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What the new H1B visa changes mean for Indian professionals

The News Minute — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 11:52:19 GMT

Effective September 21, 2025, employers must pay $100,000 per H-1B employee seeking entry into the US.

The H-1B visa programme, a key pathway for highly skilled foreign professionals in fields like technology, engineering, and research, has long relied on Indian talent, who make up the majority of beneficiaries. On September 19, 2025, the US administration announced a dramatic increase in the annual H-1B visa fee to $100,000, a move aimed at prioritising top-tier, high-salary roles. This change is expected to reshape opportunities for Indian professionals, particularly early-career workers, and alter how IT companies manage their US workforce.

What is the H-1B Visa?

The H-1B visa programme allows American employers to hire immigrant workers for occupations that require “a high level of skill” and at least a bachelor’s degree, according to the US Department of Labor. Established under the Immigration Act of 1990, the programme was designed to help employers who “cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the US workforce” by authorising the temporary employment of qualified foreign professionals.

The creation of the H-1B programme followed a prolonged debate between industry groups and workers’ unions. Business organisations, including the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Foreign Trade Council, successfully lobbied Congress to ease restrictions on hiring immigrant talent. Big Tech emerged as the primary beneficiary. During the 1990s tech boom, companies such as Microsoft, Oracle, and later Google and Amazon faced a shortage of specialised talent. The H-1B program enabled these firms to hire hundreds of thousands of highly skilled workers from countries like India and China to fill the gap.

The H-1B visa is valid for three years and can be renewed once, for a total of six years. Applicants must be sponsored by a US employer, and the programme is subject to an annual cap of 65,000 visas, with an additional 20,000 reserved for advanced degree holders from US universities. Due to high demand, visas are generally allocated through a lottery system.

Who gets H-1B Visas?

The H-1B programme primarily benefits highly skilled foreign professionals working in technology, engineering, healthcare, research and other specialised fields. Indian nationals are by far the largest group of beneficiaries, consistently receiving over 70 percent of approved H-1B petitions each year since 2015. Chinese nationals are the second-largest group, accounting for roughly 11 percent of approvals.

Between October 2022 and September 2023, 72 percent of the nearly 400,000 H-1B visas issued went to Indian nationals. Top Indian IT firms, including Infosys, TCS, HCL, and Wipro, alone received approvals for roughly 20,000 employees during this period.

The programme favors workers in specialised roles where qualified American professionals are in short supply. Computer-related occupations, particularly software development and IT services, make up the majority of approvals, while other fields such as engineering, healthcare, and scientific research account for smaller portions.

Employers currently pay multiple fees when sponsoring H-1B workers. These include a $215 registration fee and a basic filing fee ranging from $460 for small employers and nonprofits to $780 for larger companies. Additional costs cover training ($750–$1,500), fraud prevention ($500), and optional premium processing ($2,805). Large employers may also pay $4,000 under Public Law 114-113 (a rule that charges extra fees to big companies if most of their workers in the US are on temporary work visas), while asylum programme fees range from $0 for nonprofits to $600 for bigger companies

Recent changes to the H-1B programme

On September 19, 2025, the US administration announced major changes to the H-1B programme, including a dramatic increase in the annual visa fee to $100,000. The new fee primarily affects prospective or traveling H-1B workers outside the United States. Starting September 21, 2025, H-1B employees will be denied entry into the United States unless their employer has paid a $100,000 fee, according to a proclamation signed by President Trump on Friday. The requirement and entry restriction apply to any H-1B worker entering the US after 12:01 am EDT on September 21, including new visa applications, pending petitions and to-be-filed H-1B petitions.

In addition to the fee, the Department of Labor (DOL) has been instructed to raise prevailing wage levels, while the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will prioritise higher-paid H-1B applicants. The proclamation also allows for national-interest waivers for individuals, companies or industries, although the exact criteria are still pending guidance.

The share of IT workers on H-1B visas has grown sharply, from 32 percent in FY2003 to over 65 percent in recent years. Many US companies rely on H-1B-dependent outsourcing firms to reduce labor costs, with studies showing 36 percent savings on entry-level H-1B positions compared to employing American workers. Some firms have downsized in-house IT teams and outsourced roles to foreign professionals.

This report was republished from The News Minute as part of The News Minute-Newslaundry alliance. Read about our partnership here and become a subscriber here.

MSP panel has spent over Rs 38 lakh over 3 years on meetings, but the report is pending

Basant Kumar — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 15:25:45 GMT

Nearly 3 years after PM Modi announced the formation of a committee on MSP reforms, the panel is yet to submit its report.

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In 2020–21, farmers across India took to the streets against the three farm laws. Along with the demand to scrap these laws, farmers pressed for a legal guarantee on Minimum Support Price. Announcing the withdrawal of the contentious laws, PM Narendra Modi had promised a committee to make MSP more effective and transparent.

The committee was finally constituted in July 2022, eight months after the announcement. Yet, three years on, it has not submitted its report. Its last meeting was held on January 8, 2025. Since then, there have been no further meetings.

According to available information, the committee has held six meetings so far, with its sub-committees convening 39 times – making for a total of 45 meetings. More than Rs 38 lakh has already been spent on these meetings, but the report remains awaited.

Watch.

Uttarakhand disaster: Why experts say it was not a cloudburst

Hridayesh Joshi — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 15:18:27 GMT

With no meteorological data to support the initial assumption, experts explain what might be the real reason behind the tragedy.

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Four days after flash floods wreaked havoc in the Dharali area of Uttarkashi, the cause of the incident remains elusive.

While initially its cause was said to be a cloud burst, experts are now questioning this theory.

According to the scientific definition, rain measuring 100 mm or more per hour is considered a cloudburst. But there has been no such confirmation in this area. Nor is there any metrological data available in support of this claim.

Experts say the recent incident in Uttarkashi does not seem like a cloud burst. In such a situation, the big question arises: what was the real reason for this disaster?

Watch to know the answer.

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India’s new broadcast bill now has compliance requirements for YouTubers and Instagrammers

Nikhil Pahwa — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 16:03:31 GMT

Understanding the proposed changes in the law and how they may impact press and creative freedoms.

Picture for representation

Online streaming services, social media accounts and online video creators, from across the globe, might come under the regulation of the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) according to the latest version of the country’s proposed Broadcast Bill. The proposed changes in the Bill will have significant implications for press and creative freedom. Some of the aspects of the Bill reported here were first reported by the Hindustan Times.

YouTubers and Instagrammers (and perhaps TikTok creators) beyond a certain threshold of users will have to intimate the Indian government of their existence within a month of the Bill being passed, and register with a three tier regulatory structure previously applicable to streaming services like Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and Disney+ Hotstar.

They will also have to create a content evaluation committee at their own cost which will need to check all content before it gets published. Social media companies that do not provide the government with information about their users will face criminal liability. Accounts sharing news must notify the government with their details within a month of the Bill’s notification and comply with the three-tier regulatory structure, regardless of platform or follower count.

The Bill also brings within its scope advertising networks as “advertising intermediaries”.

A draft of the updated Broadcast Bill was shared last week with select broadcasters, associations, streaming services, and major tech firms, each copy marked with the organization’s identifier to prevent leaks. MediaNama has confirmed the Bill’s consistency across multiple sources. The original Broadcast Bill was published for public consultation last November, but this revised version is only accessible to a limited audience, despite significant scope expansions. MediaNama has mailed the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting with questions pertaining to the issues covered in this article.

Changes in the Bill from its previous draft significantly expand the scope and applicability of the Bill to a larger number of stakeholders, but there are some reductions of scope as well.

Regulating social media accounts as digital news broadcasters

YouTubers and Instragrammers who get paid a share of advertising revenue, or enable paid subscriptions, or even monetise their social media presence through affiliate activities, will be regulated as Digital News Broadcasters, if they broadcast news and current affairs.

It is worth noting that the Bill might even cover creators on TikTok, even though the application is banned in India, as it expands definitions on the applicability.

There is no minimum threshold, nor is there a plan to create a minimum threshold, for designating entities as Digital News Broadcasters, and the same rules applicable to “an online paper, news portal, etc,“ are also applicable to those who post news and current affairs on social media, “as part of a systemic business, professional, commercial activity”.

So a YouTube channel or a podcast that has news commentary and runs ads, or a blog that covers news and has enabled Google AdSense will be covered under this Bill. They need to comply with a Programme Code and an Advertising Code.

Our reading of the Bill indicates that online creators need to conform with a three-tier mechanism put in place by the IT Rules and includes:

Self regulation where the IT Rules mandate having a grievance officer
Signing up with a self-regulatory organisation
And a government constituted Broadcast Advisory Council

An important change here is that the Broadcast Advisory Council may only hear appeals against the decisions of the self regulatory organisation, our reading and interpretation of the Bill indicates. Under the IT Rules, one could complain to either of the three tiers for complaints, including to the government committee directly.

But what exactly is news and current affairs here?

According to the Bill, it is “newly-received or noteworthy audio, visual or audio-visual programmes or live programmes, including analysis, about recent events primarily of socio-political, economic or cultural nature, or (ii) any programmes transmitted or retransmitted on broadcasting network , where the context, purpose, import and meaning of such programmes implies so;”

The updated bill notably excludes replica e-papers, marking a shift from the previous language that excluded both “publishers of newspapers and replica e-papers of such newspapers.” Additionally, the draft bill does not provide a definition for e-papers. It is also worth noting that the current regulations do not reference “news aggregators,” a term defined under the IT Rules, which previously appeared to encompass social media companies.

Regulating online content creators as broadcasters

Online content creators that do not cover news and current affairs, but provide programming and curated programs beyond a certain threshold, will be treated as OTT broadcasters, if they provide content licensed or live through a website or a social media platform.

Curation here refers to “selection, organisation and presentation of online content or information using skill, experience or expert knowledge”, and thus could even include, for example, a doctor providing information about nutrition and exercises on social media. From a definitions perspective, a publisher of online curated content is deemed to be a broadcasting service provider.

Online content creators need to provide intimation to the government within a month of notification of this Bill. There is no Programme Code for OTT broadcasters, and only the Advertising Code will apply.

Online content creators will need to establish a content evaluation committee comprised of distinguished individuals representing diverse social groups. This includes, but is not limited to, representatives from women’s organizations, child welfare advocates, scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and minority communities, who will be responsible for evaluating and certifying the content.

Creators will need to inform the government about the names and credentials of the Content Evaluation Committee. Their certification is not required for programs that have already been certified for public viewing in India by a statutory body, educational programs, live events, animation for children, among other programs that the government may designate. Creators will have to implement a three-tier mechanism, including a grievance redressal, joining a self regulatory body, and confirming to the directions of the Broadcast Advisory Council.

Global applicability of the bill

A notable exclusion from the definition of “person” subject to regulation is the exclusion of “an individual who is a citizen of India.” This suggests that the intention behind this amendment is to extend regulation to all Internet users worldwide under this Bill. In the previous version of the Bill, the definition of “person” was relatively narrow.

The previous version of the bill defined a “person” as:

(i) An individual who is a citizen of India;

(ii) An association of persons or a body of individuals, whether incorporated or not, whose members are citizens of India;

(iii) A company;

(iv) A limited liability partnership as defined in section 3 of the Limited Liability Partnership Act, 2008 ( 6 of 2009);

Regulation of social media intermediaries

The Bill now has criminal liability provisions for Social Media intermediaries which do not provide information “pertaining to OTT Broadcasters and Digital News Broadcasters” on its platforms for compliance. This suggests that when information is sought about a YouTube, Instagram or X/Twitter user, the platform will need to provide this information to the Indian government.

The draft Bill also states that the user, rather than the Social Media Intermediary, is responsible for ensuring compliance with the Broadcast Bill. This is, however, not the end of it. The draft Bill says that different “due diligence” may be prescribed for social media intermediaries, indicating that the scope of regulation of Social Media Intermediaries may increase in the future.

The latest version of the Broadcast Bill incorporates the definition of Social Media Intermediaries from the IT Rules. It defines these intermediaries as entities that “primarily or solely enable online interaction between two or more users and allow them to create, upload, share, disseminate, modify, or access information using their services.” From a legal perspective, the IT Rules should not have been utilized to establish a definition. However, it seems that this inclusion aims to validate the IT Rules by formulating an Act that defines Social Media Intermediaries.

Advertising networks regulated

The Bill brings under its ambit advertising networks by adding a definition of an “Advertising Intermediary”. It defines them as “an intermediary which primarily enable buying and selling of advertising space on the internet or placement of an advertisement on online platforms without itself endorsing the advertisement, and should not include an advertiser or broadcaster.”

This impacts all ad networks, including those from Google (Google Adsense), Meta (Facebook Audience Network), Media.net, Amazon (Amazon Publisher Services), Flipkart, Outbrain, Taboola and others. Regulation of advertising by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting is a relatively recently phenomenon, having been allocated this mandate in August 2023

Since then, the Ministry issued an advisory requiring advertisers to self declare each and every advertisement published online, only to roll it back a little and limit it to health and food sectors after criticism.

Regulating online advertising and networks was previously the domain of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technologies, which regulated all intermediaries, platforms, aggregators.

The Bill doesn’t go into any further details about online advertising, saying only that “due diligence” requirements for online advertising intermediaries may be prescribed later.

Overlap with IT Act and due diligence provisions?

The draft Bill appears to bring under its ambit, the same provisions that the IT Act contains for regulating online intermediaries. There are due diligence provisions identified, which appear similar to those in the IT Act, and probably has been included so that the MIB can create rules for social media and online advertising intermediaries, which the IT Act also enables the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to do.

Another anomaly, apart from the due diligence provisions, is the presence of provisions related to piracy in the draft Broadcast Bill. One would expect this to be otherwise covered under the Copyright Act.

What happens to the IT Rules?

