Commentary
Find our newspaper columns, blogs, and other commentary pieces in this section. Our research focuses on Advanced Biology, High-Tech Geopolitics, Strategic Studies, Indo-Pacific Studies & Economic Policy
Using Tech to Deal with Covid-19 Is Problematic
Covid-19 has taken the world by storm. With Covid-19 being classified as a pandemic, recent predictions claim that within the coming year, 40-70% of people around the world will be affected with Covid-19 (including mild disease or an asymptomatic form). In a sense, China being the epicenter of the outbreak has reluctantly taken the world through a learning curve on how technology intersects with the policy in public health emergencies.As the number of cases rose in China, the ruling party’s response has been interesting. Since early February, China has been encouraging citizens to return to work. But while the Government does that, it has also begun efforts to regulate people’s movement through smartphones. Currently, the system is present in 200 cities and is being rolled out nationwide. Users fill in a form on the Alipay app with their personal details and are presented with a QR code, which can be green, yellow, or red. If your code is green, you are free to move about unrestricted. A yellow code means staying at home for a week, whereas a red means a two-week quarantine.On the surface, it makes sense. People who are predicted to be at risk should take precautions to ensure they don’t spread the virus. Software is a great medium to help achieve that. In a pandemic of this scale and seriousness, workers in public places like metro stations, subways, and residential societies should have the power to check who may be a contagion risk.But once you take a closer look, it becomes evident that tech does not always mirror society. People do not always fall neatly into green, yellow, and red signals. Data that classifies people may be riddled with biases. Algorithms may come to unjustified and false conclusions that put people at risk. Data shared with law enforcement agencies infringe on people’s privacy. All of this is evident now, making China an excellent case study to learn from.The New York Times has done exceptional reporting on this. In a particular case, Leon Lei, 29, was allotted a green code on Alipay before leaving his hometown, Anqing, to return to work in Hangzhou. A day before he departed, his code turned red, seemingly for no apparent reason. It is hard to say why the code changed and what parameters the algorithm used to detect the possibility of people being at risk. A working theory could be that Leon’s hometown, while itself not being a hotbed for the virus, borders Hubei Province — the center of the outbreak. As a result, the software decided to change its color. But it is hard to know for sure.Had location been the deciding factor in the code changing its color, then it is safe to assume that an increasing number of people in Anqing would get red codes, even if they are not at risk. This would make it harder for them to move to safer areas. Vanessa Wong faced this situation when she had no symptoms and her code suddenly turned red. Her employer and housing complex needed green codes for entry, leaving her stranded in Hubei. In addition, personal data shared by the users send location and an identifier to the police.This brings us to a larger question. What is a responsible way to use tech in such emergencies? State capacity is limited and technology is a handy tool that allows governments to bridge gaps. But as China teaches us, such solutions have very significant limitations. They do not mirror society accurately, can be biased, infringe on privacy, and have the potential to do considerable harm.This is why monitoring apps, such as Alipay need to be more transparent. It is better to disclose what data is being collected and how much weightage each parameter will be given. Citizens would then have the basic know-how of why their codes turned green and what they can do to be safer. It is because there is little to no transparency in the Alipay process, forcing uninfected citizens to be stranded and putting them at risk.People often tend to claim that technology is just a tool. It is value-neutral and does not defer between groups. It seems like a benign sentence but is dangerously misleading. When it comes to outcomes, history, and China today teach us that tech ends up choosing winners and losers, unintentionally so. Covid-19 is a crisis that should not be wasted in teaching us that.This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.
