshop is being planned to be organised at the Women's Studies Department of Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai during the 22nd through the 24th August. Under the scope of the "Sau Dhuni Teen" project, student and faculty volunteers of TISS will contribute in creating/editing Wikipedia articles in about notable people, books and concepts relating to women's studies, gender studies, and more broadly, interdisciplinary social sciences. The event is being organised in collaboration with Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education (CILHE).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/sau-dhuni-teen-project-wikipedia-workshop-in-tiss-mumbai

Journalism Students of the SDM College Ujire Enrich Karnataka’s Folklore And Folk Art in Kannada Wikipedia

pavanaja — 2015-09-15T09:09:12Z

As part of an ongoing partnership with the Shree Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara (SDM) College Ujjire, with active support from a few Kannada Wikipedia editors, CIS-A2K began an outreach programme so that the journalism students could help many Kannada readers about Karnataka’s rich folklore and folk art.

Both first year and second year students of Master of Communication and Journalism (MCJ) of SDM College participated in this workshop. Out of 35 participants, 11 were female. Students had discussed already about enhancing Kannada Wikipedia articles on folklore and folk art forms of Karnataka. About 20 new user accounts were created and the students have started creating articles in their user sandboxes which they will later move as articles upon enhancement with vital information. Some of the students chose to find existing articles and add more information to them. Long time Kannada Wikimedian S N Vasanthkn. from Dharmasthala helped as resource person to help the new editors with Wikipedia editing. However, as first timers, many struggled with the encyclopedic way of writing and maintaining neutral point of view. These students will be mentored by Vasanth as he is visiting them every Monday.

More details from the event page.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/journalism-students-of-the-shree-dharmasthala-manjunatheshwara-sdm-college-ujire-enrich-karnataka2019s-folklore-and-folk-art-in-kannada-wikipedia

Mini Unconference on Openness in Development, Bangalore

praskrishna — 2015-09-18T01:49:43Z

Singapore Internet Research Centre and the Centre for Internet & Society are partnering together to hold a mini unconference session on Openness in Development on Day 2 of SIRCA III workshop.

For registration, please visit here or click on the image below.

Poster of the Event

Contact: Sandy PEK Sin Yee (Ms) | Project Officer (SiRC) | Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information | Nanyang Technological University, 31 Nanyang Link, #04-22, Singapore 637718

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/mini-unconference-on-openness-in-development-bangalore

Software Freedom Day 2015, Bengaluru

subha — 2020-05-02T16:38:31Z

We are celebrating Software Freedom Day in Bengaluru this 19 September 2015. Time & Date: 3 pm, 19 September 2015 Venue: Centre for Internet and Society, 194, 2nd C Cross, Domlur 2nd Stage, Bengaluru 560071

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/software-freedom-day-2015-bengaluru

Foreign Funding of NGOs

praskrishna — 2013-03-04T23:52:31Z

Should FDI in India’s thinktank sector worry us? It is a debate long overdue.

This article by Prashant Reddy was published in the March issue of Open Magazine.

In 1976, at the height of the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi, India’s Parliament enacted a piece of legislation called the Foreign Regulation Contribution Act. It prohibited political parties and ‘organisations of a political nature’, civil servants and judges, as also correspondents, columnists and editors/owners of registered newspapers and news broadcasting organisations— and even cartoonists—from receiving foreign contributions.

The very fact that the Act makes a specific reference to cartoonists should be hint enough of the establishment’s paranoia vis-à-vis the ‘invisible hand’ of foreign powers back then. During a Rajya Sabha debate on the proposed bill on 9 March 1976, the term ‘CIA’ (Central Intelligence Agency) was mentioned at least 30 times by different legislators, while ‘Lockheed Martin’ (a military aerospace corporation) came up at least six times in the context of alleged instances of Americans pumping dollars into governments worldwide to buy influence during the Cold War.

The sentiment of the times was captured by the following statement made during that debate by Khurshid Alam Khan, father of India’s present Minister for External Affairs: “The CIA’s doings all over the world have very clearly indicated as to what could be done by foreign money and foreign interference.”

