The Centre for Internet and Society
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Policy Brief on the Report of the UN Group of Governmental Experts on ICT
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/policy-brief-on-the-report-of-the-un-group-of-governmental-experts-on-ict
<b>In light of the complex challenges and threats posed to, and by, the field of information telecommunications in cyberspace, in 1998 the draft resolution in the First Committee of the UN General Assembly was introduced and adopted without a vote (A/RES/53/70) ]. Since then, the Secretary General to the General Assembly has invited annual reports on the issue.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The most recent report, Developments in the Field of Information and Telecommunications in the Context of International Security, was published in June 2015. The 2015 Report touches upon a number of issues, including international cooperation, norms and principles for responsible state behavior, confidence building measures cross border exchange of information, and capacity building measures.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Annual reports will continue to be accepted by the General Assembly, and the 2016/2017 Group of Governmental Experts will have it's first meeting in August 2016. India was a member of the Group of Governmental Experts in 2013.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) has written an article analyzing India’s alignment with the recommendations of the report of the Group of Governmental Experts. This policy brief attempts to articulate the major policy actions that may be considered by India to further incorporate and implement the principles enunciated in the Report.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS believes that the report of the Group of Governmental Experts provides important minimum standards that countries could adhere to in light of challenges to international security posed by ICT developments. Given the global nature of these challenges and the need for nations to holistically address such challenges from a human rights and security perspective, CIS believes that the Group of Governmental Experts and similar international forums are useful and important forums for India to continue to actively engage with.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Below are our specific recommendations:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>(a) Consistent with the purposes of the United Nations, including to maintain international peace and security, States should cooperate in developing and applying measures to increase stability and security in the use of ICTs and to prevent ICT practices that are acknowledged to be harmful or that may pose threats to international peace and security;</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India has entered into treaties on ICT issues with countries such as Belarus, Canada, China, Egypt, and France. Additionally, India’s IT Act addresses a number of the cyber crimes listed in the Budapest Convention. However, India is not yet a signatory to the Convention. This leaves scope for India to consider further forums and means of international cooperation to better realise this principle.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India has been invited to accede to the Budapest Convention in the past but for various tactical and political reasons has not yet agreed to do so. Although whether to accede to an International Convention or not is usually a well discussed and thought out policy decision of the diplomatic core of a country, the mutual assistance framework, however flawed it may be, would offer a better opportunity for India for international cooperation for increasing the stability and security of ICTs and prevent harmful ICT practices as envisaged in the Report of the Group of Governmental Experts.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>(b) In case of ICT incidents, States should consider all relevant information, including the larger context of the event, the challenges of attribution [of cybercrime] in the ICT environment and the nature and extent of the consequences;</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEITY) as well as the Computer Emergency Response Team, India (CERT-In) have a number of policies which talk about maintaining security and means of addressing threats in the ICT environment, most ICT incidents, crimes or illegal activities using ICT, unless they involve large or government institutions, are handled by the regular police establishment of the country. The lack of capacity, both in terms of infrastructure and skill, of the regular police to adequately address most cyber crimes is an area that needs to be strengthened. The need for cyber security capacity building in India was highlighted in 2015 by the Standing Committee on Information Technology. It would be useful for dedicated cyber crime departments to be established in all districts. This would be a step in the right direction to provide the requisite capacity and resources to deal with the various technical issues such as attribution, jurisdiction, etc. arising out of ICT incidents.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>(d) States should consider how best to cooperate to exchange information, assist each other, prosecute terrorist and criminal use of ICTs and implement other cooperative measures to address such threats. States may need to consider whether new measures need to be developed in this respect;</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Owing to the growing irrelevance of physical and political borders in the age of globally networked devices, one of the most important issues arising out of ICTs and cyber crimes is the need for greater and more efficient exchange of information between nations. It has been widely accepted that sharing of information on a regular and sustained basis between nation states would be a very important tool. Limitations in the traditional mechanisms (MLATs, Letters Rogatory, etc.) such as the delay in accessing the information as well as denial of access due to differences in legal standards, present hurdles to the efficacy of law enforcement agencies only emphasize the urgency of developing a new mechanism of international information sharing that would be able to deal with ICT incidents, while at the same time protecting the freedoms and privacy rights of the citizens of the world. Exploration and participation in dialogues and solutions that are evolving at the international level around cross border sharing of information is key.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>(i) States should take reasonable steps to ensure the integrity of the supply chain [of ICT equipment] so that end users can have confidence in the security of ICT products. States should seek to prevent the proliferation of malicious ICT tools and techniques and the use of harmful hidden functions; </b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While the National Electronics Policy of 2012 states that the government should mandate technical and safety standards in order to curb the inflow of sub-standard and unsafe electronic products, the government is yet to mandate any broad standards in the Indian market for ICT equipment. Considering the enormous security implications of compromised ICT this is an area where the government should prioritize and must act immediately. Mandating standards may require the establishment of a monitoring or enforcement mechanism to ensure that the standards are being implemented. This should be done with the aim of ensuring security while not hindering innovation or the flow of business. To achieve such a balance, research and discussion is needed within the government to formulate a mechanism which would ensure the safety and quality of ICT tools while at the same time ensuring that industry is not hindered.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Conclusion</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The suggestions given above are some of the major lessons from the analysis of the UN Report on ICT which CIS believe the government of India could adopt and pursue to strengthen its enlightenment with the recommendations of the Report. It is also imperative that the Government of India continues to realise the importance of the work being done by the Group of Governmental Experts and take measures to ensure that a representative from India is included in future Groups. Meanwhile, India can take positive steps by strengthening domestic privacy safeguards, improving transparency and efficiency of relevant policies and processes, and looking towards solutions that respect rights and strengthen security.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/policy-brief-on-the-report-of-the-un-group-of-governmental-experts-on-ict'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/policy-brief-on-the-report-of-the-un-group-of-governmental-experts-on-ict</a>
</p>
No publisherElonnai Hickok and Vipul KharbandaPrivacyInternet GovernanceICT2016-08-23T15:37:05ZBlog EntryOf the State and the Governments - The Abstract, the Concrete and the Responsive
https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/transparency-and-politics/of-the-state-and-the-governments-the-abstract-the-concrete-and-the-responsive
<b>This post examines the concepts of state and government to lay the ground for understanding responsiveness enforced through transparency discourses and the deployment of ICTs, the Internet and e-governance programmes. It also lays the context for understanding why and how ICTs. Internet and e-governance have been deployed in India for improving government-citizen interfaces, eliminating middlemen, delivering services electronically and for introducing a range of similar reforms to institute transparency and a responsive state.</b>
<p></p>
<p>In the <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/transparency-and-politics/the-responsive-state-introduction-to-the-series" class="external-link">introductory post</a>, I had suggested that we needed
to examine the notion of the ‘responsive state’, particularly in the context of
discourses around transparency and the use of information and communication
technologies (ICTs) and the Internet to institute transparency and thereby create
a responsive state. I argued that interrogating the notion of the ‘responsive
state’ is necessary to understand how responsiveness and even statehood actually
translate on the ground for different citizen groups when ICTs and the Internet
are deployed to provide information to citizens, to deliver services
electronically, to eliminate middlemen, to re-engineer processes in government
departments and state institutions, and to make the state more visible and
(therefore, supposedly) more accessible and responsive to its people.</p>
<p>In this post, I want to open up the concepts of the state
and the government in a more fundamental way to begin our explorations
regarding ‘responsiveness’ and the ‘responsive state’. Attending to the idea
and the practice of the state and the government in everyday life will open up
the meanings that ‘responsiveness’ and transparency, ICTs and the Internet are
attributed within different contexts and in the range of relationships that
exist between the state and its citizens, governments and citizens, and across
state and government institutions. It is necessary to understand how relationships
between citizens and governments and across the range of government and state
institutions get shaped by the contexts within which governance is carried out,
and the “fields”<a name="_ednref" href="#_edn1"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[i]</span></a> within which
we locate and study governments, governance, transparency and technology. This will
enable us to nuance the notion and the translation of responsiveness in its
online, offline, transparent, secretive, overt and/or surreptitious avatars.</p>
<p>I will begin this post by explaining the similarities and
differences between the concepts (and ground realities) of state and the
government as well as the relationships that exist between these entities. This
conceptual clarification will set the context for understanding the genesis and
application of responsiveness and transparency and the deployment of ICTs and
the Internet to usher responsiveness and transparency in India in subsequent
blog posts.</p>
<p><strong>The
State – Abstract-Concrete, Composite-Fragmented, Homogeneous-Heterogeneous: </strong>The
state is an abstract idea which has its concrete basis in a physical territory.
The state is also reified through an organizational structure that is referred
to as the bureaucracy. We, as citizens, give legitimacy and authority to the idea
of the state and statehood by conferring powers on certain representatives,
institutions and systems to make decisions on our behalf and to exercise power
for maintenance of law and order. The notion of the state (more concretely the
institutions representing and exercising powers on behalf of the state) also derives
legitimacy and authority from the Constitution and the laws of the land. The image
of the state, as has been passed down to us by particular narratives of history
and certain strands of political philosophy as well as through the print and
electronic media is that the state is a composite, compact structure which has
absolute - and in certain contexts unlimited powers. The “state idea” (Abrams, 1988) remains a powerful organizing concept
in the lives of citizens as well as the employees and representatives of the
state. This is because the concept of the state provides a sense of structure
and coherence in our lives which in turn creates a sense of belongingness to a
territory (physical space) and/or an institution (such as public services,
public sector institutions, municipality, government departments, etc). This
sense of structure, coherence and order is further reinforced by the following
beliefs:</p>
<p> 1.
That the state, organized and reified through its
bureaucratic machinery, functions in a rational, orderly manner. This is the
classic idea of the state promoted by Max Weber;</p>
<p>2.
That the state is the source as well as the
guardian of laws. These laws will protect and preserve the integrity of the
territory and in turn, the integrity (and compositeness) of the state (where
the notion of the state and its notional boundaries are based on an actual,
physical territory);</p>
<p>3.
That laws are supreme and everyone is equal before
the law;</p>
<p>4.
That laws will enforce order and provide relief,
redressal, entitlements and access to welfare to one and all.</p>
<p> The state is thus imagined as a benign authority, a
benefactor, which must protect its people, provide them with welfare and at the
same time, safeguard order and integrity of the territory (and therefore, order
and integrity of the state structure/organization). The state also remains the
last resort that people have for articulating their claims and getting them
fulfilled. There is therefore, a tenuous relationship with the state where as
much as certain ideological groups/belief systems/world views and various
citizen groups desire the state’s role and intervention in the individual’s
life to be minimized, they still continue to view the state i.e., the law
courts and the common judicial system<a name="_ednref" href="#_edn2"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[ii]</span></a>, to be the
ultimate source of law and the final arbiter of disputes. To cite an example,
even though the private property rights framework gives precedence to the
individual over the state, advocates of private property invariably assume or necessitate
the existence of an overarching/central legal system to which individuals can
take their disputes and grievances. This kind of advocacy automatically creates
a paradox for individual freedom because a centralized legal system functions
on the basis of uniform laws that may not consider the particularities and the
uniqueness of each dispute over private property. Moreover, such a centralized
legal system has the capacity to impinge on the individuals’ and groups’
freedoms especially when individuals’ and groups’ practices of ownership and
usufruct (which can be social, historical, cultural and negotiated over time)
do not comply with corresponding legalistic notions and practices.</p>
<p>The concept of the state is also associated with the
notion of power where the state holds and wields power. The relationship
between the state and its citizens is defined by this power equation. The
notion of democracy is hinged on the idea that since people confer powers upon
the state and they elect representative governments by voting at elections,
citizens should also be able to contain the powers of the state and prevent the
state from becoming an absolute, authoritarian entity. Deliberations, debate
and discussion over the state’s policies and decisions (and a free press) are
viewed as tools through which the state’s actions can be questioned, criticized
and when necessary, contained. It is for the purposes of deliberations, debate
and discussion that publishing of information about state policies as well as
the processes through which decisions are made is deemed as quintessential in
certain frameworks (and corresponding policies) of the ‘responsive state’.</p>
<p>The notion of the state remains a powerful idea in
people’s imaginations and actions. The belief in the existence of a state
system/organization enables people to make claims on what they see as state
institutions or employees of the state. At the same time, as researchers and
theorists excavating the “everyday state” argue, what also matters is how
people ‘encounter’ the state when they make claims and/or seek resources, who
they ‘mark’ as the state in these encounters, and what their ‘experience’ of
the state is – a monolith, a bureaucratic mess, a sloth, a responsive entity and/or
apathetic (Corbridge, Srivastava, et al, 2005; Fuller and Benei, 2000;
Elyachar, 2005; Tarlo, 2003). The nature of the encounters with ‘the state’ and
consequently the perceptions of power and authority vary depending on the
institutions/personnel that different people approach. This implies that the
institutions within the state system are different from each other and they
function in diverse ways and contexts. These institutions are also not equally
and cordially aligned with the idea of the state and the state system.