India can fight COVID-19, but only if the private sector is allowed to step in quickly
It is important to say this because thus far, the task of addressing the COVID-19 has been delegated exclusively to the government. Almost all activities, from airlifting Indian nationals, screening arrivals at airports, testing samples, quarantining and treatment are carried out by the government. While this will be effective if the number of cases remains in the current order of magnitude, the government’s facilities alone will not be sufficient if the number of cases rises 100 times or more.The good news is that India has a private healthcare sector and R&D capability that can be used in the fight. The bad news is that we’re not letting them.If we even have a few lakh suspected cases, the government’s resources will fall short of what is required. The right time to think about the capacity required to handle such a massive crisis is now. The single most important thing for India to have a national response — as opposed to a government response — is to enable the private healthcare ecosystem to play an appropriate role to complement the government’s efforts wherever possible.Read more
The prospect of an oil stimulus in the time of Covid-19
Three major players in a market are trapped in a brutal price war. Investors stand to lose billions of dollars unless a price floor is fixed, and there is a fear of bankruptcy. Authorities are hoping that a price floor cartel succeeds. Does this ring a (telecom) bell? Well, it’s not what you think. This market is oil, and the three players are the US, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. The US has private shale oil suppliers, while the latter two have state-owned oil companies. Over the weekend, the price of crude dropped precipitously toward $30 a barrel, after the Saudi-led oil cartel failed to agree on production cuts with non-member Russia. US shale oil players, who were not a party to the negotiations, were hoping for a cartel agreement since their very viability depends on higher oil prices. Anything below $50 is bad news for them, especially for the junk bond investors who have financed these shale oil wells. The Saudis, with a vengeance, decided to up the ante, increasing their oil production and offering customers steep discounts, thus effectively trying to muscle into the market share of Russian oil companies in Europe. Russia, which is not a part of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), refused to play the ball on production cuts because its oil firms seemed bent on hurting US shale oil producers. The price war might very well be a proxy manifestation of a geopolitical showdown in West Asia between a Russia-Iran alliance and a US-Saudi one.Read More
India’s Approach to the Indian Ocean Region: From Sea Control to Sea Denial
ಬಜೆಟ್ ವಿಶ್ಲೇಷಣೆ | ನಾಲ್ಕು ಚಾಲಕಶಕ್ತಿಗಳಿಗೆ ದೊರೆಯುವುದೇ ಬಲ?
ಈಗಿರುವ ಆರ್ಥಿಕ ಸ್ಥಿತಿಯನ್ನು ಉಪೇಕ್ಷಿಸಿ ಬಜೆಟ್ ವಿಶ್ಲೇಷಣೆ ಸಾಧ್ಯವಿಲ್ಲ. ಖಾಸಗಿ ಕಾರ್ಪೊರೇಟ್ ಹೂಡಿಕೆಯು ಉದ್ಯೋಗಸೃಷ್ಟಿ ಮತ್ತು ಜಿಡಿಪಿ ಬೆಳವಣಿಗೆಯ ದೊಡ್ಡ ಮೂಲವಾಗಿದ್ದರೂ, ಆ ವಲಯದಲ್ಲಿ ಹೂಡಿಕೆಯ ವಿಶ್ವಾಸ ಹೆಚ್ಚಿಸುವಲ್ಲಿ ಸರ್ಕಾರಗಳಿಗೆ ಕಳೆದ ಒಂದು ದಶಕದಿಂದಲೂ ಸಾಧ್ಯವಾಗಿಲ್ಲ.ಕರ್ನಾಟಕದ ಬೆಳವಣಿಗೆಯ ನಾಲ್ಕು ಚಾಲಕಶಕ್ತಿಗಳ ವಿಚಾರದಲ್ಲಿ ಬಜೆಟ್ ಏನು ಮಾಡಿದೆ ಎಂಬುದನ್ನು ನೋಡೋಣ.Read the full article on Prajavani here.
