Budget’s ‘Digital India’ push: Digital library for students to digitalising ancient inscriptions

 

The government’s new proposals for digitisation in India include establishing centres of excellence for AI, rolling out the third phase of the E-Courts project and much more.

The Union Budget speech by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday highlighted the government’s continuous efforts to push for digitisation in the country.

From building a digital library for children and adolescents to formulating a National Data Governance policy, the minister announced a wide range of schemes and proposals during her address. Here are the key highlights:

Digital Public Infrastructure for Agriculture: It will be an open source, open standard and interoperable public good. The platform will offer inclusive, farmer-centric solutions through relevant information services for crop planning and health, improved access to farm inputs, credit, and insurance, help for crop estimation, market intelligence, and support for the growth of the agri-tech industry and start-ups.

National Digital Library for Children and Adolescents: This will be established for facilitating the availability of quality books in different languages, genres and at different levels. The government will also try to inculcate a culture of reading by collaborating with NGOs, which will provide age-appropriate reading material to everyone. The National Book Trust and Children’s Book Trust will also step in. Sitharaman said the library would be “device-agnostic”.

Centres of Excellence for Artificial Intelligence: There is a proposal for setting up three centres of excellence for Artificial Intelligence in top educational institutions. These centres, in partnership with leading players in the industry, will conduct interdisciplinary research and develop cutting-edge applications and scalable problem solutions in the areas of agriculture, health, and sustainable cities.

National Data Governance Policy: Government will formulate a data governance policy to enable access to anonymised data for innovation and research by start-ups and academia.

5G Services: A hundred labs will be established in engineering institutions for developing applications using 5G services to realise a new range of opportunities, business models, and employment potential.

E-Courts: Government will roll out phase three of the E-Courts project to ensure the efficient administration of justice.

Bharat Shared Repository of Inscriptions (Bharat SHRI): A digital epigraphy museum will be established and one lakh ancient inscriptions will be digitised in the first stage.

Skill India Digital Platform: The digital ecosystem for skilling will be further expanded by launching a unified Skill India Digital platform for enabling demand-based formal skilling, linking with employers including MSMEs and facilitating access to entrepreneurship schemes.

Source: Indian Express, 2/02/23

Draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill 2022

 

Background

The first draft of the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018 was proposed by Justice Srikrishna Committee, which was set up to provide recommendations on the new data protection law in India. The 2018 bill was revised and the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 was tabled at the Lok Sabha. The Lok Sabha passed a notion to refer the 2019 bill to a Joint Committee of both the House of Parliament. Due to delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the joint committee submitted the report only in December 2021. The Data Protection Bill, 2021 was introduced by the government based on the recommendations of the joint committee. However, the bill was withdrawn because of the extensive changes proposed by the joint committee.

Why are there so many revisions to the data protection bill?

India is facing several challenges while formulating a data protection bill. These include:

1. Protection of the rights of data principals (users) should not make even legitimate data processing impractical
2. The need to create balance between the right to data privacy and the reasonable exception, especially when the government is processing personal data.
3. The law must be future-proof so that it can keep pace with the current technological development.
4. The rights and remedies should be made easily exercisable by data principals, who have unequal bargaining power with respect to data fiduciaries (companies).

What are the key features of the DPDP Bill, 2022?

• The DPDP Bill, 2022 gives maximum control to the data principal. It mandates a comprehensive notice to the data principals on different aspects of data processing.
• While non-consent based processing of personal data is present, the data principal is given the right to access, correct and delete their data.
• The data fiduciary will be allowed to process the data only for the stated purposes and no more. The data can be retained only as long as it is required to fulfill the stated purpose.
• The Bill penalizes entities for data breach. It also proposes the imposition of Rs.10,000 as a fine on individuals for providing false information, impersonating and filing frivolous complaints against social media.
• The Bill removes the explicit reference to certain data protection principles like collection limitation, allowing the data fiduciary to collect any personal data permitted by the data principal. Making data collection solely based on consent does not consider the fact that data principals do not often have the requisite know-how of what kind of personal data is relevant for the particular purpose.
• The bill removes concept of “sensitive personal data”, which recognizes the harm caused by the unlawful processing of certain personal data. It does not provide the extra protection for sensitive personal data, removing the need for explicit consent before processing and usage.
• The Bill reduces the information that a data fiduciary is required to provide to the data principal to remove information overload. Previous versions required to provide considerable information in terms of the rights of data principals, grievance redressal mechanism, retention period of information, source of information collected etc.
• The Bill proposes the setting up of the Data Protection Board of India. In case the data is breached, the data fiduciary or data processor is required to notify this board and each affected data principal. If they fail to do so, the Bill proposes a fine of up to Rs.200 crore.
• The Bill introduces the concept of “deemed consent”. It categorizes purposes of data processing that are exempt from consent-based processing or are considered to be “reasonable purposes”. There are concerns regarding the grounds of deemed consent due to ambiguity of words such as “public interest”.

