Videos

This research was undertaken as part of the 'SAFEGUARDS' project that CIS is undertaking with Privacy International and IDRC.

Video

The above video is from the "UID, NPR, and Governance" conference held on March 2, 2013 at TERI, Bangalore.

What is the NPR?
In 2010, the Government of India initiated the NPR which entails the creation of the National Citizens Register. This register is being prepared at the local, sub-district, district, state and national level. The database will contain thirteen categories of demographic information and three categories of biometric data collected from all residents aged five and above. Collection of this information was initially supposed to take place during the House listing and Housing Census phase of Census 2011 during April 2010 to September 2010.[1]

What is the legal grounding of the NPR?
The NPR is legally grounded in the provisions of the Citizenship Act, 1955 and the Citizenship Rules 2003. It is mandatory for every usual resident in India to register in the NPR as per Section 14A of the Citizenship Act, 1955, as amended in 2004. The collection of biometrics is not accounted for in the statute or rules.

What are the objectives of the NPR?
The objectives of the NPR as stated by the Citizenship Act is for the creation of a National Citizen Register. The National Citizen Register is intended to assist in improving security by checking for illegal migration. Additional objectives that have been articulated include: providing services to the residents under government schemes and programmes, checking for identity frauds, and improving planning.[2]

What is the process of enrollment for the NPR?
NPR enrollment is being carried out through house to house canvassing. The Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India has assigned Department of Information Technology (DIT) the responsibility of collecting and digitizing demographic data in 17 states and 2 Union Territories of India.[2] Collected information will then be printed and displayed in the local area where it is scrutinized by local officers and vetted by local bodies called ´Gram Sabha/Ward Committees´.[4] This process of social audit is meant to bring in transparency, equity, and ensure accuracy.

What information will be collected under the NPR?
The NPR database will include thirteen categories of demographic information and three categories of biometrics. The collection biometrics has not been provided for in the text of the Citizenship Rules, and is instead appears to be authorized through guidelines,[5] which do not have statutory backing. Currently, two iris scans, ten fingerprints, and a photograph are being collected. According to a 2010 Committee note, only the photograph and fingerprints were initially envisioned to be collected.

What is the Resident Identity Card?
The proposed Resident Identity card is a smart card with a micro-processor chip of 6.4 Kb capacity; the demographic and biometric attributes of each individual will be personalized in this chip. The UID number will be placed on the card as well. Currently, the government is only considering the possibility of distributing smart cards to all residents over the age of 18.[6]

What is the UID?
The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was established in January 2009 and is part of the Planning Commission of India. UIDAI aims to provide a unique 12 digit ID number to all residents in India on a voluntary basis. The number will be known as AADHAAR. The UIDAI will own and operate a Unique Identification Number database which will contain biometric and demographic data of citizens.[7]

What is the objective of the UID?
According to the UIDAI, the UID will provide identity for individuals. The scheme has been promoted by the UIDAI as enabling a number of social benefits including improving the public distribution system, enabling financial inclusion, and improving the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS).  Despite these benefits, the UIDAI only guarantees identity, and does not guarantee rights, benefits or entitlement.[8]

What is the process for enrollment in the UID?
To enroll in the UID, individuals must go to enrollment centers with the appropriate documentation. Once documents are verified and biometrics taken, individuals will receive an acknowledgment slip and their UID number will be sent in the mail.[9] The UIDAI will enroll up to 600 million residents in 16 States and territories.[10] Online registration prior to enrollment at a Center is also now being offered.

How is UID being adopted by different States?
The adoption of the UID by different states and platforms has been controversial as the UID is not a mandatory number, yet with states and services adopting the number for different governmental services, the UID is becoming mandatory by default.  Some ways in which states are using the UID include:

• Gas and vehicles: The UPA Government has required that citizens have a UID number for services such as purchasing cooking gas, issuing a RTI request, and registering vehicles.[11]
• Education: The Kerala government has required that all students must have UID number in order to be tracked through the system.[12] This mandate was questioned by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights.
• First Information Reports (FIR’s): The high court in Bombay has ordered the state home department to direct all police stations in Maharashtra to record the Unique Identification (UID) numbers of accused individuals and witnesses filing a FIR.[13]
• Banks: The National Payment Corporation of India has collaborated UIDAI and is issuing ‘RuPay cards’ (Dhan Aadhaar cards) which will serve as ATM/micro-ATM cards. In 2011 the Bank of India had issued 250 cards.[14]
• Railway: Railways are proposing to use the UID database for bookings and validation of passengers.[15]
• Social Security: Commencing January 1, 2013, MGNREGA, the Rajiv Gandhi Awas Yojana (RGAY), the Ashraya housing scheme, Bhagyalakshmi and the social security and pension scheme have included the UID in the Mysore district

Has there been duplication of UID numbers?
According to news reports:

• The UIDAI has blacklisted an operator and a supervisor in Andhra Pradesh for issuing fake UID numbers.

• The UIDAI is looking into six complaints regarding the misuse of personal data while issuing the UID numbers to individuals.

• The UIDAI has received two received complaints regarding duplication of UID numbers.[17]

What are the differences between the UID and NPR?

• Voluntary vs. Mandatory: It is compulsory for all Indian residents to register with the NPR, while registration with the UIDAI is considered voluntary. However, the NPR will store individuals UID number with the NPR data and place it on the Resident Indian Card. In this way and others, the UID number is becoming compulsory by various means.
• Number vs. Register: UID will issue a number, while the NPR is the prelude to the National Citizens Register. Thus, it is only a Register. Though earlier the MNIC card was implemented along the coastal area, there has been no proposal to extend the MNIC to the whole country. The smart card that is proposed under the NPR has only been raised for discussion, and there has been no official decision to issue a card.
• Statute vs. Bill: The enrollment of individuals for the NPR is legally backed by the Citizenship Act, except in relation to the collection of biometrics, while the UID as proposed a bill which has not been passed for the legal backing of the scheme.
• Authentication vs. Identification: The UID number will serve as an authenticator during transactions. It can be adopted and made mandatory by any platform. The National Resident Card will signify resident status and citizenship. It is unclear what circumstances the card will be required for use in.
• UIDAI vs. RGI: The UIDAI is responsible for enrolling individuals in the UID scheme, and the RGI is responsible for enrolling individuals in the NPR scheme. It is important to note that the UIDAI is located in the Planning Commission, but its status is unclear, as the NIC had indicated that the data held is not being held by the government.
• Door to door canvassing vs. center enrollment: Individuals will have to go to an enrollment center and register for the UID, while the NPR will carry out part of the enrollment of individuals through door to door canvassing. Note: Individuals will still have to go to centers for enrolling their biometrics for the NPR scheme.
• Prior documentation vs. census material: The UID will be based off of prior forms of documentation and identification, while the NPR will be based off of census information.
• Online vs. Offline: For authentication of an individual’s UID number, the UID will require mobile connectivity, while the NPR can perform offline verification of an individual’s card.