Karnataka Budget Could Have Done More to Spur Growth
Analysis of Budget’s performance vis-à-vis the 4 drivers of growth in Karnataka shows more misses than hits; among positives, right noises on Bengaluru's economic development.Read more at https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/karnataka-budget-could-have-done-more-to-spur-growth-810873.html
Why Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos's $10 bn to fight climate change may not help
This article was first published in the Deccan Herald.Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos recently announced through an Instagram post that he would donate $ 10 Billion from his personal wealth to the newly created Bezos Earth Fund to fight climate change. The global initiative will fund scientists, activists, and NGOs according to the social media post. However, questions such as when will the money be disbursed, whether the fund will be a private foundation, a limited liability corporation, or a donor-advised fund remain unanswered.In recent years, we are seeing increased instances of giving by mega billionaires. Warren Buffet committed a majority of his wealth to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Mark Zuckerberg also pledged 99 per cent of his Facebook shares to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, soon after the birth of his daughter in 2015. Billionaires like Infosys’ Nilekanis and Wipro's Azim Premji have signed the ‘Giving Pledge’, committing the majority of their wealth. Bezos, who hasn’t signed the ‘Giving Pledge’ is the latest to jump onto the strategic philanthropy bandwagon.While the individual grant by Bezos is laudable, fighting the adverse effects of climate change will require ‘collective action from big companies, small companies, nation-states, global organisations, and individuals, as Bezos’s post acknowledges. Thus, to understand the direction the fund takes, it makes sense to analyse the policies and actions of Amazon with regard to climate change over the years.On September 19, 2019, Amazon signed ‘The Climate Pledge’ and committed to achieving the requirements of the Paris Agreement by 2040, ten years in advance of the 2050 deadline. For the record, Amazon releases 128.9 grams CO2 equivalent per dollar (USD) of Gross Merchandise Sales (GMS). It aims to fulfil 80 per cent of its energy requirements across all businesses, through renewable energy, by 2024 and raise the share to 100 per cent by 2030. Investing $100 million in reforestation projects around the world and securing a fleet of 100,000 electric delivery vehicles also feature as goals in the Amazon Sustainability Report 2019. Approximately 80 per cent of Amazon’s total emissions, which equal 44.40 Million Metric Tons (mmt) CO₂ equivalent, come from indirect sources -- corporate purchases and Amazon-branded product emissions, as well as third-party transportation, packaging upstream energy-related emissions forming the majority.Amazon’s treatment of the climate action activists from within the company who formed the Amazon Employees for Climate Justice group in April 2019 has been less than encouraging. An open letter, signed by 8,702 employees, to Jeff Bezos and the Board of Directors, asked the company to ‘adopt the climate plan shareholder resolution and release a company-wide climate plan’ to tackle the climate crisis. Bezos used his influence and 16 per cent stake to vote down the proposal in the Annual General Meeting of Amazon’s shareholders. However, the support that the group garnered from other stakeholders in the company made Bezos relook his position and lead to the birth of the above-mentioned ‘Climate Pledge’.The climate group has also urged Amazon to shift to renewable sources for Amazon Web Services, its most profitable business. Amazon continues to award contracts to fossil fuel companies for powering its data centres for cloud services. Amazon is not alone in this regard. Big Tech companies, including Google and Microsoft, are building partnerships with fossil fuel companies to leverage Artificial Intelligence to extract more oil from the earth efficiently. It remains to be seen if Amazon breaks the trend and puts its mouth where the money is. Amazon also sponsored a gala by the Competitive Enterprise Institute – a free-market think tank that engages in climate change denial.Governments have a significant role when it comes to spending to fight climate change. The Paris Climate Accord was also signed between countries and not companies (even though Amazon did make a pledge). Governments are better actors to fight climate change because the trade-offs they face are inherently different than private companies. For example, when Amazon claims that it was to be carbon neutral, it will have to revise its practices to achieve that goal. That could mean cutting corners and making compromises when the company’s own interests are at stake. Governments are long-term and do not face the threat of extinction, unlike private enterprises. This provides ministries and departments with the luxury of a longer-term vision.When you take that into account, it makes sense to better fund governments by paying taxes rather than donating personal wealth through commitments made on Instagram. However, Amazon has not been a great taxpayer. From 2008 to 2018, Amazon has paid $1.5 billion in corporate taxes. It’s closest competitor, Walmart, has paid $64 billion by comparison. Keep in mind that between September 2008 and September 2018, the value of Amazon’s stock grew more than twenty-four times from $78.3 to $1,915. During the same period, Walmart’s stock price went from $59.73 to $94.59. Amazon should have paid a lot more in taxes than $64 billion, and yet it ended up paying $1.5 billion.Putting the prior actions of Amazon with regard to policies, treatments of employees, investments in fossil fuel companies, and low taxes paid into perspective, the $10 billion individual grant is not close to what Amazon can do to minimise its carbon footprint and fight climate change. It is a welcome gesture, but we need much more to confront this global challenge.(Utkarsh Narain and Rohan Seth are technology policy analysts at the Takshashila Institution, an independent centre for research and education in public policy in Bengaluru.)
