Vol. VII No. 5
May 2009
The first monthly magazine on ICT4D
Changing times ICTs and democracy
Elections go hi-tech Election Commission of India Information for development
Making the connection Web 2.0 in Indian politics
ISSN 0972 - 804X
ICT in Elections
w w w. i 4 d o n l i n e . n e t
knowledge for change
Contents
Vol. VII No. 5
Features 5
Editorial
6
ICTs and democracy
Towards e-Democracy?
May 2009
Mail box Rendezvous 37
Election Commission of India
13
Web2.0 in Indian Politics
Elections go hi-tech Ritu Srivastava
40
Digital Inclusion: A Pathway for Economic Development, 19 March 2009, Chandigarh, India Digital inclusion
16 19
Making the connection Subir Dey Role of NGOs and corporates in Indian elections Socially conscious campaigns Ritu Srivastava
Columns 45 46
What’s on In Fact e-Politics
IT Manifestoes of Indian political parties Visiualising digital India Dinoj Kumar Upadhayay
21
A snapshot of Indian electioneering
All India People’s Manifesto, Wada Naa Todo Abhiyan, India MDGs and Indian elections 2009
26
American Election 2008
29
IT Deployment in Indian States
33
UNESCO’s comparative study of CSCs and CMCs in India
e-Governance in India
i4donline.net News Search ICT4D news by date in the sectors of governance, health, education, agriculture and so on.
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E-mail Subscribe to daily, weekly, monthly newsletters online or send request to info@i4donline.net Print edition The past issues of the magazine are available online www.i4d.csdms.in/archive/archive.htm
New! Knowledge bank
25-27 August 2009 Hyderabad, India www.eINDIA.net.in
I have been reading the i4d magazine from the last couple of months. The content and themes of the magazine is quite impressive. The Thematic Features in the magazine is the best section in the magazine. The layout and design of the magazine is also good. In the upcoming issues of the magazine I would like that magazine should cover topics related to micro-insurance and use of ICT by government and businesses. Rubel chowdhury Work for human development Bangladesh rubel_chowdhury@yahoo.com
I am writing to inform you that ‘The Drum Beat’ will be featuring ‘i4d, information for development magazine: Open Publishing’ in the upcoming issue of our e-magazine. Kier Olsen Vries Senior Editor The Communications Initiative kdevries@comminit.com http://www.comminit.com
Obama impact Dinoj Kumar Upadhayay
West Bengal: Gearing up for the big thrust Sabyasachi Kashyap
et
online.n
info@i4d
An Interpol for the Internet? Vingesh Sornamohan
Changing socio-political dynamics Dinoj Kumar Upadhayay
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The Third Internet Governance Forum, 3-6 December 2008, Hyderabad, India
of books on ICT4d www.i4d.csdms.in/floss/introduction.asp
I have been reading the online version of the i4d magazine from the last two years. The content and themes of the magazine is quite impressive. The ‘Thematic Features’ in the magazine is the best section in the magazine. The layout and design of the magazine needs to be improved. In the upcoming issues of i4d, I would like to see a section on i4d capacity building, i.e., formal education programs, seminars, workshops, conferences, short online courses. ICT for rural livelihoods; ICT for disaster preparedness and vulnerability reduction. Deepak Goswami Scientist F & SIO NIC, Secretariat, Guwahati sio-asm@nic.in
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i4d Editorial Calendar 2009 Month
Theme
January
Rural BPOs
Feburary
e-Agriculture
March
ICT in Climate Change
April
ePanchayat
May
ICTs in Elections
June
ICTs and Microfinance
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Mobiles for Development
i4d | May 2009
Editorial Towards e-Democracy? Advisory Board Dr M P Narayanan, Chairman, i4d Chin Saik Yoon Southbound Publications, Malaysia Karl Harmsen United Nations University Kenneth Keniston Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA Nagy Hanna e-Leadership Academy, University of Maryland, USA Richard Fuchs IDRC, Singapore Walter Fust Global Humanitarian Forum, Switzerland Wijayananda Jayaweera UNESCO, France EDITORIAL BOARD Akhtar Badshah, Frederick Noronha GROUP DIRECTORS Maneesh Prasad, Sanjay Kumar EDITORIAL TEAM Editor-in-Chief Dr Ravi Gupta Sr. Research Associates Ritu Srivastava Research Assistant Subir Dey Sr. Graphic Designer Bishwajeet Kumar Singh Graphic Designers Om Prakash Thakur, Shyam Kishore,
Elections, called the foundation of democracy, are here again. There is wide acknowledgement that free and fair elections are the building blocks of a development-oriented nation and economy. But it has been observed in the elections during the past few years that the number of people who actually vote is declining. This decline in voting percentage can be attributed to a variety of reasons, citizens’ apathy, lack of a clear developmental policies among the contesting parties, etc. The perception among voters that politics has now been unredeemably riddled with corrupt practices is, probably the primary reason why no one is now interested in participating in the process. Keeping in mind the fact that, India is a power to reckon with in the domains of software development and ITES (IT enabled services), and home to the NeGP (National eGovernance Plan) which promises to set up 1 lakh Common Services Centres (telecentres) across rural India to bring the benefits of ICTs to the masses from the hinterland, both the major political parties in India have promised to bring ICTs to the mainstream of the national development agenda. The BJP is using Web2.0 tools in its party website as well as its prime ministerial candidate, L K Advani’s website where he has started his own blog to directly reach out to the urban youth around the country. The Congress on the other hand, has taken a slightly different approach, though they haven’t used many Web2.0 tools, they are banking on their young leaders to encourage the Indian youth to participate in the elections and to support their party. The BJP has gone a step ahead and come up with a separate ‘IT Vision’ for India while the Congress has promised to energise the current initiatives for ICT integration into the lives of the underserved.
Chandrakesh Bihari Lal (James) Web Programmer Zia Salahuddin i4d G-4 Sector 39, NOIDA, UP, 201 301, India Phone +91 120 250 2181-85 Fax +91 120 250 0060 Email info@i4donline.net Web www.i4donline.net Printed at R P Printers, Noida, India i4d is a monthly publication. It is intended for those interested and involved in the use of Information and Commnication Technologies for development of underserved communities. It is hoped that it will serve to foster a growing network by keeping the community up to date on many activities in this wide and exciting field. i4d does not necessarily subscribe to the views expressed in this publication. All views expressed in this magazine are those of the contributors. i4d is not responsible or accountable for any loss incurred directly or indirectly as a result of the information provided.
Without taking any sides, we at i4d decided to look at how Indian political parties are using the available ICT and Web2.0 tools to reach out to the masses. While the political parties are attempting to use these tools to leverage their election campaigns, we are trying to look at the current election from the perspective of the pre-election and post-election scenario and have tried to explore and analyse the trends that are being set with the current available tools with regards to electioneering and also to synergise the manifestoes with the global ICT goals that are to be achieved post-election. ICT has immensely benefited the development processes in various arenas such as healthcare, education, governance, etc. Now that it has entered into the electoral process, it is hoped that the benefits also percolate to and fine tune the election processes thus making every vote count!
Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies, 2008 Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
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May 2009 | www.i4donline.net
Dr Ravi Gupta Ravi.Gupta@csdms.in
5
ICTS AND DEMOCRACY
Changing times “As a great social leveler, Information Technology ranks second only to death. It can raze cultural barriers, overwhelm economic inequalities, even compensate for intellectual disparities. In short, high technology can put unequal human beings on an equal footing, and that makes it the most potent democratising tool ever devised.”1 Sam Pitroda, the visionary technologist who spearheaded India’s telecommunications revolution
The world’s largest democracy is on an election trial. Around 714 million registered voters out of a population of about 1.17 billion will decide the fate of thousands of candidates who are in the fray to become the representative of one sixth of the world population. In a representative democracy like India, election is a mechanism ‘by the people’ to ensure the rule ‘of the people’ by choosing the representatives who will work ‘for the people’. Today the challenges that India faces, are enormous, and range from endemic poverty, rising social inequality, inept governance and climate change to terrorism, cultural, caste-based and communal conflicts, decline in voting and political participation in democratic process, particularly of younger generations and so on. There is criticism that our administrative and political system is riddled with corruption, crime, nepotism, inefficiency, lack of transparency and accountability. A large section of population is marginalised, and has no say in the decision-making and development process. The current gloomy economic scenario would certainly have a multiplier impact and deepen intensity of the problems. In this difficult time, Indian electors are going to elect their representatives who will determine the nation’s and its people’s destiny. It is going to be a defining moment for Indian democracy. Democracy is not an end in itself. It is rather a tool which becomes meaningful only when it delivers what is known as
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democratic dividends i.e. socio-economic development. If we take a suitably broad concept of development to incorporate the general well being of populations at large, including some basic civil and political freedoms, a democratic system which ensures these freedoms is almost by definition, more conducive to development on these counts than a non-democratic regime. It has been argued that there is a natural linkage between genuine democracy and freedom from hunger, ignorance, disease, people’s participation, and the empowerment of weaker sections that can come from socio-economic development. In such a context, now the questions arise, can Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) rekindle the hope of a population who’s faith in the democratic system has faded away and bring the marginalised sections of the populace in the mainstream of development? Can it help to keep the Nehruvian promise made during our Independence to “wipe every tear from every eye”? Can ICTs help to transform the Indian political culture? How can we change the nature and content of Indian politics by harnessing ICTs in politically relevant and innovative ways? ICTs can play a major role in supporting a culture of democracy, democratic process and civic values that uphold the democratic system. Application of ICTs can make possible electronic interaction between citizens, elected representatives and government. It can also help citizens can
access information and knowledge about the political process, services, and available choices. It encourages active citizen participation by informing, representing, encouraging to vote, enables them to play a direct role in policy making and decision making in democratic process, which affect their lives. Further it can also strengthen traditional democratic institutions and make political process more efficient and effective. The advent of ICTs has brought changes at various levels: social, political and economic, that promotes intrinsic values of democracy i.e., accountability, transparency, empowerment of the weaker sections of society and participation of marginalised sections in the development process. In the conventional perspective, developmental communication was used primarily to disseminate information, to make people aware of the dynamics of development, and instill a willingness to follow leaders. A new concept of participatory, developmental communication is not limited to information, much less to mass media. Today communication supplements education, culture, science, and technology to promote social, political and economic change.2 The process of globalisation, democractisation, decentralisation and privatisation has not only been facilitated by new communication technologies, but they also change the nature and role of media. Here it would be pertinent to see how ICTs can be instrumental in facilitating i4d | May 2009
a transparent, accountable, efficient and effective government. It has been argued, “India has the hardware of democracy - free elections - it still lacks a lot of the software - decent, responsive, transparent local government�3. The quality of governance is critical for development. Good governance ensures transparent use of public funds, encourages growth of the private sector, promotes effective delivery of public services and helps establish the rule of law. Denial of basic services to the poor is not only a matter of lack of resources, it results from the lack of accountability, and transparency and prevalence of corruption, social inequality and marginalisation of the weaker sections of society. ICTs can facilitate speedy, transparent, accountable, efficient and effective interaction between public, citizens, business and other agencies. This not only promotes better administration but also saves money in costs of transaction in government processes. This is how the concept of e-Governance has come into the picture. Women, Schedule Castes and Schedule Tribes are historically, socially and economically marginalised sections of the society. To establish substantive democracy, empowerment of these marginalised sections of the population is essential. Legal and political framework can only give a formal equal status, for genuine empowerment, they should be brought into the mainstream social and political development at every level. Considering this, ICTs can create a conducive environment for their empowerment, such as connectivity and access to information for livelihoods and enterprises, mobilisation and education of women workers and advocacy for workers’ rights, linking of women producers to global markets, efficient communication for micro enterprises of poor women, opportunities for skill-building and employment, opportunities for self-employment, and creation of data repositories and data management. Democracy is neither a single man affair nor mobocracy. Each and every section of the society must have participation and a say in the development and democratic process. In a multi-cultural, hierarchal society like India, isolation of lower Figure 1: Computer Literacy in Urban India (in Million)
Source: Internet and Mobile Association of India, I-Cube 2008, p. 45 May 2009 | www.i4donline.net
castes and women from developmental processes is against the principles of an egalitarian society, which is the bedrock of a stable society and just political system. ICTs can also become a significant tool to eradicate the historical bias and social injustice. An ICT-empowered system of governance can establish interaction between decision-makers and citizens. It can provide an avenue to express opinions and influence decision-making. In this way ICTs can form the foundation for inclusive development and substantive democracy by providing easy access to all sections of the population to influence decision-making. Criminalisation and rampant use of money and muscle power in politics have been corroding our political system. Looking at the figures posted on election watchdog websites like www.myneta.info, which contains records of the candidates submitted to the Election Commission of India, a number of Members of Parliament have criminal investigations or cases pending against them. The number can go even higher when we come to provincial politics. There is growing realisation among people that legal penalties are not enough to control this menace. A proactive stand from people and civil society organisation is the call of the hour. Civil society organisations and government agencies can disseminate information about the candidates to make people aware of their background, assets, pending criminal investigations and so on. ICTs can contribute in this process also. Many initiatives have already been taken in this regards. Online disclosure of the assets, criminal records and literacy levels are being done by various organisations. Jaago Re campaign, initiated by the Tata group is another such campaign that involves many corporate groups and media groups to raise social and political consciousness in voters, particularly youngsters. Though at the moment it seems to be a very small step whose presence could be limited but it has latent strength to reform the system.
Indian election scenario Only a few months ago, the dream of both President Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. was realised when Barack Obama became the first non-white President of the oldest democracy of the world, USA. Barack Obama effectively used online tools such as YouTube, blogs, social networking sites, online petitions, Google and Yahoo groups and more conventional email lists to rally supporters, campaign, defend attacks and communicate with constituents, even raise funds. ICTs played a major role in the making of this historic moment. If we look at the Indian scenario, our Indian leaders are are not left behind, they are also trying to woo their voters through the use of ICT tools which in more than one way is going to change the political culture in India in the coming years. This election is not only bringing ICTs
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to the fore as an important Figure 2: PCs Owners and Internet Subscribers (figure in `000) tool for campaigning, it is also witness to the most remarkable change in the attitudes of the political parties as they have promised to integrate ICTs in their scheme of good governance. They are not only using means of ICT, but also they are also promising to provide ICT services to masses. India’s main political parties, Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and Indian National Congress (INC) have been extensively campaigning online, and in their manifesto, have laid emphasis on providing smart phones, laptops, IT enabled jobs in rural areas, and so on. The online campaign of BJP can be seen spread across Source: Internet and Mobile Association of India, I-Cube 2008, p.49 various websites in the form of Google ads. Blogging has also assumed tremendous popularity Secondly, ICTs are capital intensive, which limits it rapid spread among political parties right from national parties BJP, INC, BSP in rural areas. Figure 2 illustrates that the number of computer to regional parties TDP, Shiv Sena,etc. BJP’s prime ministerial owners and Internet subscribers are constantly increasing as candidate Lal Krishna Advani can be seen using online platforms affluent classes are moving towards small towns.4 like blogging in a big way to woo young voters. BJP is using In conclusion, it has to be agreed that ICTs have a crucial role FLOSS (free/libre/open source software) to cut its web designing in information sharing, in the process of socialisation, promoting and online campaigning costs. Other groups who are directly or democratic values, transmitting knowledge and facilitating cultural indirectly supported by these parties, for instance, friends of BJP interactions. Economic development is another crucial domain can be seen on various social networking websites. To capitalise where the role of ICTs seems to be indispensable. Increased on the tremendous development opportunities presented by economic activity is a prerequisite for developing countries like ICTs, BJP has also come up with their ‘IT Vision’, in which India to care for their people and achieve true independence. ICTs they have promised to provide multipurpose national identity can play an important role in fighting poverty and stimulating card, give every family below the poverty line a free smart mobile economic growth as they do in the developed world. It can also phone, a laptop for INR 10,000 to one crore students and a assist in the political aspect of development in the developing subsidised broadband connection. In the ‘IT Vision Document world too, where politics is a deadly and divisive activity to capture for Transforming India, Empowering Bharat’ the main opposition power. In this context, horizontal technologies need to increase party has promised to generate 1.2 crore IT enabled jobs in rural political participation, mass mobilisation and raise political areas, 100 per cent financial inclusion, broadband services in every consciousness to build a truly democratic society. Suffice to say, village, Internet education in every school, and extensive use of IT ICTs have the potential to make a change possible in the Indian in the agricultural sector to raise land productivity and income of political culture. Dinoj Kumar Upadhyay farmers. At this point, it is worth mentioning that access and use Dinoj@telecentremagazine.net of ICTs is relatively low in India, particularly rural areas. Not to be left out, INC is present on facebook, orkut, and other (i) Quoted in Arvind Singhal and Everett M Rogers (2001), India’s Communication social networking websites. A study conducted by the Internet and Revolution: From Bullock Carts to Cyber Marts, New Delhi: Sage Publications, Mobile Association of India states that Internet usage is an urban p-253 phenomenon. Figure 1 illustrates that the number of Internet users (ii) William James Stover (1984), Information Technology in the Third World: Can are rapidly increasing in urban areas. It has taken a quantum leap I.T. Lead to Humane National Development, Colorado: Westview Press, pp-7-12 forward, reaching 85 million in September 2008 from 59 million (iii) Thomas L. Friedman (2004), “Software of Democracy”, March 21, 2004, in 2006. But the Internet still has very limited reach in rural areas. The New York Times Although the number of users and computers are increasing in (iv) Internet and Mobile Association of India (2009), I-Cube 2008, accessed absolute terms it is still very less in terms of percentage. It is on 24th April 2009, available at http://www.iamai.in/Upload/Research/Iapparent that ICT acquaintance is related with English. In rural Cube2008SummaryReport_30.pdf areas where overall literacy rate is only 65 per cent, knowledge of English is much less, only 17 per cent of total literate population.