India@75, Looking at 100: The new teacher – beyond a knowledge provider

 

Educators play a key role as nation builders and today more than ever we need to provide learning opportunities to our students that will not just educate them but also skill them. We can no longer just don the role of knowledge providers — rather we need to rewrite the paradigms of conventional curricula and imbue learning with vocational and skill development opportunities.

A glorious future beckons our country, home to one of the oldest civilisations. Carrying immense wisdom, fortitude and resilience, owing to centuries of hardship, India today stands at a critical juncture. We can no longer rest on the laurels of an illustrious era and be complacent about the many noteworthy inventions and discoveries bestowed on the world by our resolute forefathers. To be the global vanguards, our youth need to unshackle themselves from casteism, inequality, hatred and discrimination that remain in the contemporary social fabric.

Our mythological stories abound with lessons in compassion, cooperation and unity paving the way for inclusive success. We as educators need to delve deeper into this very wisdom and sensitise our children. Educators play a key role as nation builders and today more than ever we need to provide learning opportunities to our students that will not just educate them but also skill them. We can no longer just don the role of knowledge providers — we need to rewrite the paradigms of conventional curricula and imbue learning with skill development opportunities.

India continues to contribute the largest number of qualified engineers and technologists to the global workforce even today. It is at the forefront of new technologies and will soon become the cradle of innovation. New ventures by Indian entrepreneurs are already making a mark in the global economy.However, many children still do not have access to quality education that will harness their inherent abilities and talent. We need to ensure that our children, growing up in villages and Tier-2 and 3 cities, do not lag behind and have the same access to opportunities as their counterparts in urban areas do. We need to develop digital models, consisting of apps, digital tutorial content and virtual teachers to ensure that no child is left behind. Our children also need vital lessons in wealth management, financial literacy and entrepreneurship to succeed in life.

Providing contemporary and relevant vocational learning opportunities to our children will motivate them to innovate. At our school, we have envisioned a perfect amalgamation of curricular and co-curricular pursuits along with an emphasis on vocational education and life skills. Experiential learning is facilitated through workshops and infrastructural adaptations, with provision for sensorial and medicinal gardens, learning centres and interactive walls. Research and project-based learning inculcate essential life skills. Integrated learning is implemented by incorporating art, music, dance and drama in curriculum transactions.

The vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat is shaped in the well-furnished Atal Tinkering Lab, where budding scientists design mobile and AI applications, drone technology and Arduino-programmed robotics applications using 3D design. Technology-integrated learning is enabled through wi-fi-enabled zones, Hi-Tech Interactive Panels, Digital Library and Microsoft education tools. Environmental conscientiousness is instilled through initiatives like Mission SDGs, tree plantation drives and paper recycling projects.

I envision an India where all children can grow up in an environment that fosters their holistic well-being and development, irrespective of their socio-economic status. A country where each child is safe from the many evils that still mar our society. Our nation stands at a pivotal point, buoyed by the aspirations of one of the largest youth populations, yet it could all go awry if we don’t effectively harness the passion, dreams and strength of our young citizens. What we do today as educators can just make all the difference.

The writer is principal, Bal Bharati Public School Dwarka and winner of the National Award for Teachers, 2021. This article is part of an ongoing series, which began on August 15, by women who have made a mark, across sectors

ricula and imbue learning with vocational and skill development opportunities.

Written by Suruchi Gandhi

Source: Indian Express, 9/11/22

Education 4.0 Report: Digitally Bridging the Learning Gap

 Technology has profoundly changed education. It has not only expanded access to education but also made information available at one’s fingertips. It has grown into a powerful tool that has transformed education in several ways, from increasing student engagement, collaboration and interactivity to improving overall comprehension, time management and student-centred teaching. With the worldwide reach of the Internet, it has created a new environment of ‘anytime anywhere education’.

Digital teaching and learning – a concept that was still considered ‘futuristic’ a little while ago have also become customary in the fast-evolving post-pandemic world. During the pandemic, it proved to be the only feasible way to keep the education system going but at the same time, it also highlighted some issues, including digital inequality and learning gaps.

With the aim of addressing these issues through digital learning, the World Economic Forum collaborated with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and YuWaah (Generation Unlimited India) to launch the Education 4.0 India initiative. Under four themes – foundational literacy and numeracy, teacher professional development, school-to-work transition and connecting the unconnected –, the report aims to address the disparities in the country’s education system by exploring its challenges and identifying solutions that can be realised as scalable interventions. It complements India's National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) by providing a framework for the development of scalable pilots that can be implemented by state governments and other stakeholders.

It proposes a roadmap to improve the country’s education system and urges all stakeholders in the EdTech space to work together and help this overarching transformation along. It encourages interactive teaching and learning and the integration of collaborative and skill-based education. It advocates the increased use of storytelling, interactive content, read-aloud games, quizzes and flip books (to name only a few) to make the learning process more interesting, individualised and engaging for students. It also highlights the importance of digitalising the country’s education system to become future-ready.

Digital Tools Can Reduce Learning Gaps

While the digital learning gap has been widening over the last few decades and spreading throughout the schools of India, it took COVID-19 to truly understand the magnitude of these inequalities. Closing this divide in education will take time, effort and commitment not only from the part of government but also from the part of schools, parents and students.