The draft Bill validates the IT Rules by retroactively considering them as issued under this Act from the date they were made. This is important because the IT Rules, particularly those regulating online news, have faced legal challenges citing lack of legal backing. Thus, the draft Broadcast Bill serves to reinforce the IT Rules.

The draft Bill allows the government to “exempt a distinct class of players or a group for avoiding genuine hardship”, which suggests that some stakeholders might be exempted from the purview of the Bill, on the benevolence of the government.

This report is republished with permission from MediaNama, a publication chronicling the evolution of technology policy in India. It has been lightly edited for style and clarity.

Explained: Where are the women in Indian newsrooms?

NL Team — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 10:01:00 GMT

What ails the media when it comes to gender representation?

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Latest government data shows that the labour force participation rate of women in India fell from 43 percent in 2005 to 25 percent in 2021. According to the World Bank, the number of working women in India fell from 26 percent in 2010 to 19 percent in 2020.

Unsurprisingly, this trend continues in India's newsrooms. Eighty-seven percent of editors and proprietors at India's top English and Hindi newspapers are men, and this is just one of the findings of a report produced by Newslaundry and UN Women.

So, what ails India's newsrooms when it comes to gender representation? Watch.

Newsroom gender gap: Men get over 80% of TV panel slots, 75% of bylines87 percent of editors and proprietors at India’s top newspapers are men

Explained: Why Modi's friends in the Gulf matter

NL Team — Sat, 11 Jun 2022 11:30:00 GMT

And why the BJP was quick to act when Nupur Sharma's comments escalated to an international row.

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The BJP found itself in hot water this week after its national spokesperson and the media head of its Delhi unit made certain comments against the Prophet. While there was pushback within India, the BJP only took notice when the comments received backlash from Gulf countries, spurring the party to suspend Nupur Sharma, expel Naveen Jindal, and call them "fringe elements".

But why are these countries so important to India, and what has PM Modi done for his friends in the Gulf? We'll tell you.

Watch.

Emerging star to ‘fringe element’: The steep rise and sudden fall of Nupur Sharma‘Intellectual debate’: How papers and TV covered diplomatic fallout of BJP leaders’ Prophet remarks

Explained: What India can learn from the Sri Lanka crisis

NL Team — Mon, 23 May 2022 12:35:14 GMT

What led to the economic collapse?

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Our southern neighbour, Sri Lanka, is undergoing an economic and social crisis. This took root years ago and the responsibility lies with the country’s government. But what led to this collapse? And what can India learn from it?

Watch.

Explained: What is J&K delimitation and will it really benefit the BJP?

NL Team — Thu, 12 May 2022 14:11:09 GMT

And what does the J&K Delimitation Commission report say?

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After four long years of being under central government control, Jammu and Kashmir is a step closer to holding its own assembly elections. Its political map is being redrawn, and the J&K Delimitation Commission has submitted its final report.

So, what does the report say? Will the BJP get an advantage?

Watch.

Explained: 25 free things the Modi govt is giving you

NL Team — Thu, 14 Apr 2022 08:02:37 GMT

And what are they about?

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The union budget lists out the government’s expenses for the coming year, including those aimed at welfare measures for the public. This time, we found 25 welfare items in the list, but what are they about?

Watch.

Cash transfer schemes in India: Bandwagon politics or smart economics?

Operation Vishwaguru: How NEP 2020 aims to make India a ‘global study destination’

Meghnad S — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 12:28:56 GMT

By redefining what a university is, to begin with.

In case you hadn’t noticed, India is an aspirational country full of aspirational people. In our hearts we know that we are not good enough, that we can’t beat those liberal western powers – which we love to hate – so a few among us go to live in that shiny part of the world. Our government has finally figured out that one big reason why this happens is our horrible higher education system.

Not only have they figured it out, our clever government now wants to pull a reverse Uno card on the whole thing. They want to make India a “global study destination” with the goal of “internationalisation at home”. And the National Education Policy 2020, which was released recently, offers a host of new solutions to achieve this.

How good are these proposed solutions, though? Well, if you read the policy document, you will see that the government is trying to take steps in the right direction. There are multiple changes coming our way in the near future when it comes to higher education and we better be ready for them.

The ultimate goal of our beloved country after all is to become a vishwaguru, aka teacher of the world.

via GIPHY

Multidisciplinary goodness

One key feature of this new policy is the changes in the structure of how higher education is offered to students. Till now, students going for higher education were pretty much divided into the buckets of science, commerce, humanities, medicine and law, with each of the buckets containing their set subjects with no overlap.

The new approach is to “end the fragmentation of higher education” by transforming higher education institutions, or HEIs, into large multidisciplinary universities, colleges, and HEI clusters or knowledge hubs, each of which will aim to have 3,000 or more students. Basically, these institutions will offer a range of courses across disciplines – and do away this bucket business completely.

You would think this new approach is being taken because the Ivy League and other in-demand universities have such a model, and we want India to join the club. But you would be wrong because, according to the NEP, we have already done all this before it was cool.

“The ancient Indian universities Takshashila, Nalanda, Vallabhi, and Vikramshila, which had thousands of students from India and the world studying in vibrant multidisciplinary environments, amply demonstrated the type of great success that large multidisciplinary research and teaching universities could bring. India urgently needs to bring back this great Indian tradition to create well-rounded and innovative individuals, and which is already transforming other countries educationally and economically.”

We, true hipster boys.

Here’s how it’s going to work. To begin with, the government aims to redefine what a university is. The NEP says a university will mean a multidisciplinary institution that offers undergraduate and graduate programmes. This new definition of university will allow for a spectrum of institutions with different focus areas in the country – instead of on the basis of streams, the distinction will mainly be between teaching and research institutions on one hand and autonomous degree-granting universities on the other.

All autonomous degree-granting institutions will be encouraged to become teaching or research institutions after going through an accreditation process. The aim is to turn all HEIs into multidisciplinary institutions by 2030 and increase student enrolment to desired levels. The policy states that the gross enrolment ratio in higher education should go up from 26.3 percent, as of 2018, to 50 percent by 2035.

What is more, the policy document states that all HEIs will be regulated by a common body known as the Higher Education Council of India, which will replace both the UGC and the AICTE. Medical and legal education will remain outside of its ambit, though. This will definitely centralise higher education further and make it inefficient. But then, if colleges are granted autonomy in deciding their course material and certification process, the HECI will only function as an overarching regulatory body.

In the new system, undergraduate degrees will be of three or four years, with multiple exit options during this period. Each course will have appropriate certifications for every student who exits midway. This means that while the degree will be given only on the completion of the entire duration of the course, those who drop out midway will still have a certificate to show for their effort rather than nothing as is the case now.

When it comes to teachers, the NEP says they will have the freedom to design their own curricular within the “approved framework”. Multidisciplinary universities will need multi-talented teachers, eh?

There is also a plan to put in place a regulatory system to ensure only sound, multidisciplinary teacher education programmes are in place by 2030.

“The Regulatory System shall be empowered to take stringent action against substandard and dysfunctional teacher education institutions that do not meet basic educational criteria, after giving one year for the remedy of the breaches. By 2030, only educationally sound, multidisciplinary, and integrated teacher education programmes shall be in force.”

Don’t know about you, but whenever I hear the words “regulatory system”, I imagine corrupt babus lazily playing with a stamp while a person sits in front of them whispering, “Tell me what you want. I’ll give you anything! Please clear this!”

Another interesting idea in the NEP is encouraging HEIs to help students do internships with local industries, businesses, artists, craftsmen, although how exactly this will be done is still up in the air. We will find out when the policy is implemented, pretty much.

Now, you might think, “Hey, all of this sounds pretty good to me. Modern, forward-looking, focused on making our citizens better quality cogs in the great economic machine. Sounds about right!”

Yes, it does sound right. But then the jargon enters the building. Particularly, stuff like this:

“The development of humanistic, ethical, Constitutional, and universal human values of truth (satya), righteous conduct (dharma), peace (shanti), love (prem), nonviolence (ahimsa), scientific temper, citizenship values, and also life-skills; lessons in seva/service and participation in community service programmes will be considered an integral part of a holistic education.”

via GIPHY

I am yet to figure out exactly how these “values” might be fed to students so that they engage in holistic education. It’s great that these words are being bandied about, but just one look around you will surely leave you wondering if they have been thrown in just for effect.

Even when it comes to teachers, the policy documents contains stuff like this:

“Teachers must be grounded in Indian values, languages, knowledge, ethos, and traditions including tribal traditions, while also being well-versed in the latest advances in education and pedagogy.”

So, the overall idea is to be modern while sticking to old ways and traditions? It’s all very confusing. On the one hand, the NEP talks about turning our institutions into world class universities that would attract a diverse bunch of students from all over the world and have amazing multi-talented teachers. On the other, there are these throwaway lines which are basically #sanskaar.

Stick to one. You either want to go with the globalisation push or you want to isolate your country and stick to local “traditions and values”. You simply can’t have both, especially when it comes to education. What this attitude will likely lead to is a lot of conflict around universities.

Already, there’s much hatred being thrown at institutions such as the Jawaharlal Nehru University, which is known for its global and multidisciplinary approach and not adhering to Indian “values and traditions”. A BJP leader even went to the university some years ago to count condoms. If you look at the attitude of the present government towards universities and the utter contempt being shown towards the students, then a policy which uses soothing jargon and dreams about attracting international students seems extremely out of place.

The NEP sets ambitious goals of increasing higher education enrolment, making universities multidisciplinary and research oriented. But these are all lofty ideas that would require able, open-minded administrators to execute. And recent experience shows that the incumbent administration is anything but open.

Anna Priyadarshini helped research this report.

This is the third part of our series on National Education Policy 2020. Read the first and second parts.

Beyond jargon and keywords, what is the NEP 2020 and why do we need it? Gotta catch 'em young: What NEP 2020 envisions for school education

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Gotta catch 'em young: What NEP 2020 envisions for school education

Meghnad S — Wed, 12 Aug 2020 11:21:23 GMT

The policy aims to restructure the school education system by extending it to children under six.

For the Indian state, kids are like Pokemon. Its education policy used to be “gotta catch ‘em all”. Now, as laid out in the National Education Policy 2020, the goal is “gotta catch ‘em young”. Because, as I explained in the first part of this series on the NEP, human beings are considered a resource that must be exploited for the development of the society.

But the profound truth of the matter can only be expressed thus:

In this second part of the series, we delve into the formative years of a citizen’s education, before they opt for higher education to get…I mean, do higher things.

The biggest change this NEP is bringing about is in the structure of schooling: it replaces the 10+2 structure with a 5+3+3+4 structure. It will be easier to explain with a graph that the policymakers have helpfully provided.

As is amply evident here, the government is seeking to expand the scope of school education to kids aged 3 to 6 as opposed to starting school at 6 years. Angandwadi, preschools and Balvatika will form the “foundational” part of the curricular structure, followed by preparatory (for ages 6-8), middle school (for ages 11-14), and finally secondary schooling (for ages 14-18).

But why did they change the academic structure?

Good question.

First, about the inclusion of younger kids in this structure. The policy talks about “Early Childhood Care and Education”, or ECCE, and a National Curricular and Pedagogical Framework for Early Childhood Care and Education which will be developed by the NCERT for kids under 6.

The idea is to create a framework that will serve as a guide to both parents and early childhood care and education institutions since 85 percent of a child’s cumulative brain development occurs prior to the age of 6. To add to the rationale behind “gotta catch ‘em young”, the committee led by K Kasturirangan which drafted the NEP says this:

“In terms of the growth of the national economy, it has been estimated that the development of a strong ECCE programme is among the very best investments that India could make, with an expected return of Rs 10 or more for every Rs 1 invested.”

The idea is to improve cognitive development and motor skills in children early in life and make them “school ready”. “In particular,” says the NEP document, “the numerous rich local traditions of India developed over millennia in ECCE involving art, stories, poetry, games, songs, and more, will also be suitably incorporated.”

Essentially…

Snark aside, one has to understand that this idea is not going to be easy to implement.

India has 16.45 crore children in the 0-6 age group, which is 13.59 percent of the total population. If the government’s intention is to include these kids in the education system, it is going to cost a lot of money. Plus, there is the immense challenge of finding preschool teachers who are trained to handle such young children, so a training module will need to be designed especially for the “foundational” part of the new schooling structure.

Further, the NEP presents a new approach that will involve “reduction of curriculum content in each subject to its core essentials, to make space for critical thinking and more holistic, inquiry-based, discovery-based, discussion-based, and analysis based learning”.

Back to amazing expressive adjectives and jargon.

“Classroom sessions will contain more fun, creative, collaborative, and exploratory activities for students for deeper and more experiential learning,” the NEP says. This sounds very nice but, again, every change in approach would require training and retraining teachers on a massive scale in order to do all of this fun holistic collaborative business.

Which brings us to teachers.

What does the policy say about teachers?

For the teachers, the NEP says the first priority is to fill teacher vacancies at the earliest, in a time-bound manner – especially in disadvantaged areas and areas with large pupil-to-teacher ratios or high rates of illiteracy.

The thing is, since education is on the concurrent list of the constitution, the actual task of recruitment is under the purview of state and union territory governments. All the central government can do is issue advisories to recruit faster and efficiently. As of November 2019, the data shows states have been doing a terrible job of it. Out of total sanctioned vacancies of 9,14,771 teachers across India, 2,13,608 are vacant – which means 23 percent of all sanctioned vacancies in government schools have not been filled.

So yeah, almost a fourth of classrooms in our country look like this.

via GIPHY

On top of it, the NEP says “special attention will be given to employing local teachers or those with familiarity with local languages”. More on the languages in a bit, but overall states will have to be proactive on multiple levels when it comes to recruiting and training teachers.

The policy talks about maintaining a pupil-teacher ratio of under 30:1 and, in case of socio-economically disadvantaged students, the aim is to get it down to 25:1. One interesting thing mentioned in the NEP is that “teachers could be recruited to a school or school complex and the sharing of teachers across schools could be considered in accordance with the grouping-of-schools adopted by State/UT governments”. Which makes you think: this is such a no-brainer solution to temporarily resolving the vacancy problem, why didn’t the government come up with this before?