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i4d | May 2009
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA
Elections go hi-tech The Election Commission of India is moving on the road to integrate ICTs in the Indian Electoral process, this article takes a look at the technical side of this journey
In 1977, after analysing the pros and cons of the Electronic Voting (e-Voting) machine vis-a-vis Ballot paper by High Power Committees, the Chief Election Commissioner of India decided to use Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) in elections. The Election Commission of India (ECI) devised and designed the EVMs in collaboration with Bharat Electronics Limited, Bangalore and Electronic Corporation of India Ltd., Hyderabad. In 1980, both the companies (BEL and ECIL) brought out models with a common user interface. EVMs were first used in 1982 in India in the bye-election of Kerala for a limited number of polling stations. During General Elections 2004, EVMs were used throughout the country for the first time. In keeping with the existing practice, the Commission decided to use these machines in all Assembly Constituencies in the State of Bihar, Jharkhand and Haryana. The Indian EVMs consist of two units; Control Unit and Balloting Unit which are connected to eachother with a five metre cable. The Balloting Unit offers the voter with a button (momentary switch) for each choice of representatives which the voter has to select and press once. The
http://eci.nic.in
Polling Officer, incharge of the Control Unit manages the ballot button instead of issuing ballot papers. He activates the Balloting Unit after which the voter can cast his vote. The user-friendly EVMs have been designed keeping in mind the fact that even illiterates are able to exercise their right to vote, with ease. EVM works on batteries, so the voting process is not dependent on the availability of electricity. A single machine can record upto 3,840 votes, vs. only 600 per ballot box. The Commission made elaborate arrangements to receive results directly from the Returning Officers (RO) using GENESYS software. General Election System (GENESYS) is the software used for capturing data from the CEO (Chief Electoral Officer) offices and district centres all over India during Elections. The software feeds all data at the CEO level and for all the remaining states of the election process. The software also scans candidates affidavits at the RO’s offices and stores the data at the appropriate locations on hard disks. These scanned affidavits are sent to the CEO’s Office. It also counts the results at RO/ CEO level which has been collated through the Internet.
Ritu Srivastava Sr. Research Associate CSDMS ritu@csdms.in
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i4d | May 2009
The use of EVMs in elections, was the first movement by the ECI to make elections more transparent and build people’s faith in the process. As a part of the comprehensive plan for intensive and extensive use of Information Technology (IT) in Electoral Management and Administration initiated by the Commission in 1997, the ECI launched the website of Election Commission of India in 1998. The website reflects the vision of the Commission moving into the Internet for management for all activities connected with the election process. In 2004, ECI used one million EVMs to conduct the first Electronic Parliamentary Election. at the same time, ECI also approached the National Informatics Centre (NIC) for countrywide ICT support during the Elections. ECI signed an agreement with NIC to work closely during the election and non-election period. As per the agreement, all NIC state and district centres are to provide their support throughout the country. All NIC headquarters have access to ECI for cross verification of the result data. NIC has also developed a website http://elections.nic. in that connects to NIC’s election results. Under the agreement, NIC is providing various services across the country that can be classified as: Hosting of State Chief Electoral Officers’ websites on NIC web servers: All NIC State and Districts centres are hosting all State CEO’s websites some of which were developed by NIC State Centres. These secure servers are also hosting electoral rolls and scanned affidavits of all contesting candidates. Internet access through dial-up connectivity (ISP Services): The (ROs) uses Remote Access (RAS) connectivity through the NIC district centres as local ISP service to access the ECI web server and update the GENESYS data online from the counting centres. The Internet services on LAN are used as a back up for connectivity. Data verification and cross-verification: NIC has created an access-controlled website especially for ECI which contains the list of declared results and the details of winners, losers and the vote details. Video Conferencing (VC): NIC provides Video Conferencing service to Central Production Centre (CPC), Doordarshan, the national television network, during Elections. Field officers of Doordharshan from selected districts are able to share and transfer the video footage of elections by using the videoconferencing. Some CEOs are using videoconferencing facility in providing training programmes for District Information Officer (DIOs) and election officials on the use of GENESYS software and for monitoring the election process. NIC-Doordarshan (DD) Project: On the days when counting of votes are scheduled, parliamentary and assembly election results are transmitted to NIC web servers through NIC District Centres in providing live coverage of News on Doordarshan. Apart from the above mentioned initiatives, most of the NIC State Centres have developed standard software to cater to the specific needs of pre-election, polling day and post election activities. These software are implemented at the RO level to meet with administration needs related to information about political parties, voter turnout, election results, etc. Some of the NIC state centres initiatives are given in the next section. May 2009 | www.i4donline.net
Orissa The NIC Orisssa State Unit has designed and implemented a centralised Election Management software which is deployed across 30 districts for formation of polling parties, TA/DA calculation, booth allocation using randomisation, report generation, etc. The software is used in all elections i.e. 3-tier PRI elections and also General Elections to perform the required fuctions, like allotment of booths, TA bills for the polling personnels, attendance sheets, acquittance rolls, etc. Some of the responsibilities are : • Hosting and maintenance of the Orissa CEO’s website, on its server • Implementation of GENESYS software for transmission of results data • Scanning of affidavits, sending relevant data of nomination and affidavits to the CEO, generating voter turnout reports and sending it to the ECI • Development of an intranet software for capturing the data for Assembly Constituencies and displaying the result
Himachal Pradesh The second state after NCT of Delhi to host the electoral polls data on the Internet on its website. NIC Himachal Pradesh State Unit has designed an innovative feature through which candidates can be searched by name in Hindi without knowing the Hindi keyboard layout During elections, the NIC District Centres provide their support in preparation of polling as per ECI guidelines, deploying GENESYS software at counting centres, processing of final result sheets in Form 20 and data transmission for the NIC-DD project.
Bihar The State NIC Unit has developed a special software called Election Confidential (ELECON) that helps the District Election Officers, Returning Officers, Election Observers and Election Personnel Cell to carry out their duty effectively whilst
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Madhya Pradesh The NIC State Unit at Madhya Pradesh has computerised the process of selecting officers for election duty with the help of a web-based software for real time compilation and dissemination of results for all the parliamentary constituencies in the state. The NIC State Unit has developed the CEO’s website (http://www.ceomadhyapradesh.nic. in) that contains all the information related to electoral rolls, elections, online registration, voters’ list map, previous voters list, EVMs, electoral roll search and other important information related to pthe state’s assembly elections. The NIC Unit is actively participating in the election related activities like, polling team formation, their random deployment in Polling Stations, Counting, Nomination, Transmission of Data and almost all computerisation related activities.
Pondicherry maintaining data secrecy and integrity. It also integrates the voter list database (carrying thumb impression and photo of voters) of the constituency with the EVM through appropriate bio-metric interface for on-line validation of the genuineness of the voter during election. NIC has designed, developed and is hosting the State Election Commission’s website on its server.
Chandigarh The NIC Unit in Chandigarh helped the Election Commission by creating a software for an electronic random selection of the government staff to be deputed at different polling booths. The software has been developed to monitor the special revision of summary nature of electoral roll, campaigns for Election Photo Identity Cards and training of polling staff on the use of EVMs. NIC has also developed the Chandigarh CEO’s website and scanned affidavits of contesting candidates, electoral rolls uploaded on this website. In addition, polling parties formation, two-hourly report on voter turnout, compilation of results, Email support and data transmission are also carried out. The NIC staff members are also responsible for setting up a software for random picking of electronic voting machines, appointment of micro-observers for poll duties in different booths of different constituencies, to devise a communication plan near all polling booths for establishing communication links with the field staff on the polling day.
Haryana Windows-based Election Duty Assignment software was developed by the NIC Haryana State Unit thats helps in Mother Roll and Supplementary Roll processing for Election Department. NIC has launched a helpline service especially for elections through Information Kiosks at the Districts and on telephone for the general public to disseminate electoral rolls information. They have also developed two training courses for the nodal officers of Election Department and DIOs of NIC for carrying out election related activities.
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NIC Pondicherry developed and implemented a software for polling personnel allotment using random number generation technique at two stages. Telephone-based helplines have also been established for electoral rolls inquiry.
Goa NIC Goa Unit developed an Election Information System software that contains three modules for posting of staff, calculating voter turnout and counting of votes. The software has been implemented in all the eleven taluka offices of both the districts, the offices of ROs, Observers and CEO by installing computers. The counting centres, CEO and ROs were connected through GoaNET so that the election progress could be monitored online. Apart from these NIC Units, other state NIC Units like Gujarat, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal have also worked in making the election process transparent and easy for citizens, candidates and others. If we compare the current procedures withthe past elections, the Election Commission has become very ICT-friendly. The ECI has also used GPS-enabled mobile phones to monitor the most sensitive polling stations in the country. The EC has also introduced, for the first time, a web reporting system through which information will be collected on code violations from all districts, online. The system enables collation of information related to missing voters in electoral rolls, violation of model code of conduct, among others.
Call for News/Articles/Press Releases Readers/authors/development enthusiasts are invited to send briefings of news/press releases on e-Agriculture, social entrepreneurship, climate change, e-Panchayat, telecommunications, international development, etc. Articles/News should be of contenporary relevance and must relate to the use and applications of ICTs. An ideal article/press release should be neatly typed in 'Times New Roman', 12 font size at double spaqce between 1250-1500 words based the above mentioned topics.
Please send your news piece/article at info@i4donline.net i4d | May 2009
WEB2.0 IN INDIAN POLITICS
Making the connection This article looks at the way two leading political parties in India have used the Internet to get into the mindspace of the voters for the current Parliamentary Elections
Subir Dey Research Assistant CSDMS subir@csdms.in
May 2009 | www.i4donline.net
The largest democracy in the world is electing its representatives and this time, the process is quite different from the past 14 General Elections that the nation has seen. Electioneering and the entire election process itself has gone through a sea change this year with a dominance of the Internet and the opportunities it has opened up for the political parties, the citizens, the government and civil society actors. Use of social media by some factions reached a feverish pitch just before the elections partly to increase the voter turnout and in equal measure to increase accountability of the political parties and the people who are aiming to represent a nation that is increasingly becoming a force to reckon with in the global arena. Having seen the Obama Effect in American elections, which gripped the whole world in its campaign to garner support, Indian political parties seem to have realised that the Internet and Web2.0, are tools that can help them reach out to the urban youth who constitute a powerful electorate which has increasingly been shying away from politics. Another factor that cannot be ignored is the fact that the Indian government has also decided to utilise ICTs in a big way in order to develop the underserved areas of the country, a prime example of this exercise being the NeGP (National eGovernance Plan). As a result of the realisation, both the major contestants of this election have highlighted their respective achievements in the domain of ICT integration in governance and promise to energise the process in their manifestoes. This strategy, utilised by all stakeholders in a collective manner, seems to have paid off as seen in the initial data of voting percentage in quite a few urban constituencies have reported an upswing as compared to the previous election. Now what remains to be seen is whether this evolution gets translated into actual development work which benefits the nation as a whole.
Indian National Congress The Indian National Congress (INC) which is older than India itself and has always been associated with the nation’s freedom struggle and with many of our freedom fighters like Mahatma Gandhi has kept up with the times and created a dynamic website where information about its glorious past, current achievements (INC being the primary party within the ruling coalition, United Progressive Alliance, UPA in India) and its manifesto for the current election are all presented in an easily accessible design. Links to all the other websites of the INC are prominently displayed on the homepage as is the UPA government’s ‘Report to the People: 2004-2008’ which is hosted on the Prime Minister’s website, www.pmindia.nic.in. Tha election manifesto of the party is available in 3 formats, .html, .pdf and a flash version. The latter is best seen through a high speed broadband connection. In sync with the party’s secular credentials, all information is presented in Urdu, apart from Hindi and English. It was interesting to note that they have taken the effort to upload a flash version of their manifesto in Urdu too. Apart from the usual electioneering rhetoric on their website, the website also informs citizens about the developmental work that the party representatives in the Parliament have done across the country at a national and local level. Through this website, the Congress has also attempted to clear the questions raised about some of the controversial issues that have been raised by various factions in India and abroad about the Nuclear Deal, 123 Agreement as also the controversy surrounding the Ram Setu (Palk Strait) between India and Sri Lanka. Though the INC has created a plethora of websites for different sections of the society and for various purposes, as given below, the party has not yet fully expolited the possibilities offered by Web2.0.
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Congress Sandesh: http://www.congresssandesh.com/ - The monthly party journal in English and Hindi Congress Media: http://www.congressmedia.net/ - A portal created to connect with and mobilise the masses Indian Youth Congress: http://www.indianyouthcongress.in/ - Portal of the Congress’ Youth wing National Students’ Union of India: http://www.nsui.in/ – Portal of the Students wing of the Congress
Bharatiya Janta Party Perhaps taking a cue from the e-blitzkrieg of the Obama Presidential Campaign, the current leading opposition party of India, the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) headed by L K Advani, launched a dynamic website of the party (http://www.bjp.org) and of its charismatic leader L K Advani (http://lkadvani.in). Putting stress on the need for more integration of ICTs in the nation’s development agenda, the party has come out with its IT Vision for the nation which is in addition to their election manifesto. To give a boost to ICT integration the party has also come out with its Infrastructure Vision where stress has been laid on time-bound implementation and setting up of a stronger IT infrastructure throughout the country. All these documents are available both on L K Advani’s website as well as on the BJP’s website. Both the websites use a plethora of social bookmarking, social networking, IM (Internet Messenger), e-mail and blogging tools that enable users to share information from the website among their peer group. Not depending solely on search engine optimisation that makes sure that their website features on among the top search results of various search engines when a given set of keywords are searched for, L K Advani’s website also employs Google ads judiciously. As a result of this, it is hard to spend a day surfing the Internet without coming across a Google advert for Advani’s website, you would even come across one of his adverts on a technology website that employs Google ads.
