Nothing free or basic about it

We need to provide full Internet at prices people can afford, not privilege private platforms. This is where India’s regulatory system has to step in

The airwaves, the newspapers and even the online space are now saturated with a Rs. 100 crore campaign proclaiming that Internet connectivity for the Indian poor is a gift from Facebook which a few churlish net neutrality fundamentalists are opposing. In its campaign, Facebook is also using the generic phrase “free, basic Internet” interchangeably with “Free Basics”, the name it has given its private, proprietary platform. This is in blatant violation of Indian rules on advertising, which forbid generic words being used for brands and products. This is from a company which, in spite of having 125 million Indian subscribers, refuses to be sued in India, claiming to be an American company and therefore outside the purview of Indian law. Nor does it pay any tax in India.

The Free Basics platform is a mildly tweaked rehash of the controversial internet.org that Facebook had floated earlier. Facebook and Reliance, the sixth-largest mobile service provider in the country, have joined hands to offer it as a platform for free data services restricted to a few websites. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has stopped this service for now, pending its public consultation on the subject. Facebook’s campaign is essentially to influence the outcome of such a consultation.

Data as commodity

Evgeny Morozov, one of the most insightful commentators on technology, has written extensively on how Silicon Valley seeks to subvert the state, promising to give the people connectivity, transport and other facilities, if we only hand over our data to them. Instead of people demanding that the state provide access to various services — from drinking water to transport and communications — people are being led to believe that a few capitalists from Silicon Valley will provide all these services. We will have Internet connectivity instead of education, and Uber will provide private taxis, instead of public transport. To paraphrase Marie Antoinette, let the people have cake instead of bread. This is the Internet monopolies’ agenda of hidden and mass-scale privatisation of public services.

By accepting the Silicon Valley model of private services, we pay the Internet monopolies with our data, which can then be monetised. Personal data is the currency of the Internet economy. Data as commodity is the oil of the 21st century. Facebook and Google’s revenue model is based on monetising our personal data and selling it to advertisers. Facebook generates an estimated revenue of nearly $1 billion from its Indian subscribers, on which it pays no tax.

Free Basics is not free, basic Internet as its name appears to imply. It has a version of Facebook, and only a few other websites and services that are willing to partner Facebook’s proprietary platform.

Today, there are nearly 1 billion websites. If we consider that there are 3.5 billion users of the Internet, 1 out of 3.5 such users also offers content or services. The reason that the Internet has become such a powerful force for change in such a short time is precisely because anybody, anywhere, can connect to anybody else, not only to receive, but also to provide content. All that is required is that both sides have access to the Internet.

All this would stop if the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) or telecom companies (telcos) are given the right to act as gatekeepers. This is what net neutrality is all about — no ISP or telco can decide what part of the Internet or which websites we can access. Tim Wu, the father of net neutrality, has written that keeping the two sides of the Internet free of gatekeepers is what has given a huge incentive for generating innovation and creating content. This is what has made the Internet, as a platform, so different from other mass communications platforms such as radio and television. Essentially, it has unleashed the creativity of the masses; and it is this creativity we see in the hundreds of millions of active websites.

Facebook’s ads and Mark Zuckerberg’s advertorials talk about education, health and other services being provided by Free Basics, without telling us how on earth we are going to access doctors and medicines through the Internet; or education. It forgets that while English is spoken by only about 12 per cent of the world’s population, 53 per cent of the Internet’s content is English. If Indians need to access education or health services, they need to access it in their languages, and not in English. And no education can succeed without teachers. The Internet is not a substitute for schools and colleges but only a complement, that too if material exists in the languages that the students understand. Similarly, health demands clinics, hospitals and doctors, not a few websites on a private Facebook platform.

Regulate price of data

While the Free Basics platform has connected only 15 million people in different parts of the world, in India, we have had 60 million people join the Internet using mobiles in the last 12 months alone. And this is in spite of the high cost of mobile data charges. There are 300 million mobile broadband users in the country, an increase fuelled by the falling price of smartphones.

In spite of this increase in connectivity, we have another 600 million mobile subscribers who need to be connected to the Internet. Instead of providing Facebook and its few partner websites and calling it “basic” Internet, we need to provide full Internet at prices that people can afford. This is where the regulatory system of the country has to step in. The main barrier to Internet connectivity is the high cost of data services in the country. If we use purchasing power parity as a basis, India has expensive data services compared to most countries. That is the main barrier to Internet penetration. Till now, TRAI has not regulated data tariffs. It is time it addresses the high price of data in the country and not let such prices lead to a completely truncated Internet for the poor.