Moreover, the resources that they variously control have different kinds of
significance and meanings for both, the officials in charge of the respective
institutions as well as the people vying for those resources. In short, not all
institutions within the state system are equally statist in terms of the way in
which they control resources, wield power, maintain territorial integrity and
statist quo and interact with different citizen groups. To explain this in more
concrete terms, let us take the instance of the forest authorities in India. Forest
departments tend to be much more authoritarian and controlling of forest lands
and forest resources and consequently the people within their jurisdictions and
territory. This authority of the forest department stems from historical
factors and it has been further reinforced through the laws passed in the post-independence
period regarding protection of wildlife and various resources and produces of
forests. Moreover, as mandated in the Constitution of India, forests symbolize an
essential aspect of the territorial integrity of the state. Hence, the powers
that have been conferred, both constitutionally and by central governments and
cabinet ministries on forest departments and officials over time, is more than
the powers that have been granted to other state institutions and departments
in the context of control over the state’s natural resources. Therefore, the
manner in which forest departments function in relation with citizens as well
as in relation with other state institutions and government departments
produces and reinforces certain perceptions of the state i.e., authoritarian,
autocratic, corrupt, wielding excessive power, curbing group liberties, punitive,
among others. In yet some other aspects of governance and everyday life, we
find that police forces have unlimited powers and depending on socio-economic
status and networks, different citizen groups have different perceptions of and
relationships with the police and therefore, of the state which the police
forces represent. Groups living in slums and squatter settlements tend to fear
and dread police forces most because these groups tend to be marked as criminal
owing to their (supposedly) ‘illegal’ occupancy of state/public/private land
which in turn makes them the first targets of law and order and markers of
criminality. Hence, community based organizations (CBOs) train slum dwellers
and squatters, foremost, on how to interact with the police, how to conduct themselves
in police stations, and provide them with information regarding the laws and
procedures which immediately affect poor people’s lives and their relationship
with the police and law and order<a name="_ednref" href="#_edn3"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[iii]</span></a>. On the
other hand, vehicle owning populations tend to the loathe the police (mainly
traffic police and beat station cops) for demanding unnecessary bribes and
engaging in what are seen to be as extortionist practices.</p>
<p>At this point, it will be instructive and insightful to
ask the questions who/what is the state and where is it located (both
physically and symbolically). There are myriad answers to this question, as one
strand of sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists variously
studying the “everyday state” in India and across the world have demonstrated
and argued. In the past, scholars such as Philipp Abrams (1988) have questioned
whether the state really exists in reality or is it simply an idea, a powerful
construct that has been passed down to us by history and theory? Abrams has simultaneously
asked questions about the methodologies for studying the state – do we go back
to histories and theories to locate and understand the state or do we examine the
practices of state more carefully. Each of these approaches carries with it its
own problems of studying and explaining the state. Abrams fundamentally suggests
that the state is associated with coherence, homogeneity and compositeness, all
of which are imaginary attributes that do not exist on the ground. Then, is the
concept of the state useful at all and if so, why?</p>
<p>For the purposes of this series on the ‘responsive state’
as well as the larger monograph which tries to trace the history of
transparency, ICTs, Internet and politics in India, it is necessary for us to
deal with the idea and the different practices of state in as much entirety and
variety as may be possible. This is because discourses of transparency,
e-governance policies and programmes and the use of ICTs to create/reform
citizen-government interfaces are based on a particular idea of the state i.e.,
a notion of order as stemming from conformity/adherence to law, ‘the state’ as
the final arbiter of disputes between peoples, ‘the state’ as the provider of
welfare and therefore, ‘the state’ as a benefactor and a benevolent leviathan,
and ‘the state’ as rational and orderly and internally coherent, cogent and
composite. As I will explain in subsequent posts, ICTs, e-governance systems
and the Internet are deployed precisely to reinforce these ideas of the Indian
state to the people as well as to reorder, realign and re-engineer processes and
personnel who are seen as stepping outside the lines of law and due process.
Whether such technological interventions and the technology itself succeeds in
enforcing this vision of order and absolute alignment is an issue that
necessitates asking several nuanced questions:</p>
<ul><li>How does the state – primarily decision-makers and
policy-makers – imagine and understand technology and its application? </li><li>How are e-governance policies interpreted and
implemented by government officials (and even private parties) on the ground? </li><li>How do officials internalize the visions ingrained
in e-governance policies and deployments of ICTs and how does this impact the
manner in which they implement directives from the state in this regard and
subsequently interact with citizens?</li><li>Who gains and who loses when ICTs, e-governance
and the Internet are deployed to deliver services to people electronically, to
provide information and to create better government-citizen interfaces? </li><li>How are gains and losses assessed and why are they
assessed as such? Who assesses the gains and losses and why?</li><li>Are gains and losses absolute and irreversible? </li><li>Do some deployments of ICTs, e-governance
strategies and the Internet produce impacts that can only be seen and evaluated
in the long run? </li><li>How does the state – in terms of power, authority,
implementation of law and order and preservation of territorial integrity –
manifest through the various deployments of ICTs and e-governance policies in
different contexts?</li></ul>
<p>These questions regarding the impact of ICTs, Internet
and e-governance programmes on different citizen groups as well as the notions
and practices of the state require us to turn our attention towards
understanding the concepts of government, governance and administration and
grounding our understandings of these concepts in the manner in which various
government departments and institutions interact with citizens, on an everyday
basis, in the process of governing and administering. Revisiting and opening up
these concepts is further essential because governments and administrators are
responsible for interpreting (and therefore, translating) and implementing the
state’s policies and visions on the ground. This does not imply that the state
is separate from government and administration. In fact, as we saw in the
example of the forest departments and police forces, certain arms of the government
and administration can be highly statist in the manner in which they exercise
powers, control resources, make decisions and interact with citizens. We also
saw above that not all government departments and state institutions are
equally comfortable with and aligned with the state idea i.e., in terms of
notions of law, order, authority and power. It therefore, becomes necessary to
understand how different government departments and administrators understand,
embody and even negotiate notions of law, order and power, what are the
historical, political and social sources which shape the functioning and
ideologies of different government departments, and how are notions of law,
order, responsiveness and transparency configured when these different government
departments implement various e-governance policies and transparency
initiatives in an effort to become responsive.</p>
<p>Let us briefly examine the concept of government and in
the process, tackle the important issue of state-society relationship.</p>
<p><strong>Government
– the State in Society and the Society in State:</strong>
Governments are the concrete face of the state and the state idea. They are
bodies/institutions/organizations which perform duties of the state and
discharge the state’s obligations towards its people. Some of the primary
obligations include:</p>
<ul><li> delivering the state’s welfare resources to
different citizen groups,</li><li> attending to and fulfilling and/or negotiating
people’s varied claims and demands for entitlements,</li><li>resolving people’s complaints, disputes and
grievances,</li><li>maintaining law and order and ensuring compliance
with law,</li><li>providing infrastructure and services that are
considered necessary for people’s well-being as well as for the physical
territory’s (i.e., the state’s) development and progress.</li></ul>
<p>Governments are expected to function in ways that aid in
maintaining the integrity of the territory and therefore, the authority of the
state. Governments must therefore, follow the policies formulated by the state
and implement them in letter and spirit. However, implementation rarely happens
in the exact letter and spirit because of a variety of factors including:</p>
<p>1.
Inadequate release of funds which in turn is
triggered by factors such as competition over power, territory and loyalty, competition
between political parties, poor allocation to essential budgetary heads in the
programme implementation, desire within government agencies to curb the
autonomy of individual departments/personnel by providing fewer funds, etc.</p>
<p>2.
Existing competition between administrative
agencies, government employees and decision-makers which can be altered because
of implementation. This, in turn, can prevent implementation altogether or, the
implementing authorities may implement policies in a way that aids in
preserving certain kinds of autonomy, powers and interests of the implementing
agencies.</p>
<p>3.
Multiple claims that arise in the course of
implementation which in turn puts implementation on a sticky course and alters
the letter(s) and spirit of the original policies as government agencies,
administrators and the various implementing authorities negotiate (and even
suppress) the claims made by different interest groups (which includes citizen
groups, government agencies themselves, middlemen, competing political parties,
among others).</p>
<p>Essentially then, government institutions and departments
– the concrete faces of the state – are mired in multiple claims and interests
not only with respect to implementation but also in the way in which they
function in everyday life. These claims are advanced not only by citizen groups
but also by the very employees of governments and by agencies and authorities
related with various aspects of the governments’ functioning. Here, we need to
address the issue of state-in-society and society-in-state which tends to be
overlooked and even ignored in accounts and theories about the state. The state
– wherever is experienced and however, it is sighted – is part of the gamut
known as society. This means that the people working as government
employees/state employees are simultaneously members of other networks and
social groups. Consequently, they hold and embody various views and ideas that
may be in consonance with as well as contradictory to notions of power,
authority, law and order. These government employees also compete for the
resources of the state – water, sanitation, housing sites, roads, electricity –
as much as they are responsible for delivering the same resources to different
citizen groups. In the process of delivery of welfare and service provision
then, interests are shaped from time to time depending on the socio-economic
and political positions of the administrators, bureaucrats and people’s
representatives in charge as well as their association with various kinds of
networks that enable them to maintain/enhance their personal/institutional
positions and powers. Some of these interests and networks also shape the roles
of government employees and administrators i.e., elected representatives,
municipal field staff, engineers, etc., can also become middlemen in the process
of delivering services and resources. How they function as middlemen depends on
the resources in question as well as the political, social and administrative
contexts in which the services are provided.</p>
<p>This aspect of state-in-society which is visible when we closely
examine how governments and administrative departments and institutions
function is an important factor that not only shapes interests and policy
implementation but also influences that manner in which the state – power,
authority, law and order – manifests in the interactions between citizens and
governments. Therefore, when attempts are made to reconfigure or reform the
interfaces between governments and citizens by introducing e-governance tools
and ICTs, essentially the entire gamut of networks, social norms, conventions
and negotiations that underlies government-citizen interfacing is tried to be
put in line with a rational conception of law, due process and order. This
implies that certain arms of the state attempt to reinforce and reorder
particular government departments and functionaries in line with the idea of
the rational, orderly and law enforcing state. (These arms of the state could
be the central government in New Delhi, central government departments in New
Delhi and state governments trying to align departments and functionaries
working at different levels in the federal system hierarchy.) In turn, this
means that the complexities in government-citizen interfacing – middlemen,
opaque procedures, inadequate information, use of personal discretion, mobilization
of political, economic and personal networks - are tried to be straightened
through the application of technology which is viewed as neutral and capable of
enforcing order and uniformity in procedures and service delivery. Therefore,
it becomes essential to understand how different government departments
function and how various services are delivered in order to assess where
technology is/gets situated and how technology reorders/realigns government
functionaries in line with the statist notions of law, order and fairness.</p>
<p><strong>By way
of a conclusion …: </strong>I will end this post here, leaving it for readers
to ruminate and think over the ideas presented here. I will return back in the
next post with a more concrete history of how and why ICTs, e-governance and
Internet have been deployed in India to usher transparency and responsiveness
in the functioning of the state via government agencies and departments. The
concrete description will help put into perspective some of the conceptual
issues and insights discussed in this post.</p>
<p>Till then, adios!</p>
<p><strong>References:</strong></p>
<p>Abrams,
Philip. March 1988. “Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State”. <em>Journal of Historical Sociology</em>. Vol. 1
(1): 58-89.</p>
<p>C. J. Fuller and V. Benei (eds). 2000. <em>The Everyday State and Society in Modern India</em>. New Delhi: D. K.