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The ‘Alert Centre’ section allows users to sign up with their mobile number/email to receive campaign alerts and breaking news from the BJP campaign. The website also carries videos from the campaign train as also a compendium of speeches and press conferences hosted by the BJP, especially L K Advani. One of the interesting ways through which the BJP leader has tried to tap into the psyche of first-time voters is the ‘Advani@ Campus’ Programme which is designed as a grassroots campaign that seeks to contact and mobilise young voters in thousands of college campuses across the country. As per the programme design, several hundred young campaigners—drawn from the same educational and professional background as students in the various campuses fan out to over 5,000 colleges and talk to the student community on the vital issues facing the nation. They also communicate Advani’s vision for Young India, as part of his agenda for Good Governance, Development and Security. The website also hosts discussion forums where apart from the usual discussions started by users and administrators, the party also hosts a separate sections where users can give ‘policy proposals for a new India’. The forums are categorised under 23 sections namely: • Agriculture and Rural Economy • National Security - External • National Security - Internal • Economy • Infrastructure • Energy Security • Drinking Water for All • Education for All • Housing for All • Health for All • Social Justice and Social Harmony • Good Governance - Judicial Reforms i4d | May 2009
Good Governance - Administrative Reforms Good Governance - Police Reforms Good Governance - Electoral Reforms Good Governance - Centre-State Relations Good Governance - Empowerment of Panchayat Raj Institutions • Games and Sports • Science and Technology • Food Security • Environment and Wildlife • Revival of Arts and Culture • Foreign Policy Highlights of the BJP’s election manifesto are downloadable in Hindi, Telugu and Marathi. These manifestos are in .pdf format which takes care of the issues pertaining to missing fonts in the viewer’s computer. A lot of individuals have come together to campaign for Advani who do not have any formal links or affiliations with the BJP. One such group that has been prominently featured on the website is the group that calls itself, ‘Friends of BJP’ (http://friendsofbjp.org) which is made up of urban middle class professionals, entrepreneurs and citizens who seek to align their goals with that of the BJP by campaigning for the party in the 2009 general elections. What makes L K Advani’s website stand apart from the BJP’s website is Advani’s blogs on various topics of national and his personal interest which he regularly posts on http://blog.lkadvani.in. The topics of the posts range from subjects as varied as the party’s plans for the nation’s development if they come to power like how the IT Vision of the party can transform the lives of the rural and underserved masses of the country and their plans for increasing the literacy and education levels of the girl child to his thoughts on various books and thinkers. The blog posts are in both Hindi and English which enhance their accessibility for • • • • •
May 2009 | www.i4donline.net
people who may not be very conversant with English. Of particular interest is L K Advani’s first blog titled, ‘Electioneering: From Handbill to the Internet’ (http://bit.ly/ uWnpH) where he traces his own political journey since 1952, when India’s first elections were held, to the 2009 elections. He has been involved in all the elections that India has been through either as a candidate or as a campaigner. In this particular blog he gives accounts of how the flow of information for election campaigning has evolved from printing of handbills in small printing presses to the current day medium of the Internet. Readers are encouraged to post comments on the blogs and going by the number of comments it is clear to see that there are a lot of active readers of his blogs. Readers can join a Google group (Bloggers for Advani) which has been set up by supporters of the party and can also get a .html button to put up on their own blog/website so show their support for Advani. Apart from this very dynamic website, L K Advani is also present on the two social networking sites that are very popular in India, orkut and facebook, as also on the video sharing site, youtube. To sum up, L K Advani’s website and his online communication strategy is a very good model for other Indian politicians and political parties to follow if they want more visibility among the youth. Seamless integration with their online life is the key to grabbing more eyeballs and to get votes of a generation that seems to be increasingly becoming disenchanted with the entire process of elections and governance. Though there are quite a few leaders, politicians and political parties who have had their websites for the past few years and are also starting to tap into the Web2.0 tools but their attempts have not had the same impact as this particular website. The author thinks that other politicians can learn a lot from the BJP’s media team about how to optimise on their online presence and might it will reflect on their vote bank.
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ROLE OF NGOS AND CORPORATES IN INDIAN ELECTIONS
Socially conscious campaigns The first phase of voting for the 15 th General Elections in India started on the 16th of April, 2009. This year, over 714 million voters will elect 543 representatives and around 1,368,430 electronic voting machines have been deployed across the country [1]. According to the Election Commission of India’s (EC) statistical report, over the last decade, the polling percentage has decreased from 61.97% (1998 General Elections) to 57.82% (2004 General Elections) [2]. Realising this fact in the 15th General Elections, civil society groups, non-government organisations, media agencies, and even corporates have come together to campaign and raise awareness among voters. To make their presence felt, Indian politicians and parties are using Internet and mobile phones as their election campaigning tools. Similarly, civil society organisations and corporates in India are using these digital tools to increase voter registration and run campaigns to promote transparency and accountability. One of the most effective and important campaign is the National Election Watch (NEW), a collaboration between 1200 NGOs led by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) (http://www.adrindia.org). NEW is a nationwide campaign that seeks to increase transparency in Indian elections by combining information about constituencies and candidates with user comments and ratings on candidates. The purpose of the website are: • Provide information about the representatives based on the information they have submitted through affidavits to the Election Commission • Provide information about a constituency – various human development index parameters • Give a chance to the general public
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to comments on work done by their elected representatives • Rate various representatives based on peoples’ comments and improvement shown in their constituency during their tenure, etc. • Prov i d e t h i s f e e d b a c k t o t h e representative, so that s/he has a chance to work on the feedback received from his constituency Founded in August 1999 by a group of Professors from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad and National Institute of Design, ADR presently running two programmes, namely, a) Electoral Reforms b) Political Process Reforms. Apart from NEW, ADR has also launched www.myneta.info that allows citizens to view the candidate profile of their constituency. The candidate profile includes the party’s name, educational qualifications, criminal record, their total assets and liabilities. Using Internet as one of their strategic tools to create awareness about elections, the Public Interest Foundation (http:// www.publicinterestfoundation.com) has
launched the ‘No Criminals’ Campaign Idea (http://www.nocriminals.org). The nationwide campaign appeals political parties not to give ticket to persons with criminal antecedents. The data of this website is based on the affidavits submitted by the 2004 contestants. The campaign also has an active group on a social networking website, facebook with almost 5000 members. Members of the campaign have also launched two videos to promote this campaign. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_ general_election,_2009 http://eci.nic.in/index.asp VOTEINDIA (http://www.voteindia. org) is a non-partisan people’s movement launched under the aegis of Lok Satta Convenor Jayaprakash Narayan. The movement that comprises civil society organisations and individuals, aims to make citizens realise the need for systematic reforms and bring about a significant improvement in the existing political system by overcoming the crisis in governance. Another initiative, Vote India (http:// www.voteindia.in), was launched by some i4d | May 2009
engineering students and professionals in May 2006. Vote India is another voter awareness website that believes that “the country will change only if the educated exercise the power of the ballot”. VoteIndia.in offers downloadable copies of the forms required to register as a voter or to modify name/address in the voters’ list etc. The website has an active presence in the social networking website, orkut and on twitter. Like VOTEINDIA.org, the ivote (http://wearthemark.org), is a project run by students with an aim to create politically active youth. iVote provides youth in the 18-23 age group with all the necessary information about voter registration through its website. The main objective of the centre is to encourage students, particularly the upper middle class urban youth to register themselves as voters and practice their Right to Vote. The centre also has active presence in facebook, orkut and youtube. Along with creating this awareness, iVote also works on reforming the electoral system in partnership with the Mumbai based NGO, Agni, to make it more convenient for first-time voters to register themselves. A group of technocrats and scientists in the United States have launched a website called Bharat Votes (http://www. bharatvotes.org) that aims to create voting awareness among the educated middle-class citizens of India and engaging them in mainstream democracy. With a tagline, ‘Voting is not your Right, it’s your Duty!’, Bharat Votes is attempting to reach out to the global Indian audience. The website is present on twitter, facebook and orkut. The All India People’s Manifesto (http:// allindiapeoplesmanifesto.wordpress.com) is a first kind effort made by the Wada Na Todo Abhiyan (http:// www.wadanatodo.net), which itself is affiliated to the Millennium Campaign, that aims to hold the government accountable to its promise to end poverty, social exclusion and discrimination. The campaign inspires and supports people to engage with the national elections as an opportunity not only to cast their vote, May 2009 | www.i4donline.net
but also voice their demands for the future development agenda of the country. People across 400 parliamentary constituencies spanning 29 States and United Territories have come together to develop the All India People’s Manifesto making it the most extensive pre-election campaign organised by civil society in recent times. Apart from these initiatives, the ‘Jaago Re! One Billion Votes’ (http://www.myobv.org) is another major initiative taken by Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy (http://www.janaagraha.org), a Bangalore based NGO that has been doing pioneering work in the areas of urban advocacy and governance. The first step of the campaign has been achieved by the ‘Jaaoge Re’ campaign (http:// www.jaagore.com) in partnership with Tata Tea. Launched in September 2008, the ‘Jaago Re’ campaign started a voter registration drive in colleges and corporates in 35 cities across the country. The campaign has been driven through an interactive application on their website and kiosks that helps people identify their constituency and guides them to the nearest voter registration centre and sends updates to them via SMS when their names are added to the voting list. The campaign also provides an online registration survey that automatically generates the appropriate government forms required to vote, based on the personal details entered by the applicant. Jaago Re also has an active social media presence with more than 15,000 members on facebook and almost 13,000 members on orkut. The campaign resulted in over 500,000 online voter registrations in six months. Apart from ‘Jaago Re’, this election is witnessing two more citizen mobilisation campaigns, which are backed by corporate houses: My Idea (http://myidea.co.in) sponsored by Idea Cellular, and Lead India, backed by The Times of India. My Idea is an online space where citizens can submit and discuss their ideas related to issues in their cities, politics, society, economy, etc., in 150 words and get other users to vote on those questions. Lead India (http://www.lead.timesofindia.com) was launched by the Times of India in 2007 to identify emerging leaders for the next generation of India. This year, Lead India is enabling the Indian electorate to make the right voting decision by providing
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a platform for meaningful political debate and supporting the No Criminals in Politics campaign. Google has launched Google India Elections Centre (http://www.google. co.in/intl/en/landing/loksabha2009) in partnership with Hindustan Times and several non-profit groups. The Google India Elections Centre enables Indian voters to go online to confirm their registration status, locate their polling place and view their constituency on a map. Available in English and Hindi, the site also allows citizens to access election news and candidate quotes, and be better informed of the issues by making available area-specific development data such as urbanisation, crime-rate, literacy rate, and poverty, among other indicators. State and city based organisations and websites like Macro Infotech (http://www.macroinfotech.com) and Smart Vote in Bangalore have also evolved themselves in creating awareness about elections across the region. Macro Infotech has played a vital role in Online Photo Voter Identity Cards to the electorate of Bangalore Mahanagara Palika with the launch of Bangalore VoterId website (http://bangalorevoterid.org). smartvote (http://smartvote.in) is a campaign supported by different voluntary organisations and citizens, to provide information regarding candidates contesting elections at various levels, enabling the public to make an informed choice. Even more transformative than the society-wide shift in civic consciousness is the work of some citizen groups to simplify this daunting voter registration process. MumbaiVotes.com (http://mumbaivotes.com), the website launched by citizens of Mumbai, that allows citizens to know about the contestants across the city.
Another category of websites that aim to encourage citizens into discussion and ideation on the civic issues and the use of online community to initiate offline collective action at a larger stage. Praja (http://praja.in), an Internet driven community, aims to build a community of engaged citizens who can be mobilised to participate in offline collective action. As a start, Praja.in aims
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to capture voices and opinions from the ground via web based tools of blogs and discussion forums. Similarly, for the past three years, Youth for Equality (http://y4e. in) is aiming to build a political movement to end caste-based reservations in India. The website called India Banao (http:// indiabanao.org) is a platform for young people to participate in public affairs. On one hand, if NGOs and corporates are making their efforts to create awareness about the importance of voting, on the other hand, some websites like IndiPepal (http://indipepal.com), India Voting (http://indiavoting.com), Engage Voter (http://www. engagevoter.com), India Numbers (http://www.indianumbers.com) and India Votes 2009 (http://www.indiavotes2009.com/iv09) are bringing election updates, predictions and analysis of election results. The media excitement around this election is being generated by the middle-class urban youth, who believe in making change and broadcasting their ideas to the world. It remains to be seen how much of this fervour for change gets carried over to the post-elections phase and how it impacts the national governance and development agenda. In fact, in this election, organisations have created awareness and have generated enough interest among the masses for them to go and get registered as voters. At the same time it has been noticed that quite a few organisations have come forward to bring about more transparency and accountability in the electoral system by providing information about the contestants that was earlier not so easy to access. Both these developments, if combined and sustained, are sure to bring about a sea change in Indian democracy. „ Ritu Srivastava ritu@csdms.in
Footnotes: 1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_general_election,_2009 http://eci.nic.in/index.asp
2
i4d | May 2009
IT MANIFESTOES OF INDIAN POLITICAL PARTIES
Visualising a digital India Since the process of human development has become increasingly complex, which warrants advanced technological inputs for acceleration today, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have become indispensable in the process of human development and nation building. In its various forms, ICTs can help the least developed countries fight hunger, poverty, provide basic facilities for a decent life, stimulate economic development and so on. It also has a crucial role in providing better facilities and cope with problems which have emerged from human induced growth, i.e. climate change. Therefore, the utility of ICTs are universal, value free and people centric.
India and the world: A comparative perspective In democratic societies, whose foundations are based on accountability, transparency, equity, liberty and fraternity, ICTs hold enormous significance. A study conducted by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on ICT scenario around the world, shows that there is a clear contrast between the developed, developing and least developed or restive regions of the world in terms of ICT usage and penetration. ICT usage for the welfare of people and for providing them better facilities is a priority in the developed world. Application of ICT is also relatively good in the new and emerging economies, e.g. many Asian countries, but it is very low in the restive regions of the world which are generally situated in the Africa. Figure 1 reflects that the number of Internet users in developed world, Americas and Europe is higher than in the developing world, Asia and Africa. The number is highest in Americas as more than three fourth of the population subscribe to the Internet. Americas is followed by European countries where slightly less than threefourth of population are Internet subscribers. The figure is decent in Asia where around 57 per cent of the population are Internet subscribers. But Africa is in a dismal state as only 10 per cent of the people are Internet subscribers. The high number of subscribers in the Americas and Europe can be considered an indicator of social well being, political consciousness, affluence, etc. If we take a look at the ITU’s ICT indicators such as Internet users, mobile subscribers, and telephone subscribers, it gives a clear picture of the state of ICTs across the world (table 1). Since ICT indicators cannot be analysed in isolation, it should be interpreted in the light of other socio-economic development indicators. Usages of mobile, telephone, and Internet are determined by the income, literacy rate, economic activity, profession, social and political culture. Therefore, a holistic approach should be adopted May 2009 | www.i4donline.net
Source: International Telecommunication Union, accessed on 26 April 2009, available at http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/ict/graphs/am5.jpg
in this regard. If we do a comparison of India with countries like the US, Canada, Australia, and other European countries, it becomes clear that India is far behind even tiny European countries such as Belarus, Croatia, and Czech Republic in terms of these indicators as in these countries the number of telephone subscribers, mobile phone subscribers and Internet users are much higher than India. A wide gap appears between India and its neighbour, China. China has almost three times the number of telephone subscribers as compared to India, same goes for the number of Internet users. Number of mobile subscribers are more than double of India. Table 1 depicts a very dismal picture of status of ICT development in the country. Therefore, the need of hour is that the country plans to provide better IT access to its population. Though India has achieved remarkable success in IT at the world level, its rural areas, where majority of the population lives, do not have access to services and benefits offered by these horizontal technologies. The digital divide between urban and rural areas is glaring and is hampering the process of development in rural areas. However, it is good to note that the Government of India had formulated in May 2006 the National e-Governmence Plan (NeGP) to open more than 100,000 Internet enabled Common Services Centres to enable the rural masses to access ICT infrastructure and services. The NeGP, seemingly the largest initiative of its kind in the world, is part of the government’s policy and strategy to bridge the digital divide and provide ICT facilities for better services in rural areas. As per the Plan, each of the 600,000 villages in India will be connected to ICT infrastructure through these kiosks. Even with these interventions by the government, the implementation of which is taking time,
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Population (in million, 2007)
Telephone subscribers 2007 Mobile cellular subscribers 2007 GDP/per capita (US $, Total (000s) Per 100 inhabitants Total (000s) Per 100 inhabitants 2006)
Egypt
75.50
1428
41’294.1
54.70
30’065.2
Nigeria
148.09
844
41’975.3
28.34
South Africa
48.58
5’403
46’942.0
96.63
Argentina
39.53
5’476
49’901.8
Brazil
191.79
5’666
Canada
32.88
United States
305.83
China
Country
Internet Users 2007 Total (000s)
Per 100 inhabitants
39.82
10’532.4
13.95
40’395.6
27.28
10’000.0
6.75
42’300.0
87.08
3’966.0
8.16
126.23
40’401.8
102.20
10’246.4
25.92
160’379.7
83.62
120’980.1
63.08
67’510.4
35.20
38’974
38’158.4
117.16
20’277.4
61.68
23’999.5
73.00
43’832
418’566.0
136.86
255’395.6
83.51
221’724.0
72.50
1’328.63
2’096
912’943.0
68.71
547’306.0
41.19
212’580.8
16.00
India
1’169.02
813
273’033.0
23.36
233’620.0
19.98
81’000.0
6.93
Philippines
87.96
1’392
55’735.1
63.36
51’795.0
58.88
5’300.0
6.03
Taiwan
22.90
14’199
38’566.3
168.40
24’302.0
106.11
14’760.0
64.45
Belarus
9.69
3’811
10’631
109.73
6’960.0
71.84
2’809.8
29.00
Croatia
4.56
9’422
6’881.4
151.06
5’034.6
110.52
1’984.8
43.57
Czech Republic
10.19
13’939
15’123.8
148.47
12’721.0
124.88
4’991.3
49.00
Australia
20.74
37’083
31’020.0
149.54
21’260.0
102.49
11’200.0
53.99
Fiji
0.84
3’539
651.9
77.73
530.0
63.20
91.4
10.90
New Zealand
4.18
26’430
5’998.1
143.55
4’251.2
101.74
2’925.0
70.00
Source:: International Telecommunication Union, Basic Indicators, Internet Indicators, Main telephone lines and Mobile cellular subscriber, accessed on 26 April 2009, available at http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/icteye/Indicators/Indicators.aspx# .
the rural populace is yet to be e-ready and it will take India a few more years to catch up with countries like China, let alone America or Europe.
