India should reconsider its proposed regulation of online content

The lack of technical considerations in the proposal is also apparent since implementing the proposal is infeasible for certain intermediaries. End-to-end encrypted messaging services cannot “identify” unlawful content since they cannot decrypt it. Presumably, the government’s intention is not to disallow end-to-end encryption so that intermediaries can monitor content.

Flowing from the Information Technology (IT) Act, India’s current intermediary liability regime roughly adheres to the “safe harbour” principle, i.e. intermediaries (online platforms and service providers) are not liable for the content they host or transmit if they act as mere conduits in the network, don’t abet illegal activity, and comply with requests from authorised government bodies and the judiciary. This paradigm allows intermediaries that primarily transmit user-generated content to provide their services without constant paranoia, and can be partly credited for the proliferation of online content. The law and IT minister shared the intent to change the rules this July when discussing concerns of online platforms being used “to spread incorrect facts projected as news and designed to instigate people to commit crime”.

On December 24, the government published and invited comments to the draft intermediary liability rules. The draft rules significantly expand “due diligence” intermediaries must observe to qualify as safe harbours: they mandate enabling “tracing” of the originator of information, taking down content in response to government and court orders within 24 hours, and responding to information requests and assisting investigations within 72 hours. Most problematically, the draft rules go much further than the stated intentions: draft Rule 3(9) mandates intermediaries to deploy automated tools for “proactively identifying and removing [...] unlawful information or content”.

The first glaring problem is that “unlawful information or content” is not defined. A conservative reading of the draft rules will presume that the phrase means restrictions on free speech permissible under Article 19(2) of the Constitution, including that relate to national integrity, “defamation” and “incitement to an offence”.

Ambiguity aside, is mandating intermediaries to monitor for “unlawful content” a valid requirement under “due diligence”? To qualify as a safe harbour, if an intermediary must monitor for all unlawful content, then is it substantively different from an intermediary that has active control over its content and not a safe harbour? Clearly, the requirement of monitoring for all “unlawful content” is so onerous that it is contrary to the philosophy of safe harbours envisioned by the law.

By mandating automated detection and removal of unlawful content, the proposed rules shift the burden of appraising legality of content from the state to private entities. The rule may run afoul of the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Shreya Singhal v Union of India wherein it read down a similar provision because, among other reasons, it required an intermediary to “apply [...] its own mind to whether information should or should not be blocked”. “Actual knowledge” of illegal content, since then, has held to accrue to the intermediary only when it receives a court or government order.

Given the inconsistencies with legal precedence, the rules may not stand judicial scrutiny if notified in their current form.

The lack of technical considerations in the proposal is also apparent since implementing the proposal is infeasible for certain intermediaries. End-to-end encrypted messaging services cannot “identify” unlawful content since they cannot decrypt it. Internet service providers also qualify as safe harbours: how will they identify unlawful content when it passes encrypted through their network? Presumably, the government’s intention is not to disallow end-to-end encryption so that intermediaries can monitor content.

Intermediaries that can implement the rules, like social media platforms, will leave the task to algorithms that perform even specific tasks poorly. Just recently, Tumblr flagged its own examples of permitted nudity as pornography, and Youtube slapped a video of randomly-generated white noise with five copyright-infringement notices. Identifying more contextual expression, such as defamation or incitement to offences, is a much more complex problem. In the lack of accurate judgement, platforms will be happy to avoid liability by taking content down without verifying whether it violated law. Rule 3(9) also makes no distinction between large and small intermediaries, and has no requirement for an appeal system available to users whose content is taken down. Thus, the proposed rules set up an incentive structure entirely deleterious to the exercise of the right to freedom of expression. Given the wide amplitude and ambiguity of India’s restrictions on free speech, online platforms will end up removing swathes of content to avoid liability if the draft rules are notified.