Publishers.</p>
<p>Corbridge, Stuart, Glynn Williams, Manoj Srivastava and Rene Veron.
(2005) <em>Seeing the State: Governance and
Governmentality in India. </em>Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.</p>
<p>Elyachar,
Julia. 2005. <em>Markets of Dispossession:
NGOS, Economic Development and the State in Cairo.</em> Duke University Press:
Durham and London.</p>
<p>Moore, Sally
Falk. 1973. “Law and Social Change: The Semi-Autonomous Social Field as an
Appropriate Subject of Study.” <em>Law and
Society Review.</em> Vol. 7 (4): 719-746.</p>
<p>Tarlo, Emma.
2003. <em>Unsettling Memories: Narratives of
India’s ‘Emergency’.</em> Delhi: Permanent Black.</p>
<p><strong>Also see …</strong></p>
<p>Gupta, Akhil
and James Fergusson. 2002. “Spatializing States: Towards An Ethnography of
Neoliberal Governmentality”. <em>American Ethnologist.</em>
Vol. 29 (4): 981-1002. <u>See mainly part one on conceptual issues –
spatializing states.</u><em></em></p>
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<div id="edn">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a name="_edn1" href="#_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[i]</span></a>
The concept of “field” is borrowed from Sally Falk Moore’s (1973) model of the
“semi-autonomous social field”. Moore suggests that a ‘field’ is a concrete,
observable arena that generates rules and is simultaneously influenced by
agencies and forces from outside (720). The notion of the ‘field’ aids in more
a concrete and nuanced study of institutions especially the immediate and
larger contexts in which institutions function and how this influences their
functioning, why actors make particular decisions in certain circumstances, and
how rules are formulated, adhered and resisted. Analyses will vary depending on
how we map the field and which actors and factors we include/exclude and give
primacy to in the given field.</p>
</div>
<div id="edn">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a name="_edn2" href="#_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[ii]</span></a>
Here, it is important to note that despite advocacy and practice of
independence of judiciary, the judicial system of a nation functions on the
principle of the ‘law of the land’ and maintaining the integrity and
compositeness of the physical territory. In this respect, belief in the state’s
judicial system continues to perpetuate the belief that there is a singular and
ultimate source and arbiter of law, in this case the judicial system, even when
the judiciary can strike down the decisions made by the executive organs of the
state. Therefore, even if the judiciary is independent, the way in which it
functions is to maintain and preserve the state system (i.e. the territory) and
the statist quo (i.e. the state system and authority).</p>
</div>
<div id="edn">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a name="_edn3" href="#_ednref"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[iii]</span></a>
Interviews with social workers from community based organizations in Mumbai,
conducted between May and November 2009.</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>
</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/transparency-and-politics/of-the-state-and-the-governments-the-abstract-the-concrete-and-the-responsive'>https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/transparency-and-politics/of-the-state-and-the-governments-the-abstract-the-concrete-and-the-responsive</a>
</p>
No publisherzainabICT2011-08-03T09:56:52ZBlog EntryKonkan Corridor Project — A Lecture by Vasant Gangavane
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/talk-by-vasant-gangavane
<b>Well known social worker Vasant Gangavane will be giving a public lecture on the Konkan Corridor Project at Ashoka Innovators for the Public in Bangalore on April 16, 2012. The lecture will focus on the role of Information & Communication Technology for total rural transformation by inclusive integrated development with no change of land ownerships. The event is co-organized by Ashoka Innovators for the Public and the Centre for Internet and Society.</b>
<p>Citing examples from the 117 village clusters in the regions of Ratnagiri and Sindhudurga districts of Maharashtra the lecture hopes to throw light on questions like what is a village cluster, what does it mean to urbanize one village cluster and what do we need to do to urbanize one village cluster, how will we organize and coordinate the project. This apart the vision, status and action plans of the Konkan Corridor Project, the skills development in each cluster, intensive agriculture in each cluster, farm produce processing, water conservation in the project area, rivers in the project area, energy, transportation, industry, science communication, and self administration in each clusters will also be discussed.</p>
<hr />
<h2><br /></h2>
<h2><br /></h2>
<h2><br /></h2>
<h2><br /></h2>
<h2><br /></h2>
<h2><br /></h2>
<h2><br /></h2>
<h2><br /></h2>
<p> </p>
<h2>Vasant Gangavane</h2>
<p>In the 1970s Vasant Gangavane, a management graduate from Indian Institute of Management and Wharton, returned to his village in Konkan, Maharashtra, to give his people what he felt they needed most — the knowledge to manage their natural resources. In the process, he set up several models of rural development. Gangavane found that the rate at which people migrated out of the Konkan was very high, despite the fact that the area was rich in natural resources. He studied the area and realised that land improvement and watershed development were key issues. He conducted a series of experiments in agriculture, dairy and poultry farming before setting up the Gokul Prakalp Pratishthan (GPP) in 1978. With the Maharashtra government's comprehensive watershed management programme (COWDEP), Gangavane's <em>Pratishthan</em> afforested 400 hectares of land in Vilye village with mango and cashew trees. Gangavane then acquired 40 acres of wasteland in the village and built water conservation structures called Gokul bandharas. This resulted in the wells in the area being recharged and ensured enough drinking water for 25 families.This model was later adopted by the Indo-German Watershed Programme.</p>
<p>When Gangavane's project began, the village of Vilye was bereft of young people. Its young had migrated. Now there is reverse migration and 3,000 people have benefited from the programme. The village has been transformed — water runoff has been arrested and afforestation has changed the look of the village.</p>
<p>After the watershed programme, Gangavane formulated a theoretical plan for model villages called the Gokul project. The aim was communication and knowledgesharing. A participatory rural appraisal is also done to explore natural resource availability, potential and use. The awareness is meant to empower people and convince them that watershed programmes can address problems of poverty and inequity. Gangavane believes that with this knowledge, and with the resources available, a small family in the area can live sustainably.</p>
<p>Gangavane's Pratishthan has set up an Ashramshaala at Laanja, Ratnagiri district, which is a tribal residential school, where 300 children are provided free boarding and lodging up to the secondary level. GPP has also introduced computer education in schools. For his work Gangavane was awarded the Vanashree award, Vasantrao Naik Pratisthan award and the Indira Priyadarshini Vrikshamitra award.</p>
<p><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/konkan-corridor-project" class="internal-link" title="Konkan Corridor Project">Download the presentation here</a> [PDF, 228 KB]</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/talk-by-vasant-gangavane'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/talk-by-vasant-gangavane</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaLectureEvent TypeInternet GovernanceICT2012-04-13T13:49:32ZEventIron out contradictions in the Digital India programme
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/hindustan-times-july-15-2015-sumandro-chattapadhyay-iron-out-contradictions-in-the-digital-india-programme
<b>The Digital India initiative takes an ambitious 'Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani' approach to develop communication infrastructure, government information systems, and general capacity to digitise public life in India. I of course use 'public life' in the sense of the wide sphere of interactions between people and public institutions.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article was published in the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/iron-out-contradictions-in-the-digital-india-programme/article1-1369276.aspx">Hindustan Times</a> on July 15, 2015.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The 'Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani' approach involves putting together Japanese shoes, British trousers, and a Russian cap to make an entertainer with a pure Indian heart. In this case, the analogy must not be understood as different components of the initiative coming from different countries, but as coming from different efforts to use digital technologies for governance in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is deploying the Public Information Infrastructure vision, inclusive of the National Optical Fibre Network (now renamed as BharatNet) and the national cloud computing platform titled Meghraj, so passionately conceptualised and pursued by Sam Pitroda. It has chosen the Aadhaar ID and the authentication-as-a-service infrastructure built by Nandan Nilekani, Ram Sewak Sharma, and the team, as the identity platform for all governmental processes across Digital India projects. It has closely embraced the mandate proposed by Jaswant Singh led National Task Force on Information Technology and Software Development for completely electronic interface for paper-free citizen-government interactions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The digital literacy and online education aspects of the initiative build upon the National Mission on Education through ICT driven by Kapil Sibal. Two of the three vision areas of the Digital India initiative, namely 'Digital infrastructure as a utility to every citizen' and 'governance and service on demand,' are directly drawn from the two core emphasis clusters of the National e-Governance Plan designed by R. Chandrashekhar and team, namely the creation of the national and state-level network and data infrastructures, and the National Mission Mode projects to enable electronic delivery of services across ministries.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">And this is not a bad thing at all. In fact, the need for this programmatic and strategic convergence has been felt for quite some time now, and it is wonderful to see the Prime Minister directly addressing this need. Although, while drawing benefits from the existing programmes, the DI initiative must also deal with the challenges inherited in the process.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Recently circulated documents describes that the institutional framework for Digital India will be headed by a Monitoring Committee overseeing two main drivers of the initiative: the Digital India Advisory Group led by the minister of communication and information technology, and the Apex Committee chaired by the cabinet secretary. While the former will function primarily through guiding the implementation works by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), the latter will lead the activities of both the DeitY and the various sectoral ministries.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Here lies one possible institutional bottleneck that the Digital India architecture inherits from the National e-Governance Plan. Putting the DeitY in the driving seat of the digital transformation agenda in parallel with all other central government departments indicate an understanding that the transformation is fundamentally a technical issue. However, most often what is needed is administrative reform at a larger scale, and re-engineering of processes at a smaller scale.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Government agencies that have addressed such challenges in the past, such as the department of administrative reforms and public grievances, is not mentioned explicitly within the institutional framework, and instead DeitY has been trusted with a range of tasks that may be beyond its scope and core skills.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The danger of this is that the Digital India initiative will end up initiating more infrastructural and software projects, without transforming the underlying governmental processes. For example, the recently launched eBasta website creates a centralised online shop for publishers of educational materials to make books available for teachers to browse and select for their classes, and for the students to directly download, against payment or otherwise. The website has been developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing and DeitY. At the same time, the ministry of human resource development, which is responsible for matters related to public education, has already collaborated with the Central Institute of Educational Technology and the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education in TIFR to build a comprehensive platform for multi-media resources for education – the National Repository of Open Educational Resources. The initial plans of the DI initiative are yet to explicitly recognise that the key challenge is not in building new applications and websites, but aligning existing efforts.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This mismatch, between what the Digital India initiative proposes to achieve and how it plans to achieve it, is further demonstrated in the 'e-Governance Policy Initiatives under Digital India' document. The compilation lists the key policies to govern designing and implementation of the Digital India programmes, but surprisingly fails to mention any policies, acts, and pending bills approved or initiated by any previous government. This is remarkably counter-productive as the existing policy frameworks, such as the Framework for Mobile Governance, the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy, and the Interoperability Framework for e-Governance, are suitably placed to complement the new policies around use of free of open source softwares for e-governance systems, so as to ensure their transparency, interoperability, and inclusive outreach. Several pending bills like The National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010, The Electronic Delivery of Services Bill, 2011, and The Privacy (Protection) Bill, 2013, are absolutely fundamental for comprehensive and secure implementation of the various programmes under the Digital India initiative.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The next year will complete a decade of development of national e-governance systems in India, since the launch of National e-Governance Plan in 2006. Given this history of information systems sometimes partially implemented and sometimes working in isolation, a 'Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani' approach to digitise India is a very pragmatic one. What we surely do not need is increased contradiction among e-governance systems. Simultaneously, we neither need digital systems that centralise governmental power within one ministry on technical grounds, or expose citizens to abuse of their digital identity and assets due to lack of sufficient legal frameworks.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i><b>(Sumandro Chattapadhyay is research director, The Centre for Internet and Society. The views expressed are personal.)</b></i></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/hindustan-times-july-15-2015-sumandro-chattapadhyay-iron-out-contradictions-in-the-digital-india-programme'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/hindustan-times-july-15-2015-sumandro-chattapadhyay-iron-out-contradictions-in-the-digital-india-programme</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroDigital IndiaInternet GovernanceE-GovernanceICT2015-07-28T01:04:28ZBlog EntryInternational Conference on Innovation for Shared Prosperity
https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/international-conference-on-innovation-for-shared-prosperity
<b>Rohini Lakshane attended a conference on IP Rights, Competition and Standard Setting in the IT industry on August 20 and 21, 2016. The conference was organized by O.P. Jindal Global University and Jindal Initiative on Research in IP & Competition. </b>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/InternationalConference.jpg" alt="International Conference" class="image-inline" title="International Conference" /></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/international-conference-on-innovation-for-shared-prosperity'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/international-conference-on-innovation-for-shared-prosperity</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaIntellectual Property RightsAccess to KnowledgeICT2016-08-25T02:40:59ZNews ItemInformation & Communication Technology in Making a Healthy Information Society with special reference to use of ICTS in Educational Technology