India’s IT vision for rural development Having realised the potential of ICT for the development of the nation, particularly rural India, political parties have also incorporated IT in their manifestos. Taking a lead, BJP has come up with an exclusive IT agenda, ‘IT Vision’ for the country. This comprehensive document covers all aspects of ICT usage, i.e. in rural development, agriculture, national security, national identity card, employment generation, e-governance, healthcare, etc. India’s main opposition party promises to provide a multipurpose national identity card with citizen identification number to every citizen, create 12 million new IT-enabled jobs in rural areas, promote research and development in agricultural sector to raise productivity, and boost small scale industries. It also promises to give laptops at INR 10,000 to 10 million students, and provide Internet connectivity to every school and village. They have also promised full financial inclusion, bank account to every Indian, free smart mobile phone to every BPL (Below Poverty Line) family, basic health insurance for every citizen, and connecting all PHCs (Public Health Centres) to a national Telemedicine network. BJP prime ministerial candidate, L K Advani believes, “India’s shining achievements in the IT sector so far have been achieved by only a small section of our talented youth, who have been empowered with good education. Imagine what India can achieve when every young Indian has access to quality education and world-class IT infrastructure”. The party appears to be influenced by China’s success in IT integration for its citizens where the number of personal computers, Internet users, broadband and mobile subscribers are much higher. BJP claims
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it is determined to remove the divides between India and China. The Indian National Congress has not issued a separate agenda for IT and its usages for development. Though the party also promises to provide more ICT facilities in rural areas to enhance e-governance to realise the dreams of Rajiv Gandhi. It promises to connect every village with a broadband network within three years, which will promote off-farm activities and unlock numerous opportunities for the youth in rural areas. Generally, the regional parties do not have an exclusive agenda on IT, but some aspects of ICT integration are found in bits and pieces in their manifestos. Telugu Desam Party (TDP) leader, N Chandrababu Naidu, promises to give free colour television to below poverty line families. Surprisingly, the regional parties of northern India do not seem to be interested in IT integration for the masses, as their manifestos reflect. The process of election is going to end soon. The litmus test will start afterwards. There is a prediction of a fragmented political verdict which creates an unsuitable environment for pursuing national agenda. Since ICT is not a priority on the agenda of regional political parties, with most of them being more concerned about their respective regional political objectives, ICT integration on a national scale is at a risk of slowing down. Though there is almost a consensus on the national level that ICT benefits must trickle down to the rural masses, a well thought out strategy is missing. Rural areas still lack the basic infrastructure required for ICT penetration, i.e. electricity, human capital in terms of literate/trained people, etc., though these are issues that a focused infrastructure development and capacity building plans can correct. Therefore, any ‘IT Vision’ ought to be complemented with and supplemented by an infrastructure development plan. Dinoj Kumar Upadhyay dinoj@telecentremagazine.net i4d | May 2009
ALL INDIA PEOPLE’S MANIFESTO, WADA NAA TODO ABHIYAN, INDIA
MDGs and Indian elections 2009 ‘India has made remarkable progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and also faced challenges in achieving its key development targets’, was the key point discussed at the UN High Level Meeting, held in New York on 25th September 2008. In the year 2000, 189 countries signed the Millennium Declaration and pledged to use the MDGs’ framework for development ie, goals and indicators as the guiding principle for the development agenda and policy documents of their own countries. The UN Millennium Campaign was started to support citizens demanding accountability from their governments towards fulfillment of their MDGs related promises. The 15th General Election will play a vital role in developing advocacy for the MDGs. This is the time, when voters can select their candidates by accessing public policy directions, the adequacy of public service delivery and the allocation of resources. The UN Millennium Campaign works with its partners to strengthen the participatory process and the people’s influence on elected officials and political leaders to improve the implementation of the MDGs. One of the strategies adopted by the Campaign in India is to make citizens aware of their governments’ commitments and motivating them to actively participate
Local hearing Khurja, Uttar Pradesh May 2009 | www.i4donline.net
Local hearing of All India People’s Manifesto in Varanasi, UP.
in democratic institutions and political processes. This is done through initiating an open social dialogue that enables participation in planning development programmes and by allowing different segments of society to identify and prioritise their issues and areas of development. In collaboration with partners across civil society, media, faith based organisations, local authorities, youth and private sector, the campaign focuses on advocacy actions to build political will in the government and help formulate a policy framework that accelerates and fosters the achievement of MDGs. In India, the focus is on achieving MDGs 1-7 through various innovative citizens and civil society initiatives that builds up sustained pressure on the government to deliver on their promises. In order to create governance accountability
in India, the United Nations Millennium Campaign is supporting Wada Na Todo Abhiyan (Keep Your Promises Campaign), which is a national coalition of over 900 development and grassroots organisations working across 15 states to monitor the Government’s promises on the ground by reviewing its performance in fulfilling its UN Millennium Development Goals, National Development Goals and the National Common Minimum Programme. The All India People’s Manifesto, coordinated by WNTA (http://www. wadanatodo.net), is a first-of-its kind effort to create a 10-point national agenda through a localised process of consultation and dialogue. The campaign aims to engage people in raising their voice for the future agenda of the country. Over 400,000 people have been engaged in the consultations held in 365 parliamentary constituencies across 29 States/UTs in developing the All India People’s Manifesto. This includes the direct
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participation of citizens from various organisations, local groups and civil society organisations. The media has also played an extensive role in covering and reporting the proceedings across parliamentary constituencies thereby taking this process to a much wider audience. To target urban and youth voters, Wada Na Todo Abhiyan (WNTA) launched an online version of the All India People’s Manifesto on YouTube in March 2009. The channel was listed as a Featured Video on YouTube’s homepage which recorded over 100,000 views across the site. The campaign developments were also reported in various media agencies like Dainik Jagaran, Hindustan Times, IBNLive.com, Kalingatimes.com, Navbharat Times, The Hindu, Times of India, Women’s Features Service, Zee TV, Lead India, All India Radio, etc., and global networks including Civicus, GCAP, International Budget Project, OneWorld South Asia, UN Millennium Campaign and Whitebandaction.org. A charter of key demands have been developed on the basis of demands that emerged across parliamentary constituencies with the objective of influencing the Election Manifestoes of political parties and negotiating the integration of key demands in the
post-election governance agenda. Along with the key demands, a Women’s manifesto has also been developed in consultation with 231,984 people (both men and women) across 100 parliamentary constituencies. The Women’s Manifesto includes the following key points: • Equal political representation and participation • Equal property rights for women • Right to work and entrepreneurship support • Priority for girls’ education • End violence against women • Special programmes for women • Greater access to public facilities and public places • Stronger national and state women’s commissions The All India People’s Manifesto, as a movement, will continue to function after the elections also. WNTA and its other partners will engage people in mobilisation and advocacy to lead this effort. This includes preparing Report Card for MPs in 100 parliamentary constituencies based on MDG-related indicators, a Citizens Report on the Status of MDGs, youth contest in colleges across India etc.
Key Demands of the All India People’s Manifesto 1. Basic Infrastructure: Water, sanitation, electricity, roads and transport facilities • Basic infrastructure in every village and urban settlement, which includes safe drinking water, household level toilets and water supply, effective drainage and sanitation systems, electrification, connecting roads, public transport services and rail networks. • Sp e c i a l f o c u s o n u p g r a d i n g infrastructure in communities inhabited by dalits, adivasis and minorities. 2. Quality health and education as a right protected by law • Quality health and education must be guaranteed through public schools and health centres. The right to health and education should be protected by law, primary level services made freely accessible and public facilities expanded and upgraded on a priority basis. • Increased investment of 6% GDP for public expenditure on education and 3% GDP for public expenditure on health. Privatisation of health and education services not to be allowed. • Equip every village with quality facilities and personnel for maternal and child survival, nutrition and
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overall health. Create a separate Act to protect the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS and stronger implementation of the People with Disabilities Act. 3. Special measures to ensure food security and nutrition • Every family to be assured of food supplies and nutrition, and protected against inflation and price hikes in essential commodities. • Existing programmes such as the Public Distribution System, Mid-day Meal and Integrated Child Development Scheme to be significantly expanded and monitored to ensure equal and universal coverage. 4. Expansion of right to work and social security entitlements • 365 days of employment to be assured to every adult and an Urban Employment Guarantee Act on par with NREGA to be introduced. • Make special efforts to integrate women and marginalised groups in the economic sectors, including through the provision of reservation in the private sector. Create a special programme to support working women - including childcare facilities, transport, health insurance and
maternity benefits. Child labour to be abolished. • Strengthen the Inter-state Migration Act to ensure safety, minimum wages, housing and social security for all migrant workers in the country. 5. Lifeline programmes for agriculture and rural economy • Ne w agricultural policy to be introduced to ensure greater investment and industry status. Support prices provided to agricultural products at reasonable rates and local support centres for farmers, producers, entrepreneurs and artisans created to facilitate credit, research and technical expertise. • Farmer status for women and mandatory purchase of goods produced by women and marginalised groups by government agencies. Special support programme for artisans and small scale industries with objective of strengthening rural economy. 6. Protection of land rights and promotion of livelihood for marginalised groups • SEZ Act to be scrapped and Land Acquisition Act used only for the development of public utilities. Transparency in all projects involving land acquisition and natural resources i4d | May 2009
with participation of and accountability to local communities. • Land to be earmarked and allotted to women, dalits, adivasis, denotified/ nomadic tribes, single women, disabled and other socially excluded groups. All asset building, livelihood promotion and community development programmes to necessarily involve joint participation and ownership of women and marginalised groups. 7. Greater political representation of women, youth and marginalised groups • Women, youth and marginalised groups to be made equal partners in the political process. The Women’s Reservation Bill to be enacted on a priority basis and National Youth Policy to be strengthened. • Social Justice Committees to be introduced in Urban Local Bodies and those already existing at the Panchayat level to be further strengthened with resources and programmes to reach marginalised communities. • National and State Commissions for Women, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes to be strengthened with clear policies and resources. The Sachar Committee recommendations to be implemented. 8. Transparency in government dealings and greater public participation • Financial and operational details of all government programmes to be made readily and regularly available in the public domain. • Mechanisms for public participation and monitoring such as through the Right to Information, Social Audit and Vigilance Committees to be strengthened. • Every government department and elected representative to be made to present an annual report of work done and expenditures incurred through a public meeting. 9. Electoral reforms and accountability of political parties/representatives • Prevention of candidates having criminal records or religious, casteist or communal sentiments from contesting for elections. Stringent action against representatives involved in corruption. • An Election Watch team comprising May 2009 | www.i4donline.net
Local hearing in Etah, Uttar Pradesh.
civil society representatives and officials to be formed in every constituency and given due authority to monitor the election process. Monitoring of election expenses and creation of a common platform for candidates to communicate with people to be undertaken. • R i g h t t o re c a l l s y s t e m t o b e introduced and modification of the current ‘first-past-the-post’ system. Mechanisms for protection of women and representatives belonging to marginalised groups from harassment and discrimination across all levels of governance. 10. Implementation of police and judicial reforms • Po l i c e a n d Ju d i c i a l r e f o r m s to be undertaken with focus on responsiveness to marginalised groups and speedy redress of appeals. The D K Basu Guidelines to be implemented to ensure prevention of unlawful arrest and torture. Judgments on atrocity cases to be declared within one year. • Greater representation of women and members of socially excluded groups in the police force and judiciary. Special protection for women from marginalised groups against caste and communal violence. 11. Priority for national integration and zero tolerance for violence and terrorism • National Integration and Communal
Harmony to be prioritised and a Special Cell against discrimination on social or religious grounds to be created. • The government must practice zero tolerance for religious extremism and terrorism in the country and play a key role in ensuring safety and prosperity in the subcontinent. A Joint Action and Investigative Agency for Regional Cooperation and Mutual Assistance in South Asia must be initiated. 12. Global responsibility • India must play a demonstrative role in protecting and promoting nonviolence, democracy and respect for pluralism in the global community and in setting these principles in action through the UN. • Even while being counted as a global power, India should continue to ensure that the development, trade and security interests of less powerful countries are represented in international negotiations. • The government must publicise information within the country about the quantum and impact of its overseas aid and international development initiatives. • India must play a proactive role in the formulation of global environmental policies and balance the interests of the developed and developing countries in this dialogue.
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A snapshot of Indi Lalu Prasad Yadav’s blog http://laluleela.blogspot.com
Official BJPs website http://bjp.org
Ananth Kumar’s website http://ananth.org
Sachin Pilot’s website http://www.sachinpilot.com
Ananth Kumar: Nation First http://nationfirst.in
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i4d | May 2009
ian electioneering Official DMK website http://www.dmk.in
Amit Jogi’s Blog http://amitjogi.blogspot.com
Official NCP website http://www.ncp.org.in
Meera Sanyal’s website http://www.meerahsanyal.in
Official Lok Satta website http://loksatta.org
May 2009 | www.i4donline.net
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AMERICAN ELECTION 2008
Obama impact Media and other means of communication like mobiles and Internet have come to play an increasingly important role in democratic political processes and in shaping public opinion as expressed most significantly during elections. In information societies such as the United States, Japan, and most European countries, the Internet and Web2.0 tools have metamorphosised their political culture and process of electioneering. These horizontal technologies have not only changed the political process but also the way to mobilise support and to reach the electorates. The world witnessed one of the most significant political changes in contemporary history, as Barack H Obama assumed the American Presidency in January 2009, subsequent to his victory in the Presidential Elections held in November 2008. ‘One of the many ways that the election of Barack H Obama as president has echoed that of John F Kennedy is his use of a new medium that will forever change politics. For Kennedy, it was television and for Obama, it is the Internet’1. It has been argued that if it were not for the Internet, Obama would not have been the President. He has changed the nature and mode of campaigning. His extensive use of Internet and interactive web tools to organise his supporters, spread his messages, and interact with people filled the requirements of huge numbers of volunteers and organisers on the ground. The effectiveness of his revolutionary campaigning techniques can easily be assessed by how he mobilised the support for his successful historical bid for American presidency. ‘It has been reported through various media that Obama received donations from over one million people, totaling over $640,000,000, primarily via Internet; over 850,000 people turned to the Internet to access information and coordinate their participation in more than 50,000 campaign events across the country; some 90,000,000 Obama-related videos were watched on Youtude and over
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2,000,000 Facebook users registered as Obama supporters on this popular social networking website. In countries like the United States where Internet is almost ubiquitous, Obama’s strategy appeared to be a perfect pathway to reach the citizens, engage them and make them realise that they can also be part of the process of social, political and economic change in society, in very convenient and cost effective ways. Obama’s website provides a platform to interact with people, get their feedback of his policies and ideas, win their support, raise funds, and share other information. Obama is almost omnipresent on the all social networking websites, facebook, linkedln, myspace, twitter, to name a few. Such interactive and popular activities helped raise political consciousness among people and help Obama reach the White House. To make Obama more accessible to people, a WAPsite and an iPhone app has been created too. Even after assuming presidency, he continued to interact with citizens for their feedback of policy making, decision making and above all bring change in the American society and politics. Moreover, he wants to renew people’s belief in the American political system and maintain their faith in his abilities for engineering change. However, it is too early to predict exactly to what extent Obama’s strategy of
electioneering would influence the world, particularly the politics of developing countries, for whom he is a harbinger of change. But the way he was able to sensitise his fellow citizens and people across the world is bound to have a transformative impact on the political process of the many countries. The most relevant example is the current parliamentary election in India, where online campaigning has come up as a means of promoting much needed political reforms in the system through disseminating information about the candidates’ background, assets, etc. Other countries would certainly witness such changes in their democratic polity in near future. Today the need of reaching large numbers of people in one go and in the shortest possible time tends to make us gravitate towards the application of new techniques and technologies like the Internet. A host of problems that undermine the democratic values and ethos can also be rectified through meaningful uses of technological tools. In such context, Obama’s victory as the President of the USA marks a new era in the world history. 1
How Obama’s Internet Campaign Changed Politics, Claire Cain Miller, http://bits.blogs.nytimes. com/2008/11/07/how-obamas-internet-campaignchanged-politics/ i4d | May 2009
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IT DEPLOYMENT IN INDIAN STATES
e-Governance in India According to the e-Readiness Assessment Report 2006, released by the Department of Information Technology, Government of India in association with the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), states like Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra, Chandigarh, Haryana and Punjab are leading in e-Readiness. The report estimates the impact of the IT sector on the economy as a whole using the Social Accounting Matrix (SAM). In this article, we are trying to analyse the deployment of IT in three states, Chandigarh, Haryana and Punjab on the basis of the e-Governance services and projects put in place by the state governments
Chandigarh Government agencies are advancing their own e-government initiatives to improve citizen services and optimise operational efficiency in the union territory of Chandigarh. At the local level too, the government is turning to technology as a strategic element in it’s efforts to reinvigorate the communities they serve. As a result, a growing number of services
are being offered to the public, online. Some of the governance attempts made in this direction that have included digital delivery modes are: e-Sampark Project Sampark is a Department of IT (DIT) initiative for the development, integration and maintenance of theportal for various departments of the Administration for providing ‘One-stop-shop’ for 22 G2C and 5 B2C services through 10 e-Sampark centres. It not only provides Online Transaction Processing through its centres and portal but is also a major source of information dissemination. The vision for this project is to create a knowledge-based society through extensive use of IT. m-Sampark T h i s i n i t i a t i ve f ro m C h a n d i g a r h Administration enables the citizens to access information on a whole range of eSampark services from their mobile phones by simply sending an SMS. The basic idea behind launching the m-Sampark service was to ensure that the citizen can get information about e-Sampark services from all possible information access mechanisms. With the wide reach of cellular phone, it is really convenient for the citizens to know of the different services through their cellular phones in absence of Internet connectivity. e-Jan Sampark The Chandigarh Administration intends to provide information about services of various departments and also to provide information and facilitation to residents regarding private services and other Government of India services from the 70 e-Jan Sampark kiosks, which are to be set up in each sector and village of Chandigarh. The e-Jan Sampark
May 2009 | www.i4donline.net
project will enable residents to access information and avail services from the kiosks with ease, and without any harassment. The e-Jan Sampark centres will also provide Grievances Redressal Services and the Right to Information (RTI) services. Gram Sampark - Rural Knowledge Centre
Continuing its commitment to bridge the digital divide, especially amongst the rural population, 17 e-Gram Sampark have been planned across all the villages of the Union Territory of Chandigarh. Citizens will be able to use all the 20 G2C services and 5 B2C services which are presently available to the Sampark Centres situated in the urban areas. Since these centres would be providing the rural citizens an opportunity to have an access to the huge amount of information by using broadband connectivity, these centres will emerge as Rural Knowledge Centres for the rural population, especially the disadvantaged. Information services in these centres will be provided free of cost, on the lines of Jan Sampark Services. These centres will also help the rural citizens in registering their grievances, apart from helping them file their applications under RTI.