It will be interesting to see how this teacher-sharing system works out on the ground and whether state governments will put in the effort to make it efficient.

What does the policy say about instruction language?

Ah, yes, the forever prickly issue of #imposition. There were fears that this NEP would become one big excuse for the current government to impose Hindi on hapless kids across the country, turning it into a “link language”. Are these fears justified?

Simple answer: Nope.

via GIPHY

The policy, in reality, respects the diversity of India and doesn’t mention Hindi as a primary or a link language. Instead, the NEP says:

Wherever possible, the medium of instruction until at least Grade 5, but preferably till Grade 8 and beyond, will be the home language/mother tongue/local language/regional language.

Both public and private schools will follow this. The central government has stated that high-quality textbooks will be made available in home languages/mother tongue and that efforts will be made to ensure that any gaps between spoken language and the medium of teaching are bridged. In case textbooks are not available in mother tongue, then the NEP leaves it to the teacher to instruct the child in the mother tongue wherever possible.

It says that every student will “participate in a fun project/activity” where “students will learn about the remarkable unity of most of the major Indian languages”. So far so good, I say. Schools will also “widely” offer courses on indigenous languages (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Pali, Persian, and Prakrit) and foreign languages (Korean, Japanese, Thai, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian). There is no mention of Mandarin though…of course.

All in all, the policy steers clear of any language-related controversy. Clearly, they don’t want to get into a political fight over language of instruction in schools. But here, it bears repeating, this policy is just laying out a general vision and the actual laws and regulations will follow.

There are a few more things that we must keep an eye on, especially when it comes to regulations and lawmaking. There is a clear emphasis in the policy on “traditional knowledge”.

Keep an eye on the narratives

On the subject of being “traditional”, NEP says:

Indian Knowledge Systems, including tribal knowledge and indigenous and traditional ways of learning, will be covered. Specific courses in tribal ethno-medicinal practices, forest management, traditional (organic) crop cultivation, natural farming, etc. will also be made available.

Traditional Indian values and all basic human and Constitutional values (such as seva, ahimsa, swachchhata, satya, nishkam karma, shanti, sacrifice, tolerance, diversity, pluralism, righteous conduct, gender sensitivity, respect for elders, respect for all people and their inherent capabilities regardless of background, respect for environment, helpfulness, courtesy, patience, forgiveness, empathy, compassion, patriotism, democratic outlook, integrity, responsibility, justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity) will be developed in all students.

Students will be taught at a young age the importance of “doing what's right”, and will be given a logical framework for making ethical decisions.

So much #sanskaar in one go. Is it just me or does that last part sound a wee bit tricky. Let’s get ethical?

And then, there’s that kicker of a sentence that just exists. So, you might as well know about it.

All curriculum and pedagogy, from the foundational stage onwards, will be redesigned to be strongly rooted in the Indian and local context.

Woof. I can hear Pushpak Vimanas and Flying Homeopathic Ambulances coming towards us from a distance. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but it’s important to flag that the NEP specifically states that the course material will be redesigned to make it more “Indian”.

Perhaps, we will only know what that means once they start the redesigning process and come up with the new material.

In the next part, we shall delve into the higher forms of education.

Until then...

via GIPHY

Anna Priyadarshini helped research this report.

This is the second part of our series on National Education Policy 2020. Read the first part.

***

Beyond jargon and keywords, what is the NEP 2020 and why do we need it? What the draft National Education Policy 2019 leaves out

Beyond jargon and keywords, what is the NEP 2020 and why do we need it?

Meghnad S — Mon, 10 Aug 2020 09:18:07 GMT

Because ‘humans’ are a ‘resource’ which must be ‘developed’ and put to use.

(Anubhooti Gupta )

This National Education Policy envisions an education system rooted in Indian ethos that contributes directly to transforming India, that is Bharat, sustainably into an equitable and vibrant knowledge society, by providing high-quality education to all, and thereby making India a global knowledge superpower.

This is the first line under the title “The Vision of this Policy” in the new National Education Policy which was cleared by the Cabinet last week.

I know, it’s a lot to take in and it largely sounds like bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo.

Indian ethos, transformation, Bharat, sustainability, knowledge society, global, superpower — such glorious keywords, much wow.

But bureaucratic feel-good jargon side, let’s ask some very basic questions about the NEP. Why do we need it? What does it really do? How will it affect us? How will it affect our kids and those who want to go for higher education? Does it deal with our modern society in a modern way that will make us all feel very modern?

A lot has already been written about the policy, mostly an elaboration of the highlights listed by the Press Information Bureau. But the fact of the matter is that this one document will have a profound impact on our country for years to come. We need to look at it section by section, and really examine what it’s saying.

And that’s precisely what we’re going to do in this series on the NEP. Welcome to part one! We’ll take our own sweet time with it and, of course, GIFs are in!

via GIPHY

Why do we need a National Education Policy?

This question might sound stupid, but it really isn’t.

That’s because this document is not a law. And this is something which everyone needs to understand. The NEP is laying down a vision of whether it intends to direct our education system in the next few decades and why it intends to do that. But the actual implementation will be done by making changes in existing laws, bringing in new laws, and also making changes in regulations both by central and state governments.

So when you read this document, understand that the government is basically doing this:

Watch on YouTube

For my non-Hindi peeps, a translation:

“Sapno se bhare naina, na neend hai na chaina.” Eyes are full of dreams, they are restless and there is no sleep.

Dreaming is the first step towards achieving your lofty goals, after all.

The new policy will replace another 34-year-old dream, aka the National Policy on Education that was put out in 1986. The new policy is being projected as the first education-related dream document of 21st-century India. Which is true, but it won’t solve all the problems currently plaguing our education system, so take all of it with a cartload of salt.

The “vision” of the policy, which this piece began with, is essentially what the NEP is about. In simple terms, devoid of jargon, it’s about making Indians smarter by giving them better quality education so that they become nicely oiled cogs in the machine called India (aka Bharat), and continue towards making the country a superpower so that other countries are so, so jealous of our awesomeness.

That’s the dream.

For over a century, education has primarily been seen as a way to improve the quality of humans in a society and make them more productive so that a country’s economy expands. Education is meant to make humans capable enough to fit in a job, or start something of their own, do their best, and get paid for it. That would, in turn, give them money to spend. They’d buy stuff and grow the economy some more.

It’s a beautiful cycle with that critical element of “education” embedded within it.

The ministry in charge of this all-important task is called the “human resource development ministry” for a reason. Because “humans” are a “resource” that must be “developed” — and put to use. It’s a super no-nonsense name with a clear purpose in mind. But the Modi government has changed that and has now decided to call it the “Ministry of Education”.

via GIPHY

So, with a change in name, will there be a change in attitude as well?

To answer that question, let me throw you another jargon-y line.

Education Policy lays particular emphasis on the development of the creative potential of each individual. It is based on the principle that education must develop not only cognitive capacities — both the ‘foundational capacities’ of literacy and numeracy and ‘higher-order’ cognitive capacities, such as critical thinking and problem solving — but also social, ethical, and emotional capacities and dispositions.

The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2019, released by NGO Pratham this year, points out that only 16 percent of children in Class 1 in 26 surveyed rural districts can read text at the prescribed level. Almost 40 percent cannot even recognise letters. Only 41 percent of these children could recognise two-digit numbers.

A table from Pratham’s 2018 report on children in government schools in Class 5 who can read Class 2-level text, and the change in it over time, reveals a scary picture.

In 2018, only 44 percent of Class 5 students could read Class 2-level text. This essentially points to how our education system has failed in equipping kids with even the most basic “foundational capacities of literacy” at an early age.

It’s safe to say that our entire education system until now was so focused on getting kids into school and keeping them there that it largely ignored what these kids do inside the school. According to government data from 2017-18, India currently has a 19 percent dropout rate. This rate varies drastically across the country: from a 33 percent dropout rate in Assam to a 3.4 percent dropout rate in Jammu and Kashmir.

Apart from dropout rates and learning levels, our education system is plagued with multiple other problems like unavailability of teachers, quality of teachers, affordability of higher education, lack of on-the-job training in colleges, and more.

The NEP addresses a lot of these issues and offers some solutions. The policy’s overall objectives go something like this:

Giving individual attention to the capabilities of each student.
Achieving foundational literacy and numeracy by Class 3.
Children should be able to choose their own paths in life according to their talents and interests.
Eliminate harmful hierarchies among streams (arts, science and commerce), and eradicate silos between different areas of learning.
Emphasis on conceptual understanding rather than rote learning and encouragement of creative thinking.
Promote multilingualism in teaching and learning.
Encourage some life skillz along the way like communication, cooperation, teamwork, and resilience.
Ensure integrity, transparency, and resource efficiency of the educational system through audit and public disclosure.
Encourage pride in India and its rich, diverse, ancient and modern culture and knowledge systems and traditions.
Access to quality education must be considered a basic right of every child.

Now that we have this wishy-washy dreamy stuff out of the way, we shall be free to delve into the minutiae of the solutions offered by the policy. Starting with school education in the next part of this series, it’s going to be a wild wild ride.

So, strap yourself in.

via GIPHY

***

What the draft National Education Policy 2019 leaves out

Explained: Why AAP limiting Covid-19 treatment to Delhi’s ‘residents’ is a terrible idea

Meghnad S — Mon, 08 Jun 2020 14:58:29 GMT

Thankfully, the lieutenant governor has stopped the order from being implemented.

The Aam Aadmi Party government had a bizarre brainwave on June 7: they ordered Delhi’s hospitals not to treat Covid-19 patients who couldn’t prove that they resided in the capital city.

"Over 90% people want Delhi hospitals to treat patients from national capital during #coronavirus pandemic": Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. pic.twitter.com/l5d4yAD0Qo
— NDTV (@ndtv) June 7, 2020

According to the order, the hospitals would only treat Covid-19 patients who were bonafide residents of the National Capital Territory of Delhi.

How does one prove that they reside in Delhi before getting admitted to a hospital? By showing one of these documents:

Thankfully, before the bizarre order could do any damage, lieutenant governor Anil Baijal intervened and stopped its implementation.

Delhi LG & Chairman DDMA Anil Baijal directs authorities to ensure that medical treatment is not denied to any patient on the grounds of not being a resident of Delhi. pic.twitter.com/HI3rN3fNJE
— ANI (@ANI) June 8, 2020

But why would the Delhi government bring such an order in the first place? Was it a desperate move, Mr Arvind Kejriwal?As I write, the coronavirus situation in the capital city is this:

Delhi has the most confirmed coronavirus infections and deaths in the country after Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.

The June 7 directive came soon after the AAP government had changed the testing criteria. An order issued on June 2 stated that “no coronavirus test will be conducted after death” and only symptomatic contacts of other patients would be tested. Currently, Delhi tests the most number of people per million for coronavirus, 11,285 compared to the national average of 3,078.

In this context, the twin orders on testing and treatment came as a double whammy for the people living in the capital.

Delhi is a city of migrants. According to the 2011 census, it has the highest migrant population after Maharashtra. As much as 40 percent of the city’s population – nearly 63 lakh people – is made up of migrants and a large number of them doesn’t have proof of residence.

So, what the AAP government was essentially saying was that it would no longer work for all these people.

The question that comes to mind is: what if a person who doesn’t have a proof of residence gets the virus in Delhi?

The Delhi government specified that the order was restricted to both public and private hospitals within its territory. The state health ministry website shows there are 37 government hospitals in Delhi and 67 registered private hospitals. That’s 104 hospitals which couldn’t treat Covid-19 patients who were unable to furnish proof of residence. They would have to go to any of the 72 hospitals in the city which are run by the central government.

The June 7 order wasn’t thought through, to put it mildly. From the AAP government’s perspective, it is obvious the healthcare system in the city is quickly getting overburdened. Since May 28, Delhi has added more than 1,000 coronavirus cases daily, even as the recovery rate has hovered between 350 and 400 cases a day. This means an excess of 600 cases per day, potentially adding to the burden of the hospitals.

According to a study by the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy, Delhi has 39,455 beds across all its government and private hospitals. A piece in Livemint predicts the capital would run out of hospital beds in August if positive cases double every 12 days, as is happening currently. On May 27, Delhi crossed 15,000 infections. Today, 12 days later, it is about to cross the 30,000 mark. If the doubling rate were to be six days, the article adds, then we would run out of beds as soon as mid-June.

There’s really no way to tell if we might have already reached that point given the testing criteria are so stringent that even if someone has the virus, they might not be counted because they are asymptomatic or not severely ill.

This explains the arbitrary decisions being taken by a clearly panicked AAP government. Not just the numbers, anecdotal evidence about the healthcare system being overwhelmed is growing dire by the day. There are reports of patients struggling to find hospital beds and the niece of a former MP dying for want of timely treatment.

All this still doesn’t justify the Delhi government’s orders. It’s ridiculous to ask hospitals to only treat patients who live in that place. It amounts to cutting Delhi off from the rest of India.

What exactly are people who live in Delhi but don’t have proof of residence supposed to do? Go over the border to Gurgaon or Noida for treatment? Or find the nearest hospital which is run by the central government?

On top of this, the Kejriwal government is being accused of obfusticating information. Recently, for one, its Covid app showed beds were available in three private hospitals, but when NDTV checked, all the hospitals said they didn’t have any. This means even “bonafide residents” will face difficulties if they seek treatment.

Instead of rapidly scaling up testing capacity and healthcare infrastructure, gathering and providing reliable information, and finding realistic solutions to the unfolding crisis, the AAP government appears more interested in turning Dil Walon ki Dilli into Residence Proof Walon ki Dilli.

***

Journalists are on the frontlines of the coronavirus crisis in India, as elsewhere, reporting from the ground and asking hard questions that need answers. Support independent media by subscribing to Newslaundry today, and pay to keep news free.