According to the Education 4.0 Report, one way of achieving equity could be through the digital transformation of the Indian schooling system. Fortunately, the pandemic didn’t only reveal the digital divide but also the benefits of distance teaching and learning.

Many believe that digitalising the country’s education system would help reduce the country’s learning inequalities by making education accessible to a large number of students. In addition to making it possible for students to access learning anytime and from anywhere, digital education would also enable them to learn at their own pace.

Digital Education: Reaching the Unreachable

One of the significant advantages of digital learning is that it is accessible at all times, anywhere and everywhere. It can be conducted online and offline and can be successfully used to deliver synchronous and asynchronous education.

Due to its very nature – provided via digital technology – this type of education can accommodate larger class sizes and bridge geographical gaps between teachers and students. As a result, it can provide everyone, including students attending schools in remote areas, with access to education.

Aarul Malviya

Source: The Telegraph, 31/10/22

Learning machines

 The economic downturn caused by Covid-19 was the making of one class of business: the edutech industry. The closedown of schools created a need to teach students remotely. The electronic mode was the only possible means. But the way it was adopted prompts deep misgivings.

I am actively involved with computer applications in teaching and research. The promise held out by digital learning excites me. Its progress in India fills me with alarm.

The dismal backdrop to my discussion is the digital divide. We are content that for the poor, a single smartphone should be considered a sufficient educational tool for all students in a household. Even that, a parliamentary committee found last year, eluded 77 per cent of the nation’s children.

But today, let us think about the fortunate ones with laptops and smartphones for their sole use. When the pandemic broke, their schools soon switched to online classes. But online teaching implies more than a Zoom meeting. It calls for audio-visual techniques for which most schools had neither expertise nor infrastructure. Plain vanilla classroom teaching falters without a classroom. 

That is where edutech companies saw their chance. They applied digital technology expertly and intensively to the curricular content. Their instructors exuded a compelling onscreen presence, as conventional teachers had never learnt to do. The result was a package that captivated both children and parents footing the bill. Both parties were connoisseurs of onscreen content: the children from computer games, the parents from infotainment channels. The superstition is rife anyway that anything emerging from a computer is a superior option. In two short years, hitherto uncontested schooling methods acquired the negative label of ‘offline teaching’.

But might not the new technology truly be superior? The digital revolution has transformed our lives. In intellectual and cultural matters, however, it has generally modified older practices instead of dislodging them altogether. More books are printed today than ever before, alongside the electronic text and the internet. Live performances flourish despite staggering advances in audio-visual recording. The equation between ageless human practice and digital innovation is subtle and complex. With education, the pandemic drastically short-circuited this adjustment.

Throughout history, teaching has implied an interaction between teacher and student. A child learns letters and numbers under a teacher’s care among a group of peers. Every primary-school teacher I have asked agrees that small children cannot be taught online to read, write and count. If some learn to do so, it is because an adult is present to guide the process.

With older children, the challenge is subtler. Edutech planners will tell you that they allow for individual attention and interaction. Learners can follow their own pace, assess themselves by self-testing, and even ask questions. The interaction is largely through precoded exercises and bots, but the best (and costliest) courses find slots for human mentors. Yet all these features are worked into a pre-set, one-way system: an extended IT program, ‘remote’ in every sense.

To be sure, there are physical schools so ill-run that online instruction is a better alternative. But even a halfway decent institution offers the imperative human exchange. A lecturer in a classroom subconsciously attunes herself to the faces in front of her. Students’ queries cover a range that artificial intelligence cannot tackle — above all because it ignores individual psychology, the personal factors impacting a student’s development. A packaged online program can never overstep its boundaries, never warm to a bold question or an out-of-the-box suggestion. At most, it fosters a competent mediocrity. Hence the best students benefit the least from online courses,  which stunt their potential.

Edutech is the white flour and refined sugar of learning. To consume it is better than to starve, but it is no substitute for a wholesome home diet, even if indifferently cooked. (That is no excuse not to improve the cooking.) To vary the image, the stuff of digital learning is both literally and metaphorically behind a screen: you see it, but you can’t reach through and grasp it.

Such charges are customarily made against private coaching. Coaching centres are reviled on principle but rife in practice. Edutech providers profess the same adjunct role. But given their reach, glamour and opulence, they play a much more visible and increasingly central role in India’s education system.

This is because they blend with the current ecology of public services, cutting down State forests and planting corporate groves. Online teaching is vastly cheaper to provide: it does not need a standing army of teachers. The high demand is fanned by both commercial and official publicity. The Union government has perfected a new rhetoric extolling online teaching, never mind the digital divide. PM eVidya, the grandest of many schemes, aims to provide online education to every student in India. This may or may not be the same as the ‘digital university’ promised in this year’s budget, while actual universities languish for want of funds.