What is the controversy between the UID and NPR?

• Effectiveness: There is controversy over which scheme would be more effective and appropriate for different purposes. For example, the Ministry of Home Affairs has argued that the NPR would be more suited for distributing subsidies than the UID, as the NPR has data linking each individual to a household.[18]
• Legality of sharing data: Both the legality of the UID and NPR collecting data and biometrics has been questioned. For example, it has been pointed out that the collection of biometric information through the NPR, is beyond the scope of subordinate legislation. Especially as this appears to be left only to guidelines.[19] Collection of any information under the UID scheme is being questioned as the Bill has not been approved by the Parliament.
• Accuracy: The UIDAI's use of multiple registrars and enrolment agencies, the reliance on  'secondary information' via existing ID documents for enrollment in the UID, and the original plan to enroll individuals via the 'introducer' system has raised by Home Minister Chidambaram in January 2012 about how accurate the data collected by the UID is is that will be collected.[20] To this extent, the UIDAI has changed the introducer system to a ‘verifier’ system. In this system, Government officials verify individuals and their documents prior to enrolling them.
• Biometrics: Though biometrics are mandatory for the UID scheme, according to information on the NPR website, if an individual has already enrolled with the UID, they will not need to provide their biometrics again for the NPR. Application of this standard has been haphazard as some individuals have been required to provide biometrics for both the UID and the NPR, and others have not been required to provide biometrics for the NPR.[21]

What court cases have been filed against the UID?
The following cases are currently filed in courts around the country:

• Supreme Court:

K S Puttaswamy, a retired judge of Karnataka High Court filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Supreme  Court challenging the legality of UIDAI.[22]

• Chandigarh: A petition was filed in Chandigarh by Sanjeev Pandey which sought to quash executive order passed in violation of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, and Central Motor Vehicle Rules, 1989 by which UID cards had been made mandatory for registration of vehicles and grant of learner/regular driving license.[23]
• Karnataka: Mathew Thomas and Mr. VK Somasekhar have filed a civil suit in the Bangalore City Civil Courts (numbered 8181 of 2012) asking for the UID project to be stopped. The suit was dismissed, and they have appealed the case to the High Court (numbered 1780 and 1825 of 2013).
• Chennai: A PIL has been filed in the Madras High Court challenging the constitutional validity of the UIDAI and its issue of UID numbers.[24]
• Bombay: In January 2012 a case was filed in the Mumbai high Court. The petitioners to the case are R. Ramkumar, G. Nagarjuna, Kamayani Mahabal, Yogesh Pawar and  Vickram Crishna & Ors.

What is the relationship between UID, NPR, and National Security
The UID and the NPR have both stated improving security as an objective for the projects. To this extent, it is envisioned that the UID and the NPR could be used to track and identify individuals, and determine if they are residents of India. In the case of the NPR, a distinction will be made between residents and citizens. Yet, concerns have also been raised that these projects instead raise national security threats, given the size of the databases that will be created, the centralized nature of the databases, the sensitive nature of the information held in the databases, and the involvement of international agencies.[25]

What is the relationship between UID and Big Data?
Aspects of the UID scheme allow it to generate a large amount of data from a variety of sources. Namely, the UID scheme aims to capture 12 billion fingerprints, 1.2 billion photographs and 2.4 billion iris scans and can be adopted by any platform. This data in turn can be stored, analyzed, and used for a number of purposes by a number of stakeholders in both the government and the private sectors. This is already happening to a certain extent as in November 2012 the UID  established a Public Data Portal for the UID project. According to UIDAI officials the data portal will allow for big data analysis using crowd sourcing models.[26]

How is UID being used for BPL direct cash transfers?
Registration with the UID scheme is considered essential to determine whether beneficiaries belong in the BPL category and to provide transparency to the distribution of cash. In this way, the UID requirement is thought to prevent the leakage of social security benefits and subsidies to non-intended beneficiaries, as cash will only be made available to the person identified by the UID as the intended recipient. One of the main prerequisites of a below poverty line (BPL) direct cash transfer in India has become the registration with the UIDAI and the acquisition of a UID number. For example:

• The "Cash for Food" programme requires that individuals applying for aid have a bank account, and a UID number. The money is transferred, electronically and automatically, to the bank account and the beneficiary should be able to withdraw it from a micro-ATM using the UID number.[27] It is important to note that micro-ATMs are not actual ATMs, but instead are handheld machines which may give information on bank balance and such, but will not dispense or maintain privacy of transaction.  Most importantly, the transaction is mediated though a banking correspondent.
• The government plans to cover the target BPL families and deposit USD 570 billion per year in the bank accounts of 100 million poor families by 2014.[28]
• Currently, only beneficiaries of thirteen government schemes and LPG connection holders have been identified as being entitled to register for a UID number.[29] Though these schemes have been identified, as of yet, adoption has happened in very few districts.

What are the concerns regarding the use of biometrics in the UID and NPR scheme?
Both the UID and the NPR rely on biometrics as a way to identify individuals.  Yet, many concerns have been raised about the use of biometrics in terms of legality, effectiveness, and accuracy of the technology.  With regards to the accuracy and effectiveness of biometrics – the following concerns have been raised:

• Biometrics are not infallible: Inaccuracies can arise from variations in individuals  attributes and inaccuracies in the technology.
• Environment matters: An individual’s biometrics can change in response to a number of factors including age, environment, stress, activity, and illness.
• Population size matters: Because biometrics have differing levels of stability – the larger the population is the higher the possibility for error is.
• Technology matters: The accuracy of a biometric match also depends on the accuracy of the technology used. Many aspects of biometric technology can change including: calibration, sensors, and algorithms.
• Spoofing: It is possible to spoof a fingerprint and fool a biometric reader.[30]

[1]. Government of India. Ministry of Home Affairs. Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner.  http://bit.ly/IiySDh

[2]. This is according to a 2010 Cabinet note and the official website of the NPR.

[3]. Department of Information Technology: http://ditnpr.nic.in/frmStatelist.aspx - These include:  (1) Arunachal Pradesh (2) Assam (3) Bihar (4) Chhattisgarh (5) Haryana (6) Himachal Pradesh (7)Jammu & Kashmir (8) Jharkhand (9) Madhya Pradesh (10)Meghalaya (11)Mizoram (12)Punjab (13)Rajasthan (14)Sikkim (15)Tripura (16)Uttar Pradesh (17)Uttarakhand  Union Territories:-(1) Dadra & Nagar Haveli (2) Chandigarh.

[4]. Government of India. Ministry of Home Affairs. Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner: http://bit.ly/IiySDh

[5]. Department of Information Technology. National Population Register.  Question  22. What are the procedures to be followed for creating the NPR? The procedures to be followed for creating the NPR have been laid down in the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003, and the guidelines being issued from time to time.