https://cis-india.org/news/information-communication-technology-in-making-a-healthy-information-society-with-special-reference-to-use-of-icts-in-educational-technology
<b>The Department of Computer Science, Andhra Loyola College in collaboration with the Department of Computer Science, Krishna University will be organizing a UGC-sponsored National Seminar on August 11 and 12, 2014 at Andhra Loyola College in Vijayawada. </b>
<p>T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, Access to Knowledge from the Centre for Internet and Society will be giving a key note address at this event.</p>
<p>See the invitation below:</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/AndhraLoyolaCollegeInvite.png/@@images/d9beb902-d34e-4f42-93fd-b75528cc9da8.png" alt="Andhra Loyola College Invite" class="image-inline" title="Andhra Loyola College Invite" /></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/news/information-communication-technology-in-making-a-healthy-information-society-with-special-reference-to-use-of-icts-in-educational-technology'>https://cis-india.org/news/information-communication-technology-in-making-a-healthy-information-society-with-special-reference-to-use-of-icts-in-educational-technology</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaInternet GovernanceOpennessInformation TechnologyICT2014-07-18T09:06:20ZNews ItemICT Awareness Program for Myanmar Parliamentarians in Yangon
https://cis-india.org/news/ict-awareness-program-for-myanmar-parliamentarians-yangon
<b>Myanmar ICT for Development Organization-MIDO conducted ICT policy training for multi- party parliamentarian representatives in Yangon on July 26 and 27, 2014. Sunil Abraham presented on Innovation Ecosystem and Thinking about Internet Regulation.</b>
<hr />
<h2>Sunil's Presentations</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/thinking-about-internet-regulation.pdf" class="external-link">Thinking about Internet Regulation</a></li>
<li><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/innovation-ecosystem.pdf" class="external-link">Innovation Ecosystem</a></li>
</ul>
<hr />
<div>
<h3>Schedule</h3>
</div>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center"><b>Day 1</b></p>
</td>
<td>
<p align="center"><b>Topic</b></p>
</td>
<td>
<p align="center"><b>Resource Person</b></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>0930-1030</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>What is the significance of ICTs to legislators?</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Rohan Samarajiva (RS)</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>1030-1115</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Stories from the field: What do poor people do with ICTs?</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Helani Galpaya (HG)</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>1115-1145</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Break</p>
</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>1145-1245</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Legislation, policies, plans, strategies, regulation</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>RS</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>1245-1330</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Modalities of making and implementing ICT policy</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>RS and HG</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>1330-1430</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Lunch</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Videos</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>1430-1530</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>What is independent regulation? Why is it needed for sector growth</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>RS</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>1530-1600</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Break</p>
</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>1600-1700</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Panel discussion: How social media can be used in public life</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Sunil Abraham (SA), RS & Charitha Herath (CH)</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center"><b>Day 2</b></p>
</td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>930-1030</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Regulation of online speech</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Nay Phone Latt (NPL)</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>1030-1100</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Break</p>
</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>1100-1200</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>How to think about Internet policy</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>SA; counterpoint by CH</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>1200-1300</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Hope in the heart and money in the pocket: Results of effective policy</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>RS</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>1300-1400</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Lunch</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Videos</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>We plan to have simultaneous interpretation. There will be time for discussion within each session.</p>
<h2>Brief descriptions of sessions</h2>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>What is the significance of ICTs to legislators?</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Rohan Samarajiva</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This is the introduction, wherein we bring out the economic, social and political significance of ICTs. Why legislators should pay attention to the subject.</p>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Stories from the field: What do poor people do with ICTs?</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Helani Galpaya</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Here we present the findings of how the poor use ICTs, using demand-side data (both quant and quality) from Myanmar and countries in similar circumstances.</p>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Legislation, policies, plans, strategies, regulation</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>RS</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In this session, a former policy advisor/regulator will present a perspective on the important distinctions between legislation, policies, plans, strategies, and regulation.</p>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Modalities of making and implementing ICT policy</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>RS and HG</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Here we will delve into the practical details of making policy and of implementing policy, using examples.</p>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>What is independent regulation? Why is it needed for sector growth</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>RS</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Progress in electronic connectivity is the foundation that will reduce the frictions in the Myanmar economy, create jobs and exports and enable social, political and economic innovations. This requires massive investments, most of which will be private and most of which will come from outside the country. What legislators need to know about creating an environment that will attract and retain foreign investment in a globalized economy will be discussed.</p>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>How social media can be used in public life</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Sunil Abraham, RS and Charitha Herath</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In the panel discussion, SA will pose questions to a policy advisor who has used social media in a political campaign and a social media savvy current government official.</p>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>How to think about Internet policy</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>SA; counterpoint by CH</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A leading advocate of enlightened Internet policy, Sunil Abraham of the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India, will present his ideas, highlighting the international dimension of Internet policy. CH will share his perspectives as a serving government official.</p>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Regulation of online speech</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Nay Phone Latt</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Here, Myanmar’s leading blogger and founder of MIDO will discuss the current concerns with legislation that seeks to control online speech.</p>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Hope in the heart and money in the pocket: Results of effective policy</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>RS</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Results of effective policy implementation will be discussed with reference to specific country experiences.</p>
<h2>Resource persons</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Rohan Samarajiva, PhD, (program director) </b> is founding Chair of LIRNEasia, an ICT policy and regulation think tank active across emerging Asian and Pacific economies. He was Team Leader at the Sri Lanka Ministry for Economic Reform, Science and Technology (2002-04) responsible for infrastructure reforms, including participation in the design of the USD 83 million e-Sri Lanka Initiative. He was Director General of Telecommunications in Sri Lanka (1998-99). In this capacity, he established the Telecom Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka; conducted the first public hearing and public notice proceedings; successfully concluded a license-violation proceeding; and laid the foundation for a competitive market. He was also a founder director of the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (2003-05), Honorary Professor at the University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka (2003-04), Visiting Professor of Economics of Infrastructures at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands (2000-03) and Associate Professor of Communication and Public Policy at the Ohio State University in the US (1987-2000). Dr. Samarajiva was also Policy Advisor to the Ministry of Post and Telecom in Bangladesh (2007-09).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Sunil Abraham </b> is the Executive Director of Bangalore based research organization, the Centre for Internet and Society. He founded Mahiti in 1998, a company committed to creating high impact technology and communications solutions. Today, Mahiti employs more than 50 engineers. Sunil continues to serve on the board. Sunil was elected an Ashoka fellow in 1999 to 'explore the democratic potential of the Internet' and was also granted a Sarai FLOSS fellowship in 2003. Between June 2004 and June 2007, Sunil also managed the International Open Source Network, a project of United Nations Development Programme's Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme serving 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Helani Galpaya</b> is LIRNEasia’s Chief Executive Officer. Helani leads LIRNEasia’s 2012-2014 IDRC funded research on improving customer life cycle management practices in the delivery of electricity and e-government services using ICTs. She recently completed an assessment of how the poor in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka use telecenters to access government services. For UNCTAD and GTZ she authored a report on how government procurement practices can be used to promote a country’s ICT sector and for the World Bank/InfoDev Broadband Toolkit, a report on broadband strategies in Sri Lanka. She has been an invited speaker at various international forums on topics ranging from m-Government to ICT indicators to communicating research to policy makers. Prior to LIRNEasia, Helani worked at the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka, implementing the World-Bank funded e-Sri Lanka initiative. Prior to her return to Sri Lanka, she worked in the United States at Booz & Co., Marengo Research, Citibank, and Merrill Lynch. Helani holds a Masters in Technology and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Bachelor’s in Computer Science from Mount Holyoke College, USA.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Charitha Herath</b> has served as Secretary, Ministry of Mass Media and Information in the Government of Sri Lanka since 2012. Prior to his present appointment, he was the Chairman of the Central Environment Authority. Currently on secondment for national services from his permanent academic position as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka, he continues to work on his academic research, specializing in governments and politics in Asia, ethnic studies, cultural psychology, social and political philosophy, with his main focus on political psychology. More detail at <a href="http://charithaherath.wordpress.com/about-2/">http://charithaherath.wordpress.com/about-2/</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Nay Phone Latt</b> is the Co-founder and Executive Director of Myanmar ICT Development Organization (MIDO). He graduated from Yangon Technological University with a civil engineering degree in 2004. He co-founded the Myanmar Blogger Society in 2007. Award winner of PEN Barbara Goldsmith Award and RFS’s Cyber Dissidents Award. Former Political Prisoner. CEC Member of Myanmar Journalists Association(MJA) Chief Editor of ThanLwinAinMat Online Magazine (www.thanlwin.com). Member of Board of Directors of House of Media & Entertainment (HOME).</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/news/ict-awareness-program-for-myanmar-parliamentarians-yangon'>https://cis-india.org/news/ict-awareness-program-for-myanmar-parliamentarians-yangon</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaInternet GovernanceICT2014-07-29T09:37:26ZNews ItemFuture of Work: Report of the ‘Workshop on the IT/IT-eS Sector and the Future of Work in India’
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/future-of-work-report-of-the-workshop-on-the-it-it-es-sector-and-the-future-of-work-in-india
<b>This report provides an overview of the proceedings and outcomes of the Workshop on the IT/IT-eS Sector and the Future of Work in India (hereinafter referred to as the “Workshop”), organised at Omidyar Networks’ office in Bangalore, on June 29, 2018.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This report was authored by Torsha Sarkar, Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rath. It was edited by Elonnai Hickok. Akash Sriram, Divya Kushwaha and Torsha Sarkar provided transcription and research assistance. A PDF of the report can be accessed <a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/pdf-it-sector-workshop" class="internal-link" title="PDF IT Sector Workshop">here</a>.</p>
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<h3>Introduction</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Workshop was attended by a diverse group of stakeholders which included industry representatives, academicians and researchers, and civil society. The discussions went over various components of the transition in the sector to Industry 4.0, including the impact of Industry 4.0-related technological innovations on work broadly in India, and specifically in the IT/IT-eS sector (hereinafter referred to as the “<strong>Sector</strong>”). The discussion focused on the reciprocal impact on socio-political dimensions, the structure of employment, and forms of work within workspaces. <br /> <br /> The Workshop was divided into three sessions. The first session was themed around the adoption and impact of Industry 4.0 technologies vis-a-vis the organisation of work. Within this the key questions were: the nature of the technologies being adopted, the causes that are driving the uptake of these technologies, and the ‘tasks’ constituting jobs in the Sector. <br /> <br /> The second session focussed on the role of skilling and re-skilling measures as mitigators to projected displacement of jobs. The issues dealt with included shifts in company, educational, and social competency profiles as a result of Industry 4.0, transformations in the predominant pedagogy of education, vocational, and skill development programmes in India, and their success in creating employable workers and filling skill gaps in the industry. <br /> <br /> The third session looked at social welfare considerations and public policy interventions that may be necessitated in the wake of potential technological unemployment owing to Industry 4.0. The session was designed with a specific focus on the axes of gender and class, addressing questions of precarity, wages, and job security in the future of work for marginalized groups in the workforce.</p>