The algebra of an epidemic: How India’s Covid crisis may unfold

Jammi N Rao — Tue, 02 Jun 2020 10:09:14 GMT

‘All models are wrong, some are useful.’

Let the title not put you off. It is really quite simple to understand how epidemics like the coronavirus outbreak are tracked, studied, understood, and modelled.

On March 5, India reported a cumulative total of 28 cases of coronavirus infection. On May 31, there were 1,82,142 cases. This growth in the number of people infected (quite a few have recovered and over 5,000 have died so far) is what the mathematics of epidemics tries to study and model.

Relative to India’s 1.3 billion population, these numbers are small compared to infections and deaths in less populous countries such as Italy, France, Britain, and Iran. Today, India is 7th globally in overall reported cases. But the important point is that the epidemic in India is still growing.

Growth metrics

How do we measure this growth? And can this measure of growth tell us what will happen in the near future? These are the questions I shall deal with.

Epidemics grow exponentially, not linearly. If you understand simple and compound interest, then you will get exponential growth. Exponential growth is when the number of new cases each day increases over time and is proportional to the total cases as of that date. In linear growth, the number added each day is the same and has no relationship to the cumulative total of cases.

Consider this chart. It is based on real data from the Indian government’s Covid-19 tracker.

I have deliberately chosen a start date of April 23 when there were already over 21,000 cases. The number of cases being reported each day has steadily grown. There are a few days when it seems to drop but the trend is steadily upward. And there is a relationship between the daily cases and the cumulative number of cases. So, it meets the two criteria for exponential growth.

Growth rate

The one single number that describes this exponential growth is the compound daily growth rate, or CDGR. It is analogous to the compound annual growth rate or CAGR in finance theory. Quite simply, the CAGR is the constant annual rate of return that would take an investment from its initial value to its final value if the profits were to be reinvested at the end of each year. The formula for CAGR is:

Applying this to the Covid-19 situation in India, we have the time not in years but in days and a beginning value of 21,700 on April 23, and a final value of 1,82,142 on May 31 – 38 days later. So, the CDGR becomes:

This need not be daunting. Plug the numbers into a standard calculator or into a spreadsheet and you will get the answer 0.0576 or, in percentage terms, 5.76 percent.

Of course, this assumes a constant daily rate of growth, that’s, it is an average over these 38 days. It may have been higher earlier on and lower more recently. It is equally simple to calculate the CDGR over the most recent five-day period. Over the five-day period between May 26 (1,45,380 cases) and May 31 (1,82,142 cases), the CDGR works out at 4.61 percent.

Doubling time

The doubling time is the time it would take for a quantity to increase to twice its starting value assuming that it grows at a constant compound growth rate.

It is analogous to the time it would take for your investment to double in value for a given constant annual rate of return, only here we measure it in days.

The formula is:

Where 'r' is the steady rate of growth expressed as a percentage.

This requires a bit more calculator work but is not at all difficult. If your investment grows at a steady 10 percent per year, then you would double it in a little over seven years.

If you don’t want to mess around with logarithms and calculators, there is a simple rule of thumb which works with remarkable accuracy:

Where 'r' is the growth rate as a percentage.

It works!

Let’s apply this to the reported Covid-19 data from India.

If the latest growth rate is 4.61 percent per day, then I work out the doubling time to be 15.38 days by the complicated formula and 15.2 days by the simpler rule of 70. Not a bad approximation!

Predicting the future

“Modelling” is a big word that statisticians and consultants like to throw around but what we have just done is enough to do a simple, but not in the least inaccurate, bit of modelling.

If the latest growth rate is 4.61 percent and the doubling time is approximately 15 days, and the number of cases at the end of May is about 1,80,000, then we can predict that, unless the characteristics of the epidemic change, we will have:

3,60, 000 cases by 15 June.
7,20,000 cases by 30 June.
1.44 million cases by mid-July.

Modelling is simple in concept. A model is a simplified statistical representation of a real world situation used to understand it better and make predictions about how the situation will develop in the future.

The key ingredients are data and assumptions. The data that we used are the daily reported number of newly diagnosed cases. This is by no means complete; there may well be many more cases (and deaths) that we remain unaware of. But it is the best we have.

The key assumptions we made are that the compound daily growth rate of the last few days will continue to prevail in the near future. The growth rate may well decline, or it may shoot up, especially since the lockdown is about to be lifted substantially. Time will tell.

Modelling is not a once-and-for-all exercise. As more data become available and the assumptions are modified the model will change as will our predictions. It’s an iterative process that is at best imprecise, at worst dangerously misleading.

As the famous aphorism, commonly attributed to the British statistician George Box, has it, “All models are wrong, some are useful.”

Jammi N Rao is an independent public health physician. He has worked with the ICMR, Hyderabad, and the UK National Health Service in England. He also served as a senior civil servant in the UK health department. He has particular skills in data science, medical research ethics, evaluation, and critical appraisal of clinical evidence.

Stop Press: Platforms and content moderation. Who draws and defines the line?

Chitranshu Tewari — Sun, 31 May 2020 07:48:11 GMT

A weekly newsletter to help you track the news media ecosystem and make sense of it.

Welcome to Stop Press by Chitranshu Tewari, a weekly newsletter to break down the trends, innovations and news on the media ecosystem. To get it in your inbox every Saturday, sign up here.

Lead 🕶️

“I’m asking you to intervene in this instance because the President of the United States has taken something that does not belong to him — the memory of my dead wife — and perverted it for perceived political gain...Please delete those tweets.”

On May 25, Kara Swisher of the New York Times reported about this moving letter written by Timothy Klausutis to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Who is Klausutis and how does US President Donald Trump’s tweet affect him?

In 2001, Timothy Klausutis’ wife Lori worked with former US Representative and now MSNBC host Joe Scarborough when she was found dead in her office.

Over the last few days, Trump has fuelled conspiracy theories and insinuated in tweets that Scarborough was responsible and involved in Lori Klaustis’ death. She died of a heart attack.

Twitter, while saying sorry for the pain caused by the tweets, refused to delete them.

But then this happened:

On May 26, Twitter added a fact-check label to Trump’s tweets

And then, this:

On May 29, Twitter flagged and hid Trump’s tweets that "glorified violence". A move that led Trump to sign an executive order that limits the legal protection platforms like Facebook, Google and Twitter have over its content.

Trump has also tweeted that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act should be revoked. What is Section 230, you ask? TL;DR: A 1996 law that protects platforms for being liable for the content posted by their users. It is central to the platform, not publisher narrative. Here’s a Vox explainer and a podcast with experts in case you are interested in a deep dive.

What and why of content moderation

The intense criticism of how platforms handle misinformation, hate and fake news — often to the point of their algorithms abetting it — has pushed them to have comprehensive content moderation guidelines.

YouTube has community guidelines. Twitter’s got rules and policies, while Facebook puts it as community standards. It also has a new oversight board but that’s a different beast to break down altogether. These so-called guidelines are essentially a rulebook that platform content moderators (humans and AI) follow to block, flag, hide, demote, and remove any content. From fake news (via third-party fact-checkers) and misinformation to child pornography, the ambit for moderation pretty much covers everything.

Enters the newsworthiness exception

Both Facebook and Twitter have a "newsworthiness" exception to their moderation guidelines. In order to serve public interest, content that would otherwise be taken down will continue to stay if it’s from a politician or a world leader.

Flagging and hiding Trump’s tweets is a move away from this exception. In fact, it is a first on flagging a warning label to any public figure’s tweet. It also opens a Pandora's box of whether a platform should be liable for content that goes on it. But before that:

Didn’t Trump put the same content on Facebook? How did Facebook respond?

For starters, Facebook has not removed Trump’s Facebook and Instagram posts with the same content that have more than a million likes.

In addition to the newsworthiness exception, Facebook had made the decision to exempt politicians and political speech from its third-party fact-checking process. Why? It says it doesn’t want to “referee political debates”. It doesn’t fact-check political advertisements, even the ones with false information as per new rules. Twitter, on the other hand, has announced a ban on all political advertising, with a policy being underworked currently.

“I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of the truth of everything that people say online.” Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook, appeared on Fox News before any other news outlet to defend Facebook’s decision to not fact check Trump’s tweets. The choice of the channel makes it clear who the message was for.

Meanwhile, some Facebook employees clearly don’t agree with Zuckerberg

Here's what employees are saying inside Facebook today about the company's decision not to take action against Trump's threatening posts: "History will not judge us kindly."https://t.co/vXVwULz8T3 pic.twitter.com/xU9SyrS448
— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) May 29, 2020

Who defines and draws the line?

"Arbiter of truth" is a phrase that both Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, used in their defence this week. Both Facebook and Twitter believe that even though millions of pieces of content are published every day on their platforms — they are, by definition and nature, a tech platform and not publishers.

To misquote Spider Man’s Uncle Ben: With the publisher tag comes liability and accountability for content.

The responsibility for the content on their sites and app was, and remains, a Pandora’s box. It not only ties to how their algorithms are coded but also how they make money. That is the reason why platforms want to stay as far as they can from being seen as policing any content. The phrase "not an arbiter of truth" comes in handy here. Facebook’s decision to have third-party fact-checkers and now an independent oversight board fits into that narrative.

There’s little doubt that platforms need to do a lot more and take more accountability. Governments too are taking notice. France has just passed a law that forces social media companies to delete certain content within an hour.

Plus, this extends to things beyond moderation. Algorithms need to be tweaked to disincentivise and stop the spread of misinformation, as pointed out by Poynter.

And, transparency. We need a whole lot of transparency in the guidelines, moderations and who defines them. Dorsey at least seems to agree on that bit:

Agree this should be open source and thus verifiable by everyone https://t.co/T7XSN8anTm
— jack (@jack) May 29, 2020

Homebrewed

The opacity of Indian media layoffs

“It is ironic that the print media, which otherwise demands transparency and accountability from the rest of the observable universe, would act so opaque and tight-lipped about its own internal rumblings,” Ayush Tiwari’s report on Hindustan Times laying off of more than 100 people.

Who owns Hindustan Times?

From our ongoing series that looks into media ownership patterns.

📺 🔒 NL Interview: Sudhir Krishnaswamy

Abhinandan Sekhri spoke to Krishnaswamy, the only Indian on the newly constituted Facebook oversight board.

📺 🔒 NL Interview: Mohammad Ali

Ali wrote the longform piece in Wired on the role of technology in facilitating the rise of a “Hindu vigilante” in Uttar Pradesh.

Platforms

How nine US local TV stations pushed the same Amazon PR as news

“While most TV news professionals have scoffed at the idea of running Amazon-provided content as news, at least nine stations across the country ran some form of the package on their news broadcasts.”

⭐ TikTok: The origin story

The definite guide on understanding the rise and unmatched success of TikTok and its parent company, Byte Dance

YouTube is deleting comments with two phrases that insult China’s Communist Party

YouTube said it’s an error and it’s working on the issue. Error, huh? 🤔

Chug it out

⭐ Guardian Long Read: How the free press worldwide is under threat

“From Mexico to Malta, attacks on journalists and publishers have proved deadly to individuals and chilling to broader freedoms. And now Covid-19 is being used as an excuse to silence more voices.”

Catch up

⭐Coming Soon: UPI-based recurring payments 💯

This will go a long way in helping reader-supported publishers power recurring subscriptions via UPI apps like Google Pay. To give you an idea of how big this could be: India has 900 million debit cardholders, against 40 million credit cardholders.

News Corp announces end of more than 100 Australian print newspapers in huge shift to digital

The project behind the NYT frontpage with names of those who their lives lost to the pandemic

“Reading and typesetting these 1,000 names was brutal, but these are extraordinary stories that require commensurate design”: Tom Bodkin, NYT’s design director since 1987.

Bonus

A video from Ronit Roy is helping protesters in the USA in making baklava masks out of t-shirts. It’s got four million-plus views already!

If anyone is protesting today, here’s a way to make a balaclava mask with a T Shirt. Don’t forget your shades. pic.twitter.com/Xg67uTZN07
— THE ONE ABOVE ALL (@MRCRUZv3) May 30, 2020

***

This was the fourth edition of Stop Press. Navigating the intersection of big tech with media is a complex and messy subject. There’s barely any mention, forget analysis in India about big tech’s impact and role in media.

I want to use Stop Press to explain and contextualize questions at the heart of the big tech-media puzzle. Do let me know your thoughts and what you want to get covered more under Stop Press. I’m at chitranshu@newslaundry.com

If you liked what you read, do share and subscribe.

Explained: Locusts, plagues, and food security in India

Finshots — Fri, 29 May 2020 09:20:07 GMT

India is in for a locust invasion. What sort of impact can we expect?

(Finshots)

Locusts are grasshoppers. Albeit very specific kinds of grasshoppers. The ones making all the news right now are called desert locusts.

Usually, they like to stay alone — avoid other locusts and lead a solitary life. But on certain rare occasions, something extraordinary happens. They transform. But the conditions have to be perfect. The weather has to be just right. The soil — readily moist. When the eggs hatch, there ought to be an abundance of food — host plants. And they ought to be concentrated in small spaces so large groups of locust can mingle together. And within a few hours of living with the crowd, locusts, who would have preferred leading the solitary lifestyle start behaving differently. Instead of being repelled by other locusts, they’ll be attracted to the herd. Give it more time and their physical appearance starts undergoing a transformation too. They change colour — from dull green to striking yellow and black.

The bright colours offer them an advantage. Their predators begin thinking they might be toxic. So the population grows unabated. Even the offsprings are gregarious now — they love the crowd. There’s just one problem — food. As resources dwindle, they begin migrating in large swarms in search of new vegetation. The wind takes them far and wide. If they don’t find anything, they’ll turn into cannibals. They’ll start preying on each other. So there’s an added incentive to keep moving, to cover large distances and to follow the wind.