[6]. The Unique Identification Government of India. Ministry of Home Affairs. Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner: http://censusindia.gov.in/2011-Common/IntroductionToNpr.html Authority of India. http://uidai.gov.in/

[7]. Unique Identification Authority of India. http://uidai.gov.in/

[8]. The point was made by R. Ramachandran. How reliable is UID? Frontline. Volume 28- Issue 24: November 19- December 02, 2011. Available at: http://bit.ly/13UMiSv

[9]. For more information see: How to get an Aadhaar. http://bit.ly/R2jBOP

[10]. Mazumdar. R. UIDAI targets 400 million enrolments by mid 2013, Aadhar hopes to give unique identity to some 1.2 bn residents. Economic Times. December 2012. Available at: http://bit.ly/ZC3Yve. Last accessed: February 28th 2013.

[11]. Malu. B. The Aadhaar Card – What are the real intentions of the UPA Government? DNA. February 18^th 2013. Available at: http://bit.ly/150BXRj. Last accessed: February 28th 2013.

[12]. Government of Kerala. General Education Department Circular No. 52957/G2?2012/G.Edn. Available at: http://bit.ly/15Oiq8J

[13]. Plumber, M. Make UID numbers must in FIRs: Bombay HC. DNA. October 2011. Available at: http://bit.ly/tVsInl. Last accessed: February 28th 2013.

[14]. Press Information Bureau. Government of India. Identity Card to Every Adult Resident of the Country under NPR; No Card being issued by UIDAI. December 2011. Available at: http://bit.ly/tJwZG1

[15]. TravelBiz. Railways to use Aadhar database for passenger validation. February 2013. Available at: http://bit.ly/YcW5wl. Last accessed: February 28th 2013.

[16]. Vombatkere. S.G. Questions for Mr. Nilekani. The Hindu. February 2013. Available at: http://bit.ly/YqPlK1. Last accessed: February 28th 2013.

[17]. Economic Times. UIDAI orders probe into duplication of Aadhaar numbers. http://bit.ly/ZORowg. Last accessed: February 28th 2013.

[18]. Jain. B. Battle over turf muddies waters. Times of India. February 2013. Available at: http://bit.ly/16ud3gm. Last accessed: February 28th 2013

[19]. Rediff. Aadhaar’s allocation is Parliament’s contempt. February 2013. Available at: http://bit.ly/Y638JS. Last accessed: February 28th 2013.

[20]. Ibid 17.

[21]. Times of India. Confused over Aadhaar, Cabinet clears GoM. February 2013. Available at http://bit.ly/UTH2JS. Last accessed: February 28th 2013.

[22]. Times of India. Supreme Court notice to govt on PIL over Aadhar. December 2012. Available at: http://bit.ly/13UNs0i. Last accessed: February 2013.

[23]. The Indian Express. HC issues notice to Centre, UT over mandatory UID for license. January 2013. Available at: http://bit.ly/WJq43M. Last accessed: February 28th 2013.

[24]. Economic Times. PIL seeks to scrap Nandan Nilekani’s Aadhar project. January 2012. Available at: http://bit.ly/zB1H07. Last accessed: February 28th 2013.

[25]. Times of India. UID poses national security threat: BJP. January 2012. Available at: http://bit.ly/WeM6KA. Last accessed: February 28th 2013.

[26]. Zeenews. UIDAI launches Public Data Portal for Aadhaar. November 8th 2012. Available at: http://bit.ly/T9NdX3. Last Accessed: November 12th 2012.

[27]. Punj, S. Wages of Haste: Implementing the cash transfer scheme is proving a challenge. January 2013. Available at: http://bit.ly/1024Dwo. Last accessed: February 28th 2013.

[28]. The International Business Times. India to Roll Out World’s Biggest Direct Cash Transfer Scheme for the Poor. November 2012. Available at: http://bit.ly/UYbtw4. Last accessed: February 28th 2013.

[29]. Mid Day. Do not register for Aadhaar card before March 15: UID in –charge. February 2013. Available at:  http://bit.ly/Xymx9d. Last accessed: February 28th 2013.

[30]. These points were raised in the following frontline article Ibid: Ramachandran, R. How reliable is UID? Frontline. Volume 28 – Issue 24 November 19th – December 2nd 2011. Available at: http://bit.ly/13UMiSv. Last accessed February  28th 2013.

See the blog post published in Benson's Blog

Aaron Koenig gave a talk on the creation and use of Bitcoin, and on a payment system designed for the voting process of the Bitfilm Festival for Digital Film. Since the year 2000, the Bitfilm Festival has been showcasing films that use digital technology in a creative and innovative way. It takes place on the Internet. However, physical screenings of the films will be held in Bangalore and in Hamburg. Each of the 59 nominated digital animations has its own Bitcoin account, and users worldwide may vote by donating Bitcoins to the films they like anonymously and without any transfer costs. The donated money will be divided among the most popular films (the films with the most votes/Bitcoins).

A strong knowledgeable speaker, Aaron brought forward his tremendous knowledge of Bitcoin, Art & Economics.

The Twitter based Q&A can be viewed on the Twitter ID's of

@pranesh_prakash

@cis_india

@bensonsamuel

The Newspaper Articles where Bitfilm & Bitcoin made their news in India were

Deccan Herald - http://bit.ly/U74YsS

The Hindu - http://goo.gl/YJYni

The Bangalore Mirror - http://bit.ly/XfDRbZ

Bitcoin Resources In India

Local Exchange - LocalBitcoins.com

India Fourms -   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=89.0

http://bit.ly/ZDm4jW

Blogs - bensonsamuel.com

Unocoin.com

Services - indiabitcoin.com - Official Partners of Bitpay USA in India

Meetup Group - http://www.meetup.com/Bitcoin-Bangalore-Meetup-Group/

Video

Jessica Coates, Global Network Manager and Jane Hornibrook, Regional Coordinator, Asia-Pacific, Creative Commons recently visited India. The Access to Knowledge team from the Centre for Internet and Society got a chance to join them for three of their meetings: one in Pune and two in Bengaluru.

Ceative Commons is a not-for-profit organization and the base for the free licenses. More than 400 million work in the world are in Creative Commons license as of today. The foundation is looking to expand its wing of voluntary affiliates in India who would support for more outreach, community building and research. "We are excited to see the wikipedians in India and their passion to contribute to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. Wikimedia Commons is the largest Creative Commons license use and we are looking for joining hands with the Indian wikipedians and the Wikimedia India chapter", says Jessica Coats.

Jane Hornibook, who looks after Creative Common's operation in Asia-Pacific said, "Creative Commons has many users in India. It would be exciting for us to collaborate with more academicians, wikipedians and organizations like Wikimedia India Chapter and CIS for peer research and outreach and grow our affiliate network in India.

Video

Note: This blog post is a combination of events organized in Pune by Pune Linux/Unix User Group and Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies & Research, and CIS and the Wikimedia India Chapter in Bangalore.