Education is following the path of our healthcare services, with an endlessly expanding role for the private sector. The economics drives the technology. State agencies have their own e-learning platforms: Diksha, ePathshala and Swayam, among others. Yet our rulers are warming more and more to private operators. Universities can outsource 40 per cent of course content for online degrees (themselves a recent innovation) and engage edutech companies to ‘assist’ even with the rest. There is even talk of such companies carrying out evaluation.

In today’s India, practices once thought harmful or illicit are routinely legitimised and then made standard. Not so long ago, we deplored the possibility of commercial coaching empires influencing exam results and curricula. This might soon become normative and organic to the system.

No academically respectable country has surrendered its education sector to profit-seeking interests in this way. When all is said, Indian education has an honourable place in the world’s eyes. We denigrate our public education system, but its alumni win success and acclaim everywhere. Let us not sell out on that legacy. 

Sukanta Chaudhuri is Professor Emeritus, Jadavpur University

Source: The Telegraph, 8/08/22

Initiatives taken to improve digital divide across country in education sector

 The majority of the schools are within the jurisdiction of the individual State and UT Governments, and education is listed in the concurrent list of the Constitution. However, the Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education, has implemented a multi-pronged strategy to ensure that every student, especially those living in rural and educationally underdeveloped parts of the country, obtains uninterrupted access to education.

As a component of the Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan, PM e-Vidya, a comprehensive project that combines all activities connected to digital, online, and on-air education to offer multi-mode access to education, was launched on May 17, 2020. The project consists of the following elements:

• DIKSHA, the country’s digital infrastructure, provides high-quality e-content for classroom instruction in states and UTs, as well as QR-coded Energized Textbooks for all grades (one nation, one digital platform)
• Each class from 1 to 12 has one Swayam Prabha TV channel set aside for it (one class, one channel)
• Extensive use of Radio, Community radio and CBSE Podcast- Shiksha Vani
• On the NIOS website and YouTube, special e-content for the deaf and hard-of-hearing has been created using the Digitally Accessible Information System (DAISY)

Where the digital facility (Mobile Device/DTH television) is not available, the Ministry of Education has taken numerous initiatives, such as organising community/mohalla classes, community radio stations, and a podcast called Shiksha Vani of CBSE. It has also provided textbooks and worksheets to students’ homes.

The Samagra Shiksha, an Integrated Scheme for School Education, was introduced by the Department of School Education and Literacy in 2018–19. It sees the “school” as a progression from early childhood education through upper primary, secondary education, and senior secondary education.

It is a comprehensive programme for the school education industry that covers pre-kindergarten through class XII with the goal of ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education at all levels of schooling.

Samagra Shiksha is carried out in collaboration with all of the States and UTs, and financial aid is given to all of them for a number of components, including the improvement of the ICT infrastructure in schools.

Subject to budgetary constraints, the ICT component of Samagra Shiksha plans to include all Government and Aided classes VI through XII schools as well as Teacher Education Institutions (TEIs).

ICT resources will be accessible to students in lower grades in Government and Aided Schools with classes from VI to XII. 120614 schools have ICT labs approved, while 82120 schools have smart classroom approval. The elementary school instructors have been granted a total of 1482565 TABs.

The Department’s Innovation Funds are utilised to put up virtual studios, mobile classrooms, and online classrooms in schools. All states and UTs have started a Continuous Learning Plan (CLP), and in some states and UTs, pre-loaded tablets are being used successfully in remote rural locations where online classes are challenging.

Source: The Statesman, 25/07/22

How barcodes differ from radio-frequency identification tags

 Baggage tags equipped with radio-frequency identification (RFID) will soon be available at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport, marking a first of its kind for the country.

What is RFID technology? What’s the difference between RFID and a barcode? Is RFID is enhanced version of barcode? The Indian Express explains:

What is Radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology?

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is a technology that uses radio waves to automatically identify various tagged objects. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a wireless tracking method that uses tags and readers to track objects. Transponder, receiver, and transmitter are the three components of an RFID system.

The RFID reader continually sends radio waves of a specific frequency in RFID system. If the object to which the RFID tag is attached is within the range of the radio waves, it provides feedback to the RFID reader, which then identifies the object based on the feedback.

What are the different kinds of RFID?

Passive tags, semi-passive tags, and active tags are the three types of RFID tags that are commercially available.

There is no power supply for passive tags. They acquire their power from the readers’ incoming radio waves.

Semi-passive tags comprise an internal circuit with a power source, but rely on the radio waves received from the reader to transmit the response.

The internal circuit of active tags is powered by a power source.

Passive RFID tags do not have a battery and are powered by the reader.

Batteries are being used to power active RFID tags. It also utilises its own power supply to send the response to the reader.

The Low Frequency, High Frequency, and Ultra-High Frequency bands are used by RFID systems.

What is a barcode?

A barcode is a printed series of parallel bars or lines of varying width used for entering data into a computer system. The bars are black on a white background and vary in width and quantity depending on the application. The bars represent the binary digits zero and one, which represent the digits zero to nine processed by a digital computer. These barcodes are scanned using special optical scanners known as barcode readers, which come in a variety of shapes and sizes. The majority of these codes use only two different widths of bars, however some use four. The numbers that make up a barcode are also printe

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology Vs barcodes

RFID uses radio waves to communicate data from RFID chips to readers that do not require line of sight in order to obtain the data, whereas barcodes use light to read the black-and-white pattern printed on the sticky tag. An RFID tag can communicate with a powered reader even when the tag is not powered.