Meanwhile, there's a population explosion — courtesy of rapid breeding. A single female desert locust can lay 60–80 eggs thrice during her 90-day life cycle. And these locusts will lay waste to everything that’s on their path — crops, stems, leaves, pulses grains. They eat everything.

Experts believe this population boom originally unfolded in the remote deserts of Oman thanks to torrential rainfall that aided the growth of lush green vegetation — a perfect setting for desert locusts to breed and multiply. And since human intervention was delayed/limited, we couldn’t get their numbers down to controllable levels. So a crowd soon metamorphosized into a swarm. The swarm brought with it the plague.

And the plague now seems to be heading to India.

So, what’s the economic impact going to look like?

Well, for starters, you can look at East Africa. The Food and Agricultural Organization believes locusts have decimated close to 70,000 hectares of crops in Kenya and 30,000 hectares in Ethiopia. The coffee and tea crops that account for approximately 30 percent of Ethiopia’s exports have been ravaged by the Plague. This doesn’t even take into account food security. Considering locusts munch on a diet that’s carbohydrate-rich (think grains), these countries might have very few avenues to provide for their citizens. A large swarm can eat as much as about 35,000 people in one day. So you can perhaps assess the kind of damage we are talking about here.

How bad is this thing going to affect India?

Well, we don’t know. For now, about 42,000 hectares of crops have been affected, primarily in the state of Rajasthan. But the monsoons mark the beginning of a new planting season. And if the locusts grow in numbers, we could start seeing some issues.

Will this affect food security in India as well?

Unlikely. Because a couple of months ago, Mr Prasad, chairman of the Food Corporation of India stated unequivocally that India had enough grain stocks to feed its poor for at least a year-and-a-half owing to the record harvests we have had this year. Yes, there’s been some problems with the supply chain owing to the Covid situation. But our warehouses are well-stocked. We had 100 million tons of food grains by the end of April — far more than the annual requirement of 50- 60 million tons to support welfare programs.

But perhaps the biggest challenge is this: We’re currently witnessing an unprecedented migration. People are going back to the hinterlands. There will be more mouths to feed and if locusts start destroying farm produce, the after-effects will be particularly brutal, considering farm income will now have to support a larger aggregate population.

And we hope it doesn’t come to this.

This article was originally published on Finshots. You can check more of their content here.

‘Food today, no farmer tomorrow’: Scientist Devinder Sharma on why there can be no agriculture lockdown

How does Aarogya Setu work? Is it secure?

Manas Karambelkar — Fri, 08 May 2020 05:07:13 GMT

A debate is raging on whether India's official app for coronavirus contact tracing is a tool of mass surveillance.

In the last few weeks, much has been said, discussed and debated on whether the Indian government's Aarogya Setu app compromises the user's data or whether it is a tool of mass surveillance. The app was developed for coronavirus contact tracing.

Most recently, a French cybersecurity expert who goes by the name Elliot Anderson on Twitter, said he had found a "security issue" in the app that could put the data of its 90 million users at risk. The Indian government responded that there was "no data or security breach" and that "no personal information of any user has been proven to be at risk by this ethical hacker".

A home ministry order has made the app mandatory for public and private sector workers. And not having the app on your phone is now a punishable offence in Noida.

But if you are wondering how Aarogya Setu works and where your data goes, this infographic breaks it down. It's based on the app's privacy policy and this interview with Lalitesh Katragadda, who has worked on the app, and Raman Jit Singh Chima, founder of the Internet Freedom Foundation.

Editor's note: The author isn't a medical professional or a software development expert, and is not affiliated with the government. This infographic makes no claims about the safety or security of using Aarogya Setu.

Also listen: Let's Talk About: Privacy

Anatomy of an ‘investigation’: How India Today’s madrasa sting misled its viewers

Chitranshu Tewari — Wed, 15 Apr 2020 08:00:53 GMT

The madrasas weren’t ‘violating’ the lockdown. One of them was even lauded by another TV channel for ensuring social distancing.

On April 10, India Today TV aired a “special investigation” on Newstrack, a primetime show hosted by its news director, Rahul Kanwal.

Called “Madrasa Hotspot”, it “stung” caretakers of three madrasas in the National Capital Region – Madrasa Darul-ul-Uloom Usmania and Madrasa Islahul Mumineer in Madanpur Khadar, Delhi, and Madrasa Jamia Mohammadia Haldoni in Greater Noida.

An @IndiaToday reality check finds Madrasas in the capital violating national lockdown rules. Kids crammed into small rooms. No social distancing norms followed. Teacher boasts he’s hiding kids from the police. Another claims he’s paid off local police. Watch 8 pm @IndiaToday pic.twitter.com/MUHiOBv4Rn
— Rahul Kanwal (@rahulkanwal) April 10, 2020

The report showed that students were staying in the madrasas amid the nationwide lockdown. It also had at least one teacher accepting that he had bribed the police to keep them at bay.

India Today’s theory: the three caretakers deliberately kept students in their madrasas in cramped spaces, violating all lockdown guidelines, and hiding the students from the police. The channel claimed the caretakers had links with the Tablighi Jamaat – whose congregation in Delhi’s Nizamuddin last month has been blamed by the Indian media for causing a spurt in coronavirus cases – and, therefore, were risking the lives of the children.

Newslaundry spoke with the three men stung by Kanwal as well as Delhi police officials to ascertain the facts. Two of the men, Mohammad Jabir Qasmi of Madrasa Islahul Mumineer and Mufti Mohammad Shaique of Madrasa Jamia Mohammadia Haldoni, agreed to speak on record. But Abdul Hafeez of Madrasa Darul-ul-Uloom Usmania was wary of the media and worried for the students in his charge. So, he refused to comment.

Let’s break down the India Today “investigation”.

Why are children staying in these madrasas during the lockdown? Are they violating the lockdown guidelines?

One of the key questions that isn’t answered by Kanwal’s sting, and his monologue, is this: where are the children staying in these madrasas from?

Both Jabir and Shaique told Newslaundry that their students are from Bihar. It is an important detail that India Today left out: that these children couldn’t go back home once the lockdown was imposed.

“Students were supposed to go back home on April 11. Their tickets were booked. But they couldn’t go back because of the lockdown,” Jabir explained.

Shaique, who is himself from Bihar, offered the same explanation: “If there’s a school that is breaking for vacation on April 1 and all of a sudden there’s restriction on travel, how are kids supposed to go back home?”

Train tickets that Jabir had booked for the students to go back home. The date of journey is April 11 and the destination reads Bhagalpur, Bihar.

As early as March 21, the central human resource development ministry had advised educational institutes to let students who were still in hostels to continue staying on campus until the coronavirus outbreak was contained. Since madrasas are educational institutes, this advisory applies to them. Jabir and Shaique weren’t flouting lockdown guidelines, they were following them.

Newslaundry also spoke with Zafarul Islam Khan, chairman of the Delhi Minority Commission. Khan pointed out that most of the children in madrasas come from outside Delhi, from poor families, and their teachers are solely responsible for their wellbeing.

Were the madrasas ‘hiding’ the children? Are the caretakers linked to the Tablighi Jamaat or did they attend its Nizamuddin event? Are the children following social distancing norms?

Newslaundry spoke with Delhi police officials in the South East district, where two of the madrasas are located. The officials, who spoke anonymously because they aren’t permitted to speak with the media, said the news of two madrasas in Mandanpur Khadar “hiding” children was incorrect.

On April 2, the police had provided the sub divisional magistrate with details of the students staying in the two madrasas. Contrary to what was shown in the sting, the police said, Jabir and Shaique neither had any links with the Tablighi Jamaat nor had they visited its Nizamuddin headquarters.

What about the madrasa in Greater Noida?

It turns out that India TV featured the same madrasa and its caretaker in a report — not a sting — on April 10. The report described how the madrasa, with 24 students from Bihar, was setting an example in following social distancing norms.

Watch on YouTube

A doctor who had visited the madrasa told India TV none of the students had any symptoms of Covid-19.

So, the same madarsa and caretaker, Shaique, featured on India Today as violators of the lockdown guidelines, were shown as an example to follow on India TV.

Mufti Mohammad Shaique Qasmi from Madrasa Jamia Mohammadia Haldoni on India Today and India TV, which misspelt his name. A lockdown violator on one and an example to follow on the other.

“By Allah’s grace, we have enough space,” Shaique told Newslaundry, adding that the madrasa was spread over 500 guz, or around 4,456 square feet.

In the context of the Tablighi Jamaat event, India TV praised the madrasa’s preparations to handle the coronavirus outbreak, showing how its students wore masks, and used sanitiser and soap.

Similarly, at Madrasa Islahul Mumineer, Jabir said the campus has three floors. Students have been given separate beds to keep distance.

Newslaundry asked Jabir and Shaique if they had any links to the Tablighi Jamaat or if they had attended its event.

Shaique denied having any connection to the Tablighi Jamaat. Jabir said, “I used to go to Nizamuddin to buy toffees and handkerchiefs, but have no links with the Jamaat.”

India Today’s sting had Jabir saying that he had “visited the markaz” with his students, referring to the Tablighi Jamaat’s headquarters. Why did he say that? Jabir alleged: “They probably edited my audio.”

Did the story need a sting?

Sting operation as a way of breaking stories remains a contested idea, dividing news professionals about its efficacy and ethics. For those who support it, it’s a necessary evil in public interest, designed to expose those in power.

Every sting operation warrants crucial questions for the media outlet’s editor and reporter. One, is the story of such great public interest that it must be told through undercover reporting or it won’t come out otherwise? Is the subject of the story so powerful that the only way to expose them is through a sting?

The India Today reporter who went undercover for the story gave Jabir and Shaique the same story. Jabir said, “His name was Aamir. Dressed in a kurta like us, he came with someone I know on the pretext of helping out the kids during the lockdown.”

India Today’s “investigation” received backlash on Twitter, with many people pointing out that it was a blatant attempt to communalise a pandemic. Rahul Kanwal stuck to his guns.

So many sit-at-home ‘journalists’ and ‘pundits’ are busy suggesting stories we should be doing. Since you have such phenomenal expertise why don’t you make some real effort and do the exposes and reports yourself. Try turning punditry into tangible output for a change.
— Rahul Kanwal (@rahulkanwal) April 12, 2020

But the TV channel did leave out questions that were central to the premise it laid out for its viewer: the premise that ignorant maulvis were deliberately keepings students in madrasas, risking their lives and of those they might come in contact with. Not only that, its story was replete with incorrect information. It was a report that misled the viewer rather than inform them.

Just before the sting video rolled, Kanwal proclaimed, “This is the only investigative team across all mediums, not just television but also print and digital, that is out and about, getting you the inside stories of what's really going on.”

If only Kanwal’s team showed the same zeal to answer the most basic questions raised by the report and addressed the glaring gaps in it.

Newslaundry sent a questionnaire to Rahul Kanwal. The piece will be updated if he responds.

Media reports like these take time, resources and perseverance.

As the Covid-19 crisis deepens, our reporters are bringing you stories that help you stay informed. Click here to power our work and #PayToKeepNewsFree

The truth about Amit Malviya’s Shaheen Bagh exposé: An Alt News and Newslaundry investigation Why India Today’s JNU sting did more harm than good

Kashmiris use VPN to skirt internet curbs. But is VPN really secure?

Aditya Rajurkar — Thu, 05 Mar 2020 08:22:06 GMT

All VPN providers say they offer complete security and anonymity. That's not entirely accurate.

In preparation for dismantling Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy last August, the Indian government imposed a communications blackout in the erstwhile state, snapping phone and internet connectivity. Phone services were gradually restored over the following months but mobile internet wasn't turned back on until January 2020. When it was, it was severely restricted.

Initially, just over 300 websites “whitelisted” by the government were accessible, that too only on slower 2G internet. Most social media platforms and video streaming services were not on the whitelist.

On Wednesday, while curbs on the use of social media were finally lifted after seven full months, mobile internet continues to be restricted to 2G speed. The respite may be temporary though, given the authorities have said the decision to remove the restrictions would be reviewed on March 17.

Kashmiris might yet have to go back to using Virtual Private Networks, or VPNs. It's a risky endeavour: that Kashmiris were employing VPNs to skirt the internet restrictions had not gone down well with the authorities.

According to a report by Scroll, security forces initially "resorted to physical checks of smartphones" and subsequently the police filed an FIR "on the alleged misuse of social media through VPNs". There have been "at least five cases of arrest since February 17, all for social media and VPN use", the report states.

So, what’s VPN and how does it work? Here’s an explainer.

How do we connect to the internet?

When your computer or mobile phone or TV is connected to the internet, it’s assigned an Internet Protocol, or IP address. It’s the address from which requests are sent to the servers of websites you visit and to which the servers send the requested data, such as a webpage or a video or an image. It’s quite like your physical address except that everytime you connect to the internet, your IP address might change.

So, what can we glean from your IP address? It contains information about your internet service provider – say, Airtel, Vodafone, Jio – your city, postal code, and your approximate location based on latitude and longitude.

Where does VPN come in?

A Virtual Private Network is basically a series of servers that masks your real IP address by substituting it with a fake one. It sits between your computer and the website server that you are accessing, thus rerouting internet traffic. To ensure you are not identified from the data you send or receive, the VPN encrypts and decrypts the data packets passing through it. It’s like sending or receiving mail that can’t be opened by a third party.

Let’s assume you are in Kashmir and your IP address is 105.40.223.183. You need to access Google but the website is blocked in Kashmir. So, you install a VPN. The VPN will send a request to Google’s servers telling them your IP address is 22.189.183.130. That is in Kansas, US. Since Google isn’t banned in Kansas, its servers will send the requested data to the VPN, which in turn will send it to your computer. Google’s servers won’t know the request for data originated in Kashmir.

Are VPNs freely available?

A few companies provide their VPN services for free. For others, you have to pay.

There are two ways to use VPN and both might cost you.