Click to see the program flyer. Also see Nishant's key note at Video Vortex

Participants

Thursday February 28th / Donnerstag 28.02.2013 VIDEO VORTEX #9 Re:assemblies of Video + Analog@VIDEO VORTEX

confirmed speakers / bestätigte Referenten: Beth Coleman» , Seth Keen» ,  Edwin» , Thomas Østbye» , Andreas Treske» , Stephanie Hough» , Martin Katić» , Theresa Steffens» , Arndt Potdevin» , Robert M. Ochshorn» , Nan Haifen» , Viola Sarnelli» , Boris Traue» , Achim Kredelbach» , Dalida María Benfield» , Renée Ridgway» , Gabriel S Moses» , Nishant Shah»

Friday March 1st / Freitag 01.03.2013 VIDEO VORTEX #9 Re:assemblies of Video

confirmed speakers / bestätigte Referenten: Margarita Tsomou» , Sascha Simons» , Nelli Kambouri» , Pavlos Hatzopoulos» , Joshua Neves» , Gabriel Menotti» , Filippo Spreafico» , Caroline Heron» , Jonathan Shaw» , Jan Gerber» , Sebastian Luetgert» , Elric Milon» , Sebastian Luetgert» , Sascha Kluger» , Jamie King» ,  Stefano Sabatini» , Peter Snowdon» , Miya Yoshida» , Boaz Levin» , Azin Feizabadi» , Kaya Behkalam» , Jens Maier-Rothe» , Jasmina Metwaly», Graswurzel.tv» , Björn Ahrend» , Timo Großpietsch»

Saturday March 2nd / Samstag 02.03.2013 VIDEO VORTEX #9 Re:assemblies of Video

confirmed speakers / bestätigte Referenten: Vito Campanelli» , Robert M. Ochshorn» , Alejo Duque» , Lucía Egaña Rojas» , Andrew Clay» , Stefan Heidenreich» &  Deborah Ligorio» , Cornelia Sollfrank»

Digital Natives

The first video, DNI addresses the construction of the digital native (DN) with comments, critiques and opinions from the interviewees, visualizing a shift in how digital natives are imaged and perceived.

The second video DNII focuses on the real vs. the digital whereby the division between physical reality and virtual reality is dismissed to build more comprehensive accounts of digital native practices.

The third clip DNIII explores the processes that produce possibilities and potentials for social change through political participation and the role that technologies play in defining civic action and social movements. What are the relationships that these technology-based identities and practices have with existing political legacies?

The last video DNIV combines connectivity, collaboration, inspiration and transformation but also reflects upon the limits of cyberspace, its borders and the eventual co-optation of technology by users.

DNI, DNII, DNIII, DNIV were commissioned by Hivos, Amsterdam and the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.

Why host an Aaron Swartz memorial hacknight? In the aftermath of Aaron’s death, some people began expressing doubts, uncertanties and misinformed opinions about his activist causes. They questioned whether Aaron committed a ’crime’ by downloading articles from JSTOR and whether the means he used for liberating data were wrong in the first place. It was important to dispel these doubts and provide people with a better understanding about issues such as IT laws, copyright rules and access to information, and how these are implemented in different parts of the world.

Aaron had initiated several coding projects during his lifetime. Anand Chitipothu, who collaborated with Aaron at the Internet Archive and maintains his web.py framework, suggested that the hacknight could also be an opportunity where people get familiar with Aaron’s coding projects and work on some of them.

The hacknight: 87 people registered for the hacknight. Approximately 40 people turned up. Some participants proposed projects to liberate different kinds of public data such as electoral data, weather data, information about train timetables and crawling data from government and NIC websites. Developers worked on these projects to make the data searchable and usable.

Discussions during the hacknight: The hacknight started at 3 PM with a discussion about the life of Aaron Swartz and the political and legal implications of his coding projects and activism.

This discussion was led by Anand and Kiran Jonnalagadda of HasGeek.

Kiran gave an elaborate background about Aaron’s life starting with how he established RSS 1.0 as a standard and the collaboration between Aaron and Lawrence Lessig on using the RDF format for Creative Commons licensing, leading to Aaron’s work with Reddit and its acquisition by Condé Nast. Shortly after Reddit’s acquisition, Aaron left Reddit and began a career in activism. In this period, he started freeing data funded by public money which constitutionally belonged in the public domain. He published data from the catalogue of the Library of Congress and the US case law archives on the Internet Archive. Later, Aaron downloaded articles from JSTOR to release academic papers whose research was funded with public money. Before he could sift through the downloads, Aaron was caught by the police. He returned the hard disk containing the downloads. JSTOR and MIT did not pursue cases against him, but the United States government charged Aaron for breaking into the MIT campus and faking identity by changing the MAC address of his computer.

At the end of Kiran’s presentation, participants asked several questions about activism, what constitutes offensive speech, framework of IT laws in India, and the process of law-making.

At 5 PM, Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) joined the hacknight. He made a presentation about copyright laws, the Indian IT Act and Aaron’s work.

Sunil explained how Aaron believed in the importance of access to information by releasing data from copyright and thereby enabling freedom of expression. According to Sunil, Aaron Swartz is a very troublesome hero because his data liberation projects do not fall into one neat category. Moreover, the means he used for his activism are questioned by different activist groups. This makes it difficult to pinpoint exactly what one must credit Aaron for and what category of activism his work falls under.

After Sunil’s presentation, there was a half hour discussion about the scope of copyright laws in India, copyright exemptions and what constitutes copyright infringement. Participants agreed that the trouble lies with the broad interpretations of copyright and IT laws. This enables the state and private parties to target and harass a person, often on frivolous grounds.

Discussion about hacknight projects: At 6 PM, participants with project ideas and those who wanted to join projects gathered in the garden. Over tea and snacks, groups / pairs were formed. Participants reported two difficulties here:

1. There weren’t enough projects to choose from i.e., fewer problems to solve
2. Not everyone who proposed projects could break the problem down into tasks for individual team members to work on.

This affected participants’ motivation to stay through the night.

Web.py workshop: After the tea break, Anand conducted a workshop on web.py.

Some participants came to the hacknight mainly to attend this workshop. The code used in this workshop is available on github.com/anandology/webpy-workshop.

Anand also worked on the database module of web.py to decouple it and make it into a separate python module. This project requires more work before it is completed. The code is available at: http://github.com/anandology/sqlpy

Projects at the hacknight: A complete list of projects that participants worked on during the hacknight are available on the hacknight website. We talked with some of the teams and individual participants to understand their projects, the process they followed for solving the problems, and outcomes at the end of the hacknight.

Liberating electoral data: Arun Raghavan, an open source enthusiast, and four other participants (Arun K, Praveen, Mikul and Sumant) worked on scraping electorial data from http://ceokarnataka.kar.nic.in/. They planned to build a frontend which will make it easy for users to search their names and polling booth information. Currently, the electoral roll is published as a PDF document for each polling station along with a search form (which is unreliable and fails often) for individuals to find their names on the roll and the location of their polling station.

