Centre for Internet and Society

Users and the Internet

Purbasha Auddy — 2015-07-10T04:20:54Z

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

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

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

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

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

A personal note…

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

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

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

Overcoming the fear…

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

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

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

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

Power redefined…

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

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

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

Confidence building apparatus…

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

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

Self-learning tool…

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

An institution…

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

Utility…

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

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

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

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

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

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

Endnotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WhatsApp and the Creation of a Transnational Sociality

Maitrayee Deka — 2015-07-10T04:22:38Z

This post by Maitrayee Deka is part of the 'Studying Internets in India' series. Maitrayee is a postdoctoral research fellow with the EU FP7 project, P2P value in the Department of Sociology, University of Milan, Italy. Her broader research interests are New Media, Economic Sociology and Gender and Sexuality. This is the second of Maitrayee's two posts on WhatsApp and networks of commerce and sociality among lower-end traders in Delhi.

The beginnings of WhatsApp messages in Lajpat Rai Market and Palika Bazaar with lower-end traders in China were mostly trade related. However, with time, the messages were not just confined to the domain of products and prices. The traders in India started sharing personal messages and images with their counterparts in China. Some of the social exchanges could be interpreted within the gambit of the economy. In other words, these social exchanges in the form of photographs of anime and food developed trust and familiarity that further led to the strengthening of trade ties. However, other social exchanges on WhatsApp could be related to a more personal space whereby traders were binding themselves with Chinese traders in romantic relationships. In 2012 and 2013, the transnational sociality through WhatsApp was at its embryonic stage and showed signs of becoming much more layered in the future.

Friendship and Trust

The traders in Lajpat Rai Market and Palika Bazaar elaborated on how the electronic shops in China were usually managed by polite and pretty women. Women managing the business transactions in China made the Indian traders come in touch with them via WhatsApp. One day at Rakesh’s shop at Palika Bazaar, he was browsing through his WhatsApp messages. He invited me to see some of the messages that he thought were interesting. As I went closer to the screen, I saw images of food, a bowl of soup and salad. Rakesh told me how he had become friends with this particular trader. She was a married woman and had a shop that sold accessories of games in China. Rakesh said over time that they had developed a special relationship. He regarded her as a warm person. He was familiar with her domestic life, her children and how old they were. Their interactions were governed by the exchange of information on everyday activities going on in their lives.

I observed that the trading exchanges were mitigated by various social and personal messages. It appeared that the personal messages were a way to maintain continuity of ties, business and otherwise. Whereas the traders between the two countries might not be doing business with the same set of people everyday, an image of a teddy bear and food acted as an assurance of a lasting relationship. It indicated that even though trade between two persons was temporarily suspended, they were going to revive it in the near future. The exchange of personal messages in between trade activities developed trust and mutual respect. In a physical market place, traders developed special relationship with different people, for instance, with the customers who came to the same shop regularly. These relationships were born out of investment of time and energy on part of the both parties, the traders as well as the customers. In both Palika Bazaar and Lajpat Rai Market, often a trader had a customer who had been visiting his shops since he was a child. The trader knew what his customer did for a living as an adult, how many members his family had and their whereabouts. The same case was true for a customer. He quickly noticed what were the changes that had been made to the physical layout of the shop. The long-term ties were advantageous to both the parties. Usually the customer got a good discount for a product and he also knew that in case of a defect he could easily ask for a replacement. For the trader, a customer was a constant source of income, as he knew that the customer would not choose another trader over him. Rarely, a permanent customer approached another trader in the market.

In the absence of physical proximity between the Chinese and Indian traders, there were few occasions in which the ties of trust based on familiarity could be developed. Simple exchange of trade messages did not build social solidarity. In order for the traders to substitute the strength of physical proximity and face-to-face interaction online, the cute anime were seen to intervene. The exchange of photographs and cartoons indicated that individual traders invested in each other and developed a circle of familiar objects and symbols that generated trust.