When printed on paper or sticky labels, barcodes are more susceptible to wear and breakage, which can affect their readability. RFID tags, on the other hand, are sometimes placed in plastic labels or into the object itself, making them more durable than barcodes.

In contrast to barcode scanners, RFID scanners can process dozens of tags in a single second. Also, barcodes are simple and easy to copy or counterfeit, whereas RFID is more complicated and difficult to replicate or counterfeit.

Unlike barcodes, which must in line of sight, RFID tags need not be.

Also, RFID tags are expensive compared to barcodes.d at the bottom. One of the most well-known examples of a barcode is the QR code.

Is RFID enhanced version of barcode?

Since their introduction in the 1970s, barcodes have become an indispensable part of commercial activity on a daily basis, whether in grocery stores or at airports.

When it comes to speed, there is a noticeable difference between barcodes and RFID. This is because barcodes must be read manually, making them more susceptible to human error and more difficult to evaluate their accuracy.

However, RFID’s accuracy may be compromised if the tags are applied to metals or liquid. Since RFID frequencies can be transmitted over greater distances than barcode frequencies, there is also concern that RFID technology raises data protection issues, resulting in personal information becoming accessible without consent.

When deciding whether to use barcodes or RFID, it is important to consider the purpose, the environment, and the potential costs of an application.

Written by Priya Kumari Shukla

Source: Indian Express, 3/06/22

Digital Services Act: A historic agreement

 The new European law for digital services promises to be a template to at least dam some of the problems, even as global tech regulation will likely need constant evolution.

European lawmakers agreed on new rules last week for digital services, sealing the contours of a law likely to give a foundation to how social media and e-commerce is governed globally. Overall, the Digital Services Act (DSA) builds on the conditional immunity given to online service providers under European law. The premise is simple: Companies can keep an intermediary status so long as they do not knowingly allow illegal content on their services. The DSA now tightens the penalties for companies not acting promptly enough if illegal speech is brought to their notice. This is different from American law with broader immunities. Additionally, the DSA now adds oversight mechanisms – each member country will have an independent Digital Services Coordinator to oversee the compliance of these laws.

Then there are significant new protections as well. The chief among these addresses user behaviour manipulation. The DSA will compel large digital companies to disclose how they profile their users, the mechanism by which their content recommender systems work, and give opt-out options. In other words, it will for the first time open algorithms to scrutiny. Another step significant in combatting user behaviour manipulation is in the DSA banning so-called dark patterns, or the practice of influencing people’s choices in, say, making a purchase or opening an article through clever user interface tricks. Additionally, companies will be obligated to disclose how they decide to take down content and how advertisers target users. Targeted advertising aimed at children will be completely prohibited, the rules propose.

The DSA is landmark legislation since nation-States have grappled with the challenge of coming up with rules for companies such as Facebook (now Meta) and Amazon, which are headquartered under a single foreign jurisdiction but influence societies and businesses beyond national borders. Historically, this has meant that these companies are more responsive to, say, when speech is manipulated to cause an insurrection at the US Capitol but not when it is used to further a genocide in Myanmar. Equally challenging have been attempts to understand technological harms, some of which did not exist until recently. For instance, the online business model today hinges on surveillance of user behaviour to maximise the accuracy of advertisements, the main source of revenue. The DSA promises to be a template to at least dam some of these problems, even as global tech regulation will likely need constant evolution.

Source; Hindustan Times, 27/04/22

An optimal balance of autocracy and ‘vetocracy’ online

 In his article, ‘The Decay of American Political Institutions’, political scientist Francis Fukuyama coined the term “vetocracy" to explain why the American political system was broken. He used the term to describe the political reality today, where the checks and balances originally designed to keep the executive from growing too strong have ossified into a grid-locked decision-making system in which diverse individuals have the power to prevent the implementation of public policies by simply exercising their veto.

The irony is that the veto-based systems of checks and balances Fukuyama refers to were initially introduced to prevent an individual (or small group of individuals acting together) from becoming so powerful as to operate without oversight or accountability. However, in today’s polarized political environment, instead of being used as a legitimate tool of governance, vetoes are used more often than not to make political statements. This, according to Fukuyama, is why in America today, a few powerful interest groups are able to prevent the implementation of various policies that the vast majority of the populace are in favour of.

When we use this lens to evaluate systems of governance, it becomes obvious that these concepts occupy two different ends of the same spectrum. At one extreme is autocracy, a system of governance in which individuals can execute important decisions without asking for permission, even if doing so could be potentially risky and disruptive. At the other end is Fukuyama’s “vetocracy", where any implementation of a new policy requires the sign-off of a large number of diverse actors, any one of whom could single-handedly prevent it from coming into effect.