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security and economical assistance to the old aged, widows and handicapped, in the form of monthly pensions, who are unable to sustain themselves from their own resources and are in need of financial assistance. There are more than 14 lakh beneficiaries of this assistance. This system has helped reduce the time taken in disbursal of pension to the beneficiaries on one hand and detection of fraudulent cases on the other hand. Unlike the older manual system, this system also makes it easy for the beneficiaries to claim pensions of the previous months, in case they were unable to take it earlier.
Haryana The state government intends to make Haryana one of the most prosperous States in the country with the use of an IT driven economy, e-Governance, and extensive percolation of IT literacy and massive IT related employment opportunities. To give impetus to e-Governance in Haryana, an institutional framework has been setup for approval of e-Governance projects. E-Governance in Haryana Secretariat The ‘Electronic Governance’ in the Secretariat aims at IT driven system of Governance that works efficiently, is economical and capable of servicing the decision making machinery and citizens’ needs. The Secretariat for Information Technology (SIT) is an electronic feedback system that is used by the government.
Dynamically Integrated Haryana Land Records Information System (HALRIS) and Property Registration (HARIS) The State has implemented ICT based Property Registration System (HARIS) in all Tehsils1 and sub-Tehsils. The HALRIS system has been implemented for Land Records Computerisation in the state. The HARIS have been dynamically integrated with HALRIS. The system has improved the quality of service in Tehsils by reducing the total time taken by the Tehsil staff for registration. The system uses the collector rates as reference rates for computing the stamp duty. Online availability of Updated Nakal of ROR (Record of Right) to the public helps in reduction of litigations and frauds. The system has enforced low manual intervention and data capturing at source. Web enabling of the Land Records has helped in bringing transparency in making available access to the ROR on anytime, anywhere basis. Electronic Delivery of Integrated Services of Haryana to All (e-DISHA) The e-DISHA, an IT driven electronic interface between the government and citizens, aims to provide citizens access to information about government services and processes, knowledge about the local best practices and content, and delivery of government services at their doorstep. The state has established the District level e-DISHA Centres (DLeDCs) in all district mini secretariats in Haryana. These DleDCs are providing services like issuance of certificates, driving license, vehicle registration, birth and death certificates, passport, and services related to arms licenses, etc.
OTIS (On-line Treasuries Information System) The state has implemented OTIS in all Treasuries and Sub Treasuries across the state by linking them with the state’s financial insititutions. The project that has been operational for the last 6 years, provides an efficient, transparent mode of payments clearances, and facilitates faster payment processes, saving people’s time, and reducing the red tape involved in conducting transactions with banks and state authorities. The citizen and employees are well informed through the web interface. OTIS has helped the treasuries to provide timely information to the State Finance Department, Administrative Departments, the Accountant General office, the employees of the state and the business communities of the state. Haryana Pensions Processing and Information System (HaPPIS) The government has implemented HaPPIS to provide social
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i4d | May 2009
Your Blog Too Can Win an Award! The telecentre.org community has grown tremendously over the past few months. In less than a year, membership in all four language sites (English, Spanish, French and Arabic) has grown to over a thousand, with the English site alone having more than a thousand members. A lot of interaction has been going on through groups and forums, blogs and comments, with a good number of members participating actively and contributing content to the website. Blogs being a major form of knowledge sharing and in an effort to further engage the members of the telecentre.org community, the English team has decided to hold the first ever blog contest at telecentre. org. The contest has two specific objectives: • To provide an incentive for and give due recognition to active and deserving bloggers; and • To encourage and inspire the rest of the community to share their stories and post blogs at the telecentre.org website Check now if you are eligible or not. You can contest it if you: Are: Registered member of the telecentre.org English community and at least 18 years of age; Are Not: Community facilitators, officers, and staff of telecentre.org and its social investors; The Blog themes should be among the following 12: 1. Telecentres and Disability 2. Telecentres and Education 3. Telecentres and Environment 4. Telecentres and Governance 5. Telecentres and Health 6. Telecentres and Socio-Economic Development
7. Telecentres and Inclusion 8. Gender and Telecentres 9. Technology and Telecentres 10. Telecentre Sustainability 11. Telecentre Success Stories 12. Telecentre Best Practices To participate in the contest, blog entry must be posted at the telecentre. org website with the following compulsory contest footer to identify it as a contest entry: Submitted as an entry to the telecentre.org Blog Contest Note: Insert this code at the end of your blog post. Don’t forget to follow the instructions below: • A member may submit only one contest entry. In case more than one entry is received from the same member, only the latest submitted entry will be considered for evaluation • Telecentre.org reserves the right to reject entries that are incomplete, invalid, or that contain any inappropriate information (e.g. spam and other controversial or offensive material) • Blog post must have a minimum of 400 words and a maximum of 1,000 words • Blog entry may be accompanied by a maximum of two images. Images used must not exceed 500 pixels in width and in height • B l o g e n t r y, i n c l u d i n g accompanying images, must not in any way violate any intellectual property right. By submitting a blog as a contest entry, member certifies that it is his or her original work and that the same does not currently exist
in any other publication, blog or website. • By participating in the contest, member automatically grants telecentre.org the right to use, copy, adapt, transmit, distribute, publish and display submitted entry, whether whole or in part, and this will be applicable worldwide and in perpetuity. • All contest entries must be posted at the telecentre.org website by 5pm GMT on Sunday, May 31st , 2009. • All contest entries will be subject to validation and shortlisting by telecentre.org, and all shortlisted entries will be submitted for evaluation by a distinguished panel of judges to be appointed by the former. The decision of the panel of judges is final. Evaluation of entries shall be done based on the following set of criteria: • Content • Organisation • Relevance Winners will be announced via the telecentre.org website within one month after the deadline for submission of entries. Winners will likewise be notified via email by the telecentre.org Blog Contest Committee. Winners will each receive special surprise tokens from telecentre.org. Winning entries will also be featured in publications such as the telecentre. org newsletter and the Telecentre Times, Telecentre Magazine, i4d magazine, among others. For more details log on to http://telecentrecommunity.ning.com/profiles/ blogs/do-you-know-your-blog-can-win
Punjab
public distribution services, municipal services, social security and pension services. The objective of PunjabSewa is to make information available to the citizens at grassroots level through the Internet and information kiosks. It helps in spreading awareness among the public about these services, their procedures and time schedule. This information helps citizens make better use of the services being provided by the Government. e-District project The e-District project envisages integrated and seamless delivery of citizen services by district administration through automation of work flow, back end computerisation, data digitisation across participating departments. The project aims to target the high volume of services being delivered at the District level and to undertake back-end computerisation to enable the delivery of citizen services through Common Services Centres in a systematic way. It further aims to integrate multiple applications, faster processing of public cases/appeals/grievances, dissemination of information as per public requirement and redesigning the processes for the core services to be delivered through the Common Services Centers.
In consonance with the national objective of making India a global IT Power and a frontrunner in the information revolution, the Government of Punjab set up the Department of Information Systems and Administrative Reforms (DISAR) by merging the Department of Administrative Reforms, Evaluation and the Computerisation Wing of the Planning department. Suwidha It is a one-stop-shop solution for a number of Government services, where a specific timeframe is given in written to the public within which the applications and issues are dealt with. initiated in 2002 with funds from the Central Government and technical support of NIC (National Informatics Centre) in Fatehgarh Sahib (a district in Punjab) Suwidha was replicated in all districts of the state by 2004. With availability of this software in the native language (Punjabi), it has received attention and popularity among the public. With the help of this software applications/complaints of the citizens are registered on the spot and forwarded to the concerned authority for redressal. Besides, the concerned officials are provided with a specific timeframe within which the case has to be disposed of. After registration, people can check the status of their complaints when required. The impact of this project can be gauged from the fact that over time, the project has reduced the overall operational cost of services to the citizens and government to a considerable level. PunjabSewa (http://punjabsewa.gov.in) Its an on-line citizen service portal providing comprehensive and precise information on almost all government services. The web portal provides citizens with the facility to download application forms for various services. Some of the major departments include land revenue, general certificate, transportation services,
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Integrated computerisation of land records management system and registration of documents Under the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India sponsored ‘Horizontal Transfer of Successful e-Governance Initiatives’ programme, a pilot project on the Computerisation of Land Records was sanctioned for implementation in one district. The aim is to capture data of Record of Rights and other registers, to provide better integrated services to the common man, and to map land records with GIS. State Wide Area Network (PAWAN) This State Wide Area Network (SWAN) is envisaged as the backbone network for data, voice and video communications throughout the State. PAWAN would act as the vehicle for effective implementation of e-Governance across the state. The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) has identified various Mission Mode Projects, which are to be implemented in a phased manner over the next 3-4 years by the Line Ministries/Departments concerned at the Central and State level, as applicable, in addition to the various other e-Governance initiatives being taken by the respective States and Central Ministries. State Wide Area Network (PAWAN) has been identified as an element of the core infrastructure for supporting these e-Governance initiatives. e-PCO Intel, in partnership with BSNL, PCO Association and ItzCash has launched a very innovative ePCO initiative in Punjab. ePCO is a collaborative effort among the above mentioned partners which aims to drive self-employment, bridge the digital divide and increase IT adoption in semi-urban and rural areas. The ePCO is an excellent step in making technology more affordable and accessible to a much larger number of people in India. „ Compiled by Ritu Srivastava, ritu@csdms.in Subir Dey, subir@csdms.in i4d | May 2009
UNESCO’S COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CSCS AND CMCS IN INDIA
West Bengal: Gearing up for the big thrust Introduction In the March issue of i4d magazine we carried experiences of a research trip comparing the two models of public access to information and communication technology – Common Services Centre (CSC) and Community Multimedia Centre (CMC). The initial baseline research commissioned by UNESCO, and undertaken by Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies, Noida, India, in the state of Madhya Pradesh, showed that if the initial euphoria associated with the CSC programme need to be maintained there has to be similar efforts at ground level which include rolling out of services along with the physical infrastructure, ensuring last mile connectivity and strengthening a basic infrastructure backbone. The CSC programme in the Indore region of the state of Madhya Pradesh showed tremendous promise. However, nothing much could be seen materialising due to the bottlenecks mentioned above. The CMC programme on the other hand was brimming with energy and was seen to be an emerging and potent space for the rural populace to access information and engage in productive opportunities for livelihood generation through content which was produced of the people, by the people and for the people. Moreover, there was a lot of enthusiasm among the people involved with the CMC. However, sustainability, in terms of generating sufficient revenues for continued operation, was observed as an important issue hindering the success of the programme. The experience from Madhya Pradesh showed that there is enough scope for upscaling and integration of the CMC programme with the CSC programme provided the objectives and operational dynamics of both the models are understood. The upscaling of the May 2009 | www.i4donline.net
‘Telecentre on Wheels’ by Change Initiatives
CMC model and its integration with the CSC programme would also, in all probability, reduce costs, bring in holistic development and encourage grassroots participation which is imperative for success of programmes like this. (For more details please read - Experiences from the State of Madhya Pradesh, i4d magazine, P-36-39, http://bit.ly/XjmiC) The second part of the study was conducted in West Bengal, a state in the eastern part of India. The study encompassed visit to the CSCs and a mobile telecentre project being run by an NGO named Change Initiatives, in Nadia district and a mobile governance project in Sagar Island, in 24 South Pargana District, 150 kilometres south of Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal.