WhatsApp and Movement

Bubo is a fascinating figure in Palika Bazaar. In Govind’s shop, several people had different things to say about Bubo. Some claimed that he was a genius; other told me he was a techno nerd. Some even thought of him as an eccentric person who lacked social skills and etiquettes. Everyone however, unanimously agreed that I should not miss an opportunity to talk to him. Bubo handled the online sales of video games for Govind’s shop. He was responsible for putting up new/ second hand video games and accessories on diverse e-commerce sites in India such as OLX and Flipkart. He had a rented apartment in Pitampura area in New Delhi. Bubo and his brother usually spend days in their apartment in front of their computer screens. The traders in Govind’s shop were of the opinion that Bubo was more comfortable being online than meet people physically. This proved to be true. I on different occasions tried to talk to Bubo. I called him on his phone and he evaded the prospect of meeting me face to face. In the end, I gave up on him, as I did not know how to convince him to have a chat with me. While I personally never met Bubo, I collected information about him from different sources. As the traders at Govind’s shop found him peculiar, they had many things to say about him. They were all impressed by the fact that Bubo self taught himself to be a hacker and got past through many of the website requirements. The online trading networks entailed certain rules. For instance, with relation to the matters of quality of goods, many of the online marketing websites such as Flipkart in India wanted the trader to put up guaranteed products. According to the traders, Bubo was able to find solution to get past the different barriers put up by the big companies. Bubo with his hacking skills was an assent to Govind’s shop. Therefore, it was not surprising to see that throughout the course of my fieldwork, his name kept reappearing. In January 2015, when I went to Govind’s shop, the mythical figure of Bubo came up again. This time I saw his face for the first time on WhatsApp through Govind’s iPhone 5. I learnt that Bubo was in China. He had a new Chinese girlfriend whom he had met through online trading exchanges. As I flipped through the images on Govind’s phone, I saw Bubo dining with his girl friend, meeting her wide circle of friends and family in China.

Bubo’s story is an interesting illustration of how the lower-end trading alliances initiated by WhatsApp start to have a life of its own. Bubo was ambitious and wanted to make the most of the opportunities available to him. However, as Govind maintained his relocation to China could not be simply put as a business strategy. Govind recollected that Bubo held a fascination for Chinese women. His move to China therefore was both an attempt to better his economic prospects as well as an attempt at finding romantic love. Bubo was trying hard to teach himself Chinese and if everything worked in his favour, he might end up making a permanent move to China, Govind added.

Conclusion

For many of the users of WhatsApp all over the world, it is difficult to imagine it as a tool for business. We are accustomed to sharing personal messages and images with friends and families living in different parts of the world. Only in recent times, we hear varied usages of WhatsApp: to spread xenophobic messages in closed groups, and organize events and community tasks. Even then, the impersonal usage of WhatsApp is marginal.

In early May 2015, I was part of a meeting of peer-to-peer value creation in Europe. One of the participants spoke about how a Fablab in Madrid was beginning to use WhatsApp to assign community related tasks and operations. It made me realise how the traders in Delhi were one step ahead of all of us. Already in 2013, traders were co-opting WhatsApp to their work sphere. At a time in which high-skilled knowledge workers in Europe are devising community platforms akin to WhatsApp, traders in Delhi saw the potential of it as a social and economic tool much earlier. I was amazed at the pace at which traders submerged themselves in different endeavours. The traders never had a half-hearted relationship with anything, their consumers and the search for profit. The similar merging into the environment was visible through their use of smartphones as well. The traders in Lajpat Rai Market and Palika Bazaar learnt to stay alert surviving in the margins of an urban economy. It had become their second nature to see an opportunity in everything. And this attitude meant that they pushed every situation to its limits. Flirting with laws, selling of contraband and pirated media goods showed that the traders were ready to test the limits of any situation.

WhatsApp and trade related texts are an example of thinking out of the box. Even in its early days, WhatsApp facilitated trading links show a lot of potential. The traders from China and India have established profitable business links. Some of them have developed friendship and romantic relationships. Only time will tell to what extent and in which direction trade related ties would evolve. One could only imagine the prospect of long-term dense trading networks with China. With the official players in India and China having strong visions about where the futures of both countries should head, the experimental and out of the box thinking of many of the traders with technology per se gives hope for a more hybrid regime in Asia.

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

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_whatsapp-and-the-creation-of-a-transnational-sociality

WhatsApp and Transnational Lower-End Trading Networks

Maitrayee Deka — 2015-09-13T10:44:15Z

This post by Maitrayee Deka is part of the 'Studying Internets in India' series. Maitrayee is a postdoctoral research fellow with the EU FP7 project, P2P value in the Department of Sociology, University of Milan, Italy. Her broader research interests are New Media, Economic Sociology and Gender and Sexuality. This is the first of Maitrayee's two posts on WhatsApp and networks of commerce and sociality among lower-end traders in Delhi.