It was difficult to parse the data because the PDFs were not designed for machine readability. Hence, the team had to spend time understanding how to extract the text. The other problem was that the person’s name was written above the father’s name, but if the person’s name was very long, it overlapped the father’s name. This made it difficult to determine where the person’s name ended and where the father’s name began. The team managed to come up with a heuristic to distinguish between the person’s name and father’s name based on slight differences in the way the text was printed on each sheet.

Arun Raghavan and other team members used Python to parse data from the PDFs. They also tried extracting data by using the search form and saving results whenever it returned them (since it failed often). The search form required a JavaScript submit, so Praveen Kumar and Arun K learned to use casper.js to emulate a browser and extract data. Praveen also used casper.js to liberate his friend Aram Bhusal’s blog from Sulekha.com. Aram made a presentation about this at the January edition of the Bangalore JS meet.

At the end of the hacknight, the group almost managed to get a dump of an entire electoral roll. The project repositories:

1. https://github.com/arunk/ceoscraper
2. https://github.com/ford-prefect/ceo-kar-roll-scraper

Other data liberation projects:

1. Indexing Government websites by category of information: Elvis D’souza worked on crawling government websites and indexing them by category, for e.g., education, import-export trade, science and technology, etc. According to him, government websites contain lots of information including documents and spreadsheets. At the hacknight, Elvis completed the indexing process and ran some statistics about information contained in these websites. He eventually wants to build a portal where people can access this index and the documents.

2. Railway timetable data: Anand scraped data from the IRCTC website. Supreeth Srinivasmurthy worked with this data to plot a map. Bibhas Debnath also worked on the timetable data to build an API. A demo of this API is yet to be released.

3. Parsing weather data: Asok Padda converted weather data from HTML format to Excel sheets. Hourly weather data for all weather stations in India during 2012 is parsed and uploaded to Internet Archive: http://archive.org/details/www.imdaws.com-2012

4. Other projects: Kashyap Kondamundi started building an app which will help people to calculate the current values of their mutual funds. He built 70% of this app at the hacknight.

HasGeek has requested participants to post updates about their projects and share links to their code.

Overall achievements from the hacknight: Participants reported the following outcomes from the hacknight:

1. Learning about new libraries and their applications
2. Awareness about IT laws and copyright frameworks in India
3. Opportunity to meet and network with other coders who have an interest in data-related projects or working on new project ideas.

Participants appreciated Anand’s presence as a mentor during the hacknight. He interacted with the teams and helped them when they were stuck with their projects, either with his expertise in Python or by suggesting alternative ways of approaching the problem.

HasGeek thanks CIS for sponsoring the venue and providing logistical support during the hacknight.

This interview was originally published by NewsClick on January 19, 2013.

Discussing on the immediate background in which this tragic event happened, Lawrence says that  all of us are collectively mourning the death of an extremely talented individual. He adds that Aaron was facing a very difficult trial ahead. A couple of years ago he had plugged his computer on to the MIT network and had downloaded approximately four million articles from JSTOR (primary database for social science and other science journals) and he had intended to make freely available. This act of his in many ways marks Aaaron's short life but one which is marked by a certain commitment and activism around the idea of free knowledge.

Lawrence further says that his anger at databases like JSTOR was the fact that they were charging extraordinary amounts of money to provide access (which meant that they were not available to most people in the world) without paying any royalty to the authors contributing to the article or to the people who do the peer review of the articles. Here is a scenario which is rent control of the worst kind essentially of knowledge which is completely privatised and enclosed (public knowledge which is enclosed in this particular way).

Most researchers and academics who work and contribute towards making of journals do not get compensated for it but are paid for by public money because they happen to be employed by universities or research centres. And then all this material goes behind pay walls. And that is the context in which we need to understand Aaron's life. Click below to watch the full interview:

Video

On January 12 and 13, 2013, I was in Pune to participate in the Wikipedia Summit Pune 2013, a two day event organized by Wikipedia Club Pune to promote Wikipedia as an effective means of education, to empower and reach out to India, to bring the country under a spotlight through Spoken Wikipedia, and to bridge the gender gap of Wikipedia editors. Here is a summary of the activities.

Day 1

On the first day, January 12, more than 100 people including students from almost 10 different schools, housewives, working professionals and free and open source activists participated. The opening ceremony began with talks from Abhishek Suryawanshi, founder member of Wikipedia Club Pune, Sudhanwa Jogelkar, President of Wikimedia India Chapter, Rishi Aacharya, Principal, PAI International Learning Solutions, and social activist Ms. Vibha.

Before the formal opening Abhishek spoke for a while about the Spoken Wikipedia project which is one main agenda of the two days event. He explained about the need of spoken wikipedia, especially for people with disabilities and how effective it would be when it spreads in 20 Indic languages. In the past wikipedians in Pune gathered and recorded articles in various Indian and international languages.

Sudhanwa Jogelkar, President, Wikimedia India Chapter introduced the chapter's role for Wikimedia movement to the audience. He spoke about the chapters' in few of the national events/projects like Wiki Loves Monument, GLAM project in Crafts Museum, Delhi and many other outreach events. There were few announcements about the chapter on the MoU to be signed from the chapter with district collector of Kanyakumari, the India Chapter being partner to Springfest, IIT, Kharagpur, Commons day celebration in February and GNUnify 2013, Pune.

Vibha, a social activist based in Delhi spoke about gender discrimination in many aspects of our social and professional life. Access to knowledge for free could bridge this and Wikipedia, being so known universally and accessed by millions of people every day could be the best platform for this.' says Vibha.

Rishi Aacharya, Principal of PAI International brought the vedic saying "Ya vidya sa vimuktaye" to explain the real meaning of knowledge which is free of its existence in an Indian context. He spoke about open source movement and Wikipedia's part in it.

After the formal opening there was a Q&A session for the participants to clarify various questions they had about Wikipedia. Then they were explained about the three parallel sessions: An Open Discussion about Gender Gap, Workshop for Indic Languages, and Spoken Wikipedia. The session on gender gap was attended by many school students. Vibha and some activists coordinated this event. In the Workshop for Indic languages and Spoken Wikipedia, wikipedians helped participants for the workshop with basic editing and the participants edited Marathi and Hindi Wikipedia. Articles from various medical subjects of common interest were chosen. There were three medical professionals to support with the medical terminologies for editors contributing to Marathi and Hindi Wikipedia.

At the end of the day there were separate wrap up tracks to summarize the learning of whole session. All of the participants gathered together to educate each other about the work they have done. Many of the participants spoke about their experience and learnings. Plans for the next day was announced. Wikipedians gathered for a group photo and socialized after the closing talks.

Day 2

The second day, January 13, of  the Wikipedia Summit in Pune was a sequel of the activities which happened on the first day. More than 40 students took part in this session. Vibha, Srishti and team were coordinating the gender gap track. Many topics related to Gender Gap, gender based discrimination, Role of gender gap in occupation, Gender gap in Wikipedia, Participation of Woman editors on Wikipedia were discussed.