In a recent article, Vitalik Buterin, creator of the Ethereum blockchain, used this formulation to analyse governance systems in the digital world. He pointed out that while the physical world might, at present, have too much vetocracy, the digital sphere is rife with autocracy. This, he argues, is the reason why technology platforms have been able to wreak such broad cross-sectoral disruption, none of which would have been possible under vetocratic circumstances.

However, Vitalik believes that once the status quo has been disrupted, it is important to ensure that autocratic processes are supplanted by vetocratic systems so that trust in the system can be retained. Failure to do so would result in technology platforms becoming so powerful that they will be able to operate without oversight. This, he believes, is the reason why blockchain-based systems like DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) that enable decentralized governance of digital projects have grown in popularity.

Over the past decade, India has witnessed its own unique brand of digital disruption. We’ve built layers of digital infrastructure for public goods, starting with identity and payments and extending, most recently, to data-driven decision making and unbundled commerce. If we have to evaluate the success of these measures, we need look no further than the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) that currently clocks in excess of 3 billion transactions a month.

The ubiquitous adoption of this foundational infrastructure is largely due to the way we leveraged the autocratic inflexibility inherent in code to convince legacy institutions to alter their systems to conform to this new infrastructure’s specifications. That said, rolling out foundational infrastructure is just the first step. As these systems become more widely used, they need to evolve, adding new features and products in response to the demands of an evolving (and maturing) market.

When we have to decide what features should be included (and, more importantly, what should not), we will not be able to use the same autocratic approach we used at launch. There are now a large number of participants who have a real stake in the ecosystem, and any such decision must be appropriately inclusive, taking into account the concerns and misgivings that each of them may have. Unilateral (autocratic) action will erode faith in the system as a whole. At the same time, if we build a purely vetocratic governance system, there is a risk that we will get mired in the sort of stagnation that currently ails the US government.

What we need to do is find an optimal balance that ensures that the system doesn’t fail because a few actors can do bad things unchecked, on one hand, and also prevents decisions in the interests of the entire ecosystem from being held hostage by a few individuals who wield a veto, on the other. We need to offer the vetocratic assurance that vital infrastructure cannot be captured by a privileged few, but at the same time, need to assure the market that innovation will not sacrificed at the altar of consensus.

One way to address these concerns would be to put in place vetocratic processes to protect the institutional core; that is, the central principles that engender trust. In the context of our Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture, this might relate to the principles of individual empowerment and privacy by design that are at the core of its framework. But after we have achieved this central objective, the rest of the governance processes should be relaxed enough to ensure that innovation is not compromised.

India’s digital public infrastructure is universally well regarded. It is important that the governance systems that sustain them should be equally robust. And that will come down to achieving that fine balance.

Rahul Matthan

Source: Mintepaper, 15/02/22

Countering hate in the digital world

 

Content moderation should be considered a late-stage intervention. Individuals need to be stopped early in the path to radicalisation and extremist behaviour to prevent the development of apps such as Bulli Bai.

Ongoing police investigations to identify the culprits behind the condemnable “Bulli Bai” and “Sulli Deals” apps, which “auctioned” several prominent and vocal Muslim women, implicate individuals born close to the turn of the century. At first glance, this indicates that digital natives are not resilient against problems such as disinformation, hate speech and the potential for radicalisation that plague our informational spaces. But placed within the broader context of decreasing levels of social cohesion in Indian society, that such apps were even created requires us to frame our understanding in a way that can point us towards the right set of long-term interventions.

To understand how we got here, we need to start by looking at the effect of new media technologies developed over the last 20 years on our collective behaviour, and identities. Technologies have changed the scale and structure of human networks; and led to abundance and virality of information. Social scientists hypothesise that these rapid transitions are altering how individuals and groups influence each other within our social systems. The pace of technological evolution coupled with the speed of diffusion of these influences has also meant that we neither fully understand the changes nor can we predict their outcomes. Others have focused on their effects on the evolution of individual, political, social, cultural identities. These identities can be shaped consciously or subconsciously by our interactions, and consequently affect how we process information and respond to events in digital and physical spaces.

Our identities ultimately bear on our cognitive processes — arguments against our defining values can activate the same neural paths as the threat of physical violence. The rise of social media has been linked to the strengthening of personal social identities at the cost of increasing inter-group divisions. Some have suggested that personalised feeds in new media technologies trap us in “echo chambers”, reducing exposure to alternate views. While other empirical work shows that people on social media gravitate towards like-minded people despite frequent interaction with ideas and people with whom they disagree. People can also self-select into groups that reinforce their beliefs and validate their actions. We still need a better understanding of the broader psychosocial effects, specifically in the Indian context. Experience, though, suggests that when these beliefs are prejudices and resentment against a specific group of people, the feedback loops of social confirmation and validation can result in violence. Even pockets of disconnected actions, when repeated and widespread, can destabilise delicate social-political relations built over decades.