One of the first things that stood out in the Delhi traders’ anonymous bearings was their love for smartphones. In the two mass electronic markets in the city, Lajpat Rai Market and Palika Bazaar, the traders of video games carried varieties of smartphones of different sizes and colours. From iPhones to Samsung Galaxies, the traders vied for the latest gadget available in the market. As a researcher, within a year, I moved from getting an accidental peek into their smartphone screens to a phase when the traders felt comfortable sharing their personal messages with me.

I spend considerable time in Lajpat Rai Market and Palika Bazaar in Delhi between September 2012 and September 2013. I interviewed different traders and had day-to-day conversations with the people coming to their shops. Tracking several events in the shops, I knew the relative time that the traders spent on various activities. I saw on most days the traders divided their time between interacting with consumers and browsing through their smartphones. The traders spent maximum time of their virtual existence by being on WhatsApp. A large part of the goods to local electronic markets in Delhi were coming from China. And increasingly, WhatsApp was becoming an important communication channel managing transnational trade related exchanges.

Entry into the WhatsApp World

When I started visiting Lajpat Rai Market and Palika Bazaar at the end of 2012, I had not installed WhatsApp on my phone. The traders in the different markets were curious to know what was keeping me away from it. They came to a point when they could not anymore see me outside of WhatsApp. I, on the other hand had reservations of being part of a medium that meant continuous contact with the world. When finally I got past my initial doubts, there arose another problem. I could not download WhatsApp on my phone without the server asking for a rental fee of 250 Indian Rupees. After a few days, on being asked the same question again in Palika Bazaar, I told the traders about my problem. Lalit, a trader in Palika Bazaar retorted, ‘That is not possible! We did not pay to install WhatsApp on our phones’. He asked me to pass him my phone. Lalit cracked the security code by getting on to the Palika Bazaar Wi-Fi network and installed WhatsApp on my phone.

It was interesting to see that the traders did not always use legal channels to buy their smartphones and get an Internet connection. Many of the conversations about their smartphones were about where the traders bought their stolen iPhone. There were discussions about how much money different traders paid to get their hands on a used iPhone. They compared the feature and quality of each other’s smartphone. Sometimes even I was asked if I wanted a new cell phone for a good price and if I wanted to sell my old phone. The fascination for smartphones that in the first instance seemed like a fad for a shiny branded product, showed its own complex side. The importance of keeping an expensive phone had its conspicuous side and that explained the fascination of traders for iPhones. However, that was not all. The conspicuous side of the trader was not visible in other dimensions of their being, for instance the clothes they wore. The traders on most days were happy to buy second-hand and knock off goods from the street vendors outside Lajpat Rai Market and Palika Bazaar. The inclination of the traders to carry expensive phones and willingness to try different measure to possess them showed that smartphones were important to the traders.

I tried to understand the inclination of the traders towards their smartphones. One way by which I thought their smartphone usage could become intelligible to me was by locating it in their everyday world. What the traders did on most days and exploring where and how smartphones configured amongst other activities could make its usages noticeable. I observed one of the things that the traders hated in both the markets was to have free time in their hands. The time for chatter meant that they were not doing business. And the possibility of not making enough money made them anxious. The traders were trying to curtail the amount of time they spent on insignificant activities including the need to talk to me. Most of the times, they only entertained me when they did not have consumers in their shops. It was then interesting for me to see the traders’ fascination for their smartphones. The usage of the Internet also ideally carried levels of non-productivity that on other instances made the traders very anxious. It meant that they were not making direct monetary transactions with consumers. Having seen the traders obsessed about making sales, I was unable to place their choice of being on their smartphones in their free time. Soon, this dilemma was cleared. Being on the smartphone did not mean the traders were making social calls. Most of the times when the traders were on their smartphones, they were texting each other on WhatsApp. Eventually, I found out that most of the exchanges on WhatsApp were trade related. The traders not using WhatsApp for pleasure indicated that their activity on the Internet reflected how they are offline. The traders were preoccupied with the prospect of making profit and they did not want to waste any opportunity coming their way. This was the driving force and the source of innovation in the markets. The traders’ smartphone usage also followed the instinct of minimising wastage and find business opportunities in everything they did. The result was to make dominant in the markets another usage of WhatsApp other than its use for social communication: transnational real time trade exchanges.