The use of draconian laws to quell dissent plays a recurring role in the history of the Indian state. The draft rules follow India’s proclivity to join the ignominious company of authoritarian nations when it comes to disrespecting protections for freedom of expression. To add insult to injury, the draft rules are abstruse, ignore legal precedence, and betray a poor technological understanding. The government should reconsider the proposed regulation and the stance which inspired it, both of which are unsuited for a democratic republic.

Gurshabad Grover is a senior policy officer at the Centre for Internet and Society

Source: Hindustan Times, 24/01/2019

But What is Divine Life?

To sublimate the human into the divine, to express this sublimation in his daily, hourly life in thought, word and deed — that is truly divine life. To speak the truth at all costs, to speak sweetly with love, to practise non-violence, celibacy, to behold the Lord in all forms, is divine life. To be ever in communion with the Lord by annihilating mine-ness and egoism through faith, devotion and self-surrender, is divine life. When the mind entertains unholy thoughts, remember the unpleasant consequences. Also think of the advantages of leading a pure life. Remember the lives of saints and draw inspiration from them.… Every attempt to cultivate divine virtues, selflessness, straightforwardness, courage, serenity, generosity, mercy and self-restraint, this in reality is divine life. Keep a balanced mind in success and failure, censure and praise, honour and dishonour, gain and loss, heat and cold. Give up identification with the body, spouse, children and all kinds of property. Identify yourself with the all-pervading immortal blissful Atman and rest peacefully in Brahmn. Man’s love must embrace the entire universe. Therefore, when he loves knowledge for its own sake and his love is universal and boundless, then the mighty protector God is pleased because man attains the summit of his glory. The true goal of life is to get back to the source from which we came. Just as the rivers flow restlessly till they join the ocean, so too we should be restless here till we obtain His grace and become one with him

Source: Economic Times, 24/01/2019

Vaccine refusal among top 10 threats to public health: WHO

Refusal or hesitation to get vaccination against deadly diseases despite availability of vaccines is seen as one of the top threats to public health, according to World Health Organisation (WHO). The UN agency recently released a list of what it considers the top 10 threats to global health for 2019, which include air pollution, obesity and antibiotic resistance. This is the first time that vaccine hesitancy has made it to the UN agency’s list of ten biggest threats to world health. “Vaccination is one of the most cost-effective ways of avoiding disease — it currently prevents 2-3 million deaths a year, and a further 1.5 million could be avoided if global coverage of vaccination improved,” it said. In India, lack of awareness and information coupled with apprehension of adverse event following immunisation are seen as the major reasons for children not getting vaccinated. The two factors together account for around 65% of the children not getting vaccine coverage, as per government estimates. Between 2014 and 2018, India’s annual immunisation growth rate has risen to 4% from 1% previously

Source: Times of India, 24/01/2019

India stares at water scarcity

Tackling drought must be the immediate priority for administrators across the country

The coming elections to the Lok Sabha, crucial to the future of our democracy, our pluralism, our federalism, are only a few weeks away.

But something else, something urgent, something is already upon us. And something that is going to coincide with the elections. A drought.

The rains have failed us. Nothing new, one might say. True, except that the rains’ let down this time comes on top of an already low-rain and, in many places, no-rain ground situation. And the next nearest rains are six months away. The cruelly blue, cloudless skies over much of India, north, central, eastern and peninsular India, say it all. And there is no guarantee that June will see the onset of a normal monsoon.

What the sky says

Does anyone care? Does the political class? The Prime Minister and Chief Ministers are not unaware of the situation. They cannot be. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has given them enough data. But when droughts and elections intersect, it is extremely uncomfortable to leaders. It is inconvenient to dwell on the skies’ tidings. Which government would like to tell farmers that suffering lies at their threshold? Who would like to tell them that water will be scarcer than before, that aquifers will plummet, crops wither, livestock go thirsty? Which government would, just weeks before the elections, tell us that with reservoirs drying up taps will sputter to a stop and that we may well be looking at water-rationing? The truth is, none of them will say that. This is where, as Amartya Sen has told us time and again, the media comes in, and comes in redemptively. It is India’s great good luck that public awareness, nudged and prodded by public discussions on meteorological data and media reportage, has kept droughts from deepening into famines in our country.