NPT turns 50. The first half it lived a lie, the second half it saw its own demise
One way forward is to move away from prohibiting possession to discouraging their use. At Takshashila, we have advocated a Global No First Use (GNFU) treaty that can help reduce the risk of an accidental nuclear war. This will create the foundation for nuclear weapons states to lower nuclear alertness levels, reduce the sizes of the arsenals and change their posture. What about disarmament? Now, I do not think complete disarmament is feasible — and some such as nuclear strategy theorist Thomas C. Schelling have argued that it’s not desirable either — but it is perhaps a worthwhile goal to pursue in the long run. For the time being though, we can buy another day, month, year, and decade of human survival by committing not to use nuclear weapons first, and then, at all.Read more
US-तालिबान समझौते से शांति की कितनी उम्मीद और भारत की चिंताएं?
https://audioboom.com/posts/7519553
Trump’s India visit tightens defense ties
Donald Trump concluded his 36-hour India tour on Tuesday evening. This was his first visit to India since being elected the 45th president of the United States in November 2016. His tour to India was much anticipated by both the countries, which have a common strategic objective of balancing China’s rise.This objective was reflected immediately in Trump’s first speech after landing in India, where he took a jab at China’s undemocratic rise. India’s rise “is all the more inspiring because you have done it as a democratic country, you have done it as a peaceful country, you have done it as a tolerant country, and you have done it as a great free country,” he said in his speech at Motera Stadium in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.The article was originally published in Asia Times.
Climate change and geopolitics converge to yield locust swarms
The butterfly effect occurs when a trivial cause, such as a butterfly fluttering its wings somewhere in an Amazon rainforest, triggers a series of events that end up having a massive impact elsewhere—a tornado ravaging the state of Texas in the US, for example. Edward Lorenz, the American meteorologist who coined the phrase in the early 1960s, came up with it while building a mathematical model to predict weather patterns. It is a fitting metaphor to explain a “plague" that is currently destroying vegetation and livelihoods in East Africa, the Arabian peninsula, Iran, Pakistan, and India.Read more
Hotstar blocked John Oliver show even before Modi govt could ask. It’s a dangerous new trend
This article was originally published in ThePrint. Censorship in response to moral panic and outrage was the norm, but now in India, we’re even cutting out the middlemen.
When riots were taking place in northeast Delhi and US President Donald Trump was set to land in India, HBO’s popular Sunday night show Last Week Tonight hosted by John Oliver aired an episode on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This episode, however, did not appear on Hotstar’s listings for the show, which is normally updated Tuesday mornings in India (it has still not been added at the time of writing this). International publications like Time magazine and The Economist have been the subject of outrage for carrying stories critical of PM Modi in the past. Netflix, too, has faced criticism for producing and housing shows like Leila and Sacred Games. Perhaps, the desire to avoid facing similar public anger prompted Disney-owned Star India to take this step.