Harms arising out of escalating levels of polarisation and radicalisation are primarily analysed through the lens of disinformation and hate speech which gives primacy to motives. This framing leaves room for some actors to evade responsibility since motives can be deemed subjective. And for others to be unaware of the downstream consequences of their actions — often, even those taken with good intentions can have unpredictable and adverse outcomes. The information ecosystem metaphor, proposed by Whitney Phillips and Ryan M. Milner, compares the current information dysfunction with environmental pollution. It encourages us to prioritise outcomes over motives, in that we should be concerned with how it spreads and not whether someone intended to pollute or not. It also makes us understand that the effects of pollution compound over time, and attempts to ignore, or worse, exploit this pollution only exacerbate the problem — not just for those victimised by them, but for everyone.

Our focus tends to be on those who command the largest audiences, have the loudest voices or say the most egregious things. While important, ignoring or downplaying the role of everyone else, or envisioning them as passive, malleable audiences risks overlooking the participatory nature of our current predicament. Big and small polluters feed off each other’s actions and content across social media, traditional media as well as physical spaces. The distinctions between “online” and “offline” effects or harms are often neither neatly categorisable nor easily distinguishable, “online” harassment is harassment. Actors as varied as bored students, local political aspirants, content creators/influencers, national-level politicians, or someone trying to gain clout, etc. engage throughout the information ecosystem. Their underlying motivations can range from the banal (FOMO, seeking entertainment, fame) to the sinister (organised, systematic and collaborative dissemination of propaganda, hate) to the performative (virtue signalling, projection of power, capability, expertise), and so on. The interactions of these disparate sets of actors and motivations result in a complex and unpredictable system, composed of multiple intersecting self-reinforcing and self-diminishing cycles, where untested interventions can have unanticipated and unintended consequences.

Several have called for action by platforms to address hate speech.  Content moderation should be considered a late-stage intervention. Individuals need to be stopped early in the path to radicalisation and extremist behaviour to prevent the development of apps such as Bulli Bai. This is where steps such as counterspeech — tactics to counter hate speech by presenting an alternative narrative — can play a role and need to be studied further in the Indian context. Counterspeech could take the form of messages aimed at building empathy by humanising those targeted; enforcing social norms around respect or openness; or de-escalating a dialogue. Notably, this excludes fact-checking. When people have strong ideological dispositions, contending their narratives based on accuracy alone, can have limited effectiveness. Since behaviours in online and physical spaces are linked, in-person community action and outreach can also help. Social norms can be imparted through families, friends and educational institutions. “Influencers” and those in positions of leadership can have a significant impact in shaping these norms. At such times, the signals that political leaders and state institutions send are particularly important.

Prabhakar is research lead at Tattle Civic Tech. Waghre is a researcher at The Takshashila Institution, where he studies India’s information ecosystem and the governance of digital communication networks

Written by Tarunima Prabhakar , Prateek Waghre 

Source: Indian Express, 17/01/22

An opportunity for Digital India

 

Aditya Nath Jha writes: Made in India digital tools can help other emerging economies deal with economic, governance challenges.

India is pioneering the concept of digital public goods that enhance the ease, transparency and speed with which individuals, markets and governments interact with each other. Built on the foundation of Aadhaar and India Stack, modular applications, big and small, are transforming the way we make payments, withdraw our PF, get our passport and driving licence and check land records, to name just a few activities. Children have access to QR-coded textbooks across state boards and languages, the economically disadvantaged have access to the public distribution system and beneficiaries of government schemes have money transferred directly into their bank accounts.

There is an opportunity for India to embark on digital diplomacy — to take its made-in-India digital public goods to hundreds of emerging economies across the world. This could be a strategic and effective counter to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

To begin with, the code is highly reusable. The cost of setting up an open source-based high school online educational infrastructure, to supplement the physical infrastructure, for an entire country is less than laying two kilometres of high-quality road. The investments required for transporting digital public goods are minuscule in comparison and there is no chance of a debt trap.

Unlike physical infrastructure such as ports and roads, digital public goods have short gestation periods and immediate, and visible impact and benefits. Digital infrastructure plugs leaks. It eliminates ghost beneficiaries of government services, removes touts collecting rent, creates an audit trail, makes the individual-government-market interface transparent and provides efficiencies that help recoup the investments quickly. Processes get streamlined and wait times for any service come down dramatically. Issuances of passports, PAN cards and driving licences are such examples. Productivity goes up and services can be scaled quickly. Benefits can be rapidly extended to cover a much larger portion of the population.

Above all, the digital public goods infrastructure compounds while physical infrastructure depreciates. Compounding happens for three reasons. One, of course, is the growth of technology itself. Chips keep becoming faster, engines more powerful, and gene-editing technology keeps improving. The second reason is the network effect. As more and more people use the same technology, the number of “transactions” using that technology increase exponentially — be it Facebook posts or UPI transactions. And the third reason is the rapid creation of new layers of technology. For example, the hypertext protocol created the worldwide web. Then the browser was built on top of it, which made the worldwide web easier to navigate and more popular. Thousands of new layers were added to make it what it is today. To give an example, consider the surge in UPI-based payments in India. This kind of growth doesn’t happen with a few entitled and privileged people using UPI more and more; it happens with more and more people using UPI more and more. The use of Diksha, the school education platform built on the open-source platform Sunbird, has followed the same trajectory — today close to 500 million schoolchildren are using it. Taken together, compounding ensures that the digital divide gets bridged.