The IMD report on scant rains has received scant attention so far, with exceptions being provided by P. Sainath’s relentless warnings and observations of experts of the calibre and veracity of Ramchandra Sable, agro-meteorologist, and D.M. More, Secretary of the Second Maharashtra Irrigation Commission, reported in The Hindustan Times (January 6, 2019).

Rain deficit facts

To turn to the facts. The actual deficit last monsoon was modest — barely 10%. But the post-monsoon rainfall (October to December, 2018) or PMR as it is called by meteorologists has registered a 44% deficit. This national average deficit conceals shortages in some regions where it is much higher. In Marathwada, according to the IMD, the deficit is 84%, in Vidarbha, 88%.

Why should we worry, more than before, this time? For the reason that this low-rain and no-rain situation is going to aggravate the water crisis that we have brought upon ourselves without the ‘help’ of a dry sky. Years of policy-driven, corporate-driven water transfers from rural to urban, agriculture to industry, poor to rich and so on have made our country-side chronically water-scarce. Urban India does not realise this fast enough or well enough. It will, when there are power-outages and air-conditioners do not work! “By April-May,” Mr. Sainath said to me, “this drought could be tormenting millions in several States.” And that is when election-campaigning will be at its peak.

The pre-election mood ‘yesterday’ was all about agrarian distress, farm-loan waivers. Will the pre-election mood ‘tomorrow’ be even thinking of, leave alone talking of, drought and what can be done to address it beyond loan-waivers?

Though our major leaders deny it, Kaun Banega Pradhan Mantri — KBPM — is what occupies the high seat in their thinking today. They seem to be in aphasia if not amnesia about the massive waterlessness that has hit us already. If they see the parched ponds, the sharded earth, the leaf-shedding trees, panting crops, drooping livestock, they do not talk about it.

That is how politics is. And yet that is not how politics should be and that is not how the rural Indian voter is going to allow politics to be. Not any more. And good for that voter that it be so. Anti-incumbency may take five years in electoral politics to mature into an ouster. It does not take more than one failed farm-season to turn to impatience and then to rage. No politician in office or aspiring to it today can ignore the drought. It is going to be the biggest and immediate test for the new governments in Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh. Somewhere in her hurt ego, a ‘relieved’ Vasundhara Raje must be glad she is not going to have to fight the drought. Likewise, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Raman Singh. Not the Bharatiya Janata Party, not the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), not Narendra Modi but the drought is going to be the real challenge to the ‘collective opposition’ as it seeks to and could well manage to, oust the present regime.

Let there be no doubt that the Prime Minister of India 2019 will have to be India’s Drought Commissioner.

And let her or him face the challenge four-square and render a national service.

Time and money are short

There is a prequel to this.

For the NDA, time is short, money is not. For the Opposition, time is short, money shorter. What is short for both, equally, is credibility. It is critically short. The voter, especially the rural voter, has no illusions. A government either helps it overcome its life-and-death problems or does not. The ‘Delhi Government’ will be tested in 2019 for its credibility on many issues, among which certainly l’affaire Rafale is now top-of-the-list, followed by the Reserve Bank of India and the Central Bureau of Investigation mess-ups. But the elections in 2019 will test its credibility by what it does and says it will do for water-starved, food-short, livelihood-broken, rural India’s agrarian distress. And in States where the NDA is not in power — and now the States in which it is not exceeds the number of States in which it is — the rural voter will vote against whoever is in office unless the ‘government party’ makes drought relief, water-use, food security and massive earth-related programmes its absolute priority. In other words, unless it makes agrarian distress, now aggravated by the drought, its priority.