WhatsApp and Trading

Especially in the year’s post 2010, the mass markets of video games in Delhi were in a strange predicament. The heyday of these markets as the sole channels of distribution and acquisition of video games was over. Increasingly, these markets that sold paraphernalia of gaming devices were challenged by the onslaught of online gaming market and gaming franchises in Delhi. In such a situation, many of the traders were trying to find alternative ways to boost up their sales. One of the ways in which these markets were trying to sustain themselves in the face of immense competition was to find niche market of electronic products. The traders in Lajpat Rai Market and Palika Bazaar extended their trading links to China in an effort to get diverse as well as cheap electronic products. The Chinese lower end markets particularly in the Guangdong province became an important supply node of different qualities of video games to the mass markets in Delhi. For each PlayStation Portables in Lajpat Rai Market and Palika Bazaar, there were a number of cheap varieties of ‘Made in China’ handheld games.

All the multiple links with the Chinese lower-end economy that sustained the day-to-day functioning of the Delhi markets depended on continuous communication between the Indian and Chinese traders. This was where WhatsApp took control of the trading scene. Traders used it regularly to communicate with the Chinese traders. In the absence of face-to-face interaction, WhatsApp messages were the only way to initiate business transactions with the Chinese traders. The lack of face-to-face interaction presupposed that trading details were resolved on WhatsApp. There were a large number of to and fro exchanges of messages. As the traders felt comfortable showing me glimpses of their WhatsApp messages, I saw that on a single day hundreds of messages were exchanged even before the real transaction of placing an order and payment details were discussed. Many of the messages were exchanges of images of different varieties of a game that the Indian traders might be interested in. Image after image arrived of video games with their prospective prices. Most of these exchanges were in English. However, at times there were also messages in Cantonese that the traders translated online.

WhatsApp therefore, developed as a space where the traders got past their geographical and linguistic gap to successfully communicate and complete business transactions. WhatsApp facilitated messages enabled the markets to get new innovative products into the local market as well as track the complete transaction process.

For individual traders, WhatsApp was the lifeline of their present trade networks. Before the arrival of ‘instant messaging app for smartphone’, most of the links that the traders had with the transnational markets were through individual importers that travelled to Hong Kong, Bangkok and other places in Asia to get games manufactured in Japan and the West. During those days, a trader had to depend on the importers to bring him exclusive products that could be profitable in the local markets. The traders pointed out that the problem with this arrangement was that traders were almost entirely dependent on the importer not only to smuggle new products into the country but also for information. Often the traders knew of new products only with the information they acquired from the importers.

Things changed drastically with the advent of instant messaging especially WhatsApp. Now the traders were only a message away from connecting to their collaborators in China. An individual trader had the possibility to bring new innovative products without relying on others for information and trade negotiations. This increased the possibility for him to have a period of privileged profit before the product got widely popularised in the market. The constant exchanges of samples of video games and accessories were a step towards that. Often the traders kept up with continuous communication with the Chinese traders, as they did not want to miss an opportunity to be the first one to track the next big trend in the market. If the traders felt that they had picked up a product that had the potential of becoming a popular product, they were not hesitant to place huge orders. The traders said that they trusted the work ethics of the Chinese people. However, what also helped the traders to appreciate the Chinese work ethics was their constant tracking of transaction on Whatsapp. Bharat, a trader in Lajpat Rai Market had placed a large order for adaptors of gaming consoles in July 2013. Once when I was visiting his shop, he was messaging with a trader in China to sort out the delay that was occurring in the delivery process. Bharat said to me still texting on WhatsApp, ‘I don’t worry about the Chinese; they are very sincere and trustworthy’.

WhatsApp is synonymous with transnational trading alliances in the lower-end markets in Delhi. It has seamlessly merged into the trading environment to the extent that the traders do not consciously reflect on the role it plays in pushing their individual trade forward. It seemed traders lived two parallel lives: one with the local market goers in Delhi and another with the Chinese traders on their smart phones. The individual trader-to-trader exchanges between two countries are unprecedented in history. And with time, the trade networks are becoming denser and wider.