There are various ways of providing free Internet, or cost-effective Internet, to the low-end subscribers. They could be provided some free data with their data connection, or get some free time slots when the traffic on the network is low. 2G data prices can and should be brought down drastically, as the telcos have already made their investments and recovered costs from the subscribers.

The danger of privileging a private platform such as Free Basics over a public Internet is that it introduces a new kind of digital divide among the people. A large fraction of those who will join such platforms may come to believe that Facebook is indeed the Internet. As Morozov writes, the digital divide today is “about those who can afford not to be stuck in the data clutches of Silicon Valley — counting on public money or their own capital to pay for connectivity — and those who are too poor to resist the tempting offers of Google and Facebook” (“Silicon Valley exploits time and space to extend the frontiers of capitalism”, The Guardian, Nov. 29, 2015). As he points out, the basic delusion Silicon Valley is nurturing is that the power divide will be bridged through Internet connectivity, no matter who provides it or in what form. This is not likely to happen through their platforms.

The British Empire was based on the control of the seas. Today, whoever controls the data oceans controls the global economy. Silicon Valley’s data grab is the new form of colonialism we are witnessing now.

Net neutrality is not an esoteric matter, the concern of only a few netizens. It is fundamental to the world, in which the Internet is a source of knowledge, a means of communication, an artery of commerce. Whoever controls access to the Internet will control our future. This is what the current battle over Facebook’s Free Basics is all about.

(Prabir Purkayastha is chairperson, Knowledge Commons, and vice-president, Free Software Movement of India.)

Keywords: Free Basics, Facebook, Silicon Valley, net neutrality

Source: The Hindu, 30-12-2015

Tracing The Ego Back To Its Source

Anup Taneja





Thoughts have two basic compoT nents: a subjective factor ­ I, me or mine and an objective factor ­ a state, condition or object with which we are associated, like our own body and mind or external circumstances like relationships, possessions or activities.We get so deeply absorbed in the `object' portion that we fail to direct our mind inward to see our true nature apart from these external conditioning influences.The result is that we remain ignorant about our true nature and the pure `I' remains obscure to us.According to Ramana Maharshi, exponent of jnana marga, Atma vichara or Self-enquiry is the method that can help us in detaching from the `object' portion to discover the pure `subject', so that we can become liberated from all external limitations. Self-enquiry is a process of meditation that involves constant reflection on the question, `Who am I?' This repeated enquiry ultimately enables the seeker to take his ego-consciousness (I-thought) back to the Divine `I Am' at the core of one's Being where all sense of duality disappears and true knowledge arises.
The purpose of Self-enquiry is to trace the root of one's thoughts back to the I-thought from which all other thoughts arise and diverge. It is not, therefore, a case of one `I' searching for another `I'. The seeker engaged in Self-enquiry must first, distinguish between the `I', pure in itself, and the `I-thought'. The latter being merely a thought, sees subject and object, sleeps, wakes up, eats and thinks, dies and is reborn. But the pure `I' is the pure Being; eternal existence, free from ignorance and thought-illusion. Second, I-thought or the ego functions as the knot between the Self which is pure consciousness and the physical body which is inert and insentient. The ego is therefore called the `Chit-jada-granthi' ­ the knot between consciousness and the inert body. In one's investigation into the source of I-thought, the seeker is mainly concerned with the essential `chit' (consciousness) aspect of the ego.
Third, the universe exists on account of ego or the `I'-thought. If that ends there is an end of misery also. The per son who exists in sleep is also now awake. There is happiness in sleep but misery in wakeful ness. In sleep there was no `I'-thought, but it is now present while one is awake. The state of happiness in sleep is effortless.
Ramana Maharshi suggests that seekers, in order to be perennially free from suffering, should constantly endeavour to bring about that state even in the waking state. Fourth, knowledge is the light which links the subject to the object, the seer to the seen. Suppose you go in search of a book in the library in pitch darkness. Can you find it without light, although you, the subject, and the book, the object, are both present? You need light. This link between the subject and the object in every experience is `chit' or Consciousness. It is both substratum as well as the witness of the experience, the seer.
When the mind becomes introverted through constant Self-enquiry ­ into the source of ego ­ the `vasanas' (deeprooted desires) become extinct. The light of the Self falls on the `vasanas' and produces the phenomenon of reflection we call the mind. Thus, when the `vasanas' become extinct the mind also disappears, being absorbed into the light of the one reality , the Self, which is beyond all conceivable divisions of time and space, name and form, birth and death. (December 30, 2015 is Ramana Maharshi's 136th birth anniversary).