One, you can pay a VPN company to use their services. They have network infrastructure across the world and you can choose which server to connect to. All your internet traffic will pass through that server.

Two, you can create a VPN on your own. This involves setting up a server, and working out server and network configurations. If any problems arise, you would need to fix them yourself.

Is technical expertise needed to use VPN?

Not if you use the services of a VPN provider. If you want to set up your own server then, obviously, you would require some technical knowledge. However, YouTube has plenty of tutorials about setting up a VPN and fixing problems that might arise. So, if you’re dedicated enough, you can set up a VPN on your own even if you do not have much technical expertise. In the context of Kashmir, a journalist who is somewhat tech savvy can set up a VPN and help fellow mediapersons connect to this network.

Can a VPN user be tracked?

All VPN providers say they offer complete security and anonymity. That's not entirely accurate. Internet service providers broadly know if you are using VPN.

VPN providers advertise using “military-grade encryption”. But all modern web browsers employ such encryption by default.

VPN providers say they don’t keep logs of a user’s activity. But they have to keep some activity logs, and even hand them over if law enforcement authorities seek them through lawful means such as court subpoenas.

Spy agencies, such as America’s NSA, are known to keep track of people who search for keywords related to VPN. So, if you search for such keywords, you might become a target of surveillance.

So, is there no way to stay completely anonymous?

Well, there is. Here’s a primer.

If you are using Windows OS, stop running Microsoft Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge browsers.

Uninstall Chrome and Mozilla browsers.
Install Tor on your computer or phone. Then use its inbuilt web browser for all your work.

This will safeguard your identity online without you having to pay for VPN subscriptions. Using Tor is somewhat different from using VPN servers. But if your Windows operating system itself is infected or compromised in some way, then even this isn’t a completely secure way of accessing the internet.

So, what can you do?

Install the OS which the whistleblower Edward Snowden used to escape NSA’s surveillance. It’s called the Tails OS, a privacy-focussed system built upon the Linux kernel and made specifically for use with the Tor network. All its incoming and outgoing connections are forced to go through the Tor network. All of the OS code is open source, so we know there are no security vulnerabilities in it. And it works entirely on the computer’s RAM; nothing is stored by the OS on the hard disk.

Here’s what you need to do to use Tails OS:

Buy a new pendrive with at least 8 GB storage space.
Download Tails OS on the pendrive.
Restart your computer.
In BIOS settings, change the boot sequence to boot first from your pendrive instead of your hard disk.
Your Tails OS will boot up now. It offers a minimal desktop environment and you can use the inbuilt web browsers as usual.
The overall experience of using the internet will be significantly slower but you can be assured that you are completely anonymous.
Once you are done with your work, shut down your machine and take out the pendrive. It will not leave any digital footprint on the machine.
You can carry your pendrive with you and securely use any machine without worrying about security and privacy.

No school, no Internet is the ‘new normal’ for students in KashmirPendrives & gumption: How journalists in Kashmir are dealing with communications blockade

Digital Policy series: Shashi Tharoor speaks about internet shutdowns, privacy and security

NL Team — Thu, 23 Jan 2020 08:29:45 GMT

‘We need to protect the individual citizen, who is the generator of data in this digital ecosystem.’

Watch on YouTube

In this fifth episode of our Digital Policy series in collaboration with The Dialogue, Kazim Rizvi speaks to Shashi Tharoor, Member of Parliament and chairman of the parliamentary committee on IT, about the need and design for a progressive legislative framework.

Talking about data protection, Tharoor points out, “We need to protect the individual citizen, who is the generator of data in this digital ecosystem.” On regulatory systems, he says, “Who should regulate? How to regulate? Should the government be doing the regulation?”

On India’s propensity for internet shutdowns, Tharoor says, “We are by far the record holder for internet shutdowns. You cannot, in the 21st century, allow shutting down the internet to be a kneejerk reflective reaction to any threat, the damage it does in the 21st century to the businesses, to economy...vastly outweigh the potential risk to the small number of people form a terror attack.”

He also speaks about the new intermediary guidelines, the balance between privacy and security, proactive monitoring, independent regulatory models, the idea of freedom of expression and privacy in a just society.

Watch!

Also watch: Digital Policy series: What’s intermediary liability and why you should care about it

Digital Policy series: How will intermediary liability guidelines affect privacy and business?

Digital Policy series: Five ways to ensure intermediary liability doesn’t hurt free speech, privacy

Digital Policy series: Who should be responsible for curbing hate speech and fake news?

Digital Policy series: Five ways to ensure intermediary liability doesn’t hurt free speech, privacy

NL Team — Fri, 10 Jan 2020 06:25:44 GMT

Can a balance be struck between free speech on the internet, the Indian government’s mandate, and the operations of social media platforms?

Watch on YouTube

By democratising knowledge and radically improving connectivity, the internet has enabled many positive developments over the past few decades. At the same time, it facilitates propaganda and fake news. This calls for content moderation on internet platforms.

The Indian government sought to fill this need by framing the Intermediary Guidelines Amendment Rules of 2018, which are set to be notified by January 15. The rules could fundamentally change how the internet works.

Many questions surround the need for intermediary liability. How, for one, do we assign legal responsibility for online content without infringing on free speech, or jeopardising privacy?

Here, we explain how a balance can be struck between a user’s free speech on the internet, the government’s mandate, and the operations of social media platforms.

Also watch: Digital Policy series: What’s intermediary liability and why you should care about it

Digital Policy series: How will intermediary liability guidelines affect privacy and business?

Digital Policy series: How will intermediary liability guidelines affect privacy and business?

NL Team — Tue, 31 Dec 2019 12:58:14 GMT

‘It’s important that internet platforms and companies do not become arbitrators of free speech.’

Watch on YouTube

In this second episode of our Digital Policy series in collaboration with The Dialogue, Abhinandan Sekhri speaks to Manuj Garg, co-founder of the healthcare website myUpchar, Kazim Rizvi, a public policy entrepreneur and the founding director The Dialogue, and Tanya Dalal, principal associate at the technology-focused law firm Ikigai Law, about the potential impact of the Intermediary Guidelines Amendment Rules, 2018 on businesses as well as private lives.

Dalal highlights how online platforms are forced to jeopardise the privacy of their users by collecting more and more information about them. “The policing of user content is one thing, but it [the proposed guidelines] also ask the intermediary to aid an investigating authority when asked for help,” she explains. “When the authorities ask for help, one of the modes in which an intermediary is supposed to help them is by tracing the user.”

Pointing out the limitations of AI moderation, Garg says, “AI is an extremely complex technology, it really doesn’t understand human-generated content, especially in Indian languages.” He adds, “The guidelines will have a very serious impact not just on UGC platforms but also on innovation around the tech ecosystem.”

Emphasizing the need for accountability when it comes to controlling hate speech, Rizvi argues, “It is important that the platforms and companies do not become arbitrators of free speech. Public speech has the power to change the government, it has the power to change societies. And you don’t want that power to be with a few intermediaries.”

The discussion also delves into questions of who is an intermediary, what types of content moderation are available, whether there are alternatives to the intermediary guidelines, and much more.

Also watch: Digital Policy series: What’s intermediary liability and why you should care about it

Why the breach of Article 14 by the Citizenship Amendment Act is a step towards dystopia

Meghnad S — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 12:13:59 GMT

Right now, we’re looking at discrimination on the basis of religion. We might soon need to look at race, caste, sex and place of birth as well.

“The Citizenship Amendment Act is unconstitutional.”

We’ve heard this repeated again and again, by lawyers, politicians, journalists and so many others. In fact, it’s been repeated since 2016, when the Citizenship (Amendment) Act first came into the picture.

But what does it mean? Why should we care? How does it affect you and me?

The answers to these questions are not that difficult to grasp, if only we move away from legal jargon and focus on the spirit of the Constitution itself. But first, it’s vital that you understand why we even have a Constitution.

#Throwback: 8th Grade Civics

Forget what legal and constitutional experts are saying and look at the book that many of us are familiar with: the CBSE Civics Book. This is how it introduces the Constitution to students:

The government, currently, has picked up the ball and is running with it.

While people are trying hard to stick to the rules and kick the ball, every player from the government team is just clutching the football tightly to their chest and running to the goalpost. What’s even more bizarre is the crowd in the stadium is cheering the government along and questioning the other team, calling them “anti-national” whenever they point to rule violations.

“Scoring the goal is important here,” says one member of the crowd. “This government is a goal-scoring government. How does it matter how they do it?”

The reason why this line of thought is problematic is pretty simple. This is also the same reason why our Constitution exists in the first place.

We are a diverse country with different languages, cultures, religions, geographies, cuisines, and just different sensibilities in general. To hold a country like ours together, we need some basic rules that cannot be breached. These are the rules that our Constitution provides.

Since 1947, the reason why we’ve held together as a common country called India is thanks to this rulebook: our Constitution. Now, that rulebook is about to be breached, encouraged by a cheering crowd of spectators.

What these spectators are missing out on is the damage the government is causing by picking up the football while being confident that they won’t be penalised for it. Their confidence stems from one singular argument: “Hey, the crowd wants us to pick up the ball in our hands. How can we not do that?”

The crowd doesn’t realise that in their mad frenzy to support the government team, they’re ruining the entire game of football. For themselves.

Article 14: The Rule That Shall Not Be Broken

Our Constitution has some basic rules established. Rules which essentially define how India will stay together, despite being so goshdarn diverse. One of the rules is that the Indian state shall treat everyone equally, and not discriminate against the citizens of India based on caste, religion, language, gender and place of birth.

Again, understand the simple logic behind why this exists as a rule. Tomorrow if one Hindu fellow from Bihar hires a Hindu and a Sikh for the same job, but decides to pay the Hindu more because their religious beliefs match, that’s discriminatory behaviour. The Sikh fellow will feel isolated, go back to Punjab, and tell people how they all need to boycott Bihar in general.

This is a very simplistic example, sure, but you can see how cracks can form in the unity of the nation because of the simplest of everyday things, fueled by inherent biases we all have. Unless there is a constant reminder to the citizens of India that the law is applicable to all equally, that the state cannot discriminate against other citizens based on caste, religion, language, gender and place of birth, unless there is constant effort to defeat these biases at a societal level — this whole dreamy multi-cultural experiment called India which was started in 1947 just falls apart, bit by bit.

The recently-passed CAA breaks the basic core principles of the Constitution, especially the fact that citizenship of India is open to all without discrimination. The government, however, has put forward some legal terminology to argue how the CAA falls under “reasonable classification” so it does not violate Article 14. This tricky little thing will only be resolved in late January by the Supreme Court when the hearings against the CAA commence.

(To understand what the “reasonable classification” argument is, read this.)

If the Supreme Court also ends up allowing this law, it will open up a Pandora’s box for India. Now that is when the real divisions will commence. For the sake of argument though, let’s assume the Supreme Court does not exist. Let’s assume the government’s argument is correct and that this CAA law is constitutionally valid.

Now, read Article 14 again, but this time with Article 15:

Yes. Article 14 talks about equality before the law and, in Article 15, religion is not the only criteria mentioned. There is race, caste, sex and place of birth as well. As of now, because of the CAA, the conversation is centred around religion. But next, you never know, caste or sex will come into the picture.

Maybe not immediately, maybe in a few years, maybe under another government, what if a law is passed saying that Dalit Indians will have to fulfil certain criteria in order to continue being citizens of India? What if, in another decade, the same is done to women? The then government will point to the year 2019 when the CAA was accepted, an Act that does the same thing on the basis of religion.

Right now, at this point of time, we are looking at just one aspect of Article 14 being breached. The CAA is designed to act as a filter that will decide who will get citizenship, keeping religion as the primary criteria. This criteria can change in the future through another law cleared by the Parliament. It can be caste, sex, race or place of birth.

This might seem alarmist and dystopian to you but right now in 2019, if our current government continues lawmaking on the basis of sectarian divisions, in another 10 years, this will be reality.

Then, we will truly be in dystopia.

The article was updated to include a screenshot of Article 15.

Digital Policy series: What’s intermediary liability and why you should care about it

NL Team — Fri, 27 Dec 2019 14:46:12 GMT

Should social media companies be held accountable for the content shared on their platforms?

Watch on YouTube

The internet and its intermediaries such as social media platforms, search engines and blogs have a major role in enabling freedom of expression and sharing of information. They are used by people around the world to connect, mobilise, and even to spread propaganda. The reach and influence of these platforms make them vastly powerful in our digital age. This raises a question: should they be held accountable for the content that’s shared on their platforms? And what responsibilities and protections come with hosting Indian user content on these platforms?

Last year, the Indian government introduced the Intermediary Guidelines Amendment Rules, 2018, which addressed this question. In October this year, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology informed the Supreme Court that the guidelines would be finalised by January 15, 2020. There’s thus an urgent need to escalate public discourse on intermediary liability in India. With this in mind, we present our Digital Policy Series, in collaboration with The Dialogue.

In this first episode, we explain what intermediary liability is and how it can impact freedom of speech, privacy, and online behaviour.

Watch.

Citizenship Amendment Act is simply a Muslim filter

Meghnad S — Sat, 14 Dec 2019 05:00:28 GMT

The fear that the law will destroy the secular character of our country is very real.

The Citizenship Amendment Bill, passed by the parliament this week, has been notified by the president. It is now an Act.

In an earlier explainer, I answered some key questions about the new law:

What is the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2019 all about?
Are there really “persecuted minorities” that would benefit from this legislation?
What is Article 14 and does the Citizenship Bill violate our constitution?
Why does the legislation not cover countries other than Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan?
What special benefits will minority refugees from the three countries get under this law?
What are the main problems with the Bill?

Do read that first if you want answers to any of these questions.

In that piece, I lightly touched upon how the Citizenship Amendment Act, or CAA, is related to the National Register of Citizens exercise carried out in Assam. In this article, I’ll explain why that is particularly problematic.