<h3>Preliminary Comments</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Workshop opened with a brief introduction on the research the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is undertaking on the Future of Work (hereinafter referred to as “<strong>FoW</strong>”) vis-a-vis Industry 4.0. The conception of Industry 4.0 that CIS is looking at is the technical integration of cyber-physical systems in production and logistics on one hand, and the use of internet of things (IoT) and the connection between everyday objects and services in the industrial processes on the other. The scope of the project, including the impact of automation on the organisation of employment and shifts in the nature and forms of work, including through the gig economy, and microwork, was detailed. The historical lens taken by the project, and the specific focus on questions of inequality across gender, class, language, and skill were highlighted.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">It was pointed out that CIS’ research, in this regard, comes from the necessity of localising and re-examining the global narratives around Industry 4.0. While new technologies will be developed and implemented globally, the impact of these technologies in the Indian context would be mediated through local, political and socio-economic structures. For instance, the Third Industrial Revolution, largely associated with the massification of computing, telecommunications and electronics, is still unfolding in India, while attempts are already being made to adapt to Industry 4.0. These issues provided a starting point to the discussion on the impact of Industry 4.0 in India.</p>
<h3>Qualifying Technological Change</h3>
<p><strong>Contexualising the narrative with historical perspectives</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The panel for the first session commenced with a discussion around a historical perspective on job loss being brought about due to mechanisation. The distinction between Industry 3.0 and 4.0, it was suggested, was largely arbitrary, inasmuch as technological innovation has been a continuous process and has been impacting lives and the way work is perceived. It was argued that the only factor differentiating Industry 4.0 from previous industrial revolutions is ‘intelligent’ technology that is automating routine cognitive tasks. The computer, programmatic logic control (PLC) and data (called the ‘new oil’) were also a part of Industry 3.0, but intelligent technologies are able to provide greater analytical power under Industry 4.0.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The discussion also went over the distinction between the terms ‘job’, ‘task’ and ‘work’. It was argued that the term ‘job’ might be treated as a subset of the term ‘work’, with the latter moving beyond livelihood to encompass questions of dignity and a sense of fulfilment in the worker. With relation to this distinction, it was mentioned that the jobs at the risk of automation would be those that fulfill only the basic level in Maslow’s hierarchy - implying largely routine manual tasks. Additionally, it was explained that although these jobs will continue to use labour through Industry 4.0, it is only the nature of technological enablement that would change to automate more dangerous and hazardous tasks.</p>
<p><strong>Technology as a long-term enabler of job creation</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">It was argued that technology has historically been associated with job creation. Historical instances cited included that of popular anxiety due to anticipated job loss through the uptake of the spinning machine and the steam engine, whereas the actual reduction in the cost of production led to greater job creation, increased mobility and improved quality of life in the long-term. Such instances were used to further argue that technology has historically not resulted in long-term job reductions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The platform economy was posited as a model for creating jobs, through the efficient matching of supply and demand through digital platforms. It was indicated that rural to urban migration is aided by such platforms, as labourers voluntarily enrol in skilling initiatives given the certainty of employment through platformization. It was further argued that historically, Indian workers have been educated rather than skilled, and that platformization and automation, coupled with the elasticity of human needs, will provide greater incentives for technically skilled workers by creating desirable jobs.</p>
<p><strong>Factors leading to differential adoption of automation</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In relation to the adoption of the technologies Industry 4.0, it was argued that the mere existence of a technology does not necessitate its scalablity at an industrial level. Scalability would be possible only when the cost of labour is high relative to the costs entailed in technological adoption. This was supported by data from a McKinsey Report<a name="_ftnref1" href="#_ftn1"><sup><sup>[1]</sup></sup></a> which indicated that countries like the US and Germany would be impacted in the short term by automation, because their cost of labour is higher. Conversely, since the cost of labour in India is relatively cheap, the reality of technological displacement is still far away and the impact would not be immediate.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Similarly, a distinction was also made to account for the differential impact of automation in various sectors. For instance, it was indicated that since the IT/IT-eS sector in India is based on exporting services and outsourcing of businesses. Accordingly, if Germany automates its automobile industry, that would impact India less than if it automates the IT/IT-eS sector, as the latter is more reliant on exporting its services to developed economies. The IT/IT-eS sector was further broken down into sub-sectors with the intention of highlighting the differential impact of automation and FoW in each of these sub-sectors. It was agreed that the BPO sub-sector would be more adversely impacted than core IT services, given its constitution of routine nature of tasks at a higher risk of automation.</p>
<h3>Disaggregating India’s Skilling Approach</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The discussion around skilling measures was contextualised in the Indian context by alluding to data collected from the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) surveys. The data revealed that around 36% of India’s total population is under the age of seventeen and approximately 13% are between 18 - 24. Additional statistics suggested that only around a quarter of the workforce aged 18-24 years had achieved secondary and higher secondary education and close to 13% of the workforce was illiterate. While these numbers included both male and female workers, it was pointed out that it was an incomplete dataset as it excluded transgender workers. It was suggested it should be this segment of the Indian demographic that is targeted for significant skilling pushes, which could be catalysed through specific vocational training centres. It was also suggested that there was a need for to restructure the role of the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) in the Indian skilling framework.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A comprehensive picture was painted by conceptualising the skilling framework in India as 5 distinct pillars. This conceptualisation was used to debunk the narrative around NSDC being the sole entity pushing for skill development in the country. The NSDC’s function in the skilling framework was posited as providing funding to skilling initiatives with programmes lasting for a period of 3 months. These 3- month programmes were critiqued for being insufficient for effective training, especially given the low skill levels of workers going into the programmes. The NSDC’s placement rate of 12% as per their own records was used to support this argument. Further suggestions on making the NSDC more effective were made in a later discussion<a name="_ftnref2" href="#_ftn2"><sup><sup>[2]</sup></sup></a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Related to this, the second pillar of vocational skilling was said to be the Industrial Training Institute (ITI). The third pillar was said to be the school system which was critiqued for does not offering vocational education at secondary and senior secondary levels. The fourth pillar comprised of the 16 ministries which governed the labour laws in India - none of whose courses were National Skills Qualifications Framework (NSQF) compliant.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The fifth pillar was construed as the industry itself and the enterprise-based training it conducted. However, it was stated that India’s share of registered companies who did enterprise-based training was dismal. In 2009, the share of enterprise-based training was 16% which rose in 2014 to 36%. Further, most of these 36% were registered large firms as opposed to small and medium sized enterprises. Unregistered companies, it was suggested, were simply doing informal apprenticeships.</p>
<p><strong>Joint public and private skilling initiatives </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In addition to government sponsored skilling initiatives, attention was directed to skill development partnerships that took the shape of public-private initiatives. As an example, it was said that that a big player in the ride-hailing economy had worked with NSDC and other skilling entities to ensure that soft skills were being imparted to their driver partners before they were on-boarded onto the platform.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">It was also brought forth that innovative forms of skilling and training were gaining traction in the education sector as well in the private sector. This was instantiated through instances of uptake of platforms which apply artificial intelligence, and within that machine learning based techniques, to generate and disseminate easier- to- consume video-based learning.</p>
<h3>Driving Job Growth: Solving for Structural Eccentricities of the Indian Labour Market</h3>
<p><strong>Catalysing manufacturing-led job growth</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The discussion began by discussing specific dynamics of the Indian labour markets in the context of the Indian economy. It was pointed out the productivity level of the services sector is not as high as the productivity level of manufacturing, which is problematic for job creation in a developing economy such as India witnessing capital-intensive growth in the manufacturing sector. The underlying argument was that the jobs of the future in the Indian context will have to be created in the manufacturing sector.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Several macroeconomic policy interventions were suggested to reverse the trend of capital-intensive growth in order to make manufacturing the frontier for enhanced job creation. The need for a trade policy in consonance with the industrial policy was stated as imperative. This was substantiated by highlighting the lack of an inverted duty structure governing the automobile sector that has led India to be amongst the biggest manufacturers of automobiles. The inverted duty structure entails finished products having a lower import tariff and a lower customs duty when compared to import of raw materials or intermediates. However, it was highlighted that a dissonant industrial policy failed to acknowledge that at least 50% of india’s manufacturing comes from Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and provided no assistance to MSMEs in obtaining credit, market access or technology upgradation. On the other hand, it was asserted that large corporates get 77% of the total bank credit.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Another challenge that was highlighted was with the Government of India’s severely underfunded manufacturing cluster development programs under the aegis of the Ministry of Textiles and the Ministry of MSMEs. For sectors that contribute majorly towards India’s manufacturing output, it was asserted that these programmes were astonishingly bereft of any governing policy and suffer from several foundational issues. Moreover, it was observed that these clusters are located around the country in Tier 2, 3 and 4 cities where the quality of infrastructure is largely lacking. The Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) program devised for the development of these cities is also myopic as the the target cities are not the ones where these manufacturing clusters are located. The rationale behind such an approach was that building infrastructure at geographical sites of job creation would lead to an increase in productivity which would in turn attract greater investment. This would have to necessarily be accompanied by hastening the setting up of industrial corridors - the lackadaisical approach to which was stated as a key component of India being outpaced by other developing economies in the South East Asian region.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">An additional policy intervention that was suggested was from the lens of setting up of skilling centres by NSDC in proximity to these manufacturing clusters where the job creation is being evidenced as opposed to larger metropolitan cities.</p>
<p><strong>Carving out space for a vocational training paradigm</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">It was asserted that the focus of skilling needs to be on the manufacturing rather than services sector, given the centrality of manufacturing to a developing economy undergoing an atypical structural transformation<a name="_ftnref3" href="#_ftn3"><sup><sup>[3]</sup></sup></a> - as outlined above. Further compounding the problem of jobless growth, it was stated that 50% of the manufacturing workforce have 8 or less years of education and only 5% of the workforce including those that have technical education are vocationally trained, according to the NSS, 62nd Round on Employment and Unemployment.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A gulf in primary and secondary education vis-a-vis vocational training was pointed as one of the most predominant causes behind the much touted ‘skills gap’ that the Indian workforce is said to be battling with. Using data to further cull out the argument, it was said that in 2007, the net enrollment in India for primary education had already reached 97% and that between 2010 - 2015, the secondary education enrollment rate went from 58% to 85%.<a name="_ftnref4" href="#_ftn4"><sup><sup>[4]</sup></sup></a> It was hypothesised that the latter may have risen to 90% levels since. Furthermore, the higher education enrollment rate also commensurately went up from 11% in 2006 to 26-27% in 2017.<a name="_ftnref5" href="#_ftn5"><sup><sup>[5]</sup></sup></a> It was argued that this is impossible to achieve without gender parity in higher education. This gender parity in education was contrasted with the systematic decline in the women’s labour force participation that India has been witnessing in the last 30 years.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Consequently, the ‘massification’ of higher education in India over the past 10 years was critiqued as ineffectual in comparison to the Chinese model, as the latter focused on engaging students in vocational training, which the Indian education system had failed to do. The role of the gig economy in creating job opportunities despite this gap between educational and vocational training was regarded as important, especially given the lack of growth in the traditional job markets.</p>
<h3>Accounting for the Margins</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">With relation to the profiles of workers within sectors, it was indicated that factors such as gender, class, skill, income, and race must be accounted for to determine the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ of automation. Several points were discussed with relation to this disaggregation.</p>