In 2010, a different parliament, with opposition members who had not been imprisoned like those in 1976, unanimously voted to update the law by passing the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA). In fact, the Parliamentary Standing Committee that examined the bill was headed by the BJP’s Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj, and it had no major objections.

This time round, there was no talk of the CIA or Lockheed Martin. Instead, concern was focused on the increasingly influential role of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) as institutions of civil society in India. The term ‘NGO’ found at least 40 mentions during the Rajya Sabha debate on the 2010 bill. The main concern of the Upper House appeared to be a lack of transparency among NGOs receiving foreign contributions. Hence the calls to strengthen the monitoring regime, although several MPs expressed worry that the new law would give the Centre too much discretionary power to crack down on dissenting NGOs.

Worries about the 2010 Act’s overreach were validated last year when the Government used it to clamp down on NGOs involved in anti-corruption and anti-nuclear protests. As part of that exercise, at least four NGOs were booked under the FCRA for allegedly diverting foreign funds to aid the organisation of protests against the Koodankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu. Their bank accounts were frozen. The protests, however, did not end.

Perhaps the most ironic use of the FCRA was when the Ministry of Home Affairs reportedly held back potential funding from the US-based Ford Foundation for the Mumbai-based Institute for Policy Research Studies (IPRS), a thinktank that runs Parliamentary Research Service (PRS).

Incubated at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), a Delhi-based thinktank, PRS was spun off and institutionalised as IPRS in 2010 as a Section 25 non-profit company with a registered office in Mumbai. The main aim of PRS was to provide non-partisan legislative research services to parliamentarians, most of whom are starved of resources to conduct independent research required to hold the Executive accountable in Parliament. The service’s popularity among MPs was obvious from the fact that several of them reportedly made individual representations to the Home Ministry against blocking foreign funds for its parent institute.

The tragedy of why Parliament does not have a public-funded service like PRS is a debate for another day, but choking the IPRS of foreign funds raises a question of hypocrisy since the Central Government routinely collaborates with a wide range of civil society thinktanks that receive funds from the West.

Let’s start with the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER). According to its filings with the MHA, accessible on the FCRA website (http://mha.nic.in/fcra.htm), ICRIER has received over Rs 11.5 crore in foreign donations from a range of international institutions such as the Asian Development Bank, World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Sasakawa Peace Foundation between 2007 and 2012. This council, currently headed by Dr Isher Judge Ahluwalia, wife of Planning Commission Vice-chairperson Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, appears to have a cosy relationship with the present establishment. When the Government was in a fix over the contentious General Anti- Avoidance Rules (GAAR) of taxation, for example, it delegated the task of ironing out its problems to a four-member committee headed by Dr Parthasarathi Shome, a well-known economic policy expert at ICRIER. There are several other projects on which the Council’s faculty collaborates closely with the Government of India.

That thinktanks are well networked goes without saying. In fact, ICRIER and PRS were involved in quite a controversy during last year’s Parliament vote on Foreign Direct Investment in India’s multi-brand retail sector. As reported by India Today, (‘Foreign Direct Instruction for our MPs?’ 6 December 2012), IPRS had organised a ‘close-door’ meeting at Delhi’s Constitution Club the day before the vote, where MPs were briefed on the benefits of FDI by Professor Arpita Mukherjee of ICRIER. Some MPs had publicly labelled this a ‘lobbying’ effort.

Another example of close collaboration between the Centre and a thinktank that gets significant foreign funding is the one between the Government and the CPR, headed by Dr Pratap Bhanu Mehta. Between 2007 and 2012, according to its filings with the MHA, this thinktank received foreign funds of over Rs 40.8 crore from a range of donors such as the Ford Foundation, Google Foundation, International Development Research Centre, Economic and Social Research Council, Hewlett Foundation and IKEA Social Initiative.

Environmental policy is another area in which foreign-funded thinktanks have a significant impact. The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), headed by Sunita Narain with a governing board that has Ela Bhatt, BG Verghese, Dr MS Swaminathan and Dr NC Saxena among others, has received over Rs 67.7 crore in foreign funds between 2006 and 2012. The CSE’s main donors, according to FCRA records, include the Denmark- based Dan Church Aid, Germany-based Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst EV, Heinrich Boll Foundation and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. Other donors include the Commission of European Communities and Government of India.