Why it’s important to get into the details is that the issue is being buried under a lot of rhetoric. While the government and its supporters claim that Muslims in India will not be affected by this law, their opponents argue that it’s the first step in a sinister plan to destroy the secular character, specifically by targeting Muslims.

The opposition’s worries are legitimate. But we need to figure out exactly how the CAA can potentially affect Indian Muslims.

How many beneficiaries?

During the debate on the Citizenship Bill in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, Amit Shah kept saying that “lakhs and crores of people” will benefit from it. It was strange because when a parliamentary standing committee scrutinized this Bill, it was informed by the Intelligence Bureau that only 31,313 people from the six faiths mentioned in the Bill wouldl be the immediate beneficiaries. So, who are these lakhs and crores of people the home minister was talking about?

Shah said, “I request all of you to accept this Bill which has been brought in by the Narendra Modi government so that crores of people see a new day.”

Again, crores of people? This clearly implies that the numbers mentioned in the standing committee’s report are either incorrect or that the government expects these numbers to exponentially increase.

Shah admitted to this while speaking in the Rajya Sabha. Roughly translated from Hindi, he said: “When we make this law and tell immigrants that you will get citizenship from the day you came and we will protect you, then when the citizenship numbers come, I will be in this House and Ghulam Nabi sahab will be here, and the numbers will be in lakhs and crores. That is what I want to tell the House. This is because you have never made provisions to protect them. How would they declare [that they are illegal migrants]? If they did, they would lose their jobs, marriages would end, their homes would be taken away, they would be arrested. Today, because of the Bill that Narendra Modi has brought, they can declare, without any fear, ‘Yes, we are refugees. Give us citizenship.’ We have brought a provision to give them citizenship with retrospective effect.”

Source: Rajya Sabha Verbatim Debates

After reading this, a few questions come to mind. Since 1947, only 31,313 migrants belonging to six minority communities in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh have declared to have been persecuted for their faith. So, how is it that after this law is passed, the numbers will go into lakhs and crores? Why is our home minister admitting on record that India will suddenly have crores of new citizens once this law comes into force?

This is where the NRC comes in.

A botched exercise

The National Register of Citizens in Assam was updated over the past few years to identify undocumented migrants who had come mostly from Bangladesh after 1971. The updated NRC was supposed to document all those people whose names were listed in the NRC of 1951 and were still alive as well as their living descendants who could prove they were permanent residents of the state.

It was a botched exercise. There were many errors during the updation process and a lot of people were excluded who clearly didn’t deserve to be. In all, around 19 lakh people in Assam were excluded from the final register. Soon, the BJP started complaining, vocally, that many undocumented immigrants had been included in the register, while around five lakh Bengali Hindus were excluded. In fact, even some people who had campaigned for the BJP found themselves excluded. #Awkward.

There were three options to fix this mess. One, just scrap the whole thing and pretend like it never happened. But that wouldn’t work because the BJP’s whole Northeast India electoral march has “we will throw out illegal immigrants” as a major promise and an exercise like the NRC is the tool to do thay. Two, redo the whole thing and desperately hope that there are no errors the second time. This one is quite impossible because the data entry folks are bound to make errors again, like they did the first time. The excluded people can raise hell for the BJP. Which leaves us with the third option: find a filter.

A filter which ensures that despite the errors in NRC, only a certain section of society remains excluded from the NRC.

Enter the Citizenship Amendment Act

If you look at the full text of the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, you’ll notice a peculiarity: there is no mention of “religious persecution” in the law. But, in the Statement of Objects and Reasons of the Bill, which was presented in the parliament, you will find this:

The main push and logic behind bringing this Bill was to give a safe haven to persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. Although it’s mentioned in the statement of reasons, where the home minister explains why this piece of legislation is being brought, the term “religious persecution” is not mentioned in the law that was notified. This was pointed out in the parliament by Kapil Sibal and other members.

To explain how the CAA acts as a religious filter, It’s important to explain the significance of this one little omission. This part gets a wee bit complex with all the legal jargon, so bear with me.

In Section 2 of the CAA, it is written that people belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian communities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan who entered India before December 31, 2014 will not be treated as illegal immigrants. It also mentions the exemptions under The Passport Entry into India Act of 1920 and the rules made thereunder.

So, like a Russian doll, there is the CAA, which is referencing the Passport Act. Under the Passport Act, the government is free to make rules.

via GIPHY

Rules are basically subordinate laws that the central government can issue through a gazette notification at any time. These laws do not require the approval of the parliament. In September 2015, the government notified a set of rules under the Passport Act that include the following:

In these rules, you find the words “religious persecution” and “fear of religious persecution” mentioned. Simply put, these words are not mentioned in the main law but they have been made a part of rules under another law which can be changed atany time through a notification.

In fact, when asked about this in the parliament, Shah mentioned the same rules. He said, “Speaker sir, Kapil Sibal mentioned one or two rules, Entry 2 of Passport Act was one of them. In 2015 and 2016, we made changes to the Passport Act. The notifications for the same have also been issued.”

This was seemingly a response to Sibal’s question about the absence of the term “religious persecution” in the Citizenship Bill.

The Muslim filter can be imposed through these rules. By making sure that the central government holds the power to change the Passport Act rules, to ultimately affect the CAA, that too any time it wishes, they have opened up the possibility of massive future misuse.

Possibly, misuse to fix the botched NRC exercise.

Future misuse of CAA

Imagine a scenario where a nationwide NRC is rolled out. The babus administering the exercise mess up and end up excluding a whole bunch of people from the register, of all faiths.

Now, a legal recourse is available only to people of the six religions mentioned in the CAA. Do note that the law specifically says that people belonging to these faiths “shall not be treated as illegal migrants”. Muslims, however, will not have any such recourse. For that matter, even Jews and atheists won’t be able to do anything about their exclusion from the register.

As a result, lakhs and crores of excluded people might have to declare that they are illegal immigrants to become Indian citizens again.

The tricky part is proving religious persecution in another country. To benefit from the CAA, the person excluded from the NRC must prove that, one, they are a non-Muslim migrant from Afghanistan, Pakistan or Bangladesh, and, two, that they came to India to escape religious persecution. Because it can make the rules under the Passport Act essentially at whim, the government can simply strike out the second condition and keep only the first.

It doesn’t help when the home minister himself has this to say.

Watch on YouTube

What this Bill is systematically and deliberately doing is to create two classes of citizens based on their faith: people who can be citizens and people who cannot. Given this clear discriminatory nature of the Bill, it is unlikely to stand the test of Article 14 of the constitution. For now, the existence of the law simply tells the world that India can deprive its own Muslims of citizenship while welcoming migrants of other faiths. And also that we don’t give two hoots about atheists or Jews, persecuted or not.

Want to increase GDP? Buy more Roasted Mashed Aubergine Masala

Meghnad S — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 12:36:53 GMT

In case you’re wondering, it’s a fancy version of baingan ka bharta

Last week, the Government released figures of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth and it led to a lot of general furor about the state of our economy. While economists, politicians and commentators like to go bananas over this one term, it is quite difficult for a mango person to understand what this is about. What does a 5% GDP growth rate in the last quarter mean exactly?

And no, the answer is not, “It was 8.1% in 2018 quarter one, so the current gormint sucks!”

Funnily enough, Quarter 1 of 2018 was when the BJP twitter handle stopped talking about GDP, for obvious reasons.

Since Aug 2018, BJP has not shared an infographic on quarterly GDP growth rate. Because it looks like this. ? pic.twitter.com/BoIyD1Igf4
— SamSays (@samjawed65) August 31, 2019

In our heads, it’s usually like this: “GDP is higher than such and such country! That’s awesome.” or “GDP is lower than such and such country! That’s terrible.” It’s more or less a competitive game where countries seem to be trying to prove how they are doing better than the rest of the world. But does GDP growth actually affect the man on the street, economically? That is a question that needs some answers.

First, let’s figure out what GDP is.

The usual definition of Gross Domestic Product is, “the monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a specific time period.” The words in bold is where the tricks of the trade lie.

Think of our economy as a giant mall. You pick up stuff, go to the cash counter, it goes beep, you pay for it and done. The ‘beep’ is where the monetary value of what you bought is being recorded. That is, in crude terms, the GDP of the mall being counted. If you are buying baingan for making bharta, the cost of the baingan will become a part of the GDP. But, if you’re a restaurant owner who is making bharta and selling it, the value of the bharta, the finished product, will be measured.

This part is important because the labour and value being added into converting a baingan into a bharta will only be counted if someone pays for it. If you’re consuming it at home, your own labour is… not worth anything, because it has zero monetary value. So what is the best way to increase GDP, you ask? Well, just encourage bharta dishes with more value.

A 5 star restaurant, selling 5 star bharta under the name “Roasted Mashed Aubergine Masala”, with a garnishing of cherry tomatoes on top, will have way more value than a dhaba selling the same bharta. Since it’s monetary value is what matters, a Government will always like Aubergine Masalas to be made as opposed to dhaba bharta. They would give even lesser importance to your homemade bharta.

Another thing here is the labor that is not getting counted, mainly, domestic labor. More specifically, the women and men toiling in their homes to make sure that the family is productive simply doesn’t count. If these homemakers buy finished products, only then they contribute to the GDP. Add to this the fact that India has a giant unorganized sector, where the goods and services being produced are just estimates. They might or might not be correct but they’re also included in the GDP figures anyway.

Going a little further, this whole calculation becomes a wee bit more complicated when you add the ‘value of money’ factor to it.

Let’s go back to our shopping mall example. An Aubergine Masala which is priced at Rs 500 today might have cost Rs 250 five years ago. So if you measure GDP over 5 years, based on this single item, it’ll show that growth doubled during that period. This is problematic. When you don’t consider inflation, meaning the purchasing power of money, GDP growth becomes quite… extreme, on paper.

So what we need to look at is Real GDP. This would be the price of goods keeping the value of money constant on a decided year. The Modi Government, in 2015, changed the base year for GDP measurement to 2011-12 from the earlier 2004-05. This exercise is actually required to be done periodically, to keep the real GDP measurements accurate. But what the government also did was change the database. In the earlier method, actual output of the manufacturing sector, crop production, and employment of the services sector was being measured. In the new method, new estimates have been added such as consumption, employment, and the performance of enterprises. Critics have raised their eyebrows about this, but we’ll not get into that too much. Let’s leave it for the critics to argue over.

Now for the final question that actually matters: Does the GDP really show how the common man is faring, economically? Does growth in GDP mean everyone in the country is better off?

Simple answer:

via GIPHY

Back to the mall! Just think about our bhartas again. There would be only a certain category of ultra-rich foodies who would be able to afford our Aubergine Masala. One plate is worth adding Rs 500 to the GDP which would be equal to ten plates of dhaba bharta. Now that, ladies and gents, is how wealth inequality comes into the picture. Even if the top 10% of the population keep spending and buying more high value items, the GDP will keep growing and the country will keep shining. Again, on paper. The contribution of the low income groups will barely count because they’re either having dhaba bharta or just cooking at home.

If you divide up the GDP with the population, which is per capita GDP, it might show we’re higher than other countries, but it is not representative of how much a large amount of population is earning. The GDP figure, by its very nature, kinda assumes that the wealth in society is equally distributed when the truth is far from it.

But, all said and done, GDP has proven to be a good indicator when an economy goes into a recession. The side effect of that is also the fact that business owners bandy the term ‘recession’ around as an excuse to do layoffs, which in turn affect the common man.

Is there a better indicator which shows the actual economic condition of the population? Sure, there are things like Human Development Index — which includes life expectancy and education levels along with per capita income — and even things like Gross Domestic Happiness — which includes factors like socio-economic development, environmental conservation, protection of culture and good governance. But these are not widely used because decision-makers around the world just want to stick to thinking in terms of: “How productive are our citizens?”

Maybe, perhaps, probably, now is a good time to ask another question instead: “How happy are our citizens?”

Whatever happened to the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana?

Meghnad S — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 08:23:35 GMT

Launched with epic fanfare, marred by poor planning and ill-thought-out policy framework.

In October 2014, in classic Narendra Modi style, with epic fanfare, a scheme was launched called the ‘Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana’ (SAGY). The idea was that every Member of Parliament would be asked to adopt a village in their constituency and develop it as a model village. This would then become a blueprint for developing other villages.

Here’s what the ‘about’ section of the SAGY website says: “The goal is to develop three Adarsh Grams by March 2019, of which one would be achieved by 2016. Thereafter, five such Adarsh Grams (one per year) will be selected and developed by 2024.”

It’s April 2019, so the question worth asking right now is: Whatever happened to the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana?

A forgotten scheme with a forgotten website

The first logical thing we need to do—to find out what is happening even—is head over to the official website of the scheme: http://saanjhi.gov.in. Which I did. Turns out, it doesn’t work. Only the Home, About and CSR page open while the others— namely Guidelines, Circulars, Message, Report and Media—which are actually vitally important to get information on how the scheme is doing, draw a blank.

The message page shows… this:

Oh well. Time to use some awesome jugaad skills to make this work. So I tried manually entering the website URL with an addition in the end to http://saanjhi.gov.in/media.aspx and boom. Success.

And disappointment.

The last update is this report from November 2014. It’s about PM’s visit and his plan to adopt Jayapur village in his constituency of Varanasi under this scheme. Fascinating stuff. The officials didn’t even bother updating the website to reflect the fact that PM Modi has adopted two more villages apart from Jayapur.

So, the next step here is to dig deep and find out what happened to these villages adopted by the PM.

PM adopted villages and their state of affairs

Mint did a story in March 2017 that talks about how Jayapur saw a flurry of activity when the village was adopted. They got new roads, solar electricity provisions, toilets and piped water. But that was short-lived owing to a lack of administrative follow-up. The bathrooms built under Swachh Bharat Abhiyan started crumbling, people started selling solar panels that were installed and unemployment continues to be the reigning issue in the village. Even the piped water system has failed.

