Kapil Sibal’s decision to control content and opinions on social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google (+), Yahoo, Microsoft is a mindless act of condemning people’s democratic rights. It’s the simplest technique to remove complete feedback mechanism, which these companies are striving hard to maintain for free, and which the Indian Government can hardly claim to have ever provided.
A movement takes pace ‘only’ with a public outrage (don’t expect only one wo/man to spend expensive time and money). Indeed, ‘control systems’ should devoid happening of anti-national movements and violence (riots for instance), but Mr Sibal you’ve come to condemn people’s opinion on or depicture of Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, where National Security does not even feature. Please don’t forget that if BJP should come to power, people’s opinions are unlikely to change, neither against your party, nor against theirs. Unfortunately, as a nation we tend to forget more things, only marginally condemned (for a few days) than forgive. Such has been happening for generations and all political parties keep making use of constant consternation – exploiting the endurance power of people.
Your argument is to preserve the culturally strong Indian background. We see for ourselves as examples at the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha meetings that gets randomly discontinued because MPs (who have not used a proxy) come up to slam the microphones, throw chairs haphazardly, shout in ghastly manners, even beat some up and the Speaker barely remains heard.
What happened to the culture preservation jingle when a painter paints religious Gods nude? Or was that not your vote bank Mr Sibal? True – you said (and appreciated):
“Three months back we saw that Google, Yahoo, Facebook had images that could be insulting to Indians, especially the religious. We told them to see to it that such insulting images are not uploaded. We gave them some time… but there’s been no response.”
So, what did you do for those three months where these companies did not respond to you – you forgot? Smartly, now you’ve asked these tech companies to respond to you within three weeks but on the pictures of your Party President and the Prime Minister (and not on the issue that rose previously). Well, here it is, as far as sentiments are concerned, India’s sentiments are not hurt at all this time.
The jokes on Sardarjis that make 1000s of rounds online bring laughter. Oh! Put it this way, they are people with big hearts. By no means has one wished to mess them up. Rather, truly said, find one Sikh who is a beggar. And yes, I am talking about our Nation where political bloodiness has made everyone a virtual beggar. In fact our Prime Minister is a Sikh and he’s been accepted by your people. Imagine Bollywood stars and Cricketing heroes coming up and trying to filter the content and criticism! Don’t they have sentiments? The online content will have to be flushed out literally. And what about a singer not allowing constructing a strategically crucial flyover in Mumbai to reduce traffic menace? Any comments – it’s been over a decade since then? Watch out a few bridges in Sion or Masjid Bunder, and one can jump from those bridges to get on to a common man’s window – they’re literally that close. Were they asked? Stop this partial treatment when it comes to common wo/man. Social media is the people’s Lok Sabha, where healthy discussions occur. We respected when you were trying to bring educational reforms in the Country — at least there was a purpose!
We recommend that you place more importance on avoiding to use the minorities, reduce SCs and STs class structure, generate more employment (create awareness), concentrate — on the economic growth and on reducing the all time high inequality, than to target the literate online crowd, who are sane enough not to spend useless time on morphing pictures. On the contrary, start a page on these social websites, to initiate people to vote. And Mr Sibal, you are well aware of the fact that over 40% of India’s population that has crossed 1.2 billion, lives below poverty line. That means they earn less than Rs 22 approximately a day. Evidently, if they would not be poor, they would never vote for you – thus, that’s not your priority.
We thus figure out the reason now that you wish to ban people’s opinions:
- Stop movements like the ones against corruption (India against corruption) which made in-roads to the intellectual crowd and got the not-so-minorities too on the streets (who are difficult to be wooed)
- Improve chances on earning from internet giants, where it’s difficult to find a method to earn more money
- Avoid any contrary opinions that may come up ever and ensure poverty remains and illiteracy continues
- Improve the efficacy of scams so that the 5 year period of ruling can be cherished (for a list of scams in India, check here on Wikipedia — several yet to be updated)
- Continue spending hard earned money on pre-screening the social media content
When it comes to IT infrastructure development and content, unlike all other public utility services, we are glad that we have not left it on to your Government; otherwise we would yet be using the remnants of the IT boom period and of industrial revolution. You must be glad that India is 3rd only in terms of internet users after China and the US. These internet giants are spending enormous time and money on research, which we believe on, than believing the garbage that you’ve exposed your countrymen to. Enough is being done on their part already to remove illicit and objectionable content (closely watch features like – “mark as spam”, “remove post”, and such others). They are working hard to make the common wo/man come online and share, opine – for years you haven’t been able to do that Mr Sibal and from where we understand after independence, only you’ll have ruled the Country (except for one 5 year period). We, as India only haven’t called it a Monarchy.