Participants of the Spoken Wikipedia session worked on the articles on Hindi and Marathi Wikipedia and moved them from sandboxes to article namespaces. After all of the articles were created they recorded them. They formed groups of 3-4 members and worked together. One of them would search information mainly from the English Wikipedia articles and some of the available Marathi (or Hindi), some others would translate and the other member would record it using a mobile phone. That was a great team effort.

Over 25 voluntary organizers joined hands for making this a success. There were about 120 participants. At the end of the day participants from both the sessions gathered. Many of the participants and organizers shared their experiences and learnings. The program was concluded with socializing, taking group pictures, promises to stay in touch and taking active part in more Wikipedia activities.

This event was co-hosted by Centre for Internet and Society with a financial support of ₹ 21,600 granted by Kusuma Foundation.

Also see:

• Wikipedia Summit Pune: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Summit_Pune
• Wikipedia Club Pune: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Club_Pune
• Pictures: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_Summit_Pune
• Spoken Wikipedia Project: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Spoken_Wikipedia_-_India
• Pune Club facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/WikipediaClubPune

Video

Jayanta Nath and Deepon Saha — Lecture on Bangla Wikipedia

Jayanta is one of the active contributors in Bangla Wikipedia. He has supported community building for Bangla Wikipedia in India. Apart from contributing articles Jayanta supports many wikipedians for fixing technical issues on various language wikis. Deepon is another active wikipedian from Kolkata who contributes mostly to English Wikipedia besides contributing to WikiCommons and Bangla Wikipedia and taking active part in community building in Kolkata and other places. I met both Jayanta and Deepon recently in Kolkata and discussed about Bangla Wikipedia and the role of contributors from India.

Over the last few years Bangla Wikipedia has seen enough growth — growth in number of articles, growth in number of outreach, growth in number of contributors and lot more. However, there is something missing in this list, and that is the growth in number of Bangla editors from India. Sadly, though Bangla speaking people constitute a major part of the intellectual sphere. Bangla Wikipedia has not seen many new faces in the recent past from the Indian subcontinent. "English has become like a mother language of most Bengalis in Kolkata and Bengalis residing in other major cities", expresses Jayanta with grief. "Most of the Bengalis speak and are adhered to Bengali language but the use of language is limited only to speaking. And they no more use Bangla in writing. That is what makes it more difficult to tell them about Bangla Wikipedia", adds Deepon. Bangla Wikipedia in India is facing one more major challenge: media coverage. There is not much coverage about Bangla Wikipedia in Bangla media, especially print media. "I was interviewed by the Times of India, Hindu, Telegraph and few other English newspapers but, surprisingly there was not much coverage in Bangla media. There are almost 12 Bangla newspapers being published from Kolkata and in spite of our efforts the outcome is far below expectation", explains Jayanta. Jayanta feels there is much scope for community building for Bangla Wikipedia in rural West Bengal. Unlike urban Bengal, Bangla is the primary medium of both verbal and written communication.

Computer literacy might be a big hurdle when it comes to spreading words about editing Bangla Wikipedia. But it is difficult to predict about the status of government schools, computer and internet penetration before initiating outreach for rural places. Deepon also suggests about making a small survey in Bangla medium schools in Kolkata to understand the scope for any Bangla education program in those schools. We discussed about the internet penetration to measure and assess the state of Bangla on internet and its public usage. Out of the ten Bangla newspapers only two are available in unicode for their online edition. The state of unicode and online usage of Bangla in unicode is much better in Bangladesh which also explains that Bengalis in Bangladesh are using Bangla to a great extent including reading, writing and upon internet.

Typing is another challenge to be tackled. DTP operators, government offices where Bangla typing is used normally use a different typing scheme and non-unicode fonts (mostly old ISCII or ASCII fonts). "We could bring many Bangla enthusiasts to Bangla Wiki projects by simplifying the typing solution and making people aware about the available typing tools. Simple video tutorials and smaller help pages with easy-to-understand guidelines will be helpful and these should be linked from other pages so the new editors will find them and make use of them to learn editing", adds Deepon.

The Full Story Began with Loads of Curiosity and a Small [Edit] Button!

Deepon was searching for some information online while he discovered the available information on wikipedia is incorrect. He was searching for a help desk to ask to correct it. Suddenly he discovered the "Edit" button, when he clicked on it a new page opened up with a warning: "You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. Please log in or sign up to have your edits associated with a user name, among other benefits."  He clicked, signed up and created a new account and corrected the mistake. That was the first time Deepon made his first edit on Wikipedia and never stopped after that.

Ashwin (User:AshLin): Passion to Contribute to Wikipedia still Flying like Butterflies

There was no book available in the early 80s when Ashwin wanted to know more about Indian butterflies. There was no article on Wikipedia about Indian butterflies and there were very less available resource on Indian butterflies. Ashwin along with Shyamal and other enthusiasts collaborated to start working on this project which brought many other contributors. The other project he was quite involved was about Indian snakes. One of his key motivations for contributing to Wikipedia was making the resource about Indian butterflies available for others.

Since March 2011, Odia Wikipedia has started growing in terms of readers, editors and content. Last few months have seen many new faces added to the community who are willing to take part in both offline and online outreach. Though many of the community members are staying out of state, there are community clusters in three different places: Cuttack, Nalconagar and Bhubaneswar. We approached many institutions from these three places and some of them showed interest for an Odia Wikipedia workshop to assess and evaluate students for the education program. We conducted workshops in some of those institutions in the initial level. After successive workshops and meeting with the faculty members, some of the potential institutions were chosen for the education program. One of those colleges was the IIMC in Dhenkanal. We had a meeting with the professor of this organization along with teaching associates and a visiting professor and a full day workshop on editing wikipedia. Odia wikipedians, Mrutyunjaya Kar, Manoranjan Mallick, Srikant Kedia and Kamalakanta Nayak supported for organizing the event.

IIMC, Dhenkanal is one of the six IIMCs of India and a pioneer in the field of Mass Communication. We met Professor Mrinal Chaterjee along with teaching associates, Sucharita and Bhagaban Sahu, retired professor of Revenshaw University and visiting professor of IIMC. The college is home to 83 students across India. Students enroll for a one year diploma program for Journalism and Mass communication in Odia and English.

The full day session was made to two separate sessions: an introductory session and one hands-on training on editing. Prof. Chaterjee introduced the agenda of the session and why it is needed for the students from a student's point of view. I continued the discussion and presented the key points of wikipedia editing and details of the education program, why and how we are going to start it focussing on the key roles of students and the institution and how it will help them. We announced about the hands on training session post lunch for the interested students. Twenty one students gathered for the second session. Interestingly all of the Odia department students were present and there was one student from English department. Students were briefed about editing. During the workshop we found that majority of them knew a typing layout called "Modular layout" which is used by non-unicode ISCII/ASCII typing softwares like Leap office, I-Lipi, Shreelipi, etc. As this layout is yet to be enabled for Odia we continued explaining about typing using the default typing scheme.