<p><strong>Technology as an equaliser? Gender and skill-biased technological change</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">First, the idea of technology and development as objective and neutral forces was questioned, with the assertion that human decision-makers, who more often than not tend to be male, allow inherent biases to creep into outputs, processes, and objectives of automation. Data from the Belong Survey in IT services<a name="_ftnref6" href="#_ftn6"><sup><sup>[6]</sup></sup></a> indicated that the proportion of women in core engineering was 26% of the workforce, while that in software testing was 33%. Coupled with the knowledge that automation and technology would automate software testing first, it was argued that jobs held by female workers were positioned at a higher immediate risk of automation than male workers.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The ‘Leaky Pipe Problem’ in STEM industries i.e. the observation that female workers tend to be concentrated in entry level jobs, while senior management is largely male dominated was also brought to the fore. This was used to bolster the argument that female workers in the Sector will lose out in the shorter term, when automation adversely impacts the lower level jobs.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A survey conducted by Aspiring Minds<a name="_ftnref7" href="#_ftn7"><sup><sup>[7]</sup></sup></a> which tracked the employability of the engineering graduates was utilised to further flesh out skill biased technological change. As per the survey, 40% of the graduating students are employable in the BPO sector, while only 3% of the students are employable in the sector for software production. With the BPO sector likelier to be impacted more adversely than core IT services, it was emphasised that policy considerations should be very specific in their ambit.</p>
<p><strong>Social security and the platform economy</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The discussion around the platform economy commenced with a focus on how it had created economic opportunities in the formal sector by matching demand and supply on one hand, and by reducing inefficiency in the system through technology on the other. It was pointed out that these newer forms of work were creating millions of entrepreneurship opportunities that did not exist previously. These opportunities, it was suggested, were in themselves flexible and contributing the greater push towards enhancing the numbers of those that come within the ambit of India’s formal economy.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This discussion was countered by suggesting that the shift of the workforce from the informal sector to the formal sector, which companies in the gig economy claimed they contributed to, have instead restricted the kind of lives gig workers have been living historically. As an instance, it was pointed out that a farmer who had been working with a completely different set of skills was now being asked to shift to a new set of skills which would be suited for a very specific role and not transposable across occupations. In other words, it would not be meaningful skilling. It was also pointed out that what distinguishes formal work from informal is whether the worker has social security net or not - mere access to banking services or filing of tax returns was not sufficient for characterising a workforce as being formal in nature.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Relatedly, the possibility of social security was discussed for the unorganised sector and microworkers. One of the possibilities discussed was to ensure state subsidised maternity, disability, and death security, and pensions for workers below the poverty line. The fiscal brunt borne by the government for such a scheme was anticipated to not be above 0.4% of the GDP. It was suggested that this would move forward the conversation on minimum wage and fair work, which would be of great importance in broader conversations around working conditions in the platform economy.</p>
<p><strong><em> </em>The interplay of gender and platformisation</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">It was highlighted that trends in automation are going to change the occupational structure in the digital economy - the effect of which will especially be felt in cognitive routine jobs given their increased propensity to platformisation. A World Economic Forum report<a name="_ftnref8" href="#_ftn8"><sup><sup>[8]</sup></sup></a> was cited which indicated the disproportional risk of unemployment faced by women given their concentration in cognitive routine jobs was also brought up.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The discussion logically undertook a deeper look at the platformisation of work with a specific focus on freelance microwork and its impact on the female labour force and culled out certain positive mandates arising from such newer forms of work. It was suggested that industries are more likely to employ female workers in microwork due to lower rates of attrition, and flexible labour. It was reiterated that freelancing in India extends beyond data entry and other routine jobs, to include complex work - thereby also catering to skilled workers desirous of flexibility. Platforms designing systems to meet the demand for flexible work were also discussed, such as platforms geared towards female workers undertaking reskilling measures and counselling for females returning from maternity leave or sabbaticals. Additionally, the difficulty of defining freelancing under existing frameworks of employment, compounded by the lack of legal structures for such work, was outlined.</p>
<h3>Systemic challenges within the Indian labour law framework</h3>
<p><strong>Static design of legal processes</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Labour law was, naturally, acknowledged as a key determinant in the conversation around both the uptake and impact of automative technologies encapsulated within Industry 4.0.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The archaic nature of India’s labour law framework was highlighted as a major impediment to ensuring both worker rights as well as the ease of conducting commerce. It was pointed out that organised labour continues to be under the ambit of the Industrial Disputes Act, which was made effective in 1947, has undergone minimal amendments since. This was critiqued on the basis that the framework for the law is embedded in its historical context, and while the industrial landscape in the country has transformed drastically since the implementation of the Industrial Disputes Act, the legal framework has not evolved. Similarly, the Karnataka Shops and Establishments Act, 1961 which regulates the Sector today was enacted much before the Sector even opened up in India in the 1990s.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Additionally, it was pointed out that the consolidation of the fragmented extant framework of labour laws in India was being consolidated into 4 labour codes without any wholesale modernisation push reforming the laws being consolidated. Consequently, it was argued that the government has to drive changes through policies alone as the legal framework remains static. Barriers to implementation of adequate policies were also discussed, such as the political impact of labour policies, lack of state initiative to deal with the impact of the future of work, apart from the historic inability of the law to keep up with the state of labour and economy.</p>
<p><strong>Labour law arbitrage </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">One of the reasons behind the increasing contractualizing of labour in India was attributed to over-regulation. There was consensus that the labour law regime was not conducive to industry in India leading to greater opportunistic behaviours from industry participants. It was acknowledged that the political clout that a lot of contractors (of labourers) enjoy along with providing primary employers greater flexibility to hire and fire employees at will has led to a widespread utilisation of contract labour entities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">It was further stated that industry behaviour has adopted several other tools of arbitrage to not consider labour law as a key impediment in the ease of scaling business. Empirical evidence of labour law arbitrage was cited to drive home the point - according to national surveys, 80-85% of enterprises employ less than 99 workers as the law mandates stricter compliance requirements for enterprises employing 100 or more workers<a name="_ftnref9" href="#_ftn9"><sup><sup>[9]</sup></sup></a>. This was acknowledged a serious hurdle to scaling businesses.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Problems behind other apparently well-intentioned legislation from a public policy lens having counterproductive consequences was also highlighted. In the space of labour laws, the example of the recently enacted Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017 was cited. By enhancing maternity benefits, without accounting for other provisioning such as a paternity benefit inclusion, it was anticipated that companies may entirely shy away from hiring women.</p>
<p><strong>Policy Paralysis</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The discussion progressed towards a high-level discussion around the efficacy of law vis-a-vis state policy as a means to create a system of checks and balances in the context of Industry 4.0. It was highlighted that law, by design, would be outpaced by technological change. The common law system of law operating in India is premised on a time-tested emphasis on post-facto regulation. In other words, it is reactionary. While policy making in India suffers from a similar plague of playing catch-up, it is in large part due to a bureaucratic structure premised on generalism - a pressing need for domain expertise in policy making was emphasised upon. Having said that, it was stated that it is the institutional design of policy making institutions that needs rectification. What was acknowledged was the success, albeit scant, that individual states have had in policy making catering to specific yet diverse domains. A greater push towards clear and progressive evidence-based policy pushes was stressed upon with the anticipation that it would lead to self-regulation by the industry itself - be it in terms of the future of employment or of the economic direction that the industry will embark on.</p>
<h3>Concluding Remarks</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The discussions during the course of the Workshop situated the discourse around Industry 4.0 within the contours of the Indian labour realities and the IT sector within that.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As a useful starting point, various broader perspectives around the impact of technological change on the quantum of jobs were brought forth. While the industry perspective was that of technology as an enabler of job creation in the long-run, it was sufficiently tempered by concerns around those impacted adversely in the short to medium-term time frames. These concerns coalesced towards understanding the potential impact of Industry 4.0 on the nature of work, as well as mitigation tools to ease the impact of technological disruption on labour.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Important facets of technological adoption within the Sector were highlighted, such as potential for scalability as well as the distinct eccentricities of the various sub-sectors the IT sector subsumed. The differential impact within the various sub-sectors was pegged to the differential composition of automatable tasks (routine, rule-based) within each sub-sector. However, questions regarding the exact contours of task composition were left unanswered signalling a potential area for further research. On the other hand, the primary challenge to technological adoption faced from the labour-supply side was skilling, or the lack thereof. This was contextualised in the larger scheme of structural issues plaguing the skilling machinery operating in the country, which lead to inadequate dispensation of technical and vocational education and training (TVET). In terms of additional structural issues that would potentially have an impact on how Industry 4.0 plays out in the Indian context, attention was directed towards overdue reform of the labour law framework which has already struggled with incorporating newer forms of working engagements such as platform and gig work, that are being evidenced as a part of Industry 4.0.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">An underlying theme that found mention across sessions was the need to devote attention to prevent further marginalisation as a consequence of technological disruption of the already marginalised. Evidence from government datasets as well as from literature around concepts such as skill biased technological change, the leaky pipe problem, and the U-shaped curve of female labour force participation were cited to explicate these issues. The merits of different policy measures to address these concerns, such as social security, living wages, and maternity benefits were also discussed.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">While the Workshop touched upon several facets of the discourse around Industry 4.0 in the Sector, it also sprung up areas that require further inquiry. Questions around where in the value chain use-cases for Industry 4.0 technologies were emerging needed a more comprehensive understanding. Moreover, the impact of Sector Skill Councils (SSCs), a central aspect of the skilling ecosystem in India, wasn’t touched upon. An additional path of inquiry that emerged pertained to evolving constructive reforms to legal and economic policy frameworks as top-down interventions within the Sector that could be anticipated to play a significant role in the uptake and impact of Industry 4.0 technologies.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn1" href="#_ftnref1"><sup><sup>[1]</sup></sup></a> McKinsey Global Institute, <em>A future that works: Automation, employment, and productivity</em>, https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/featured%20insights/Digital%20Disruption/Harnessing%20automation%20for%20a%20future%20that%20works/MGI-A-future-that-works-Executive-summary.ashx, (accessed 10 August 2018).</p>
<p><a name="_ftn2" href="#_ftnref2"><sup><sup>[2]</sup></sup></a> See discussion under ‘Catalysing manufacturing-led job growth‘.</p>
<p><a name="_ftn3" href="#_ftnref3"><sup><sup>[3]</sup></sup></a> R. Verma, Structural Transformation and Jobless Growth in the Indian Economy, <em>The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Economy</em>, 2012.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn4" href="#_ftnref4"><sup><sup>[4]</sup></sup></a> S. Mehrotra, ‘The Indian Labour Market: A Fallacy, Two Looming Crises and a Tragedy’, <em>CSE Working Paper</em>, April 2018.</p>
<p><a name="_ftn5" href="#_ftnref5"><sup><sup>[5]</sup></sup></a> ibid.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn6" href="#_ftnref6"><sup><sup>[6]</sup></sup></a> Mohita Nagpal, ‘Women in tech: There are 3 times more male engineers to females’, <em>belong.co</em>, http://blog.belong.co/gender-diversity-indian-tech-companies, (accessed 10 August 2018).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn7" href="#_ftnref7"><sup><sup>[7]</sup></sup></a> Aspiring Minds, <em>National Programming Skills Report - Engineers 2017</em>, <a href="https://www.aspiringminds.com/sites/default/files/National%20Programming%20Skills%20Report%20-%20Engineers%202017%20-%20Report%20Brief.pdf">https://www.aspiringminds.com/sites/default/files/National%20Programming%20Skills%20Report%20-%20Engineers%202017%20-%20Report%20Brief.pdf</a>, (accessed 11 August 2018).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="_ftn8" href="#_ftnref8"><sup><sup>[8]</sup></sup></a> World Economic Forum, <em>The Future of Jobs Employment, Skills and Workforce Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Global Challenge Insight Report</em>, January 2016.</p>
<p><a name="_ftn9" href="#_ftnref9"><sup><sup>[9]</sup></sup></a> Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, <em>All India Report of Sixth Economic Census</em>, Government of India, 2014.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/future-of-work-report-of-the-workshop-on-the-it-it-es-sector-and-the-future-of-work-in-india'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/future-of-work-report-of-the-workshop-on-the-it-it-es-sector-and-the-future-of-work-in-india</a>
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No publisherambikaInternet GovernanceInformation TechnologyICT2020-03-05T19:03:07ZBlog EntryFill The Gap: Global Discussion on Digital Natives
https://cis-india.org/research/grants/digital-natives-with-a-cause/dntweet
<b>More often than not people don't understand the new practices inspired by Internet and digital technologies. As such a series of accusations have been leveled against the Digital Natives. Educators, policy makers, scholars, and parents have all raised their worries without hearing out from the people they are concerned about. Hivos has initiated an online global discussion about Digital Natives. So, to voice your opinion, start tweeting with us now #DigitalNatives.</b>
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<h2>If you cannot attend Fill The Gap, you can also join us in a global discussion on some of the issues being discussed at #DigitalNatives<br /></h2>
<br />
<p>1.