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

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_whatsapp-and-transnational-lower-end-trading-networks

Indic Scripts and the Internet

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

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

Internet Usage Statistics in India

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

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

Languages the Indian Internet User Encounters Both Online and Offline

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

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

Indic Script Software and Data Entry

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

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

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

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

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

Mimetic Desires on Public Platforms

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

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

Spelling Skills in Indic Languages

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

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

Digitisation of Pre-Digital Resources

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

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

Effects on the Indian Internet User

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

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

Effects of the Internet on Indic Scripts

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

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

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

Endnotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Studying Internet in India: Selected Abstracts

sumandro — 2015-08-28T06:53:33Z

We received thirty five engaging abstracts in response to the call for essays on 'Studying Internet in India.' Here are the ten selected abstracts. The final essays will be published from June onwards.

Deva Prasad M - 'Studying the Internet Discourse in India through the Prism of Human Rights'

Exploring Internet from the perspective of human rights gives rise to the multitude of issues such as right to privacy, freedom of expression, accessibility. Pertinent socio-political and legal issues related to Internet which was widely debated upon in the past one year in India includes lack of freedom of expression on Internet and Section 66A of Information Technology Act, 2000. The recent net neutrality debate in India has also evoked deliberation about the right of equal accessibility to Internet and to maintain Internet as a democratic space. The repercussions of ‘Right to be Forgotten’ law of European Union also had led to debate of similar rights in Indian context. Interestingly all these issues have an underlying thread of human right perspective connecting them and need pertinent deliberation from human rights perspective.

This paper is an attempt to understand and analyze theses issues from the human rights angle and also how they have contributed in evolving an understanding and perspective amongst the digitally conscious Indian’s to ensure the democratic nature of “Internet” is perceived. Moreover, analysis of these three issues would also help in emphasizing upon the need for a right-based approach in studying Internet in India.

Dibyajyoti Ghosh - 'Indic Scripts and the Internet'

Whereas the status of the internet in India is similar to the status of the internet in similar economies with low-penetration and a primarily mobile-based future, an alphabetically diverse nation such as India has its added worries. Whereas the 1990s saw an overdomination of English given the linguistic communities which were developing the world of computers and the world of the internet, by 2015, some of the disparity with offline linguistic patterns has been reduced. However, for Indic scripts, much less development has taken place. If one is studying the internet in India, chances are one is studying it in English.

What does this hold for the future of these Indic scripts? Given the multilingual skills of Indian school-goers and the increasing amount of daily reading time of those connected to the internet (which is somewhere between 12% and 20% of the population) being devoted to reading on the internet, chances are reading is increasingly in English. In this essay, I shall attempt to study the effects this has on the internet population of India, some of which are as follows.

The kind of mimetic desire it causes
The degneration in spelling skills caused due to transliteration
The effacement of non-digitised Indic verbal texts

Divij Joshi - 'The Internet in the Indian Judicial Imagination'

The first mention of the 'Internet' in the vocabulary of Indian judicial system was a fleeting reference to its radical capability to allow access to knowledge. In one of its most recent references, it expounded upon and upheld the idea of the Internet as a radical tool for free expression, announcing its constitutional significance for free speech.

The judicial imagination of the Internet – the understanding of its capabilities and limitations, its actors and constituents, as reflected in the judgements of Indian courts – plays a major role in shaping the Internet in India, both reflecting and defining conceptions of the Internet and its relationship with society, law, and public policy.

This essay is an attempt to use legal and literary theory to study the archives of judicial decisions, tracing the history of the Internet in India through the lens of judicial trends, and also to look at how the judiciary has defined its own role in relation to the Internet. It attempts a vital study of how courts in India have conceptualized and understood the Internet, and how these conceptions have, in turn, impacted the influence of the Internet on Indian society.

Ipsita Sengupta

The proposed essay will make observations of a specific kind of conversation that takes place on the social media platform of YouTube. The conclusive argument is imagined along questions of high versus low culture, as described below.

Under study are two objects- one, particular YouTube videos which play Rabindra-Sangeet, i.e. songs penned and composed in the late 19- early 20th centuries by the Bengali writer and artist Rabindranath Tagore, the body of work which today has become a genre of Indian music; and the second, comments that these videos receive from users of the site.