After the end of the workshop we had another meeting with the professor and other faculty members to assess and discuss about the further steps. IIMC has a very close student-teacher relation which we observed from the beginning of the workshop. Students were really keen and patient to learn and all of the students who attended the hands-on training session stayed back till the end of the session. Apart from their regular assignments and projects, students also publish a daily bilingual newspaper, "The Reporter".

"Writing is a part of their their study and we emphasize much on getting the most of their short program. If Wikipedia could give them a global platform to and larger audience for their work to be read, reviewed and enhanced then why not adding it to their task list?", expresses Prof. Chatterjee. The only hurdle which students are going to face in the initial phase is typing in Odia. So, modular layout needs to be added in "Narayam", the typing tool integrated in Odia Wikipedia. To begin with this program an Odia Wikipedia club was formed at Nalconagar which would primarily support this program at the ground level.

Video

This video was published in LiveMint on November 30, 2012:

Aryaman Sundaram, Pavan Duggal, Pranesh Prakash and Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad took part in a discussion with Karan Thapar on section 66A of the IT Act. This was aired on CNN-IBN on November 20, 2012.

Pranesh Prakash said that it was just not a history of misuse of section 66A of the IT Act because that presumes that the law is otherwise fine and it has just been applied wrongly. This law is fundamentally flawed. It is unconstitutional. It is like a law in which there is a provision on rape, murder, theft, nuisance, everything put together in a single section with the same punishment being given for all of them. This obviously is not good law making but that is exactly what has been done in this case by taking bits from laws in the UK and from elsewhere and mashing them all up into one omnibust gargantuan monster which is unconstitutional.

Pranesh Prakash also added that the fact is that if you have bad laws they will be used to harass people. Having good law is one part of that. Apart from that there has been also other laws which have been misapplied in this case. In all these recent cases, section 66A of the IT Act wasn't the only provision used. This particular section has been used in conjunction with some other laws. So section 66A of the IT Act independently is not required. There are other laws in the Indian Penal Code and elsewhere which are usually enough to cover all the things that section 66A of the IT Act is right now covering. It is just an add on provision that really can't justify its existence unless it is really reduced in scope.

Watch the full video that was aired on CNN-IBN

Panelists:

• Chinmayi Arun, National Law University India and Fellow at CIS India
• Brian Cute, CEO at PIR (.org)
• Lee Hibbard, Media and Information Society Division at Council of Europe
• Konstantinos Komaitis, Policy Advisor at Internet Society
• Michael Niebel, Internet Policy Development at European Commission
• Patrick Ryan, Policy Councel Open Internet at Google

---

Moderator: Bertrand de La Chapelle, Director of the Internet & Jurisdiction Project Remote Moderator: Paul Fehlinger, Manager of the Internet & Jurisdiction Project

More information at www.internetjurisdiction.net

Video by the Internet Governance Forum

YP Singh, Alyque Padamsee, Rohan Joshi, Karuna Nundy and Pranesh Prakash took part in a discussion about the arrest of two girls over a Facebook comment. The discussion was aired in NDTV on November 19, 2012.

The anchor asked Pranesh Prakash:

Who are these people scrolling through people's Facebook posts and Twitter accounts, finding these comments and taking action?

Pranesh Prakash said that it could be anyone. The reality is doesn't really matter because the laws are written in such a way that if it is public and stuff that is on Facebook for different purposes can either be public or private, if it is public these laws can very often apply and that is a problem. We haven't quite figured out to what extent these laws apply. The IT Act section 66A for instance, is unconstitutional, section 295 A which has been applied, and section 505 which also seems to have been applied in this case make it a clear case of misappropriation of those provisions. These kind of arrests will happen. It doesn't quite matter if we have right laws at one level and it clearly doesn't help if we have bad laws. What we need to do at least in part to remedy the situation is to amend the IT Act to make it consonant and consistent with civil and political rights and to do so in multi-stakeholder fashion  involving civil society, industry and government. Right now it doesn't protect privacy and freedom of speech as much as it should.

Watch the full video aired on NDTV

Odia Wikipedians gathered in the temple city of Bhubaneswar on November 18, 2012 to organize the third Odia Wikipedia workshop in KMBB College of Engineering. KMBB College of Engineering is a BPUT affiliated engineering college supported by Ama Odisha, an organization working for media, communication and development of Odia language. Dr. Dhanada Mishra, Director-Academics, KMBB and a veteran educationalist and open source source enthusiast supported this event. Forty-five students from KMBB attended this workshop. The agenda for the two-and-a-half hour session was to educate students about open source movement, journey of Wikipedia and how to contribute to Odia Wikipedia and how it would help them. Nine active Odia Wikipedians joined to support this event.

Dr. Mishra began the session by introducing Odia Wikipedians to the students. He spoke about Open source movement, how the community supports various open source projects, how Wikipedia was started and how it is essential for students to take part in such activities. Subhashish Panigrahi briefly spoke about the history of Odia wikipedia, how it grew up in the recent years to its present state. Odia Wikipedian Manoranjan Behera discussed about how everyone can contribute to the Wikipedia.

To explain the easiness of typing in Odia, some of the students were invited to write text on a board and test the typing tool on Odia Wikipedia. A new article about the college was created and one of the students wrote few sentences. Wikipedians explained the importance of creating user accounts and demonstrated how to search an article, how to create an article and the basics of editing an article. A Question and Answer session was held for students to put their queries. At the end of the session, contact details were shared with the students and the Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/OdiaWiki) of Odia Wikipedia was shown so that students could continue editing and remain in touch with fellow wikipedians.

Odia daily “The Sambad” covered this event.

"More and more, you have young people who are trying to come together, not merely to express discontent, but actually take action so that they can build the kinds of futures they want to occupy."

The 2013 DML conference will be held in March 14-16, 2013 in Chicago, Illinois. The conference is supported by the MacArthur Foundation and organized by the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub located at the University of California's systemwide Humanities Research Institute at UC Irvine.

More details about the DML2013 Conference and the Call For Workshop/Panel/Paper Proposals can be found at the conference website: dml2013.dmlhub.net.

Video

Sunil Abraham along with Shivam Vij, Journalist and Blogger, SB Mishra, Additional DCP, Census Wing, Economic Offence Wing, Delhi Police, and Sanjay Pinto, Advocate, Madras High Court participated in this discussion aired in NDTV on October 31, 2012.

Watch the full video on NDTV

I visited Gujarat for a few Wikipedia activities – including Wikipedia meets in the cities of Ahmedabad and Rajkot, interacted with students and teachers from various colleges as well as to successfully conclude the Gujarati Wikipedia article writing competition.