Here are some facts / recommendations that may be looked at, before you decide to spend people’s money and to justify your move towards officially claiming a totalitarian rule:
- Rs 200 crore must be spent monthly to mass-monitor all of the social media content. This is besides the set up costs which may run in to 100s of crores, confirms Mahesh Murthy, founder of Pinstorm
- According to Google’s Transparency Report, in the first six months of this year, Indian authorities issued 236 takedown requests for Orkut, and 68 others for other content, of which only three requests were about hate speech (pointed out by Murthy)
- The basic calculation arrives to about 700 million comments a month (this is basic estimation) and will only grow. Do you believe this can be handled? And you wish to fall upon these internet giants to do this for you? Or spend a common man’s money?
- Spend the money on reinforcement and greater use of “E-Governance”, that may reduce Government’s cost, reduce people’s grievances, improve people’s and constitutional participation in conjunction. To much extent, these social sites are doing this for absolutely free of cost for you, for our own people
- India has nearly 13 million broadband users and about 630 million active mobile connections (check MediaNama’s post for detailed data up to Oct. 2011). The users are only burgeoning, the pace of which is frantic:
- Imagine using the data wisely with the support of the telecom, broadband, and social media companies to improve E-Governance
- Telecom Ministry’s one of the roles (if not as a top priority) need to be of engaging more people to use social media and involve in extracting the right data that may help efficient governance and improve services, rather than banning the use and downgrading the feedback system
- Stop comparing the Country with China and trying to make Mumbai (or Delhi), a Shanghai. India is the largest democracy. In communist China too, the penetration of internet users in to social media sites is 40% as compared to only 3% in India, which we already think is massive
- Concentrate more on improving the telecom infrastructure, which is extremely poor, given the rapid pace of growth in terms of the number of users year-on-year
Very smartly, Shashi Tharoor, the diplomat turned MP, a true endorser of Indian National Congress tries troubleshooting, after implying to speak with Kapil Sabil, tweeting:
“Have to say I support Kapil Sibal on the examples he gave me: deeply offensive material about religions&communities that could incite riots”.
Clearly, he changed his standpoint after speaking to Kapil Sibal.
Let me quote you Mr Tharoor, as you proclaimed at the Goa Think Fest 2011:
“I hope more and more governments use the social media to have sense of accountability in democracy”
“We may not overestimate it but certainly we cannot underestimate it (social media)”
“where small group of people can make their voice louder”
Check it here on Economic Times
Google, Facebook have responded to Sibal’s pre-screening calls and I’m glad they decided to only continue blocking ‘objectionable’ content and keeping the platforms neutral as they are now.
What India should do (and that’s with the support of 1000 million on these social sites), is bring about the same very crowd in democratic Bharat to become the largest intellectual vote bank. Filtering any bit of content on these sites will only work in India’s favour – watch the uproar of the literate Hindustan.
It seems like the License Raj is back, but only all this time after Independence, Indians continue to fight against its own political ringmasters.
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Relevance is in–execution of thoughts, clearing of any hurdles, (constantly) improving and delivering. While ‘measurable quality’ sounds unreasonable, the doer of the distinctive is aware of the larger picture (and oftentimes, also the repercussions). That’s how perhaps they go on to be claimed as geniuses by others. Unfortunately, most (self-proclaimed) constant learners are so ungenerous to their own value-notion. Take for instance career hoppers (can be read as industry hoppers). I mean, they are great people–gutsy, learners, accumulators of sense and knowledge (cross-functional training and adaptability mean some are serious fat pay-check earners too). But notice their terrible justification of consistent mistakes, indecision, boring jobs, work-life imbalance–the blame’s conferred upon time, circumstance and incredible lack of innocence around them!
If there was anything like a hassle-free job, you would not be working. That’s what machines do. You can in stead try working for what you like (your passion), than believe that your job (at any level) will require no troubleshooting, while you are actually enjoying the changes. Systems are essential, but 