Going by the media coverage that CSE receives, it is safe to say that this thinktank has a profound influence on India’s environmental policy. An indication of its ties with the Government is the fact that the two had their own ‘side-event’ at the recently concluded Doha talks on climate change.

The other green thinktank with generous foreign contributions that works closely with the Government is The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). Consider this: the International Bioenergy Summit of 2012 held in New Delhi was organised by TERI and sponsored by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT). According to its FCRA filings, TERI, with a staff of over 900, has received about Rs 155.9 crore between 2006 and 2012 from a vast variety of donors.

In the field of health policy, one of the most influential thinktanks is the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). Since it was founded in 2006, it has received a total of Rs 219 crore in funds, its biggest foreign donor being the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and biggest Indian donor being the Government of India. Other foreign donors, according to FCRA filings, include the National Institutes of Health (of the US government), Welcome Trust, International Development Research Centre and MacArthur Foundation.

A public-private initiative, the PHFI is expected to shape India’s approach to public health policy over the next decade. An example of its influence on India’s health policy is the fact that its secretariat has been thanked and praised in a report of the High Level Expert Group constituted by the Planning Commission to frame a new policy on ‘universal health coverage’ for all Indians.

On matters of internet policy, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a Bangalore-based thinktank focused on internet governance and intellectual property issues, has been a member of some key government committees, like the one under Justice AP Shah to study privacy laws in India. The CIS also receives foreign funding. According to its website, it has received over Rs 8.3 crore in funds, a significant portion of it from foreign donors like the UK-based Kusuma Trust, which was founded by Anurag Dikshit, an Indian businessman who made a fortune selling his stake in a popular online gambling website. He eventually donated most of his wealth to the Kusuma Trust, which funds various charities across the world.

In the human rights space, there is the famous Lawyers Collective, which, apart from its human rights advocacy, also provides legal aid to members of disadvantaged communities. Although this collective does not appear to work all that closely with the Government, it is interesting to note that it was founded by Indira Jaising, who is currently one of the Centre’s Additional Solicitor Generals. Since 2006, according to its FCRA filings, the organisation has received around Rs 21.8 crore in foreign funds from the Ford, Levi Strauss and Open Society foundations and from the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, among others.

Another thinktank that deserves a mention is the Centre for Civil Society (CCS), which was founded by Dr Parth J Shah and has a ‘Board of Scholars’ with Isher Judge Ahluwalia, Jagdish Bhagwati, Lord Meghnad Desai and Swaminathan Anklesaria Aiyar, among others, as members. While it is not clear from its website whether it works closely with the Government, it was ranked 51st in a recent global survey of thinktanks by University of Pennsylvania. According to a CCS press release, these rankings were ‘based on not just our research and analysis, but also on our engagement with policy makers and ability to influence policy decisions’. The CCS’s rank was quite a surprise, given its modest resources. According to its FCRA filings, between 2006 and 2011, it received about Rs 6.2 crore from foreign donors such as the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, John Templeton Foundation and International Policy Network. As per its audited accounts, available on its website, donations from Indian donors were equally modest.

The above examples demonstrate the influence of foreign funded thinktanks on almost every major aspect of Indian policy today, be it economic or environmental, related to public health or internet governance.

Is this good or bad for India as a country? Given that most sectors of the economy are now open to foreign investment, does it make sense to regulate and restrict foreign funds for such thinktanks under laws like the FCRA?

The answer depends on what Indian society expects of them. Do we expect them to be completely independent of donors in their views? Would an organisation like the CSE still get foreign funds from European donors if it were to readily welcome genetically modified (GM) food in India? In such circumstances, how independent should we expect these thinktanks to be in the arena of policy?

Absolute objectivity—or at a least public perception of it—is an absolute myth. No matter who funds a thinktank, be it foreigners or Indians, it is impossible to be seen as such. The more pressing issue is of transparency. Are Indian policymakers aware of the details of foreign funds received by these thinktanks?