I visited Rajkot on October 17, 2012 with two Wikipedians – Harsh Kothari and Konarak Ratnakar, both from Ahmedabad. We were scheduled to take up a small introductory lecture on contributing to Wikipedia at Christ College, Rajkot in the afternoon and meet up with other Gujarati Wikipedians from Rajkot and Junagadh later in the day. Fortunately, I was able to connect with Rashmikant Makwana, a teacher at TGS (The Galaxy School) in Rajkot. I had first met up with him during the photo walk – Wiki takes Ahmedabad in January 2012. He had shown a great deal of interest in doing something for his school students. Thanks to Mr. Makwana's prompt response and support, we visited three branches of TGES (The Galaxy Education System) and had the opportunity of interacting with over 100 students from secondary and higher secondary divisions.

Interactions with TGES students

I got to read Mr. Makwana's email only after I reached Rajkot. He wrote that he spoke to a couple of teachers about our visit and their students were very eager to meet us as they had many questions about Wikipedia! I was pleasantly surprised because once we met these students (mostly 11^th standard, English medium students) we realized they had already tried their hand at editing and even creating articles! So, they had far more advanced queries like how to verify information on Wikipedia, what is the authenticity of information there, questions on notability and so on. Next, we were taken to the vadi branch of the education group. These were children from fifth and sixth standards and who also had questions and better ones about stories of vandalism they had committed on Wikipedia! We told them how Wikipedia was one of the best ways of telling people about their culture, identities, city and language. Besides students, we also met teachers who taught Gujarati, History and Geography.

Interactions with Christ College students

Meeting Wikipedians

The trip to Rajkot, apart from meeting a whole bunch of new people, was also about connecting offline with Gujarati Wikipedians. Their warmth and day long support in terms of logistics, context and guidance kept us enthused. I extend my gratitude to Jitendrasinh Chauhan and his friend Harsh, both Wikipedians for their help. They have also helped us establish a dialog with Saurashtra University where we hope to plan a two-day conference centered around Gujarati language and digitization.

Given here is a network visualization infographic highlighting the key points.

Videos

Gujarati Wikipedia workshop at Christ college - 1

Gujarati Wikipedia workshop at Christ College - 2

Write about your city on Gujarati Wikipedia

Recently Odia Wikipedia (http://or.wikipedia.org) crossed 3000 articles. After being dormant for 8 long years, Odia Wikipedia emerged as one of the active South Asian wikipedias. I visited Pune on October 27, 2012 to participate in an Odia Wikipedia workshop celebrating this success with the wikipedians and also attend the WikiWomenDay 2012.

Over the last few months Odia Wikipedia has seen many active faces. One of them is Suratha Parhi, a very active Odia wikipedian. Suratha reached out to his friends, colleagues and existing wikipedians staying in Pune to celebrate the success with an Odia Wikipedia workshop. As it was after Durga Puja only a few Odia people in the city were there to attend. We saw a gathering of 10 people at PAI International Learning Center for this workshop. Abhishek Suryavanshi from Wikipedia Club Pune extended his support for organizing the venue for us.

Prior to the workshop I interacted with the participants to understand their interests and efficiency with Odia typing. To my surprise two of the participants were good in typing in phonetic and Inscript. Suratha took the audience through a presentation about Odia Wikipedia explaining the history of Odia language, importance of Wikipedia, how to contribute to Wikipedia, manual of style for writing articles, dos and do nots, rules and regulations and validating articles by adding sources. After the preliminary sessions participants started asking questions about numbers of readers, how to type in Odia, use of Odia Wikipedia and various such questions. Suratha answered their questions with examples and illustrations.

To demonstrate editing on Odia Wikipedia we invited one of the participants. We helped her to create her user account and others also created their user accounts on Odia Wikipedia. Then we invited Sudhir Patel, a type designer and technologist working with CDAC, Pune to introduce Odia typing and how to type easily in Odia. After a small hands-on training for typing, all of the participants were able to start searching for articles they wanted to edit. Some of them created new articles and some edited existing articles. At the end of the session we shared our contacts to stay in touch. We also showed them Chatasabha, a friendly desk on Odia Wikipedia and demonstrated how they can ask questions and see the answered questions. New wikipedians will be also connected to the facebook group to be updated about events and activities. New Wikipedians have decided to meet once again in November for a Odia Wikipedia meetup. Sudhir and Suratha are also planning to organize a introductory session on Odia Wikipedia during the cultural gathering organized by Odia communities.

More pictures on WikiCommons.

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

Videos

• Suratha Parhi explaining about Odia Wikipedia

• Sudhir Patel explaining about Odia Typing

This increment can partly be credited to  the photography and article contest, conducting workshops at various educational institutions and organic community growth.

Though Assamese Wikipedia is still a small project with about 1600 articles, the Assamese Wikipedians have the drive, willingness and zest to get more editors and multiply their community. Their enthusiasm and determination has led them to start with an Assamese Wikipedia Education Program. The program was launched on October 14, 2012 with 15 masters students (90 per cent of these are women students) under the guidance of Prof. Dulumoni Goswami, Head of the Department of Education, Guwahati University.

The day before the launch some of the Assamese Wikipedia editors including Jyoti and Durbhajyoti met to design and alter the Wikipedia Education Program for Assamese Wikipedia. It was decided that the entire program will be divided in four different stages which are as follows:

• Stage 1: Introduction to Wikipedia + Introduction to Education Program + Assamese typing
• Stage 2: Editing Assamese Wikipedia
• Stage 3: Advanced editing including adding references, headers, TOC and wiki markups
• Stage 4: Concluding the Education Program

In accordance with each of these stages there will be set of deliverables expected out of the students which are as follows:

• Deliverable 1: Create Wikipedia user accounts and user pages
• Deliverable 2: Submit a two-page typed article in Assamese
• Deliverable 3: Students will select one article each and start editing their articles
• Deliverable 4: Students will continue enhancing their articles and will start adding references, wiki markups and pictures, if desired.

All the students have willingly enrolled themselves in the program and have not been forced by the faculty members. Indeed, three students were not studying in Guwahati University but still wanted to be a part of the Assamese Education Program. A loud cheer and good wishes to the Assamese Wikipedia community!

Video

It was quite overwhelming to see the amount of effort the institution had put in to organize this event. It took place in a large auditorium which was well equipped with all modern facilities like projector, internet, good sound system, each student had a laptop with access to stable internet connection.

Over 120 participants attended the workshop including MCA, BCA, BBA students and faculty members. The workshop included a brief introduction about - what is Wikipedia, who edits Wikipedia, why do they edit Wikipedia, how can one contribute to Wikipedia articles. The presentation was followed by a hands on editing training session where some participants created usernames and tried minor editing.

During the session participants also created a new article, Inmantec, and have taken it as a challenge to edit and improve this article over the period of next one month.

Overall, the workshop was a huge success. The A2K team will be in regular touch with the participants through mail and Facebook to provide editing support. The participants will also be sent regular invites about Wikipedia events organised in NCR. The follow up session might be organized sometime in the month of November. Please watch out for more updates.

Video