It is important to look at the implications of this intervention.All the world’s an outrageA moral panic is a situation where the public fear and level of intervention (typically by the state) are disproportionate to the objective threat posed by a person/group/event.In India, one of the most infamous cases of a technology company bowing to moral panic occurred in January 2017. The Narendra Modi government threatened Amazon with the revocation of visas when it became aware that the online retailer’s Canadian website listed doormats that bore the likeness of the Indian flag on them. It was fitting that this threat was issued on Twitter by then External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj since the social networking platform was also the place where the anger built-up. It should come as no surprise that Amazon acquiesced, even though it was bound by no law to do so. While such depictions of national symbols are punishable under Indian law, it is debatable whether it should apply to the Canadian website of an American company, not intended for India-based users.
This wasn’t the first instance of sensitivities being enforced extra-territorially on internet companies and certainly won’t be the last. And this is very much a global phenomenon. While the decision by the Chinese state channel CCTV and several other companies to effectively boycott the NBA team Houston Rockets and the censorship of content supporting Hong Kong protests by Blizzard Entertainment garnered worldwide attention, these were only the latest in a long list of companies that have had to apologise to China and ‘correct’ themselves for issues like listing/depicting Taiwan as a separate country or quoting Dalai Lama on social media websites that were not even accessible in the country.
In Saudi Arabia, Netflix had to remove an episode of Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act that was heavily critical of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In the United States as well, content delivery network Cloudflare has twice stopped offering services to websites (Daily Stormer in 2017 and 8Chan in 2019) when faced with heavy criticism because of the nature of the content on them. In both cases, CEO Matthew Prince expressed his dismay at the fact that a service provider had the ability to make this decision.Of Streisand and censorshipThe key difference in the current scenario is that Hotstar appears to have made a proactive intervention. There was no mass outrage or moral panic that it was forced to respond to. By choosing not the make this John Oliver episode available on its platform, it effectively cut out the middlemen and skipped to the censorship step. A move that was ultimately self-defeating since the main segment of the episode is available in India through YouTube anyway and has already garnered more than 60 lakh views while the app was subjected to one-star ratings on Google’s Play Store.The attempt has only drawn more attention to both the episode and the company itself. This is commonly known as the Streisand Effect. Although a more cynical assessment could be that this step has earned Star India some ‘brownie points’ from the Modi government.Earlier this month, The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) announced a new ‘Self-Regulation for Online Curated Content Providers’ with four signatories (Hotstar, Jio, SonyLiv, and Voot). Notably, an earlier version of the code released in February 2019 had additional signatories that chose to opt-out of this version. It was also reported that some of the underlying causes for discontent were lack of transparency, due process, and limited scope of consultations in the lead-up to the new code.Some of the broad changes in the new code include widening the criteria for restricted content from disrespecting national symbols to the sovereignty and integrity of India. It also empowered the body responsible for grievance redressal to impose financial penalties. In addition, signatories of the code and the grievance redressal body are obliged to receive any complaints forwarded/filed by the government.A letter by Internet Freedom Foundation to Justice A.P. Shah cited as concerns, the code’s consideration of the reduction of liability over creativity and the risk of industry capture by large media houses. The pre-emptive action taken in the case of Last Week Tonight’s Modi episode perfectly encapsulates the risks of such a self-regulatory regime. It signals both intents and potentially the establishment of processes to readily restrict content deemed inimical to corporate interests. Such self-censorship, once operationalised, is a slippery slope and can result in much more censorship down the road.The general trend of responding to outrage by falling in line was problematic in itself. But in India’s current context, the eagerness to self-censor is significantly more harmful especially when you consider that other forms of mass media are already beholden to a paternalistic state with severely weakened institutions.The author is a research analyst at The Takshashila Institution, an independent centre for research and education in public policy. Views are personal.