78,000 of country's beggars are 12th passouts

Himanshu Kaushik

Ahmedabad





India has 3.72 lakh beggars of whom 21% are literate, having at least cleared Class XII. In fact, over 3,000 have professional diplomas, or are graduates and even post-graduates, according to the Census 2011 data on `Non-workers by main activity and education level' released earlier this week.Many of them have turned the adage `beggars cannot be choosers' on its head -especially considering that they made a studied choice to take up beggary after their degrees failed to land them satisfactory jobs.
“I may be poor but I am an honest man. I beg as it fetches me more money , Rs 200 a day.My last job, as a ward boy in a hospital, got me only Rs 100,“ said Dinesh Khodhabhai (45), a Class XII passout with a halfway decent command over English.
Dinesh is part of a motley group of 30 beggars who seek alms around Ahmedabad's Bhadra Kali temple. Before their work begins, they sip hot tea offered gratis by a local.
After he flunked his thirdyear BCom exams, Sudhir Babulal (51) came to Ahmedabad from Vijapur town with stars in his eyes. However, masonry jobs proved erratic, fetching him Rs 3,000 for a 10 hour shift and nothing for weeks on end. “After my wife left me, where was the need to keep a house? I sleep on the riverfront and beg,“ said Sudhir, who averages Rs 150 a day .
Dashrath Parmar (52), who has an MCom degree from Gujarat University , is another pan-handler. This father-of-three, who aspired for government service but lost even the private job he had, today lives off free meals offered by charity organisations.
Ashok Jaisur, who cleared high school from Mumbai and now begs in the Lal Darwaza area, left his job as a security guard after he lost sight due to cataract. He says he begs to ensure better prospects for his family . “I have only one wish: to make my son Raj an animator,“ said Ashok, who feeds his nine daughters and wife from income earned off the streets.
“It's difficult to rehabilitate beggars as they get lured back due to easy money ,“ said Biren Joshi of Manav Sadhana, an NGO working with beggars.“Graduates turning to begging reflects the grim employment scenario. People turn to beggary when they do not get decent jobs and have no social support to fall back on,“ added sociologist Gaurang Jani.

Source: Times of India, 30-12-2015

Mahatma of the tribals

Destiny took away Brahma Dev Sharma (B.D. Sharma) from us on December 6, the Mahaparinirvan Din of Babasaheb Ambedkar. While Ambedkar remains the original icon of the oppressed classes, mainly Dalits in Hindu society, Sharma will be remembered for his contribution to the emancipation of the tribals.

Beginning his career as a civil servant, Sharma spent a lifetime in the cause of the marginalised sections. At times acting like a Gandhian or reasoning like a communist, and occasionally positioning himself in a manner that attracted the tag of Maoist, Sharma transcended all isms. He was an original thinker and activist par excellence.

Born in an orthodox Brahmin family on June 19, 1931 at Shahjahanpur, UP, Sharma studied mathematics at the Benares Hindu University and worked at BITS, Pilani as a lecturer. Subsequently, he sat for the civil services examination and entered the IAS in 1956. He understood the calculus of the government machinery and its unholy alliance with big industry. When a scheme to replace the primordial Bastar forests with a pine plantation was proposed during his tenure as district collector (1964-68), he shot it down. He thought the pine plantation, meant to service a matchbox manufacturing MNC, would deprive poor tribals of their natural food resources and jeopardise their very survival. A lesson from an experiment in a Bastar village guided him throughout his life. He had built an “ideal village” with facilities like school and hospital. But no tribal would shift there. He realised it was best to ask the tribals what they needed and make plans accordingly rather than thrust one’s own ideas upon them. While on deputation at the Centre, he helped devise the concept of the tribal sub-plan (TSP), which became a source of dedicated funding for schemes in tribal areas. He took voluntary retirement from government in 1981. Later, the government appointed him vice chancellor of the North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU). In 1986, he was invited to head the SC/ST Commission.