The failure of rains this time is so serious that ‘drought’ now means not just a farm crisis but a national crisis that will affect towns and cities no less than villages. ‘Agrarian crisis’ appears to urban India as something ‘out there’. No longer true. It is only a matter of time when the ‘taken-for-granted’ piped water supply will falter and when water cans will cost even more than they do, today.

Whoever becomes Prime Minister will do well to appoint a commission like the Farmers’ Commission, which Dr. M.S. Swaminathan headed, to advise him or her on how water scarce India, all of India, needs to face drought. And give that Commission just one month to complete its study, make its recommendations not just to government but to all Indians, to us, who have become so used to water-access imbalance, water-use lopsidedness, water prodigality in the midst of water poverty that we just do not care. And this time, not advisories or appeals but penalties will be needed.

Addressing the deepening drought, agrarian distress and water-management are critical not just for our governments to survive but for us to survive our governments.

Gopalkrishna Gandhi is a former administrator, diplomat and governor

Source: The Hindu, 23/01/2019

The crisis of imbalance in the world economy

Privatisation of social sector services are making people poorer and eating into their chances of upward mobility. Rise of finance compared to green field economic activity has made economic growth more skewed. Solutions to these problems requires coordinated, long-term policy actions.

The World Economic Forum (WEF), an annual event held in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, has become a symbol of global capitalism. Oxfam, an international advocacy organisation, releases its global report on inequality to coincide with the WEF to question the rising inequality which has accompanied the current phase of capitalism. The findings of the report, like other advocacy studies, are important, but also sensational at times.

Here are some examples from this year’s report. Twenty-six people owned the same amount of wealth as the bottom 3.8 billion people in the world in 2018. This figure was 43 in 2017. The total wealth owned by billionaires increased by $900 billion in 2018, while the wealth of the bottom 3.8 billion fell by 11%. In the 10 years since the global financial crisis, the number of billionaires has nearly doubled. These findings are based on calculations by Credit Suisse and Forbes, which, in turn, rely on multiple other sources and assumptions. Some of these are extremely volatile. Oxfam revised the number of billionaires who owned as much wealth as the bottom half of humanity from eight to 61 for 2016 in its 2018 report. Surveys estimating the wealth of the population are often conducted infrequently in countries, especially in the global south. For India, this data is not available after 2012-13. Even if these issues are set aside, there are other logical problems. Should wealth be the sole indicator of the problem of inequality? A rural house in Bihar might be worth nothing compared to a posh villa in South Mumbai. But, if the village where the house is located were to receive a significant boost in terms of education and health infrastructure, life would become a lot better for its occupants without there being any decline in wealth inequality at all. Similarly, if a labour intensive industrialist were to become the new billionaire instead of a stock market trader, the positive impact on incomes of the not so well off would be much greater.

Much of the crisis of inequality in the global economy is due to developments which run counter to the examples given above. Privatisation of social sector services are making people poorer and eating into their chances of upward mobility. Rise of finance compared to green field economic activity has made economic growth more skewed. The solution to these problems requires coordinated, long-term policy actions and not Robin Hood-type solutions which a cursory reading of Oxfam’s drastic conclusions might suggest.

Source: Hindustan Times, 23/1/2019

A Creative Process

Most people don’t know how to communicate. We share information, sometimes in very sophisticated ways, but we don’t really communicate. Real communication is a creative process. Human beings evolve only through interaction, so enlightened communication means engaging in a developmental process at the top level of our consciousness. Enlightened communication can occur in a disciplined, controlled context, where the content of the dialogue is kept in the realm of the impersonal. If you hold yourself and other participants to the biggest philosophical and spiritual concepts, without swerving into abstractions or deviating into personal matters, you will discover that the liberating depth and clarity of the Authentic Self will spontaneously emerge. The instant you or anyone else becomes too abstract or personal, this new context that you have created together in consciousness will disappear, the evolutionary tension will dissipate, and you’ll lose touch with the Authentic Self. But if you diligently avoid mere opinions, theoretical abstractions and the personal dimension, your words will become one with the inspired passion, focused intensity and evolutionary tension emanating from the Authentic Self. Once you become grounded in the Authentic Self, you will be clear enough to be able to slowly widen the content of the dialogue to embrace all of your humanity, including every aspect of the personal domain, without swerving from a truly enlightened perspective. Enlightened Communication is communication beyond ego.