Take, for example, a recent Parliamentary Standing Committee report that expressed serious reservations about GM food. The Committee repeatedly quotes with approval the deposition of Dr Vandana Shiva against GM food. A little-known fact about Dr Shiva is that her organisation, Navdanya, according to its FCRA filings, has received a total of Rs 16.7 crore between 2006 and 2012 in foreign donations from mainly European organisations (some of which also contribute to the CSE) like Bread for the World, Diakonie Emergency Aid, Hivos Foundation, Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst EV, RSF Innovations in Social Finance, and even from the European Union itself.

Would a Parliamentary Standing Committee headed by an MP of the CPM, a party that is always suspicious of the ‘foreign hand’, show the same deference to Dr Shiva’s views if its members knew of Navdanya’s European donors, several of which are also Christian churches?

In an op-ed article in The Indian Express (‘Do not disagree’, 29 February 2012), Dr Pratap Bhanu Mehta while criticising the FCRA, states, ‘Of course, NGOs should be transparent and accountable in terms of their sources of funding.’ Yet, the CPR, of which Dr Mehta is president, only discloses the names of its donors in its annual report, and that too without revealing the amounts received from each. Similarly, Navdanya offers no information on either of its websites, Indian and Italian (navdanyainternational.it), on any of its funding. Other thinktanks like the PHFI and CIS offer a more detailed breakup of their different sources of funding, while some like the CSE and CCS provide only a roll of donor names and a figure of cumulative funding with no breakup of individual contributions. So, while these thinktanks are forced to disclose their foreign funding sources to the MHA under the FCRA, why do they not volunteer exhaustive information on their own websites?

An amusing facet of this is that the Central Government and Corporate India are more transparent (even if forced to be) than these civil society institutions, thanks to the Right to Information Act, 2005, and the extensive disclosure requirements under the Companies Act, 1956. Of companies in particular, information is accessible over the internet on the MCA21 website of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. This contrast is amusing because some of these thinktanks never tire of demanding transparency of the State and corporate sector.

For several thinktanks, it is often hard to figure out something as basic as the nature of the legal entity through which they conduct their activities. Are they societies, associations or trusts? More pertinently, why is the Government not pushing for a stricter transparency regime? A major stumbling block may be the fact that these thinktanks are set up under state laws and it is difficult for the Central Government to coordinate a nationwide transparency regime. However, given that most are beneficiaries of income tax exemptions, it may be possible for the Centre to use the Income Tax Act to demand comprehensive disclosures. Since they enjoy tax benefits, they might also qualify as ‘public authorities’ under the Right To Information Act, 2005.

Another reason that disclosure of funding is important is to inform the analysis of people who usually see NGOs as selfless entities dedicated to nothing but a higher cause. While this may be true of some NGOs, many leaders of these set-ups have personal stakes in ensuring certain outcomes. After all, future donor grants often depend on sustaining one’s influence in the policy space. Many of the institutions described in this article have been regular recipients of funds from the same sources year after year.

Another question is the volume of funds coming in and where it will leave India’s public institutions that were originally meant to aid policymaking with unbiased intellectual inputs. How are cash-strapped Indian universities to compete with these well-funded thinktanks?

Government-run institutions of higher learning are supposed to have an inbuilt guarantee of academic independence, but would their scholarly voices be drowned out by those backed by bigger resources?

Also, given the frequency with which a few foreign funders appear on donor lists, is it time to worry about their influence on Indian policies? After all, generous funding lets the faculty of these thinktanks jetset around the world to attend conferences, organise seminars in India and network with officials at a level that most public universities cannot afford. How does this impact our civil society discourse? Should Parliament limit the amount that a single foreign entity can donate, or are we better off sticking to a regulatory regime that only insists on a set of disclosure norms?

On a concluding note, let us not forget that a large part of the credit for the RTI Act of 2005—the country’s most empowering piece of legislation since the Constitution of 1950—goes to the advocacy efforts of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), a farmers group in Rajasthan that does not accept institutional funding from either India or overseas. Bank interest on its corpus and donations by individuals are the MKSS’s only sources of funding. Together, the two gave it Rs 30 lakh for the financial year 2010-11, details of which are available on its website.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/openmagazine-article-business-prashant-reddy-march-2-2013-foreign-funding-of-ngos