Sharma was part of an informal group, Sahayog, which included many social activists. He was associated with the anti-Narmada dam movement and in 1992, set up the Bharat Jan Andolan (BJA). The BJA had three basic objectives — peasants’ rights, wage entitlement and mainstreaming of the Schedule V of the Constitution to bring tribal areas into the panchayati raj fold. He would recall how farmers were forced to repay loans at over 14 per cent when the original British laws of 1884 provided for 4 per cent interest with a repayment span of 35 years. The BJA organised the famous wage entitlement battle, Zenda Hajeri, in Madhya Pradesh for jobs under the “demand-driven” EGS scheme. The officials found it too demanding. Then chief minister Digvijaya Singh wrote to then prime minister P.V.

Narasimha Rao that the scheme had become a “law and order problem”. Sharma’s greatest contribution was in bringing Schedule V areas under the Panchayat Raj (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act of 1996 (PESA). The PESA gave an impetus to the tribal self-rule movement and led to the path-breaking Forest Rights Act.

Vested interests were hostile to Sharma’s dogged fight against the usurpation of tribal resources by the government and private entities. While being part of a tribal agitation against setting up private iron-ore extraction units, he was accosted by goons who stripped him naked, put a garland of chappals round his neck and paraded him on a donkey in Mavlibhata village. The gross exhibition of intolerance took place when the BJP was in office in MP. The Sundarlal Patwa government showed no remorse. The exception was RSS ideologue Govindacharya, who apologised to Sharma.

A natural consequence of working in tribal areas was that Sharma had to engage with the Maoists. The intelligence machinery, eager to brand all those working for tribal rights as Maoists or their sympathisers, marked out Sharma as well as a suspect.

However, Sharma’s moral stature helped in securing the release of Sukma district collector Alex Paul Menon and two Italian tourists whom the Maoists had taken hostage.

Sharma lived the life of an ascetic. He grieved that state governments were not framing rules to implement the PESA act in letter and spirit. He was unhappy that he couldn’t contribute to furthering the cause of prohibition. In his last days, he lapsed into a state of dementia. Sharma was, as health activist Abhay Bang described, “the Mahatma of the tribals”.

The writer, a journalist, was an associate of B.D. Sharma for over four decades .

Source: Indian Express, 29-12-2015

Hunger brews in Bengal’s tea estates

North Bengal’s tea estates are witnessing an unfolding human tragedy as more deaths of tea garden workers were reported this month from the region. With the industry as a whole struggling from soft prices and a drop in output as climate change affects rainfall and weather conditions across the country’s tea-growing regions, several estates are reportedly being unofficially shut, leaving thousands of hapless workers in the lurch. And even at gardens that are operating, living conditions for the predominantly female workforce are said to be precarious, with access to housing, sanitation, healthcare and drinking water far from adequate. A delegation of the State Assembly’s Standing Committee on Labour that visited four tea estates cited malnutrition as an apparent cause for the recent deaths of workers and said the State government was not doing enough to resolve the crisis. Separately, an international fact-finding mission headed by the Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition that visited tea gardens in West Bengal and Assam earlier this month painted a grim picture of extremely low wages driving thousands of families to hunger and malnutrition. With a majority of the labour landless, tribal migrants who have little to no other skills to help them find gainful work, the closures and unpaid wages in many estates are spurring a surge in the incidence of starvation. While West Bengal’s Labour Minister this month told legislators the government was providing jobs under the MGNREGA, medical vans and midday meals to workers at the closed tea gardens, and challenged opposition members to prove the deaths were due to starvation and not natural causes, there is a tacit admission that there is a crisis requiring the State’s intervention. The Minister’s comment that none of the death certificates show starvation as the cause of death is tragically ironic since acute hunger and dehydration leave a person too weak to work or even stir out seeking food or water as alms. The victim ultimately dies of organ failure or an opportunistic infection that the body can’t fight.