Source: Economic Times, 23/01/2019

K’taka LS seats worse than Bihar’s in child nutrition

 Karnataka has more parliamentary constituencies than Bihar and Odisha put together in the list of those with the worst child malnutrition. Shockingly, 12 out of 14 Lok Sabha constituencies in Jharkhand and 19 out of 29 in Madhya Pradesh figure in this list making them the states with the worst record in childhood malnutrition indicators. In contrast, 17 of Kerala’s 20 constituencies figure in the list of the best and none in the worst. This was revealed in a study done by a multidisciplinary team of academics from Harvard University, the Institute of Economic Growth in Delhi, Tata Trust, and Niti Aayog. The study, reported in the Economic & Political Weekly, mapped data on childhood malnutrition from the national family health survey conducted in 2015-16 on to 543 parliamentary constituencies. It provides estimates for four child malnutrition indicators (stunting, underweight, wasting, and anaemia) for each constituency. A total of 72 PCs were in the top bracket of prevalence for all indicators — 12 in Jharkhand, 19 in Madhya Pradesh, 10 in Karnataka, six in Rajasthan and eight in Uttar Pradesh. Of the 70 PCs with the best record on all four indicators, 17 were in Kerala, nine were in West Bengal, and seven each in Odisha and Tamil Nadu. Overall, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, and Kerala showed low prevalence of the four conditions of malnutrition and Jharkhand showed high prevalence. Interestingly, only 8 out of 80 PCs in Uttar Pradesh and 6 out of 40 in Bihar figured among the worst. Surprisingly, though Assam is considered a backward state, none of its constituencies figured among the worst and four out of its 14 PCs were among the best. In fact, none of the north eastern states figure in the list of the worst PCs. Seven out of 11 constituencies spread over the seven NE states other than Assam figure among the best. These include the two constituencies each that Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura have. The distribution of underweight (inadequate weight for age) and stunted (inadequate height for age caused by chronic malnutrition) children under five shows similar trends with Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, UP, Bihar and Chhattisgarh showing the highest burden. Three PCs in UP, Shrawasti, Kaisarganj and Bahraich, with over 60% of the children being stunted, showed the highest burden for stunting. Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala showed the lowest burden. Idukki in Kerala had the lowest burden of 13.7%. The PCs with the highest prevalence of underweight are Singhbhum in Jharkhand (60.9%), Puruliya in West Bengal (58.2%), and Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh (54.3%). Again, three PCs in Kerala fared best, with Kannur recording the lowest burden of 10.5%. Prevalence of wasting (low weight for height, usually the result of acute food shortage and/or disease) is highest in central and western India, particularly in MP, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, and Jharkhand. Jamshedpur in Jharkhand had the highest prevalence of 40.6%. Parts of southern, eastern and northern India show the lowest rates with two PCs in Manipur having the lowest burden of 7.6%. The highest rates of anaemia (when haemoglobin level is below 11) were found mostly throughout central India, particularly in Madhya Pradesh, southern Rajasthan, Haryana, and Gujarat. Singhbum in Jharkhand (83.0%), Banswara in Rajasthan (79.3%), and Khargone in MP (79.1%) were the worst off.
Again the two PCs with the least prevalence of anaemia were Attingal and Kollam in Kerala with about 19.5%. The study found no constituency with high burden of stunting, underweight, wasting or anaemia within states with better nutrition outcomes. It did, however, find stand-out PCs in states with poor indicators. Future studies ought to try and find positive practices or characteristics in these constituencies that could be applied to other PCs, the authors urged.

Source: Times of India, 23/01/2019