Visuals of YouTube song videos of Rabindra-Sangeet are of many kinds. So are renditions, with solitary or duet or band performances, and with varying pace and instrumental accompaniment.

The videos which have visuals from contemporary cinema, like images of urban youth, and the remixed renditions have often been found to receive comments which reflect/ reveal hurt sentiments of people trying to preserve some kind of sanctity of Rabindra-Sangeet, comments which state how the ethics of presenting the genre have been violated, via their notation and design, by either makers of the film in the song’s incorporation, or by the way young pop stars have been placed in particular montages.

Some examples:

In such a scenario, YouTube as medium of user-generated expression becomes interesting to analyse individual and group dynamics- given the space for commenting (below the video), and statistical data such as “Likes”, “Dislikes”, and “Views”. The debate here is that in Tagore’s “Nationalism”, when he himself is seen to have an imagination of the human race beyond patriotic groupings and consequent othering, does this apparent need to avoid “insulting” his compositions by preserving an intangible art form in a particular way, become then a type of jingoism of region or identity? And what is this Benjaminian “aura” of the “original” that listeners look for in their experience of these videos?

Laird Brown - 'Dharamsala Networked'

Three hours after regulations governing public access to WiFi in India were changed in 2005 the first router went up in Dharamsala. It was homemade, open source, and eventually, “monkey proof.” Something unimaginable had happened: high-speed Internet access in one of India’s most difficult physical geographies. Dharamsala has also become one of India's interesting information networks and has a burgeoning, unlikely 'tech scene’. But is it so unlikely?

Since 1959 Dharamsala has been home to the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan people and, government in exile. This single, significant incident possibly set in motion a number of factors that made it possible for the mountain-town to become a political, global, communications. However, much like the rest of India, the region struggles for human and environmental rights against fractured ideas of 'development'. This essay will draw on archives and interviews to unpack this microcosmic tale of Internet access, its histories and economics and the factors at play in shaping it - mundane and maverick, familiar and outlier.

Maitrayee Deka - 'WhatsApp Economy'

Everyone around us is connected to the Internet through some or other electronic devices, phones, laptops, and tablets. However, not everyone use Internet for the same purpose. Through an ethnographic account of the usage of WhatsApp messages by the traders in three electronic bazaars in Delhi, Palika Bazaar, Nehru Place and Lajpat Rai Market, we see how Internet on the phone is used predominantly for business purpose. The paper seeks to examine how Whatsapp messages, which are for most of the users a medium for social communication, for the traders in Delhi, become a mode to establish business contact with their counterparts in China. From sharing of pictures of new tools to quoting prices of different products, Whatsapp messages become the lifeline of what many has termed as ‘globalization from below’. This paper argues what has started as economic exchanges through Whatsapp messages may start a new political alliance of similar mass markets in Asia. With the electronic bazaars in Delhi facing stiff competition from formal business actors both online and offline, the WhatsApp messages that is a space of new innovations and trade alliances could sustain the mass markets in India.

Purbasha Auddy - 'Citizens and their Internet'

Suddenly it seems internet data package on mobile phones is the reply to the problems in India. As mobile phones remain with us most of the time, it is as if we are ready to face the world if our mobile phones have a data package. Yes, several television commercials in India are gleefully harping on the notes of knowledge, empowerment and freedom. Moreover, internet is being identified as a virtual institution.

The essay proposes to look into those advertisements which talk about the internet to promote data packages, mobile phones or apps. Through this, the essay firstly, would like to construct the idea of the internet using the Indian citizen who is depicted as smart and almost infallible. Secondly, on the other hand, the essay would analyse how an affirmative and constructive view of using the internet in the minds of citizens has been generated by these advertisements, like the virtual world of the internet can save you from any drastic situation.

Advertisements are creative constructs, which have a strong aptitude to entice target consumers. While studying the internet in India, studying the ‘texts’ of Indian advertisements which refer to the act of ‘consuming’ the internet could result in an interesting study.

