15 Apr 2013 | Digital Freedom, India, Uncategorized
Some of India’s most prominant internet writers, researchers and policy analysts came together in Bangalore on 9 April to discuss “Strengthening Freedom of Expression on the Internet in India”, organised by the Internet Democracy Project.
The subject has been intermittently making headlines in India, with a number of politically motivated arrests made under the Information Technology Act’s controversial Section 66a. Causing more confusion, in 2011, the Minister for Communications & Information Technology, Kapil Sibal, made headlines by asking social media intermediaries to take down “objectionable” content.
At the time, the content in question seemed to be mainly objectionable to to the government itself. The content in question seemed to be mainly objectionable to the government alone.
This caused a huge public uproar, and since then Sibal has exercised more caution, though still maintaining that “the country must have an enabling framework — rules and regulations must not come in the way of the growth of the net.”
As well as Index on Censorship, the roundtable in Bangalore brought together a number of actors, including analysts from social media giants Facebook and Google, as well as Change.org, Wikimedia India Foundation, Medianama, Digital Empowerment Foundation, Open Governance India, Knowledge Commons, Alternative Law Forum, Center for Internet and Society, Tactical Tech, researchers from IIM Bangalore and Aziz Premji University. Journalists from The Hindu, Hindustan Times, DNA and smaller media organisations like Oorvani Media, Mahiti and The Alternative also took part in the debate.
The overall discussion centered around a few key issues, the first being whether the law “protects” free speech as it stands today. Many of those present felt that while Section 66a of The Information Technology Act 2000, which protects against “annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred, or ill will…” has been misused in the past, it needs to be examined from different angles, such as protecting women from online abuse.
While some writers have outright rejected this argument, the Internet Democracy Project released a draft paper on the subject. In it, they revealed that women think of the internet — social media — as “the street” where they can be taunted and abused in a similar manner to real life. In fact, drawing on the experiences of writer Meena Kandasamy and singer Chinmayi Sripada, who have faced violent abuse on social networks, the panel discussed ways to fend off misogyny that did not involve the law. These included using humour, blocking people, ignoring the comments, and even asking or waiting for others to come to your defence.
Interestingly, many women who were questioned for the study revealed that they prefer not to go to their families to report the abuse, for fear that they would be told to stop spending so much time online. The women and their families also said they had little confidence in going to the police with the same complaints.
This led the panel to discuss beyond the validity of the law — and question the role and capacity of the police in enforcing controversial measures like Section 66a. Some felt that 95 per cent of police on the front lines were not even aware of free speech issues, or the law in question, while others believed that police reforms are the way forward.
Some were unsure if they wanted the police to be tech savvy in the future, suggesting that it could lead to more arrests than there are today. It was agreed that there needs to be more research on the law as it functions today, to understand the crucial role the police will play in upholding it, particularly regarding the role the judiciary currently plays.
The question of defamation was also raised, with some panelists believing that there needs to be a distinction between those who have a small number of followers versus those who have a large following. Can the punishment be the same, if the effect of their status update or tweet is not?
Other discussions assessed challenges to freedom of speech at state level rather than national level and whether or not the mainstream media is forcefully supportive of free speech on the internet. The panelists debated the issue of anonyminity, and whether it is the cause or the solution to some of the free speech issues we see today.
An issue was raised surrounding how internet users are not a core constituency for the government right now; a fact reflected in the budget of the Ministry of Information and Technology, which chooses to focus areas such as computer hardware.
Another question circulating the room was whether strict laws such as Section 66a were designed with the intention to shape the internet a certain way, so that future users simply fall into line. The government’s perspective on the internet’s purposes was also explored, examining whether the National Broadband Network, currently being laid out to connect rural India, was viewed simply as a delivery service platform or for two-way communication.
Two questions that prompted considerable debate were “what is the role — actual or desired — of non legal actors such as intermediaries, pressure groups; the public at large” and “what non-legal strategies can we develop to protect free speech and who should implement such strategies?”
Some suggestions were to try out a “naming and shaming” site or Tumblr account for hate speech, although there were doubts as to how effective it would be. Other panelists advised that intermediaries could reveal more data that could save the government from taking drastic measures — for example, if a certain video was not being heavily viewed from within India, then the government would not feel the need to censor/block a website as it does now.
It was clear that civil society members and even the intermediaries are grappling with the same questions as the government. While a section of Indian society is firmly opposed to laws like Section 66a, there are discussion platforms to help understand how to operate within the constraints of the law.