Are
you an apolitical consumer, or do you have ambitions?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNatives" target="_blank">http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNatives</a></p>
<p>2.
Are
you a little prince or princess, who only wants to talk to like minded people
or are you different?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesPrincess" target="_blank">http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesPrincess</a></p>
<p>3.
Is
Wikipedia your bible or do you really know something?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesWiki" target="_blank">http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesWiki</a></p>
<p>4.
Are
you a digital dinosaur? They say you don’t know anything about ICT!</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalDinosaur" target="_blank">http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalDinosaur</a></p>
<p>5.
Why
use the Internet, why don’t you march the streets?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesProtest" target="_blank">http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesProtest</a></p>
<p>6.
Plans
to change the world? What do you need?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesChanceTheWorld" target="_blank">http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesChanceTheWorld</a></p>
<br />If you are in Amsterdam, here is the information you will need to attend the event:<br />
<h2>Fill the Gap! - 7</h2>
<h3>
R U Online?</h3>
<div class="date">Date: 15 January 2010 </div>
<div class="date">Time: 12.30 until
17.00 hour</div>
<div class="date">Location: Het Sieraad, Postjesweg 1, Amsterdam</div>
<br />
<strong></strong>The seventh edition of Fill the Gap! is all about the power of youth
and IT in developing countries. How can their skills be strengthened
and put to use for a better world? Hivos, apart from cohosting the
event, will be involving digital natives to hear their stories about
ICT and engagement.
<br />
<p>
An Open Space event on the potential of new (mobile) media and youth in
developing countries. For everyone in politics, the profit and the
non-profit sectors who is interested in ICT and international
development cooperation.</p>
<p>
The use of new (mobile) technology is the most natural thing in the world for the youth of today.</p>
<p>
Shaped by the digital era and at ease with creativeity, these
innovators use new media to change the world. Just think of the Twitter
revolution in Iran. What can the international development sector learn
from this? How could international development cooperation use the
potential power of youth to tackle development problems?</p>
<p> The seventh edition of Fill the Gap! is all about the power of
youth and IT in developing countries. How can their skills be
strengthened and put to use for a better world? The kick-off will be
hosted by Jennifer Corriero, co-founder of Taking IT Global: the
international platform for youth and the use of new media for a better
world. Then the floor is open to discuss your own ideas with people
from new media, the business world and the international development
sector during the Open Space sessions. Join in: come to Amsterdam on
Friday January 15th and be inspired during Fill the Gap!<br />
<br /> Registration is free. The programme is in English.</p>
<br /><a href="http://www.fill-the-gap.nl/Fill_the_gap_7?" target="_blank">» Fill the Gap</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/research/grants/digital-natives-with-a-cause/dntweet'>https://cis-india.org/research/grants/digital-natives-with-a-cause/dntweet</a>
</p>
No publishernishantSocial mediaDigital ActivismDigital GovernanceDigital NativesAgencyYouthFeaturedCyberculturesNew PedagogiesDigital subjectivitiesICT2010-01-22T10:54:13ZBlog EntryConsultation on Draft E-commerce Policy
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/consultation-on-draft-e-commerce-policy
<b>Alternative Law Forum and IT for Change organized a public consultation on draft e-commerce policy on March 14, 2019 at Tony Hall, Ashirwad , Off St.Marks Road in Bangalore. Arindrajit Basu attended the event.</b>
<p class="moz-quote-pre" style="text-align: justify; ">The newly created Department Promotion of Industry and Indian Trade has published a draft e-commerce policy ( [ <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://dipp.gov.in/whats-new/draft-national-e-commerce-policy-stakeholder-comments">https://dipp.gov.in/whats-new/draft-national-e-commerce-policy-stakeholder-comments</a> | <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://dipp.gov.in/whats-new/draft-national-e-commerce-policy-stakeholder-comments">https://dipp.gov.in/whats-new/draft-national-e-commerce-policy-stakeholder-comments</a> ] ) inviting public comments with a deadline of March end. All actors involved in commerce – from traders, to street vendors, to vendors selling on online platforms, apart from domestic and foreign e-commerce companies are greatly impacted by this new policy. At one level, this policy would determine the relative power among these actors vying for the Indian retail space. At another level, however, the draft policy is about who should own personal, social and commercial data that is behind e-commerce – whether people and communities about whom the data is or it can entirely be owned and appropriated by the e-commerce companies, mostly foreign ones, who collect the data. EU is also examining whether data about and around products put by sellers on online platforms is owned by the these sellers or by platforms. These are issues which need wide and deep discussions by all sections of society from traders , technology enthusiasts, lawyers, civil society and all others. However there is very little public discussions on the same. It is towards this end that we are organising this discussions. We would also like to explore possible inputs that different groups can make to the policy. The Joint Action Committee Against Foreign Retail and E-commerce is one group that has prepared some points on behalf of traders community, which are enclosed, and these too can be discussed at the meeting among others.</p>
<p class="moz-quote-pre" style="text-align: justify; ">The discussion was a first of many more discussions. The participants of this consultation were researchers, lawyers, street vendors union representatives, traders associations representatives and others.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/consultation-on-draft-e-commerce-policy'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/consultation-on-draft-e-commerce-policy</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminInternet GovernanceICT2019-03-20T15:47:02ZNews ItemComments on Draft Electronic Health Records Standards
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comments-on-draft-electronic-health-records-standards
<b>The Centre for Internet & Society submitted its comments on the Draft Electronic Health Records Standards to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.</b>
<p> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">To,<br />Ministry of Health and Family Welfare,<br />Room 307 D,<br />Nirman Bhavan,<br />New Delhi 110108</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Subject: Comments on the Electronic Health Record (EHR) Standards of India</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Electronic Health Record (EHR) Standards (hereinafter “EHR Standards”) were publicly circulated on March 18, 2016 seeking comments and views from stakeholders and the general public. Having reviewed the EHR Standards and referred to other robust standards dealing with the same subject matter, we wish to submit the following comments on the EHR Standards.</p>
<h4>Standards and Interoperability</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The EHR Standards state that the "primary aim of interoperability standards is to ensure syntactic (structural) and semantic (inherent meaning) interoperability of data amongst systems at all times" <a name="_ftnref1">[1]</a>. It is mentioned that set of standards outlined in this document represents an incremental approach to adopting standards and that they need to be flexible and modifiable to adapt to the demographic and resource diversity in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Comments:</strong></p>
<ol>
<li>
<div style="text-align: justify;">The EHR Standards make a reference to syntactic and semantic interoperability without really defining these terms or stipulating clear steps for how they may be achieved. It is suggested that these terms are clearly defined. Syntactic interoperability can be defined as ensuring the preservation of the clinical purpose of the data during transmission among healthcare systems. Similarly, semantic interoperability can defined as enabling multiple systems to interpret the information that has been exchanged in a similar way through pre-defined shared meaning of concepts <a name="_ftnref2">[2]</a>.</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="text-align: justify;">Inadequate human resource capacity remains a critical challenge to the adoption of e-health standards. The WHO and ITU eHealth Strategy Toolkit <a name="_ftnref3">[3]</a> recommends the development of effective health ICT workforce, capable of designing, building, operating and supporting e-health services. This workforce could participate in standards development, as well as the localization of international standards to fit a country's specific need. The EHR Standards should also include mechanisms and solutions to address these issues.</div>
</li></ol>
<h4>Ownership of Data</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The physical or electronic records, which are generated by the healthcare provider are held in trust by them on behalf of the patient <a name="_ftnref4">[4]</a>. It is stated that the contained data which is sensitive personal data or personal information of the patient as per the Information Technology Act, 2000 is owned by the patients, however the medium for storage or transmission of such data is owned by the healthcare provider.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Comments:</strong></p>
<ol>
<li>
<div style="text-align: justify;">Currently, the EHR Standards state that the contained data which are the sensitive personal data of the patient is owned by the patient. While medical records and history is included within the scope of sensitive personal data under the Information Technology Act, 2000, the definition of "Personal Health Information" under the EHR Standards is more expansive. Therefore, it is recommended that all Personal Health Information is deemed to be owned by the patient.</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="text-align: justify;">Currently, the EHR Standards do not clearly specify the bodies and individuals who would be subject to the requirements under this document. A definition similar to that of "covered entities" under the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) could be used <a name="_ftnref5">[5]</a>.</div>
</li></ol>
<h4>Privileges of Patient</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Currently, the privileges of the patient include the rights to inspect and view their medical records. Further, the patient can request a healthcare organization that stores/maintains their medical records, to withhold specific information that they do not want disclosed to other</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">organizations or individuals. Also, patients can demand information from a healthcare provider on the details of disclosures performed on the patient's medical records <a name="_ftnref6">[6]</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Comments:</strong></p>
<ol>
<li>
<div style="text-align: justify;">Currently, the EHR Standards only refer to "medical records" as being available for inspection and review of the patients. This should be expanded to also include information about enrollment, payment, claims adjudication, case or medical management record systems maintained by or for a health plan; or Other records that are used, to make decisions about individuals by healthcare providers or other bodies <a name="_ftnref7">[7]</a>.</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="text-align: justify;">The EHR standards do not currently stipulate that the upon request by a patient, healthcare providers must exercise timeliness in providing the information to them. A time-limit such 30 calendar days should be clearly stated within which the healthcare provider must process the request.</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="text-align: justify;">The right of patients to request information from a healthcare provider on the details of disclosures should include within its scope the rights to receive the date of the disclosure; the name and address of the entity or person who received the information; a brief description of the medical information disclosed; and; a brief summary of the purpose of the disclosure <a name="_ftnref8">[8]</a>.</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="text-align: justify;">A right to seek amendment of the one's medical records should also be provided to patients in cases where the information is incomplete.</div>
</li></ol>
<h4>Patient Identifying Information</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Under the Standards, Personal identifiers include the following: Name, Address (all geographic subdivisions smaller than street address, and PIN code) All elements (except years) of dates related to an individual (including date of birth, date of death, etc.), Telephone, cell (mobile) phone and/or Fax numbers, Email address, Bank Account and/or Credit Card Number, Medical record number, Health plan beneficiary number, Certificate/license number, Any vehicle or other any other device identifier or serial numbers, PAN number, Passport number, AADHAAR card, Voter ID card, Fingerprints/Biometrics, Voice recordings that are non-clinical in nature, Photographic images and that possibly can individually identify the person, Any other unique identifying number, characteristic, or code <a name="_ftnref9">[9]</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Comments:</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The above mentioned list is not adequate and exhaustive such as the definition and scope of Protected Health Information under the HIPAA <a name="_ftnref10">[10]</a>. The following identifiers must be included within the scope of Patient Identifying Information: Device identifiers and serial numbers, Web Universal Resource Locators (URLs), Internet Protocol (IP) address numbers.</p>