One thing India can teach the West is this — you can be a liberal and a nationalist
The origin, development, and consequences of the politics of nationalism in western Europe and the United States have led many in the West, and indeed most of the world, to see nationalism as a bad thing. It is not surprising therefore that an RSS functionary in the United Kingdom advised its chief Mohan Bhagwat (in his words), “not to use the word nationalism as English is not our language and it could have a different meaning in England. It’s okay to say nation, national, and nationality but not nationalism. Because it alludes to Hitler, Nazism, and fascism in England.”Read more
Privacy Is Not Dead, It Is Terminally Ill
This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Earlier last week, The Verge ran a story about how health apps had permissions to change their terms of service without the user’s knowledge. If you are a former alcoholic who tracks how many days it has been since your last cigarette or a depressed professional who is keeping a record of how your days are progressing, that is horrible news. It sets the precedent that it does not matter what conditions you agreed to once you signed up for the app. Thus, your information can and likely will be sold to companies that may want to sell you alcohol or medication. The news comes as a shock to most people who read it, especially considering the personal and sensitive nature of health data. But that is the nature of terms and conditions that technology companies set out in their agreements today. A significant source of revenue for tech products and applications is the data they sell to their clients based on your usage. And it does not make sense to keep asking you for new kinds of permissions every time they want to track or access something. Instead, it works better to have a long-form document that is widely encompassing and grants them all the permissions they might ever need, including the permission to change the terms of the agreement after you signed. After all, no one reads the privacy policies before clicking, ‘I Agree’. This was on display earlier last year when Chaayos started facial recognition, and Nikhil Pahwa went through their privacy policy to unearth this line, “Customer should not expect, that customer’s personal information should always remain private”. The rest of the privacy policy essentially conveyed that Chaayos collects customer data but does not guarantee privacy. And Chaayos is not the cause of an extremely exploitative attitude towards data; it is a symptom. The history of the internet and the revenue model it gave birth to, has led to this point where access to information is a paramount need. If you want a better understanding of it, the New York Times did an excellent job tracing the history of Google’s privacy policy which does serve as a history of the internet. Because of how little regulation existed in the internet space when it was a sunrise industry, the frontrunners today ran with our data on their terms. During all of this, consent has been virtually non-existent. I use the word virtually consciously. Consent has largely been a placeholder during the internet’s rich history. There are two reasons why. Firstly, terms and conditions lead to consent fatigue. Even the best of lawyers do not go through the conditions for every app before they click accept. Secondly, let’s say you press the decline button when asked for additional permissions. Apps are known then to bypass the OS’ permission system without consent to gather that data. But let’s say that we live in an ideal world and apps don’t do that. You manage to read a few agreements and make a conscious decision to accept. You are happy to give your consent for access to the microphone but not the location and thus, deny permission. There is a chance that it still doesn’t matter. Consents tend to be interlinked because of the nature of the internet and smartphone apps. For instance, consider the automation app, ‘If This Then That (IFTTT)’. It serves as a platform to automate functions across multiple services. For instance, it can log in every trip you take on Uber to a Google Sheet. Sounds like a helpful tip to keep track of and claim work reimbursements, doesn’t it? But if you do use that service, you are subject to three interlinked policies, Uber’s, GSuite’s, and IFTTT’s. At this point, any data you generate from that automation will likely be sold for profit. How do we tackle something like this? How do we make sure that privacy is respected more and companies cannot change their agreements once you click accept? Google took a small step towards it by introducing in-context permissions in Android 10. The idea was that if an app wanted additional permissions, say access to your microphone, or your location, it would ask you when it needed it, and not front-load all requests. We are yet to see how effective it is going to be over time. At their best, in-context permissions will tell you why PayTM needs access to your location (because they likely need that information in case there is a fraud), or that your SMS app has been recording your location in the background for no apparent reason. At their worst, they make consent fatigue worse. In context, permissions are likely not the only answer, but it’s a start. Google implementing it is a definite sign that privacy is not dead, just terminally ill. Given time, and combined with measures such as simplified permissions, our generation might see a day when we completely control our data. Views are personal.