The CSC experience West Bengal is one of the states where the CSC programme is picking up momentum
since the days of its roll out. The State Designated Agency for the CSC programme in the state is The West Bengal State Rural Development Agency (WBSRDA) of the Panchayats and Rural Development Department and there are two Service Centre Agencies (SCA) in the state which are responsible for rolling out the CSC programme, SREI Sahaj E-Village Limited and Reliance Communications. In West Bengal, as per the 1:6 criteria (one CSC for every six census villages), a total of 6797 CSCs are going to be set-up in the State by SCAs. Out of this, every Gram Panchayat and Block office will have one CSC each (i.e. a total of 3695 CSCs at Government Locations) and balance 3102 as per the choice of SCAs, within the bidding zone. This is a unique feature of the CSC programme in the state of West Bengal, that of having the CSC programme under the Department of Panchayati Raj and Rural Development which is not the case
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in other states. The CSC programme in other states are generally supervised by Department of Information and Communication Technology. The Common Services Centres in the state are named Tathya Mitra Kendras, and provide, on paper, various services earmarked under the National eGovernance Plan (NeGP) – G2C, B2C, and other social services. Currently connectivity is through VSAT, but previously the CSCs were connected through Wi-Fi which was later changed to VSAT due to cost associated with Wi-Fi. Out of the total 6797 CSCs, 4937 are to be rolled out by SREI Sahaj E-Village Limited and 1860 are to be rolled out by Reliance Communications. 3354 CSCs are to be located at the Gram Panchayats and 341 at Block Offices. Besides, 680 CSCs are to be set up in the urban areas, except Kolkata. Out of the total of 4,937 CSCs to be rolled out by SREI, till now, locations for 3,986 CSCs have been selected, Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs) have been selected for 2,195, training completed for 1,887 VLEs, number of CSCs rolled out is 1,912, and the number of CSCs operational, with connectivity is 1,254. On the other hand, out of the 1860 CSCs to be rolled out by Reliance Communications, locations for 511 have been selected, number of VLEs selected is 511, out of which 274 VLEs have been trained, 311 CSCs have been rolled out and 274 CSCs are operational having connectivity. However it became apparent during the study that connectivity is still a significant bottleneck. All the three VLEs, when questioned about the connectivity, responded that they were not happy with connectivity. The CSCs in the state are connected through VSAT and due to divided bandwidth the speed is slow, most of the time. On the services front, as per the government’s plan, there are several G2C services provided through the CSCs. To avail the services being provided by the CSCs, 17 line departments have been provided application forms in English and Bengali(local language) for the citizens. Besides, WBSRDA has tied up with
Telecentre located in a Gram Panchayat premises in Hoogly district, West Bengal
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Land and Land Records Department, for delivery of services like ‘Copy of Record of Rights’ through the CSCs and with Department of Agriculture for providing ‘Soil Health Cards’ - online soil sample test report to small and marginal farmers through CSCs in Hooghly district. That apart, Chief Electoral Officer, West Bengal, has floated tender inviting Expression of Interest for outsourcing data and image processing services related to Electors Photo Identity Card (EPIC) to be done through CSCs in 18 districts. Department of Labour is working on the prospect of involving the CSC network in document processing jobs for providing Employment Exchange Card for new and existing candidates. Besides these services, talks are also on to provide online availability checking and booking of hospital beds, blood banks and other data entry jobs through the CSC, online return of Value Added Tax (VAT), Central Sales Tax (CST), Property Tax, issue of waybill through the CSC, etc. The CSCs also offer educational services like computer training and SREI has developed an e-learning module to be provided through the CSCs. However, the research findings show that most of the services have not been able to penetrate the entire geographical space of the state. While in some districts like Hooghly most of the services are being rendered, the same cannot be said about other districts like Nadia. For instance, in one of the CSCs located in a private location, the VLE interviewed did not have much idea about the range of services that can be provided by the CSCs. When asked about the services being provided in his CSC, he said that the services provided in his CSC are limited to educational services like e-learning, Internet surfing, photocopying, scanning, railway ticketing, digital photocopy, DTP, etc the footfalls of which are not sufficient to sustain the CSC. This seemed to be case of lack of knowledge about the technology, services as well as lack of entrepreneurial skills. Moreover, the slow speed of Internet does not attract visitors because in the locality itself there are at least five Internet cafes with broadband connectivity and provide more services than the CSC. This has, to a large extent, hampered the business prospects of the CSC and consequently, it’s sustainability. On the other side of the spectrum, in another CSC visited, in Hooghly district, the sustainability of the CSC did not appear to be an issue for the VLE. The CSC, located in the premises of the Gram Panchayat, provides a range of services including G2C services like electricity bill payment, taking photographs for NREGA job cards, mobile bill payment, DTP, digital photography, railway ticketing, mobile recharge, e-learning, etc. However, Internet surfing still has not picked up in full swing because of lack of adequate speed for Internet. The e-learning programme has attracted some revenue for the CSC and the VLE feels that there is some scope for more revenues from the e-learning module. The third CSC also had similar things to say about connectivity and business prospects. i4d | May 2009
A VLE in his CSC in Hoghly district, West Bengal
Offering the same set of services, this CSC, located in the Gram Panchayat building, however was not much worried about the sustainability of the project. Offering the same set of services as the other CSC visited in the locality and located in the premises of the Gram Panchayat, the VLE, was enthusiastic about the potential of the business model of the CSC even though the footfalls generated from the business currently is not attractive enough. Digitlal photography, photography for NREGS job card, e-learning, railway ticketing, were some of the popular services offered by the CSC. The VLE seemed to be very enthusiastic about the banking services that he thinks should be provided as early as possible. Connectivity, however, was an important issue for him hindering the growth of the CSC. The CSC scenario in the Nadia and Hooghly district offers a mixed bag for CSC stakeholders. Geographic discrepancy to a certain degree was noticed and it was evident that some things are moving in the right direction in terms of offering services while some others are not. Connectivity is still an issue across the districts surveyed. The study observed that successful implementation of a project of this nature has to take into account uniformity in implementation and roll-out. Moreover, the project implementing agency needs to focus on the aspect of capacity building of the VLEs. One thing that came up during the study that in the capacity building front, there is still need of some more efforts on the part of the SCA. Since the VLEs are selected locally and are people from the rural communities, the SCA should practically handhold the VLE with the required knowledge of the technology, the services and basic entrepreneurship.
The CMC experience The UNESCO supported CMC programme in West Bengal was carried out in the form of Nabanna Information Network in the Baduria Municipality in the North 24 Pargana district. Change Initiatives, a Kolkata based NGO conceived the Nabanna Information Network for the rural women of West Bengal as part of UNESCOs cross-cutting theme on eradication of poverty project on “Empowering the underprivileged through the use of ICTs”. The vision of the project was to empower the community women to ‘harvest’ information for their needs. Hence, came the name Nabanna, which in Bengali means first grains of rice. May 2009 | www.i4donline.net
Towards this end; an innovative concept was designed whereby two to three women were deployed in each of the 17 wards of the municipality as ‘information agents’ who are either students or housewives. The information agents lead an information group comprising of ten women from the neighbourhood and have managed to reach out to 600 women in the area. The major focus of the Nabanna are developing local capacity and content. The information agents are trained with basic computer skills relating to word processing and desktop publishing applications. The women are also trained to use Paint, MS Word, MS Excel and iLEAP (an Indian language word processor that allows users to type in Bengali using a special key-character layout as well as phonetically using the Roman alphabet and the standard keyboard layout) which are easy, visual softwares that allow trainees confidently use the computer apart from creating something tangible and personal like birthday card designing, preparing bio-data, etc. Although formal skills training has been largely in the domain of computer and software skills; the network has also fostered new skills in writing and information literacy; understanding what information is, how it flows within a given environment, and how it can be tapped for the benefits of all stakeholders. This initiative, started as a pilot project, was successful to a great extent in achieving its objective in getting the rural women empowered to harvest information to meet their information needs. When the research team interviewed members from the NGO that was running the project - Change Initiative – they reported that the project could not be sustained due to political instability in the region, among other reasons. However, pursuing the same objectives, the organisation started another project ‘Telecentre on Wheels’ which is being undertaken in four villages in Nadia district of West Bengal - Ghoragacha, Madandanga, Kantabelia and Teligacha. The project is a collaboration between UNESCO, New Delhi, West Bengal Renewable Energy Development Agency, community people and Change Initiatives. Under this project, a manually run tricycle van, equipped with ICT tools for information dissemination in rural communities has been deployed. Besides a laptop, the van has two solar panels, a printer, Internet connection and facilities for digital photography. The main objective of Telecentre on Wheels is to take the concept of telecentres to the doorsteps of rural communities. Information dissemination on livelihood, health, education and social rights; undertaking follow-up activities so that information leads to the generation of entitlements; undertaking training on Telecentre on Wheels among the community; promoting principles of community ownership of the Telecentre on Wheels; exploring other income generating opportunities; and undertaking ethnographic action research on embedding the Telecentre on Wheels in rural communities are some other objectives of this project. The laptop in the telecentre was equipped with various locally relevant content in Bengali which are prepared with the association with Nadia Krishi Vigyan Kendra. The mobile telecentre also provides agricultural advisories in association with Nadia Krishi Vigyan Kendra. The rural women, the primary target beneficiary of the project seemed to be optimistic about the project as they thought it has a
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lot of potential to deliver solutions to most of their issues which range from agriculture to livelihood generation. Moreover, the villagers get the services of the telecentre for free and as a result of which villagers are being exposed to updated and locally relevant knowledge, information and services through ICTs without having to incur any expense. The involvement of the local self help group members was also an inspiring aspect of the mobile telecentre. One more aspect that favours the sustainability of the mobile telecentre is that it , being run by solar power and thus the operational expense of the telecentre being very nominal, it is also an eco-friendly way to access and disseminate information. The operator of the telecentre is also a volunteer of the NGO running the project, which has helped reduce costs. However, connectivity is still an issue and irregular Internet speed is proving to be a roadblock for the telecentre. Though the focus of the survey was to analyse and compare the CMC model with that of the CSC, however, as mentioned above, since the CMC programme could not be continued due to various reasons, the mobile telecentre project surfaced as a viable alternative for the study because both the CMC model and the mobile telecentre model seek to empower the rural people through audio, video, or digital content produced by themselves. And in summary it can be said that the mobile telecentre could be a viable supplement to the CSC project as when it is clubbed with a CSC it can help a particular CSC reach the doorsteps of the people and spread awareness about the CSC which in return will contribute to the sustainability of the CSC. The mobile telecentre augurs well for the rural community to access and disseminate information and thus could be an important ally to the CSC programme.
The mobile governance project The e-Governance cell of the West Bengal State Rural Development Agency (WBSRDA), Department of Panchayats and Rural Development, West Bengal, has also embarked upon another project which seeks to integrate mobile phones, an integral information and communication technology tool to bring about transparency, accountability, and efficiency in governance. Under the framework of this project, SMS based communication platform is to be used because this communication platform makes it possible to send SMS in automated, manual and scheduled form, from an internet-enabled computer system to a mobile phone in the field. In addition, authorised individuals with mobile phones can also send information to the back-end systems via SMS. The project will offer Government to Government (G2G) and Government to Citizens (G2C) services by customising data and porting it to the existing information generated through various egovernance initiatives and also new services which are in pipeline. The objectives of the project among others are: make available to Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) and citizens the information on financial resource allocation, predictability of amounts available to PRIs and fund balances with various tiers of governments and PRIs; make available to PRIs, subordinate levels of government and state government the compliance and performance status of the PRIs and subordinates levels of government. Using SMS, the state government and its line offices can inform the status of the compliance and performance of different poverty alleviation
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and social security programmes and also monitor components of DRISTI- the predecessor and flagship pilot project for making ICT work for local governance. The research team also visited the site of a pilot of this mobile governance project which is being carried out in Sagar (island) block of South 24 Pargana district in the Sunderbans, the world’s largest delta. The pilot project is being undertaken with support from Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). SMS based communication system is being used under the project whereby evaluation and monitoring of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) in the block is being done. A person from the respective Gram Panchayat is given a mobile phone loaded with the appropriate software and he is responsible for uploading the manual muster roll to the mobile and sending the account details of the persons in the Gram Panchayat having NREGS job card to the central messaging server through a GSM Modem which ports the data to the datasource and subsequently this data gets uploaded in the website of the West Bengal Panchayats and Rural Development Department. This way, the process which used to be manual and had scope of manipulation, is now being digitised and the scope for manipulation has also been minimised. The mobile governance system has definitely changed the way national or state level developmental programmes are being monitored and has brought in a sense of transparency to the way in which these type of developmental initiatives were being monitored till now. However, questions may arise on the way data is being manually uploaded onto the mobile phone because this leaves scope for tampering of data while its being uploaded onto the mobile. But overall, this project seems to be a viable mechanism for bringing about transparency Subject to successful implementation of the pilot, the project will be upscaled to cover all the blocks and districts of the state in the near future. The Department also has plans to integrate the mobile governance system into the CSC network of the state with the VLE being the authorised person to send and receive data relating to NREGS and other similar programmes.
Conclusion The three studies conducted in the state of West Bengal show that all the three projects – the CSC programme, the mobile telecentre project, and the mobile governance project – having similar objectives to achieve, that of making ICTs a tool for socioeconomic development, can become three pillars of a nationwide project on ICT for development and two of them – the mobile telecentre project and the mobile governance project – could complement and supplement the third – the CSC programme to a large extent and thereby strengthen the National eGovernance Plan (NeGP) making it widespread, holistic and efficient covering all the areas that need to be covered under the plan. Moreover, the infrastructure sharing model in this case can be adopted reducing costs and thus ensuring sustainability. But the need is to understand the nuances for interoperability of these systems. Sabyasachi Kashyap sabyasachi@telecentremagazine.net i4d | May 2009
RENDEZVOUS RENDEZVOUS: THE THIRD INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM, 3-6 DECEMBER 2008, HYDERABAD, INDIA
An Interpol for the Internet? Executive summary In this report, we provide a report on the workshop entitled ‘An Interpol for the Internet?’ organised during the third Internet Governance Forum, held in Hyderabad, India, from 03rd to 06th December 2009. Hosted by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India, the forum focused on the overall issue of ‘Internet for all.’ Participants from government, private sector, civil society and the Internet community gathered for four days to share knowledge and experiences to explore how the Internet can be used to its full potential for the benefit of all while combating its use for harmful purpose. The forum addressed five main themes: reaching the next billion; promoting cyber-security and trust; managing critical internet resources; taking stock and the way forward; and emerging issues – the Internet of tomorrow. In addition, to plenary sessions on these themes, there were open meetings and thematic workshops to discuss specific issues and share best practices. One of the most dynamic sessions of the forum was the workshop titled ‘An Interpol for the Internet?’ was co-ordinated by Jayalakshmi Chittoor and moderated by Vignesh Sornamohan of the Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (www.csdms.in).
Rationale for the workshop The Internet is facilitating the emergence of new forms of human interaction in what is becoming known as cyberspace: a computergenerated public domain which has no territorial boundaries or physical attributes and is in perpetual use1. Cyberspace is the matrix of electronic telecommunication and computer networks, usually referred to as the Internet, which links millions of May 2009 | www.i4donline.net
Participants at the 'An Interpol for the Internet' workshop
people globally, and it is not controlled by any single authority. Internet is said to be the means to facilitate the demise of modernist forms of governance based upon territory, hierarchical managerial control of populations, and policing. Thus nation-state boundaries are said to be weakening both from the development of global economies where ‘cyberspace is where your money is’ and also from the lack of control by national governments over communications in cyberspace2. The Internet is undoubtedly one of the greatest technological advances of all time, but it is also a double-edged sword. While the Internet allows us to do such things as engage in electronic commerce, research, be entertained, communicate with others, and find myriad information on just about anything imaginable, it also has its dark side. The Internet not only provides great opportunities for those with good intentions, but is a haven for criminals as well. It is evident that Internet poses as a challenge to traditional forms of
governance. Governance in the postmodern world is further characterised by the weakening of the nation-state through the accentuation of the local and global dimensions of human interaction. ICT networks such as the Internet facilitate the deconstruction of national financial and cultural boundaries which are an intrinsic attribute of modernism. Given this backdrop, the workshop saw in-depth deliberations on the creation of a global governing body like ‘An Interpol for the Internet’ and various other ways to tackle this emerging threat to the global community.
The workshop proceedings The moderator set the stage for the deliberations by citing an example of a cross-border cybercrime and requested the panelists to share their views on the following questions: Where do we differentiate between cyber law and real law? What are the IT policies in various developing countries? Is it possible to have one common set of guidelines and
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policies for all nations? If online crimes mirror offline crimes then which country’s jurisdiction prosecutes? Is there a need for an international body like the Interpol for the Internet? If ‘An Interpol for the Internet’ is a solution then how do we address the challenges of sovereignty, openness and freedom of expression? The first presentation was made by Deepak Maheshwari, Partner Technical Consultant with Microsoft, who highlighted the Convention on Cybercrime of the Council of Europe. Keeping in mind the fact that there can be a number of cases of cyber crime which are cross-border in nature, it is going to be very difficult to implement cyber laws. There are talks about the need for a global governing body that looks into these cyber crimes but that will have its own set of challenges that will need to be overcome. However, there are existing models that can be looked at for adoption or partial implementation depending ont he respective needs, presence of basic cyber laws in a country, maturity of the organisation that will take care of its implementation and its people to deal with those issues. In that context, the Interpol already has a very active engagement in cyber crime. Of course, the Interpol as an inter-governmental organisation can only do so much unless there is a local legislation and framework within individual nation states which have a mechanism to use the Interpol network. To take an example that was mentioned by the moderator, suppose there is an ISP in Nigeria which has given an IP address to someone there and if there was an access point or some other kind of wireless access in Nigeria close to an international border, the person could be accessing that particular network/internet connection even from outside the legal jurisdiction of Nigeria. One of the best examples would be the Convention on Cybercrime of the Council of Europe, which has been ratified by more than 40 countries. The most important aspect of the convention is that it has developed a guideline between the law enforcement agencies and service providers against cybercrime and these have been approved formally by the Government of Europe on the 2nd of April 2008. The convention addresses some of the basic information needs which can be a major cause of contention in cases of cross-border cyber crime, such as: what are the obligations and the rights of the law enforcement agencies, what are the rights and obligations of the service providers and
how to actually go ahead, etc. The convention is very prescriptive but a very comprehensive set of guidelines. In cybercrime investigation you require specific details from the service providers. First, who is the designated authority to provide information in the public domain? Second, what kind of information do you need? Are you looking for the IP address given to a person? Are you looking for a particular content? Are you actually looking for the date or time or the point or place when/where the unlawful content was accessed? Being cognizant of the specific types of communication or details that you are actually looking for makes seeking information a lot easier because then the service providers can go ahead, look into the details and respond to the law enforcement agencies in a timely and efficient manner. Finally in practical terms, maturity level in terms of the legislative framework and capacity building of the law enforcement agencies or prosecution of the crime or the socio-cultural context of that particular country needs to be considered. This, of course will differ significantly and unless people are sensitised in these matters; having a new type of mechanism, per se would not be very helpful. The next presentation was made by Pavan Duggal who is a practising advocate in the Supreme Court of India and is an internationally renowned expert and authority on Cyberlaw. A brief of his presentation is carried below: Cyberspace and the World Wide Web have created distinctly new challenges. The concept of a public place created on computer platforms where the users not only participate but actively contribute their inputs or more has given rise to various complicated legal issues. Cyber law is distinctly different from the real world law in as much as the challenges of cyberspace are distinctly far more complicated than the actual world. Different countries have had their own experiences while framing and implementing cyber laws. Some early adopters in the US and the West in general, had come up with their own legislations in this regard. However, by and large, developing countries are still in the process of enacting cyber laws. Some countries have already enforced their cyber laws including India, Pakistan, Dubai, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Korea, Philippines. A distinctive feature of cyber law legislations existing in developing countries is that these legislations are normally the ‘Jack of all trade’ legislations. They tend to touch small and diverse issues in one legislation. Consequently, the concept of having dedicated specific legislations on specific topics in cyber law is distinctly missing in the developing countries. Through the Internet, by its very inherent mechanism and architecture, a person sitting anywhere in the world can go ahead and target computers and data in other country’s jurisdictions with impunity. The absence of effective national legislations beyond the conventional national boundaries complicates the entire Deepak Maheshwari from Microsoft and Pavan Duggal, Cyberlaw Expert at the workshop issue of jurisdiction.