The bleak situation of these workers starkly highlights the absence of a social security net for rural workers, and specifically labour in the plantation sector. Unless governments both at the Centre and the State develop adequate mechanisms to safeguard the basic needs of non-unionised workers in vulnerable sectors such as the plantations, all efforts at labour law reform will be quite vacuous and bereft of any meaning to the key factor of economic productivity: the worker. Rising above partisan political considerations, the West Bengal government needs to act urgently to address the crisis and, if warranted, take strong legal action against the managements of tea estates that have landed their workers on the brink of starvation and death. A longer-term rehabilitation and re-skilling package is also required to help labour at the defunct estates find alternative work, and measures must be taken, separately, to rejuvenate this key employment-providing sector.

Keywords: Bengal tea estates, tea gardens, West Bengal

Source: The Hindu, 29-12-2015

To become empowered, we must train our youth in the Constitution

‘We the people of India having solemnly resolved to constitute India…’ words so powerful that if only we understand its intended meaning, it would pave the way for the empowerment of each one of us. Freedom we attained 68 years ago but empowerment will continue to elude us unless we make an honest effort to understand the ideals and spirit of our freedom movement that culminated in the production of a finest non-religious, yet sacred book: The Constitution of India.

Our founding fathers not only secured us freedom but toiled for three long years in the Constituent Assembly and after prolonged deliberations gave us our Constitution, which not only ensures individual rights but also clearly laid down the principles to build a prosperous India, free of inequity and exploitation.

The biggest disservice that we have done and continue to do so is to pay scant regard to the spirit of the Constitution. This neglectful attitude has produced various problems, especially the sectarian tendency to demand privileges while denying the same to others. If we continue to ignore the wisdom propounded in the Constitution, it would lead us to moral bankruptcy and spiritual paucity.

Our Constitution not only spells out the duties of various organs of the State and basic rights of the citizens, but also charges the citizens with certain duties. The failure on our part would be a moral and spiritual setback.

The Preamble gives a fair idea of what behaviour and conduct is expected of us, the citizens. It was further reinforced by the incorporation of a list of fundamental duties in the Constitution in 1976.

Now we may ask ourselves if our conduct is in conformity with these fundamental duties. The day we can honestly say yes, most of the problems that confront us in the conduct of our national life would disappear and our interests would integrate with the State. In fact, in a landmark judgment the Supreme Court has observed: ‘State is all the citizens placed together and hence though Article 51-A does not expressly cast any fundamental duty on the State, the fact remains that the duty of every citizen of India is the collective duty of the State.’

As citizens we can show our commitment to the Constitution by conscientiously doing our duties and that alone is the most effective instrument to protect our liberty. Today our behaviours are more influenced by the legacy of the colonial rule rather than the spirit of the Constitution. That explains why we are still obsessed with our denominational and social identities, and the focus of political discourse takes no cognisance of the citizen.

We, however, need not despair. We are an old civilisation but a young nation who has laboured under colonial rule for centuries. During this period we developed certain attitudes that do not agree with the letter and spirit of our Constitution. The best method to get rid of that colonial hang up is to train our young minds to become familiar with the Constitution and imbible its spirit.

(Mustafa Arif is an advocate. The views expressed are personal)

source: Hindustan Times, 29-12-2015

The Peace Message

ARUNA JETHWANI





Every community that migrates, whatever the reason, contributes to its new region of settlement. In Sindhi culture and literature, the most prominent name is that of Shah Abdul Latif. His spiritual literature is considered very similar to that of Rumi's. He has been the single most influence on the life of the people of Sindh, whether they are Hindus or Muslims.His family had migrated from Herat in Outer Mongolia.He was a third-generation Sindhi who gave to the world the unique religion of Secular Sufism; his work, `Shah Jo Risalo,' is pure spiritual vedanta.It is the most beautiful gift he gave to the world. He enriched the Sindhi language with Persian and Arabic words, so much that today linguists consider Sindhi to be the richest language in the world.
What have Hindu Sindhis given to the world? They have given the world true secularism without any divisions of caste, creed or religion. And the wisdom of education and healthcare that is visible in numerous schools and colleges, as well as hospitals wherever they have settled down, be it India or foreign lands.
Greater than this is their unique peace contribution: peace, which is seen in the 7,000-yearold Sindhu civilisation, one that supported and sustained the great civilisations of Babylon and Egypt.
Not a single war weapon is found in the excavation of Mohenjo-daro, indicating that more things are wrought by cooperation than confrontation. Perhaps the concept of non-violence came from here.