Emerging economies are characterised by gross inefficiencies in the delivery of government services and a consequent trust deficit. Digital public goods spread speed, transparency, ease and productivity across the individual-government-market ecosystem and enhance inclusivity, equity and development at scale. India’s digital diplomacy will be beneficial to and welcomed by, all emerging economies from Peru to Polynesia, from Uruguay to Uganda, and from Kenya to Kazakhstan.

It will entail a slight rejig in the composition of India’s consulates abroad, with technology experts getting incorporated into the structure. It will take made-in-India digital public goods across the world and boost India’s brand positioning as a leading technology player in the digital age. It will enable quick, visible and compounding benefits for India’s partner countries and earn India immense goodwill. And it will create a strong foothold for India globally to counter the extravagantly expensive, brick-and-mortar led Belt and Road Initiative of China.

Written by Aditya Nath Jha

Source: Indian Express, 29/12/21

Privacy assurances mustn’t result in data value losses

 In my book Privacy 3.0, I had suggested that we were entering the third age of privacy—a period in which increasingly stringent privacy regulations could, if we are not careful, deprive us of some benefits that data has to offer. Since the time of its publication, a number of countries seem to have come to similar conclusions, recognizing that unless they can come up with a better solution for protecting personal privacy, they will never be able to unlock the value inherent in personal data

The EU, whose General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is widely recognized as today’s gold standard for privacy regulation, has tacitly acknowledged the need for extra-legal solutions that data subjects can use to better control their data. The European Data Strategy, adopted in February 2020, states that individuals should be given tools so they can take control of their data and decide, at a granular level, what is to be done with it. This strategy is going to be implemented through the enactment of the EU Data Governance Act, which will establish “common data spaces" that will, through a combination of technical infrastructure and governance rules, make data more widely available for use in society while ensuring that entities which generate it remain in effective control of it.

Australia, for its part, has launched its Consumer Data Rights (CDR) initiative, aimed at ensuring that citizens have greater access to their own data, allowing them to obtain this data in a usable form so that they can direct it to be securely transferred to trusted third parties. The first implementation of the CDR has been in the country’s banking sector, where granular data transfers between participant banks has been made possible through a centrally-defined protocol. Similarly, India’s implementation of the Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA) in the financial sector (with the launch of the Account Aggregator framework), offers tools through which users can more effectively manage the flow of their personal financial data.

While there are clearly a number of different normative technologies being developed to augment existing data protection regulations, they all fall into two broad categories. The first provides data subjects with tools they can use to manage personal data, right from the moment it is created, thus allowing them to determine how it is subsequently shared to the point of even controlling how insights generated from this data are used. Examples of this approach include the Solid project (promoted by Sir Tim Berners-Lee) and the MyData model of human-centric design. Both these sets of tools operate on data from before it is collected, granting individuals full control over the data’s entire life-cycle and giving them tools with which to manage its creation, storage and use as well as to control its flow between different data controllers. However, in order for these tools to proliferate, they need to be widely adopted by a large enough number of users that would convince data controllers of the necessity of implementing these protocols in their offerings.

Tools in the second category are designed to unlock personal data already under the control of data controllers operating in different sectors of the economy, so that the data they control can be securely transferred to others with the consent of users. Australia’s CDR and India’s DEPA frameworks are examples of this, offering users technology frameworks through which data sharing has been implemented in the financial services sector to start with. While there are several differences between the Indian and Australian frameworks, broadly speaking, tools in this category operate on data silos, unlocking data that has already been collected by making it easy to transfer it to other entities with the required consent. For this approach to have a substantial impact, these frameworks need to be adopted by institutions that control data. This might seem daunting, except that when that happens, the benefits of safe and convenient data sharing would be unlocked for all customers of participant entities.

On the face of it, these two approaches may seem contradictory, given how they focus on opposite ends of the spectrum. However, a closer examination suggests that they are not mutually incompatible. With so much data already stored in silos that are effectively beyond the ability of individuals to control, we need to implement a DEPA-like approach to unlock that data for the benefit of the consumer. Absent such an intervention, users will be unable to utilize their data that has already been aggregated in sectors such as finance and health. At the same time, tools like Solid are necessary to implement personal data stores in which newly created data can be managed so that the information contained within them can be more effectively used without detrimentally affecting personal privacy.

No technology can, of itself, deliver the data-driven future I had written about in my book. As promising as these tools are, they need to derive their legitimacy from privacy principles embedded in the law. At the same time, laws alone are incapable of delivering the level of data governance required in a world increasingly dependent on data. They need to be augmented by technology solutions that are compatible with the statutory framework.

We need models that combine normative technologies with smart regulations. Thankfully, we have more than just a few options to choose from.

Rahul Matthan is a partner at Trilegal and also has a podcast by the name Ex Machina

Source: Mintepaper, 15/12/21