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The Convention on the Cybercrime of the Council of Europe provides a platform for exchange of ideas, strategies, and information pertaining to cyber crimes. But, as Internet is becoming more and more ubiquitous, it is becoming amply clear that there is a need for codifying common universally acceptable principles and guidelines pertaining to all nations. Given the peculiar customised requirements of each nation, it may not be possible for all countries to have the same law, with the same language. However, the common set of established international principles relating to cyber legal jurisprudence need to be embodied in an international treaty which need to be duly approved by nations. Nations need to incorporate the relevant portions and principles of the said jurisprudence in their national jurisdictions, depending upon their own national exigencies. Limited amount of cyber law convictions of the world and cyber crime matters leaves no doubt that the world as a whole needs to act as a whole, against cyber crime. There is a need for an international body to monitor international efforts on cyber crime with international recognition and support of nations. It’s very clear that there is a need for a special Interpol for the Internet.
The workshop debate Do cyber laws cover mobile phones? The answer is clearly yes. Not just for India, but for the whole world. Because, in any definition of any legislation of cyber law across the world, the way a computer has been defined, it has been divided into broad terms to include any device which has got mechanism, memory functions which has data processing capability, so your mobile typically is a computer within the law. And the Indian law is no exception; a mobile phone considered a computer under section 21 of the Information Technology Act, 2000. We have been saying that law enforcements have problems but do you actually get cooperation from other countries? Certain countries have been cooperating, the problem comes as has been mentioned in one of the presentations, some countries don’t have cyber laws in place and in other countries which have cyber laws their provisions are totally different as compared to India. So there are certain problems and then there are times when the local legislation of a particular country also overrides other considerations, like take the example of United States which is
Key recommendations 1.
2. 3.
4.
The Internet Service Providers need to designate an authority, who will bring the critical information into the public domain There must a common consensus on what kind of information needs to be shared in the public domain The Cybercrime Convention of the Council of Europe could be considered as one of the options to replicate or ratify or be adopted with changes based on the nations needs and readiness It’s very clear that there is a need for a special Interpol for the Internet
Participants at the 'An Interpol for the Internet' workshop
very stringent as compared to certain other countries including India. So countries have increasingly realised that it is important for them to cooperate and come on a common platform, have similar kind of technologies, etc., but it is a process which will take time and I think it’ll still take another 5 to 10 years. I think when we are talking about cyber crimes we are only taking into consideration only the place where the said crime has physically taken place. I believe that cyber crimes should also take into cognizance the fact that these crimes may have been planned in the cyberspace and should be dealt with there itself. For example, a terrorist attack where the crime isphysically being committed at a certain geographic location but the perpetrators of the crime communicate with eachother through e-mails or through other online communication models to plan for the crime. Hence, I believe that we need greater co-operation from the service providers where the cyber Interpol or the cyber police can intercept such communications and stop the crime from taking place. Earlier, countries thought that cyber crime the scope of cyber crime laws only extends to what happens in the cyberspace, but now the definition is getting broader to encompass any activity that is targeted at the Internet or that is done using the Internet. So today when, say, a terror attack takes place in Mumbai, the terrorists have also become shrewd. Today they do not send e-mails because they know that the government might be looking into their e-mail. To counter that, they have come up with a more ingenious methodology. They open an account with any generic e-mail service provider and then the username and password of this account is disseminated among all the members of the group across the world. To transmit information and instructions an e-mail is composed and saved in the ‘drafts’ folder. This message is read by the concerned person, whi may be based in another geographic location, and action is taken accordingly. Since, no message was transmitted through the Internet it is hard to monitor this kind of a communication system. But at the same time, the Internet was used very effectively and ingeniously to plan out and perpetuate the crime. So it is only right that a deeper surveillance is required to monitor this kind of usage of the Internet and legislators and governments around the world are trying to work towards it. But the bigger challenge is how to go ahead with it and demarcate and distinguish between a legitimate activity versus an activity that could be part of a crime. Vignesh Sornamohan, vigneshjnu@gmail.com
May 2009 | www.i4donline.net
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RENDEZVOUS RENDEZVOUS: DIGITAL INCLUSION: A PATHWAY FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, 19 MARCH 2009, CHANDIGARH, INDIA
Digital inclusion The Conference, hosted by Centre for Science, Development, and Media Studies (CSDMS) in association with Intel and UN Solution Exchange, has become the place for those with an interest in digital inclusion to meet, mingle and deliberate over the latest in policy developments, technological advances, and groundlevel best practice. Luminaries from the domain of digital inclusion were invited to take their places at ‘Digital Inclusion: A Pathway for Economic Development’, the one-day conference held on 19th March 2009 at Chandigarh, India.
Opening session The conference started with a workshop on ICT4D hosted by UN Solution Exchange which was followed by the opening plenary and the panel discussion sessions where several distinguished speakers set the stage for the discussion by laying out the challenges facing the national and international community and the opportunities posed by new information
Highlights include: •
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Three Indian provinces, Punjab, Chandigarh, and Haryana took part in the conference A team of officers from various government departments representing the three provinces, along with representatives from Industry and the Civil Society Organisations, making up a total of 11 speakers led the discussions at the States’ level Digital Inclusion Conference The presence of around 80 attendees who took active part in the discussions made it a successful and thought-provoking conference
From left to right: Representative from BSNl, Taposh Mishra, Head -Govt. and PSU Group , Rajen Varada, The National Coordinator of the education community of UN Solution Exchange and Ashis Sanyal, Sr. Director, Dept. of IT, Govt. of India
technologies and the networked global economy. A number of central points emerged from the opening session. • First, knowledge and information are increasingly becoming the central components of innovation, growth and sustainable development. Its effective mobilisation and use, dramatically affects the efficiency and effectiveness with which the other factors of production are mobilised; hence advantages in the efficient use of knowledge and information have a multiplying effect, and those less able to access and harness information and knowledge effectively risk falling behind. • The second, related point that emerged is that new information and communications technologies, their power, speed, and global reach, provide unprecedented opportunities for such sharing of information and knowledge. The explosive growth of global information and communications networks (including the Internet) and the equally dramatic expansion in the power and affordability of information
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technologies amount to nothing less than an economic revolution with profound global implications Third, the digital divide is real and growing, and has profound implications. This divide is not just about access to computers or telephones; it is a deeper and more profound divide that reflects and reinforces more fundamental economic and social divides between and within countries The policy challenges for developing countries like India and for the international community as a whole are daunting and complex. Bridging the digital divide is not simply about giving people access to tools. It is about creating policy and regulator y environments, institutional frameworks, and human capacities that foster information flows, innovation, and effective use of the world’s knowledge resources in every dimension of sustainable development, from health, agriculture, medicine and education to trade and economic development, effective governance, etc. i4d | May 2009
Several speakers highlighted the important efforts and welcomed the opportunity of this dialogue to examine the challenges facing the states in this context John Davies, Vice President, Sales and Marketing Group General Manager, Intel World Ahead Programme, put forth his thoughts as the Guest of Honour. An excerpt from his talk reads as below: While highlighting some of the features of the Intel World Ahead Programme, like the ‘Accessibility’, ‘Connectivity’, Education’, and ‘Content’ components, John cited some examples with reference to the international community on how to lead with innovation. He suggested some of the approaches that can be adopted in order to overcome the current global recession period. G8 nations and PRC (People’s Republic of China) are investing more than $1.5 trillion to stimulate their economies to emerge from the recession faster and stronger. He also said, government IT investments help creates jobs, which is a critical need during recession. Increased broadband and IT investment should be part of every country’s recovery plan. Stimulus infrastructure spending on roads, rail, power should include broadband connectivity. John cited the example of Vietnam as the stimulating economy, where $1 billion is approved and $24 billion announced as the stimulus. USF (Universal Service Fund) fund in the country complements national broadband funding, VAT (Value Added Tax) reduction and duties have been eliminated for all IT products, interest rate has been subsidised for business loans, etc. Again in China, where $570 billion has been announced as stimulus, 30% has been invested in smart railways. Coming to India, John sees Internet as the game changer for the country. The country, where two lakh railway tickets are sold on the website of Indian Railway, 40% of legal queries are getting addressed through blogs, farners get latest equipments and fertilizer tips from e-choupals, etc., he said, the change is already happening through technology. The opening session was also attended by Sanjay Kumar, the Secretary, IT, Haryana, who was also the Chief Guest of the conference. The other guest of the evening, Ashish •
May 2009 | www.i4donline.net
Audience during the panel discussion
Sanyal, Sr. Director, Dept of Information and Technology, added some positive notes to the whole discussions. He said, ‘we can still talk about 14-15 % telephony in a land, where ICT sector is increasing and mobile phones are being added (at the rate of ) 10 million a month which is more than the population of Finland. If we increase tele-density by 1%, the GDP growth becomes quite vital.’ An outline of Shri Sanyal’s deliberations included some vital points as mentioned below. • There is a distinct difference between ‘Digital Inclusion’ and ‘Digitally Inclusion’ • Other than India, nowhere in the world are G2C services being delivered to the people through ICTs in such a large scale. The government of India has realised the fact and is using 33 % of G2C Services for this. ICT is an enabler and facilitator to this end. • People have understood that egovernance is not a mere translation of the manual process of governance. So, ICT proliferation is just a part of digital inclusion. ICT proliferation without conduciveness is digital exclusion. If we do not put in place a legal framework and we do not put a policy in place then it will not be effective. • When people talk about digital inclusion, it is mostly about urbanrural. However, there are many pockets of urban areas which are digitally excluded. There are several social and economic divides. Whatever is responsible for these social and economic also has an impact on ICT divide. There are different players
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working in this field including NGO’s, government and other community organisation. But a lot of other players must also come in. This is one area, where if we work, it will be a win-win situation for all stakeholders. There are 3 main things that need to be kept in mind: 1) Access; 2) Universalisation 3) Capacity Building. Universalisation includes abilities, wages, universal availability of technology so that no section of the society is excluded. By 2010, we intend to make sure that broadband connection is accessible to everyone. Strong financial solutions to address problems of soci-economic barriers in access to digital technology needs to be brought out. Purchasing power should not hamper access to digital technology. Greater public access to Internet technology should be promoted through corporate social responsibility. Digital inclusion policy should address the issues related to accessibility. There is also a need to design internationally recognized standard for service providers which should be part of the policy. Creating technical guidelines and a conducive atmosphere is a must. Adequate capacity building measures have to be developed. Proper access to public information services need to be made. In South Korea, several senior citizens were given training in using ICT tools for access to information and services through the Internet. So in India, we need to find out the areas which require similar capacity building.
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Panel Discussion1: Digital Inclusion's discussion
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For complete ICT penetration, we need to start from schools. A EU survey showed that gender gap is evident in ICT usage. Young boys are able to use and have better knowledge of technology. Younger students have much better knowledge of ICTs than teachers. Hence, there should be a programme where teachers are trained as part of digital inclusion. Public enterprises should take initiatives towards making wider availability of services; comprehensive content policy for the public good; public services to be designed with a universal framework; development of new services. To make broadband available to everyone, ICT tools need to be accessable in schools; co-ordinated measures need to be taken to provide knowledge and information to schools, teacher and students.
Panel discussion 1: Digital Inclusion: A pathway for economic development The Digital Inclusion and Economic Development session primarily brainstormed about the progress in National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) in northern India in terms of rolling out mission mode projects like CSCs, State Data Centres, State Wide Area Networks, etc. It also focused on accelerating egovernance initiatives for Government to citizen interface, like land records, property certifications and public distribution system, etc. The first panel discussion session deliberated on increasing entrepreneurship and enhancing competitiveness of the growing sectors, relating to the Internet and broad-
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band combined with IT solutions that have the potential to bring in efficiencies and competitiveness of the SME sector. The feeling was strong that, if all goes well, India can lead the world in broadband penetration and Internet access. The panel discussion was moderated by Rajen Varada, The National Co-ordinator of the education community of UN Solution Exchange. The speakers included Ashis Sanyal, Sr. Director, Department of IT, Government of India; Taposh Misra, Head – Govt and PSU Group, ICICI Bank Ltd. and a Representative from BSNL. Starting off the discussion, Rajen Varada said that there is a need to look at the e-Governance project in retrospect and what are the timelines that are being set and where is the Indian IT sector heading towards in the next couple of years. He also said that sustainability is a major issue in the near future and called for some of the action plans which can act as leverage in such a scenario. Talking about the initiatives of ICICI Bank, Taposh Misra reflected that we have been monitoring the global situation for the past 30 years and taking cues from there. He said that cards platform would act as an enabler to provide connectivity for the common people. ICICI Bank is looking at solutions such as scholarships for students, long sick pensions, money on ration cards, and tolling conditions as well as cards from various other institutions. Talking further about connectivity, the representative from BSNL said that BSNL has contributed more in the social sector than any other private telecom operator. He spoke about the two schemes that the World Bank has launched at a very subsidised rate – Rural USO 99 and Rural USO 150. Through Rural USO 99,
BSNL is providing 512 kbps bandwidth and a 400 MB download/ upload limit at INR 99 per month. The second scheme, Rural USO 150, where the minimum bandwidth is 512 kbps and the monthly upload/download limit is 1 GB at INR 150 per month. S V Rajendra, President, PCO Association and a participant of the conclave, said that financial stability, operational functionality and sustainability are very important when it comes to PCOs (Public Call Office). The future is of ePCOs. Another participant also raised the point that even if one says that there are about 60 lakh PCOs in the country, the question is how many PCOs are situated in the rural areas. He further added that if one looks at the Common Service Centres (CSCs) schemes it has guaranteed revenues for 4 years. So we have taken care of the financial subsidiary. There are 25,000 PCOs and 27,000 e-PCOs will be created in the first phase. The fact that India’s vertical connectivity is very strong also emerged during the discussion. One of the key challenges that emerged out of the discussions is defining an appropriate role for the government in addressing the digital divide. Several participants pointed out that though creating a proper policy and regulatory environment is fundamentally important, the government’s role goes much beyond just that. Governments also have to strike a balance between fostering private sector development and entrepreneurship, on the one hand, and investing in physical and human capital (infrastructure and training) in appropriate ways that foster opportunity and empower the poor without stifling private innovation. Furthermore, the information revolution makes more urgent and more possible the efficient and effective functioning of government institutions within their relevant domains, and here, too, decisive and forward-looking government policies are vital. The discussion allowed the panel to identify several areas of priority for the community, in its efforts to bridge the Digital Divide and contribute to Digital Inclusion: pursue, broaden and deepen its consultation process, further the dissemination and exchange of best practices in the social uses of ICTs, and raise global awareness about the importance i4d | May 2009
of ICTs as a tool for development and a more equitable global economy. The major discussion points of this panel are outlined as below. • Awareness raising and consensus building among policy makers and key actors; • Infrastructure development, and the crucial policy and regulatory measures that governments need to take to foster such development, including liberalisation of the telecommunications sector and creating an environment conducive to investment and entrepreneurship; • Regional cooperation and integration; • Coherent, realistic national ICT strategies undergirded by a broad consensus; • Human capacity building in all dimensions; • Favourable and predictable policy environments, including strengthened and autonomous regulatory bodies; • Strengthening the capacity, and the involvement of the private sector; • Greater support and encouragement to the small-scale innovation and entrepreneurship and the local private sector.