Following Jayapur, PM Modi adopted two more villages in 2016. One of them was Nagepur. Journalists from The Quint presented a report in October 2018 on the state of this village.

In Nagepur, a solar plant was supposed to be set up but, after 10 months of negotiations, the private company which was supposed to set up the plant refused to pay for the land and left. There is no school for kids above Class 5 and there isn’t a hospital nearby, adding to the woes of the people there. Unemployment, yet again, seems to be a major issue people are complaining about.

There is little information about how the third village is doing. Alright, let’s not solely criticise our Prime Minister’s visionary plans. Let’s look at how other Members of Parliament (MP) have been doing.

How are other MPs doing?

One news item which was splashed across the board was the adoption of a village by Sachin Tendulkar. He adopted Puttamraju Kandriga in Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh and the story here is quite different. Turns out, he has done a fabulous job of developing this village according to this report.

Watch on YouTube

In 2017, he went on to adopt Donja in Osmanabad, Maharashtra, under SAGY. But Sachin, unfortunately, seems to be the outlier here. Unlike him, other MPs don’t seem very taken in by SAGY and it has generally received a mild response. In the first phase of the scheme, 703 out of 786 MPs adopted villages. The adoption saw a downward trend after that. In phase 2, 466 MPs identified villages while in phase 3, the number drastically dropped to only 172 MPs. Clearly, there is a definite trend of MPs losing interest in this much-publicised scheme.

It would be worth mentioning here that of these, the governing BJP has a total of 341 MPs in the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha combined. Of course, the total number of occupied seats has kept changing because of retirements, resignations and deaths, but even when you take that into consideration, the participation in the later stages of SAGY is quite disappointing. At the very least, efforts should have been made to get BJP MPs to be diligent about these adoptions.

So why is this scheme failing? Why are MPs losing interest? The answer to that might be in the way this scheme was designed and how it works.

Funding, administrative and perception woes

One would assume that if the government launches a scheme, there would be some funding attached to it. Say you are an MP who adopts a village and you want to develop a fish rearing pond—just like master blaster Tendulkar did—so you’d need funds to do that. Where does the money for your projects come from? Logically, it should be given to you as part of this scheme. But nope. The MPs who adopt villages under the SAGY scheme are supposed to fund projects in their adopted villages using their Members of Parliament Local Area Development (MPLAD) Funds.

Sachin, according to the report mentioned earlier, spent around ₹3.6 crore from his MPLAD funds and the Andhra Pradesh government chipped in with ₹4.5 crore separately. An MP gets ₹5 crore a year as MPLAD funds and this is one village we are talking about. Some constituencies have an upward of 3,000 villages. As an MP, picking just eight villages (till 2024) and spending a chunk of your annual development money on those is just plain bad politics. It’ll lead to widespread resentment among constituents from other villages because they are quite aware that MPs can spend money from their funds to develop projects across the constituency. The MPLAD funds need to be spread out throughout the constituency to keep people happy and voting for you.

The reluctance to adopt might also stem from the fact that there is little administrative follow-up after villages are identified. The PM might have diligently chosen three villages, meticulously planned out projects there according to what his constituents need and made efforts to turn his adopted villages into model villages. But it all depends on how well the follow-up from the state government of Uttar Pradesh is to implement these multiple projects. If the state government stops showing interest in these model villages, MPs will also lose interest in adopting and transforming more villages.

The SAGY might have been launched with epic fanfare but because of poor planning and just plain ill-thought-out policy framework, it’s failing miserably. No matter how much more money you throw at it now, it will not work.

The website of this scheme kinda proves my point.

This is the first piece in a series looking at some of the top schemes and programmes launched by the current Bharatiya Janata Party government and how they have fared.

#Impeachment of Chief Justice (in 5 not-so-easy steps)

NL Team — Fri, 20 Apr 2018 12:47:12 GMT

Can you get your head around this?

Wheels have been set in motion for the unprecedented impeachment motion against the Chief Justice of India. On Friday, the main opposition Congress and six other parties moved a notice – signed by 71 current and retired lawmakers of the Rajya Sabha – for the impeachment of Chief Justice Dipak Misra to Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu.

But…

According to Article 124(4) of the Constitution: “A judge of the Supreme Court shall not be removed from his office except by an order of the President passed after an address by each House of Parliament supported by a majority of the total membership of that House and by a majority of not less than two-thirds of the members of that House present and voting has been presented to the President in the same session for such removal on the ground of proved misbehaviour incapacity.”

Now that is not just difficult to read and make sense of, it is even more difficult to implement.

First, the charges:

The CJI has been accused of five counts of “misbehaviour” and “misusing” authority. According to Congress’ Kapil Sibal:

The first charge relates to the conspiracy to pay illegal gratification by persons in relation to the Prasad Education Trust case and the manner in which the case was dealt with by the Chief Justice.
The second and third charges relate to the Chief Justice having dealt on the administrative as well as on the judicial side with a writ petition which sought an investigation into the matter of Prasad Education Trust, in which he too was likely to fall within the scope of investigation.
The fourth charge relates to the Chief Justice having acquired land when he was an advocate by giving an affidavit which was reportedly found to be false.
The fifth charge relates to the abuse of power by the Chief Justice in choosing to send sensitive matters to particular benches by misusing his authority as Master of the Roster with the likely intent to influence the outcome. This charge was also levelled by four senior-most SC judges at a press conference in January – which is when the demand for CJI Misra’s impeachment was first made.

The above allegations have to be proved.

A long-winding impeachment

Step 1: A notice of motion issued by 100 MPs from the Lok Sabha or 50 MPs from the Rajya Sabha is required.

Step 2: The Speaker or Chairman of the House can accept or reject the notice of the motion for impeachment. If the notice is accepted, the Speaker or Chairman forms a three-member panel – comprising a senior Supreme Court judge, a high court judge and a jurist – to inquire into the charges.

Step 3: If the committee finds substance in the allegations, the motion is taken up for discussion in the House in which it was introduced and must be passed by a special majority – supported by a majority of the total membership of that House not less than two-thirds of the members of that House present and voting.

Step 4: Once cleared, it is taken up in the next House where too it has to be passed by a special majority.

Step 5: Once passed by both Houses, the President of India has to give approval to the impeachment.

Failed attempts

While impeachment proceedings haven’t ever been initiated against a CJI in India, they have been moved against several judges in the past:

V Ramaswami: The Supreme Court judge was the first against whom proceedings for removal were initiated by the BJP and Left parties in 1991. He was defended by lawyer and Congressman Kapil Sibal. Of the 401-strong House, only 196 members voted in favour of the motion. Not backed by two-thirds of the total members present and voting by an absolute majority, the motion fell through.

Soumitra Sen: Accused of graft, the Calcutta High Court judge resigned days before the Lok Sabha was to take up the impeachment motion – already passed by the Rajya Sabha – against him in 2011.

PD Dinakaran: The Chief Justice of the Sikkim High Court faced allegations of corruption and misconduct and his removal was sought by 75 opposition members in the Rajya Sabha. He resigned after an inquiry panel was formed but before impeachment proceedings could be initiated against him.

JB Pardiwala: As many as 58 Rajya Sabha MPs moved an impeachment notice against the Gujarat High Court Justice in 2015 for “objectionable remarks on the issue of reservation”.

SK Gangele: A panel was set up in 2015 by then Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari to look into allegations of sexual harassment against Justice SK Gangele, a sitting judge of the Madhya Pradesh High Court. He was subsequently acquitted.

Explained: All the fuss about doorstep delivery of public services in Delhi

NL Team — Fri, 29 Dec 2017 14:21:38 GMT

Before the noise between the AAP government and LG drowns out the scheme, we go to the bottom of it.

Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi government is again at loggerheads with the capital’s Lieutenant-Governor, Anil Baijal – this time over the proposal of doorstep delivery of 40 public services.

While Baijal had asked the government to “reconsider its proposal”, pointing out that in the age of digital delivery of services, doorstep delivery is not required, deputy CM Manish Sisodia hit back saying the scheme will be “Super Digital Delivery”.

The idea was to deliver 40 government services of eight different kinds, including revenue, transport and social welfare schemes, at the citizen’s doorstep. Initiating the process of availing these services would be as easy as ordering a pizza at home.

The Delhi Cabinet had approved the scheme on November 16 and was waiting for Baijal’s nod. A month later, as expected, the LG’s office returned the proposal.

As the political rumbling is all set to increase, and might just drown the real issue, Newslaundry explains what exactly the scheme is.

What is doorstep delivery of services?

What if getting your driving licence or changes made in a registration certificate becomes as easy as pizza delivery at home? You call a given number, a representative visits your home at a convenient time of your choosing and the process of getting the service starts from there. You don’t need to skip office or college to queue up at government offices for small changes to be made in official documents. So far, such kind of smooth functioning has remained a dream for Dilliwallahs.

On November 16, Kejriwal’s cabinet in a “historic decision” approved the proposal for delivery of 40 services at people’s doorstep. The move was to make public services more accessible and reduce the burden on citizens. The idea was to provide services beyond the government office counter, at the citizen’s residence, through a chain of mobile sahayaks or representatives. The scheme included services pertaining to driving licences, availing of caste certificate, new water connection, old-age pension, widow pension, and updation of BPL ration (AAY) cardholders.

One just had to make a request to the call centre in order to pre-schedule a visit – even for holidays – at a facilitation fee. The charges of services were yet to be announced.

Like physical documents required for a post-paid SIM card at home are collected and submitted by company representatives from customers’ homes, the same was proposed to be done through the mobile sahayaks. According to the proposal, the representatives would have deposited such documents with the department concerned.

The Delhi government had stated that “approximately 25 lakh transactions are held every year” to avail these 40 services. “Each transaction takes around four visits to the office concerned by the applicant,” it said.

The government was planning that a “minimum 30-35 more services would be added to the scheme every 30 days from the date of rollout, till all services are covered”.

Why was the proposal returned by the LG?

The AAP government probably didn’t think of the blockades ahead. While the LG’s office didn’t shoot down the scheme, in a much moderate action it asked the government to “reconsider” the proposal.

The argument was that in a time of digital delivery of services, doorstep delivery is not required. On December 26, Baijal’s office in a note flagged concerns such as safety of citizens and undue financial burden on both the exchequer and those availing the services.

The LG had cited that unlike digital delivery of services, the proposed scheme will “introduce another layer of human interface with its attendant complications, including concerns associated with safety and security of women/senior citizens, a possibility of corruption, delays, bad behaviour, loss of documents, breach of privacy, etc.” The note said “it adds unnecessary expenditure for the government and the people”.

Delhi government’s rebuttal

Kejriwal sprang into action as soon as Raj Niwas gave the cold shoulder to his pet scheme. Using it as an opportunity to attack the LG, Kejriwal tweeted: “LG says digitisation enough. Elected govt says digitisation needs to be coupled wid doorstep delivery LG does not agree So, the question is – in a democracy, in such a situation, who shud have final say – LG or elected govt??”

Indeed, it was Kejriwal who, instead of holding deliberations with the LG, preferred to register this as another chapter in the LG versus Delhi government battle. He later softened his stance, and tweeted:

I urge Hon’ble LG to hear the voices of the people. Despite digitalization, people facing so many problems. Doorstep delivery is next logical step after digitalisation https://t.co/9PI4TEqzeN
— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) December 28, 2017

However, his deputy Manish Sisodia is now leading the battle from the front. In the past two days, Sisodia has been aggressively campaigning for the scheme and has made scathing attacks against the LG’s office.

On safety concerns, the Delhi government said “if pizza delivery, LPG gas delivery, credit card and other delivery executives don’t pose a threat, how can doorstep delivery of services be a threat to the safety and security of women and other citizens? The concern in our humble opinion appears to be misplaced.”

Similarly, to counter the argument that in the era of end-to-end digitalisation of services one doesn’t need doorstep delivery of public services, Sisodia on Thursday met people queued up at government offices to take their feedback.

He, also Delhi’s revenue minister, could be heard saying in a video posted on social media that many people don’t have internet access and literacy to use online services.

Why Delhi Govt is bringing Door Step Delivery of Basic Government Services & Why LG is blocking it.
Watch as Dy. CM @msisodia talks to people in queues at SDM Office, Nandnagari
Part 3: pic.twitter.com/YGMuR1XO6F
— AAP (@AamAadmiParty) December 28, 2017

The Delhi government argued that the “internet is not an easy medium for everyone to use; many are not tech-savvy enough. Even in the case of online services, people are required to go to government offices to submit documents”.

The LG had raised concerns about the safety of documents and that they could get misplaced in the process of delivery. But Kejriwal’s government said in a statement on Thursday that this shouldn’t be a concern as the executives “will not take any documents. He/she will just scan and upload the documents and give them back to the resident at the latter’s residence or office only”.

Considering that the revenue model of the scheme remains unclear, it would be too early to comment on whether it would prove to be an undue financial burden on the government and citizens.

However, the AAP government could have tried to resolve the crisis instead of making it look like a war between the selected and “the elected”. Especially when a constitution bench of the Supreme Court is already hearing the legal battle between the Centre and Delhi government over exercise of powers.

As far as government services at one’s doorstep is concerned, hardly anyone living in a metro city such as Delhi would not love the idea. The common service centres (CSC) or kiosks have failed to make an impact on delivery of services. Moreover, doorstep delivery of services could mean a revolutionary change in the model of governance.

There is no denying that visiting government offices for services remains a process of hassle. Given an opportunity, no one would like to miss a working day – including the LG – just to get a water connection or minor change in AAY cards.

Concerns that such a scheme could increase corruption too seem based on flimsy ground. Scope for graft always remains in a country like India – whether the process is offline or online. Remember, Union minister Nitin Gadkari himself declared regional transport offices as the centres for loot.

Had PM Narendra Modi announced the scheme at a public meeting, he might have declared it as “government at your doorstep”.