5 Mar 2013 | India
Since the internet was introduced in 1995 in India’s major cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkatta, it has steadly grown in urban areas. By 1998, India has its first Internet Service Provider, Sify (later sold for $155 million). By 2001, India has its first crime branch. By 2005, the country had over 200,000 internet cafes. Facebook arrived in 2006, and in 2009, the government drafted policy on Indian language internet domain names.
As individuals in cities stock up on phones, laptops and tablets, accessing free wifi at more and more public places, the question of digital access in rural India still remains. Over the last decade, The National e-Governance Plan sought to bridge this gap by establishing a Common Service Center in each village. A CSC, as it is known, is a public-private partnership and operates as a one-stop hub for online government services (e-delivery) such as payment of certain utility bills, birth and death certificates, university exam results and such.
However, the overall experiment has revealed that the CSCs do not function equally. People do not need to use these government facilities more than once a month (if that), so unless the private entrepreneur is savvy enough to generate other income from the hub, it is not profitable to run. As well as this, irregular electricity supplies often restrict the timings of the CSC. And finally, while a public office with computers serves some purpose, it cannot substitute having personal connections in people’s homes.
This is why the government of India proposed a National Broadband Network, which will essentially lay out a fibre-optic cable across the country to achieve last mile connectivity. The idea behind this is simply that the network, like roads, will be provided by the government to then encourage private operations to start services those previously untouched areas. The government has committed about $4 billion to build the network that is projected to connect 250,000 village headquarters. One can only hope that it does not become mired in allegations of corruption, like so many other government projects in India.
— Of the 937.70 million telecom subscribers in India, 63.5 per cent are from urban areas
To understand India, you first need to look at some numbers. As of September 2012, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India revealed that in a country of 1.24 billion people, there are a total of 937.70 million telecom subscribers, including both wireless and wireline. Of these, 595.69 million or 63.5 per cent are from urban areas, while the rest, 342.01 million or 36.47 per cent are from the rural areas. The overall teledensity of the country is 77.04 per cent, with urban pockets at a whopping 161.13 per cent compared to 40.36 per cent in rural areas. Finally, the total number of internet subscribers in India (excluding those who use it on their mobile phones) is 24.01 million, a 5.97 per cent jump from the previous quarter. Some studies put mobile 3G subscriptions at 30 million, as of late 2011.
The figures reveal two important details. The first is that while there are many subscribers for telecom, that does not translate to each citizen owning a phone. In fact, the discrepancy between urban and rural teledensity, compounded by the very low broadband penetration in the country all point to the woefully inadequate job by both government and markets to connect much of rural India.
The solution to digital constraints in rural India has been one of hits and misses in the recent past. In terms of policy, India’s objectives have remained to some degree, quite ambitious. The 2012 Telecom Policy aims to take rural teledensity to 60 per cent by 2017 and one hundred per cent by 2020. The methods, however, are being changed as we speak.
In 2002, the government had constituted a Universal Service Obligation Fund, with the overall intention of encouraging private telecom operators to service remote and less lucrative markets. It did not work, as many service operations opted to pay a penalty instead of rolling out service in commercially unviable regions. For example, villages in India can often have only 500 residents, or be so poor that companies cannot even be guaranteed a minimum number of subscribers to justify their spending on infrastructure. At the same time, the high volume of mobile phones and internet subscriptions in the urban areas suggest that the market has successfully serviced cities, but is not incentivised enough to reach the deepest pockets of India.
While the government will be watched closely to see if it can deliver the network infrastructure it has promised to rural India on time, another facet of an inclusive digital development needs to be kept in mind. Right now, the internet in India serves populations who can read and write in some of the dominant languages including English, Hindi and some prominent state languages. However, as homes in smaller corners of the country get connected, everything from keyboards to content will have to cater to local dialects.
At the same time, outside of big e-commerce portals, projects that serve the smallest customer will be the only way the internet becomes relevant and constructive to rural India. Else, it will solely become a vehicle to youtube videos, Bollywood and cricket updates and let’s face it, porn.
When the final tabulation is done, it seems the government of India has understood all too well that leaving last mile of internet connectivity to commercial companies is not a viable strategy. Another reason they are taking up the challenge with a degree of renewed vigor is that they have pinned high hopes on their ability to deliver government services and crucial information in a more efficient manner through the net. To that end, the information highway needs to be established, so that the distance between the digital haves and digital have-nots does not increase any further.
The recent $1 million TED prize-winning education researcher Dr Sugata Mitra’s ground-breaking project, Hole in the Wall, demonstrates that all that is really needed to spur learning is access to information. In this case, Dr Mitra left an internet connected PC in a hole in a wall, and left to their own devices, slum children quickly learned how to use the computer and go online. Imagine the possibilities if they can grow up as digital natives.