Panel discussion II: ICT in education: Socio-economic imperatives The second panel discussion on ICT in Education: Socio-Economic Imperatives was moderated by Ashish Garg, Asia Regional Coordinator, Global eSchools & Communities Initiative (GeSCI). At the outset, she emphasised the importance of education, against something which is there on everybody’s mind, that is the global economic downtrend, and its effect on children and of course, education. Putting capital to work not just for the infrastructure, but for creating a capacity for innovation is something we haven’t yet imagined. If the investment is going to make a difference, and helps lay crops for the future, that is what investment means. ICT in education is important for access to quality education across gender, and many other fields. Ashish laid the base of the discussion by the esteemed panelists of the education session by throwing some very pertinent questions by May 2009 | www.i4donline.net
From left to right: B Purusharth, Director, Technical Education & Industrial Training, Govt of Punjab, Jyoti Arora, Commissioner, Higher Education, Govt. of Haryana, Ashish Garg, Asia Regional Programme Coordinator, GeSCI, Ranit Singh Bajwa, Deputy Chairman, Punjab School Education Board and Tarun Vij, Country Head-India, American India Foundation
linking the current global economic downtrend with the technology mediated education scenario. What is the advantage for new developing economies in this current situation? The developing countries can no longer have the advantage of cheap labour market. What are the other advantages that developing economies can have and hold forth and can use to combat the recent economic down trend. Or to continue on the path of development that they have been going on. So we have the givens, education, which is extremely important, and which can help people break out from the poverty cycle. What is the requirement for the nation, for developing economies? To focus on education? Integration of ICTs and education? If there is an economic downtrend, should we stop sending children to school, or do we envision a larger strategy and a larger political vision that incorporates all those critical components? Do we have National ICT vision and a national ICT strategy in education? How can the panel help us take the first step, which can help finding what are the components of a national ICT strategy? With all the questions tabled by the moderator, the discussion started with Jyoti Arora, Commissioner, Higher Education, Govt of Haryana. She highlighted the fact that digital divide is still visible locationally, between the students of small town and of the progressive areas. She underlined the challenges faced, as an Administrator, while making technology available to all students, irrespective of a very bright
student living in a smaller town and also students in the big cities. ‘We have to see what are the contexts in which technology and sustainabilty of the technology can be used in the education field.’ Haryana has a network of 4 general universities and 75 government colleges, 94 private colleges, and around 450 centralised colleges, in which around three and a half lakh students are getting education. • While trying to provide education through ICT at such a large scale, all the stakeholders need to be in sync with the quality being provided. • Unless the universities, the concerned officials, administrators and teachers are brought on board, providing the infrastructure, the information and knowledge will not do much good. All the stakeholders have to be brought on to the same platform - whether it is to bring about education through digitalisation or to go in for training through workshops. • In the higher education sector there are more issues that need to be addressed, for example, there has to be a proper system for quality audit of all the programmes that are instituted for this end. • Keeping in mind the fact that students coming from government institutions are likely to be less computer literate as compared to their counterparts who come from privately owned educational institutions, the education material created for this demographic segment should be suitably customised. There is a need to create an enabling network for them.
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Responding to a question on what is the role of school education board, in particular, the Punjab School Education Board and what is their vision for national ICT strategy, Ranjit Singh Bajwa, Deputy Chairman, Punjab School Education Board mentioned that for the past few years the board has been trying to imbibe ICT as a tool for improving all its key components. • Making the whole system technology mediated will save a lot of human resources, effort, wastage of time. • Side by side, in order to make the Punjab School Education Board at par with other boards, all the previous records have been digitised and are now available on the Internet. Similarly, the Board is trying to imbibe ICTs to improve upon their syllabi. • Stress should be given to improve the local ecologies so that the local culture also understand the need for ICT-led education for this, there is a strong need to disseminate information about it’s benefits to the people there. • There should be new openings and vistas for rural students, through radical revision of text books, may it be through electronic medium or through televised or particularly through video conferencing, audio conferencing or other means of ICT. Tarun Vij, Country Head, American India Foundation (AIF), introduced the audience with the AIF’s education activities, one programme of which is modeled on Public Private Partnership model - Digital Equalizer (http://www. aifoundation.org/education/de/default. htm). The Digital Equalizer programme has a vision of an India where all children have access to technology and information to prepare them for the emerging Digital Age. The programme aims to advance the use of technology to engage, educate, enrich and empower India’s underserved children. It provides digital access to under resourced schools. The programme runs in 13 states in partnership with state governments. The states are Uttaranchal, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan and
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Punjab. The programme has a footprint of about 1450 schools, reaches 600,000 students and trains about 20,000 teachers. The AIF’s Digital Equalizer (DE) programme is a Computer Aided Learning (CAL) programme that is bridging the education and digital divide in India and preparing tens of thousands of children to compete in the digital economy. Targeting children in grades 6 through 10 (ages 10-14), AIF supports a DE school for 3 years and prepares the school for complete self-sufficiency after that period. DE imparts computer and Internet education to students and teachers through comprehensive activity-based learning techniques. The programme is tightly integrated with the school curriculum thereby improving subject matter expertise through the use of technology. The challenge that DE programme comes across is running it across multiple states. Learning computers vs using computer. Variability of quality. Grappling with managing scales, critically managing execution skills/scales. Need for adequate project based planning, connectivity. B Purusharth, Director, Department of Technical Education and Industrial Training, Government of Punjab, threw some very pertinent questions at the gathering. Digital Inclusion or ICT Induction is a very small section within the entire education sector. Are we able to digest the anmount of funding in education? Are we using the funds that have been allocated for ICT and education? Has it been properly utilised and do we have any direction as to how we should invest or spend the money in education? Do we understand the goals and objectives? Do we have a vision, policy, state or a national policy on this? Or are we only running pilot programmes? It is an evolving issue, but yes, we have to initiate the process. • The drivers of education are teachers, it is not the administrators or policy makers. We have been talking about the students at the last mile to be able to use technology, but unless the teachers, whom we can not replace, are trained in using ICT, we cannot achieve our aim • By putting in one intervention we can
not replace the teachers. We have to look at teachers’ training, we need to link education to the markets. Needs of the education sector have to be taken into account. • The beauty of technology is that it can bring quality education to the masses in a short period of time. Who is going to deliver this? The need, therefore is to collaborate with those (service providers) who are going to deliver it door-to-door. • It is important to introduce a child to certain aspects of the learning skills that are required for seeking an appropriate job in the market. The department does not plan to completely do away with the traditional theoretical method of teaching but supplement it by making changes in the curriculum by introducing training in basic accounting and word processing softwares and packages. Dialogue with industry representatives have been initiated so that the new curriculum developed enables the students to get jobs in the market. • We also need to keep in mind that this is not just about going through the exercise of putting computers in educational institutions and expecting it to bring results. The programme has to be customised on the basis of the needs of the various streams of education where the ICT interventions are being made. Primary education, higher education and technical education, each have their own set of needs that have to be fulfilled in order to make an impact. This is where the an informed policy framework comes to play. A set of policy guidelines that has evolved keeping in mind the varied needs of these streams. This conference celebrated achievements and showcased successes in the field of eInclusion from across three Indian states. It helped industry, practitioners and policy makers to take stock of what still lies ahead and renew their commitments to achieve inclusion in the information society for all in order to overcome the current scenario of global recession and head towards economic development in a society that provides equal opportunities to all. i4d | May 2009
What’s on Africa 28-30 October 2009 IDIA2009 Conference South Africa http://www.elearning-africa.com
ICT4D 2010 12-14 October 2009 Cape Town, South Africa http://www.itc4d.org
Australia 15-18 November 2009 2009 Asia Pacific Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect Perth, Western Australia http://www.napcan.org.au
20-25 March 2010 World Congress of Internal Medicine Melbourne, VIC http://www.wcim2010.com.au/
Europe 31 August-4 September 2009 World Climate Conference-3 Geneva, Switzerland http://www.wmo.int/pages/world_climate_conference/ index_en.html
31 August-3 September 2009 Sustainable Energy Technology (SET) 2009, North Rhein Westfalia, Germany
14-16 September 2009 Indian Environment Summit 2009 New Delhi http://www.iesummit.net/
16-19 June 2009 Enterprise IT 2009 Singapore Expo. Centre
Japan
http://www.biztradeshows.com/trade-events/enterpriseit.html
24-28 August 2009 The 3rd International Symposium on the Environmental Physiology of Ectotherms and Plants Tsukuba
18-20 August 2009 Map Asia 2009 Suntec Singapore International Convention & Exhibition Centre
http://www.nias.affrc.go.jp/anhydrobiosis/isepep3/ index.html
Malaysia 15-17 June 2009 First Global Business Summit Conference Kuala Lumpur http://gsbms.com
6-9 July 2009 6th International Conference on IT in Asia 2009 Kuching, Sarawak http://www.cita09.org
3-4 November 2009 4th International Conference on e-Commerce Penang http://ecdcconference.com
http://www.set2009.org
http://www.mapasia.org
14-16 September 2009 Agriculture Outlook Asia 2009 Grand Hyatt http://www.terrapinn.com/2009/agriasia
Thailand 4-6 October 2009 3rd Vaccine Global Congress Bangkok http://www.vaccinecongress.com
United States 4-7 October 2009 HighEdWeb 2009: Open. Connected Milwaukee, WI http://www.highedweb.org/2009
26-30 October 2009 mLearn 2009 - 8th World Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning Orlando, Florida http://mlearn2009.org
22-23 October 2009 Gender, Media and the Public Pshere Coimbra, Portugal http://mediagender.wordpress.com/
Singapore
knowledge for change
India
28-30 October 2009 International Conference on Information Technology (ICIT 2009), Chicago http://www.waset.org/wcset09/chicago/icit/
5-6 June 2009 Free Software Workshop for NGOs and Civil Society Groups New Delhi
United Kingdom
http://ngoinabox.mahiti.org/
http://academic-conferences.org/eceg/eceg2009/eceg09home.htm
13-18 July 2009 Media, Democracy and Governance: Emerging Paradigms in a Digital Age New Delhi http://www.amic.org.sg/new/news_n_updates/ conf2009cfp.htm May 2009 | www.i4donline.net
29-30 June 2009 European Conference on e-Government London
25 - 27 August 2009 Hyderabad, India http://www.eINDIA.net.in/2009/
28-29 September 2009 Energy From Waste London http://www.smi-online.co.uk/events/overview. asp?is=5&ref=3142
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IN-FACT
e-Politics In 2009, Indian General Elections, political parties,individual politicians, and civil society groups are using Internet and mobile initiatives as their campaigning elements. The list includes links to websites, blogs, Twitter IDs, Facebook pages/ groups, Orkut groups and other digital initiatives: Party Name
Online tools Official websites
Orkut
Youtube
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BJP @ Facebook
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BJP Supporter’s Group
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Friends of BJP @ Facebook
• BJP Supporters Group Orkut.com • L K Advani for PM Orkut Group • BJP Youth Orkut Group • Atal Bihari Vajpayee fan club on Orkut • Narendra Modi Orkut Fan Club • Jitega Gujarat Orkut Community • Bihar BJP Orkut Group • Delhi BJP Orkut Group • Gujarat BJP Orkut Group • Arun Jaitley’s Orkut Fan Club
• L K Advani: Youtube Channel (http://www. youtube.com/user/ bjpuploader) • Narendra Modi: Youtube Channel “Vandegujarat” (http://www.youtube. com/user/vandegujarat)
Indian National Congress
• Official Congress Website • (http://www.aicc.org.in/new) • Congress Media • (http://www.congressmedia. net/home) • Vote4Congress (AP) (http://vote4congress.om) • Vote Cong (AP) (http:// votecong.com) • Official UDF (Kerala) (http://www.udf.org.in)
Shashi Tharoor’s Facebook Page
Other Parties/ Independent Candidates
• Official TDP (http://www. • telugudesamparty.org) • Official CPIM (http://cpim. org) • Official CPI (http://www. cpindia.org) • Official MDMK (http:// mdmk.org.in) • Official AIADMK (http:// www.aiadmkallindia.org) • Official SP (http://www. samajwadipartyindia.com) • Official BSP (http:// bspindia.org) • Official NCP (http://www. ncp.org.in) • Official TMC (http://www. trinamoolcongress.com) • Official TRS (http://www. trsparty.in) • Official Praja Rajyam Party (PRP) (http://prajarajyam. org) • Official Left Democratic Front (LDF) - Kerala (http://ldf.org.in)
Mallika Sarabhai’s Facebook Group
Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP)
A) BJP Official Websites • Advani@Campus (http:// www.lkadvani.in) • Join BJP (http://joinbjp. com) B) BJP Supporters’ Website • Friends of BJP (http:// friendsofbjp.org) • Nation First, party Next, Self Last (http://nationfirst. in) • Narendra Modi: Namo League (http://www. namoleague.com) • Overseas friends of BJP (http://www.ofbjp-usa.org)
• Shashi Tharoor’s Orkut Community
Other social networking Websites and Blogs • L K Advani For PM (http://lkadvani.in/eng) • L K Advani Blog (http://blog.lkadvani.in) • Bloggers for Advani (http://www.lkadvani.in/eng/ content/view/766/401/) • Narendra Modi’s Website (http://www. narendramodi.in) • Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s Website (http://www. shivrajsinghchouhan.in) • V S Acharya’s Blog (http://drvsacharya.blogspot.com) • Ananth Kumar’s website (http://ananth.org) • BJP IT Cell @Twitter (http://twitter.com/missionbjp) • V K Malhotra @Twitter (http://twitter.com/ vkmalhotra) • Narendra Modi @Twitter (http://twitter.com/ Narendra_Modi) • Shashi Tharoor @Twitter (http://twitter.com/ shashitharoor) • SM Krishna @Twitter (http://twitter.com/ smkrishnacong) • Priya Dutt’s website (http://www.priyadutt.org) • Priya Dutt’s Blog (http://www.priyadutt.org/blog/) • HT Sangliana @Twitter (http://twitter.com/ sangliana) • Congress Official Blog (Gujarat) (http:// gujaratcongress.wordpress.com) • Congress Gujarat @Twitter (http://twitter.com/ gujcongress)
Milind Deora’s Facebook Group
• Mallika Sarabhai’s YouTube Channel (http://www.youtube. com/mallikaformp)
• Lalu Prasad Yadav Blog (http://www.mypopkorn. com/blogs/lalu-prasad-yadav) • Omar Abdullah Blog (http://www. jknationalconference.org/blogdetails.asp?pvalue=all) • Caption Gopinath’s Blog (http://votecaptaingopi. com) • Capt. Gopinath @Twitter (http://twitter.com/ CaptainGopinath) • Mallika Sarabhai’s Blog (http://mallikasarabhai.in) • Meera Sanyal on Twitter (http://twitter.com/ meerasanyal) • Rajeev Chandrasekhar’s blog (Independent MP) (http://www.rajeev.in/blog) • Rajeev Chandrasekhar@ Twitter • Ajay Goyal (http://www.rajeev.in/blog)
• Vote for CPI(M) (http:// vote.cpim.org) • Ramachandran Nair P Website (Thiruvanant hapuram)(Malayalam) (http://pramachandrannair. com/index1.php)
Source: http://indiaelection2009.pbwiki.com
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i4d | May 2009
i4d Invites Feature Articles on ‘Microfinance and ICTs’
The June 2009 issue of i4d magazine focuses on ‘Microfinance and ICTs’. We encourage a wide variety of submissions on the topic areas outlined below: • • • • • • • • •
Status of Microfinance sector in developing countries Bridging the economic and social divide in microfinance Microfinance: Integrating the financial needs of low-income clients Solutions and methods by which people with low-incomes can better manage their finances Microfinance for HIV/AIDS and Gender Equity Leveraging technology for micro banking Online network platforms for Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) Accountability and transparency in Microfinance MFIs as a viable business venture
An ideal feature article (two-pager) should be between 1400-1600 words. Case studies should be between 16002200 words. Graphs, charts, tables and pictures should be sent separately in high-resolution (360 dpi or more) .jpeg, .tiff or .bmp format. Alongwith the manuscript, authors/contributors should submit a profile and a passport size photograph. Submission deadline is 22 May 2009. E-mail all submissions to ritu@csdms.in or subir@csdms.in
TM