Sailen Routray - 'The Many Lives and Sites of Internet in Bhubaneswar'

Those of us who have jumped or meandered across to the wrong (or perhaps the right) side of thirty by now, first came to consume internet in what were called, and are still called, cyber cafes or internet cafes. Their numbers in big Indian cities is dwindling because of the increasing ubiquity of smartphone, and netbooks and data cards. The cyber café seems to be inexorably headed the way of the STD booth in the geography of large Indian cities. The present paper is a preliminary step towards capturing some of the experience of running and using internet cafes. With ethnographic fieldwork with cyber café owners and internet users in these cafes in the Chandrasekharpur area of Bhubaneswar (where the largest section of the computer industry in the state of Odisha is located), this paper tries to capture experiences that lie at the interstices of ‘objects’ and spaces - experiences that are at the same time a history of the internet as well as a personal history of the city.

Sarah McKeever - 'Quantity over Quality: Social Media and the New Class System in India'

From the humblest mobile phones to the most sophisticated computers, the Internet is everywhere and nowhere in India. The boundaries, the contours of the space remain nebulous and opaque. When engaging with social media in urban India in particular, we are bound to the conventions of corporations which demand quantity over quality creating a new class system of the Internet: those who are “active” – and therefore a “better” user – and those who have seemingly failed to keep up with the demands of the medium, buried in the ever‐growing noise and chaos. The creation of a new class system on the Internet, based on Western corporate desire for data, has shaped who is seen and heard on the Internet in India.

Based on fieldwork in New Delhi which examines the impact of the Internet on offline social movements – including the anti corruption movement in 2011 and the Delhi Rape Case in 2012 – I will argue that the study of the Internet in India can reinforce Western corporate conceptions of how to use the Internet properly among various users involved in the movements. By challenging these preconceptions, this essay will engage with issues of Western corporate notions of Internet use and how we engage with and find participants, how we evaluate what is “good” use of the Internet, and the creation of a new class system on the Internet in India.

Smarika Kumar - 'Governing Speech on the Internet: Transforming the Public Sphere through Policymaking'

In the privatised spaces of the World Wide Web and the internet, how does one make sense of speech? Should speech in such a space be understood as the product of a marketplace of ideas? Or should its role in democratic participation be recognised by contextualising the internet as part of the Habermasian public sphere? These questions have interesting implications for the regulation of speech on the internet, as they employ different principles in understanding speech. Recent scholarship has argued for the benefits of employing the public sphere approach to the internet and thus recognising its democratic potential. But taking into account that all speech is inherently made in private spaces on the internet, the application of this approach is far from simple.

This creates a tension between the marketplace of ideas and the public sphere approaches to speech on the internet in policymaking. I propose to explore how legal and regulatory mechanisms manage these tensions by creating governance frameworks for the internet: I argue that through the use of policy and regulation, the private marketplace of the internet is sought to be reined in and reconciled to the public sphere, which is mostly represented through legislations governing the internet. I propose that this less-than-perfect reconciliation then manages to modify the very idea of the public sphere itself in the Indian context, by infusing participation of the "other" on the internet through indirect means.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/studying-internet-in-india-selected-abstracts

Call for Essays: Studying Internet in India

sumandro — 2015-08-28T07:09:39Z

As Internet makes itself comfortable amidst everyday lives in India, it becomes everywhere and everyware, it comes in 40 MBPS Unlimited and in chhota recharges – and even in zero flavour – the Researchers at Work (RAW) programme at the Centre for Internet and Society invites abstracts for essays that explore what it means to study Internet(s) in India today.

We are interested in the many experiences of Internet(s) in India; its histories and archaeologies; how we use it to read, write, create, relate, learn, and share; the data that is produced, and the data that is consumed; the spaces that are created, and the spaces that are inhabited; the forms that political expressions take on the Web; and of course, where and how should one be studying Internet(s) in India?

This call is for researchers, workers, and others interested in closely – or from a distance – commenting on these topics and questions.

Please send abstracts (200 words) to raw@cis-india.org by Sunday, April 26, 2015. The subject of the email should be 'Studying Internet in India.'

We will select up to 10 abstracts and announce them on Friday, May 01, 2015.

The selected authors will be asked to submit the final longform essay (2,500-3,000 words) by Sunday, May 31, 2015. The final essays will be published on the RAW Blog. The authors will be offered an honourarium of Rs. 5,000.

We understand that not all essays can be measured in words. The authors are very much welcome to work with text, images, sounds, videos, code, and other mediatic forms that the Internet offers. We will not be running a Word Count on the final 'essay.' The basic requirement is that the 'essay' must offer an argument – through text, or otherwise.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/call-for-essays-studying-internet-in-india