<h4>Disclosure of Protected/Sensitive Information</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The EHR Standards state that disclosure of protected/sensitive information for use in treatment, payments and other healthcare operations must be only done after obtaining a general consent of the patient. On the other hand, disclosures for for non-routine and most non-health care purposes must be done only after obtaining the specific consent of the patient. Only for certain specified national priority activities, such as notifiable/communicable diseases, it is stated that "the health information may be disclosed to appropriate authority as mandated by law without the patient's prior authorization."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Comments:</strong></p>
<ol>
<li>
<div style="text-align: justify;">The terms "specific consent" and "general consent" need to be clearly defined.</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="text-align: justify;">In cases of disclosures for for non-routine and most non-health care purposes, a written authorisation should be mandatory. It should be clearly specified that a healthcare provider may not condition treatment, payment, enrollment, or benefits eligibility on an individual granting an authorization.</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="text-align: justify;">There is confusion due to the use of numerous terms such as "health information", "protected health information", "sensitive personal data", "personal information" and "protected/sensitive information" in the EHR Standards for the same purpose. Some of these above terms are defined while the others are not. In order to remove the ambiguity caused due to this, it is recommended that the term "protected health information" is used throughout the document.</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="text-align: justify;">All bodies dealing with medical data should be required to abide by the principle of "data minimisation" in use and disclosure. They must take reasonable efforts to use, disclose, and request only the minimum amount of protected health information needed to accomplish the intended purpose of the use, disclosure, or request.</div>
</li>
<li>
<div style="text-align: justify;">For internal uses, healthcare providers and other entities must develop and implement policies and procedures that restrict access and uses of protected health information based on the specific roles of the members of their workforce.</div>
</li></ol>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><br />Amber Sinha,<br />Centre for Internet and Society,<br />No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross,<br />Domlur, 2nd Stage,<br />Bengaluru, 560071</p>
<hr />
<p> </p>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div id="ftn1">
<p><a name="_ftn1">[1]</a> Page 7 of the EHR Standards.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<p><a name="_ftn2">[2]</a> Funmi Adebesin, Rosemary Foster, Paula Kotze, Darelle van Greunen, "A review of interoperability standards in e-Health and imperatives for their adoption in Africa", Research Article - SACJ No. 50, July 2013; L. E. Whitman and H. Panetto. "The missing link: Culture and language barriers to interoperability", Annual Reviews in Control, vol. 30, no. 2, 2006.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn3">
<p><a name="_ftn3">[3]</a> WHO and ITU. "National eHealth Strategy Toolkit", available at <a href="http://goo.gl/uxMvE">http://goo.gl/uxMvE</a>.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn4">
<p><a name="_ftn4">[4]</a> Page 19 of the EHR Standards.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn5">
<p><a name="_ftn5">[5]</a> Covered Entity includes a healthcare provider ( Doctors, Clinics, Psychologists, Dentists, Chiropractors, Nursing Homes, Pharmacies), a health plan (Insurance companies, HMOs, Company Health Plans, Government programs that pay for health care) and Healthcare Clearinghouse.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn6">
<p><a name="_ftn6">[6]</a> Page 20 of the EHR Standards.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn7">
<p><a name="_ftn7">[7]</a> Individuals' Right under HIPAA to Access their Health Information 45 CFR § 164.524, available at <a href="http://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/guidance/access/"> http://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/guidance/access/ </a> .</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn8">
<p><a name="_ftn8">[8]</a> Patient Rights Under HIPAA Accounting of Disclosures of Health Information, available at <a href="http://uthscsa.edu/hipaa/patientrights/accountingofdisclosures.pdf">http://uthscsa.edu/hipaa/patientrights/accountingofdisclosures.pdf</a>.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn9">
<p><a name="_ftn9">[9]</a> Page 21 of the EHR Standards.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn10">
<p><a name="_ftn10">[10]</a> See: <a href="http://cphs.berkeley.edu/hipaa/hipaa18.html">http://cphs.berkeley.edu/hipaa/hipaa18.html</a>.</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comments-on-draft-electronic-health-records-standards'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comments-on-draft-electronic-health-records-standards</a>
</p>
No publisherAmber SinhaInternet GovernanceICT2016-12-15T08:45:07ZBlog EntryCivil society & industry oppose India’s plans to modify ITRs
https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-nov-23-2012-shalini-singh-civil-society-and-industry-oppose-indias-plans-to-modify-itrs
<b>Industry fears ITU control over Internet; excessive content control and surveillance an issue for civil society.</b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Shalini Singh's article was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/civil-society-industry-oppose-indias-plans-to-modify-itrs/article4124046.ece">published in the Hindu</a> on November 23, 2012.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India’s proposal on International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs), submitted last month to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the U.N. agency responsible for information and communication technologies, has drawn opposition from, and fears of content control among, civil society and the industry alike.<br /><br />Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet Society, told The Hindu: “The Indian government’s position on the ITRs can be improved, particularly with regard to the proposed definitions, approach to cyber security, scope of regulation.” However, he said, “we are confident that the Indian position will protect consumer and citizen interest once the government implements changes based on inputs from all… stakeholders.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><span>The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), which represents the $100-billion IT and BPO industry, has strong views against the Internet governance model of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names (ICANN), but favours self-regulation. Its president Som Mittal says: “NASSCOM does not favour oversight by an existing U.N. organisation like ITU. Internet and infrastructure have to be in the hands of expert organisations with proven experience.” NASSCOM has also expressed discomfort with the inclusion of “ICTs along with processing” in Section 21E of India’s proposal, since this would subject IT and BPO industries to inter-governmental regulation through the ITRs.</span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), which represents India’s largest mobile operators with nearly 700 million subscribers, has also opposed any role for ITU in the areas of international roaming and Internet governance, fearing a direct impact on domestic network architecture, costs and technology choices. COAI director-general Rajan Mathews said: “We are already regulated by the Department of Telecom (DoT) and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). Placing the ITU’s jurisdiction over us — where we neither have voice nor recourse — is unacceptable.” The COAI’s position is consistent with the GSM Association (GSMA), the world’s largest association of mobile companies representing 800 operators spanning 220 countries. The COAI further alleges that most of its inputs “have been rejected without reasons assigned or even a meeting.” It has lodged a protest with the DoT.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) has similarly protested against ITU’s jurisdiction over issues of Internet governance, architecture and cost.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Subho Ray, president, Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), said: “We represent a vast majority of Internet companies but have not been consulted by the DoT. We are completely opposed to ITU’s jurisdiction in any area related to Internet policy.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The FICCI has also given detailed inputs on the dangers of allowing ITU’s jurisdiction, especially in areas of Internet policy and governance. It supports a bottom-up consultative and consensus-led multi-stakeholder approach, similar to the one propounded by Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal at the Internet Governance Forum, the world’s largest multi-stakeholder conference, held in Baku.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Several prominent civil society groups and members of academia involved in Internet governance also have apprehensions about expanding the ITU’s reach to Internet regulation through the ITRs. In a November 15, 2012 letter to Telecom Secretary R. Chandrashekhar, Society for Knowledge Commons, Internet Democracy Project, Free Software Movement of India, Delhi Science Forum, Media for Change and Software Freedom Law Center have complained about not having been consulted, while warning that India’s proposal “could have far reaching implications for the Internet.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On the issue of cyber security, industry associations and several civil society groups are unanimously against any role for ITU, pointing out that including ill-defined terms such as ‘spam’ and ‘network fraud’ in a binding treaty is a terrible idea. Further, cyber security commitments can force India to cooperate with countries whose military and strategic interests are against it.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Kamlesh Bajaj, CEO, Data Security Council of India, and head of NASSCOM’s security initiatives, said: “Cyber security is sought to be taken over by ITU — an area in which it has little experience. Cyber security includes areas of application security, identity and access management, web security, content filtering, cyber forensics, data security, including issues such as cyber espionage and cyber warfare. The ITU has had no involvement in these matters over the last two decades, and should therefore stay out of them.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Similar views have been expressed in varying degrees by the COAI, the IAMAI, the ISPAI and the FICCI. Dr. Ray of the IAMAI says: “cyber security is essentially a state prerogative and should not be part of an external treaty obligation. Any attempt to channel it through the ITU may be counter productive.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><span>Mr. Sibal, who has already been challenged by opposition to the domestic IT rules, is aware that if left unaddressed, opposition to India’s stance on ITRs will only escalate at a national and global level, and that if corrections have to be made in India’s position, those will have to be done consensually within the governance structure. Mr. Sibal confirmed that while cyber security was an area of discussion with the ITU, “the ITU does not have any role in Internet governance.”</span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">According to him, either he or the Department will hold meetings on these issues with the industry to further evolve India’s position.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Mr. Chandrashekhar further confirmed that similar to several global national delegations, the government would include media and industry experts as part of its delegation to Dubai, the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12) will be held from December 3 to 14. The final decisions on the ITRs and the composition of the delegation would be announced the coming week.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A deeply divided house in Dubai is a strong possibility, with countries which favour democracy and free speech taking a stance against those who, due to political compulsions, have proposed inter-governmental control through the ITRs by the ITU, not just on Internet policy, but also its traffic and content, most of which automatically fall under the definitions of the ICTs.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The 193-countries at THE WCIT may well spend 11 days discussing national proposals to separate issues that can be addressed nationally from those which require inter-governmental cooperation, while further debating which platforms may be best to address global cooperation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is equally clear that the existing Internet governance system is unacceptable to most countries, and therefore a more evolved democratic and internationally equitable system, which is managed through a multi-stakeholder process and yet with a definite role for countries like India, appears the only way forward.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Mr. Sibal, at meetings with global Internet governance bodies in Baku, is learnt to have bargained hard for India’s explicit role in the existing Internet governance processes.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-nov-23-2012-shalini-singh-civil-society-and-industry-oppose-indias-plans-to-modify-itrs'>https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-nov-23-2012-shalini-singh-civil-society-and-industry-oppose-indias-plans-to-modify-itrs</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaTelecomInternet GovernanceICT2012-11-30T09:42:17ZNews ItemCIS Submission to UN High Level Panel on Digital Co-operation
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-submission-to-un-high-level-panel-on-digital-co-operation
<b>The High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation was convened by the UN Secretary-General to advance proposals to strengthen cooperation in the digital space among Governments, the private sector, civil society, international organizations, academia, the technical community and other relevant stakeholders. The Panel issued a call for input that called for responses to various questions. CIS responded to the call for inputs.</b>
<p>Download the <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/submission-to-un-high-level-panel-on-digital-cooperation">submission here</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-submission-to-un-high-level-panel-on-digital-co-operation'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-submission-to-un-high-level-panel-on-digital-co-operation</a>
</p>
No publisherAayush Rathi, Ambika Tandon, Arindrajit Basu and Elonnai HickokPrivacyInternet GovernanceICT2019-02-19T01:41:35ZBlog Entry