Intermediary guidelines might infringe on privacy
This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle.
If you try to keep up to date with the tech policy debates in India, intermediary liability is one of those few topics you cannot escape. In very oversimplified terms, the debate here is whether companies like Facebook should be held accountable for the content that is posted on them.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) came up with proposed changes to the intermediary guidelines back in December 2018. Since then, discourse around the topic has been rife and the new, finalised guidelines are speculated to come out in the next few weeks.
So when Bloomberg reported that MeitY is expected to put out the new rules later this month without ‘any major changes’, speculation around the guidelines was replaced by concern.
One of the most contentious clauses of the intermediary guidelines was to make messages and posts traceable to their origins. That would mean WhatsApp would need to use its resources to track where a message was originating from and then report that to the government.
As The Verge puts it, tech companies could essentially be required to serve as deputies of the state, conducting investigations on behalf of law enforcement, without so much as a court order.
That is deeply troubling. In contemporary India, we have either begun to take secure messaging for granted or just do not think about how secure our communications are today.
Here context matters. More often than not, when I talk about privacy and end-to-end encryption, I get glazed eyes. That is understandable. People find it hard to understand how encryption impacts their lives. But humor me in a thought experiment. As you read this, take a look around you. Take a good look at the person physically closest to you at this moment and ask yourself whether you would be okay with disabling the security on your phone and giving it to them for three days. If the thought of doing that makes you even slightly uncomfortable, you now understand why privacy matters.
Using the new rules, privacy is now going to be chipped away for anyone in India who uses WhatsApp (or any other end-to-end encrypted service). Add to that the fact that India today does not have the strongest of institutions. The issue of whether NaMo TV was a governance tool or a political one taught us that. So if there is anything that the political climate tells us today is that there is a very real chance that these guidelines can and will be used for political gain.
The other side to the story also is that these are intermediary guidelines and do not apply to just platforms. The intermediary is a broader term and encompasses not just platforms such as Facebook, Telegram, or Signal, but also cloud service providers, ISPs, and even cybercafés.
Not all of these players have equal access to information when ordered by law enforcement agencies to disclose it. A consultation report released by Medianama listed instances of harassment of intermediaries.
According to the report, ISPs claimed to live in a constant situation of threat and made to feel like criminals for running their businesses. During raids, people and their families were often asked to part with their phones and electronics, along with access to their passwords. In fact, according to the report, when a cloud service provider for an app in Andhra Pradesh was approached by the Police with a request for information, it had to go out of business being unable to comply. Not all intermediaries are created equal and these guidelines do not acknowledge that.
But the broader problem I see here is that there is no problem statement here. What these guidelines are trying to address is not clear. If the agenda is for the law enforcement agencies to information on digital communications (and that is essential to maintain law and order), it does not make sense to do it through these means. There are international provisions that India can and should resort to address (CLOUD Act in particular).
Once we go down this route, there is a non-zero chance that intermediaries such as WhatsApp might stop providing their services in India. Especially since if they comply, it will set precedent for other countries to follow India in their approach to breaking encryption. This could end up causing these intermediaries to serve as government lieutenants. Regardless of what platform we choose to communicate on, we need to value privacy going forward. If you disagree with the idea, now might be a great time to unlock your phone and hand your phone over to the person physically closest to you.
Using the new rules, privacy is now going to be chipped away for anyone in India who uses any end-to-end encrypted service.
The intermediary is a broad term and encompasses not just platforms but also cloud service providers, ISPs, and even cybercafés.
The writer is a research analyst at The Takshashila Institution All views are the author’s own.
India's Troops in Afghanistan: An Old Request in a New Context
Boots on the ground are secondary; India's key objective in Afghanistan should be to help the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan claim a monopoly over the legitimate use of physical force. India can contribute a lot towards the capacity building of the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces (ANDSF). The biggest challenges it currently faces are related to the decline in the quality of human resources at hand, rather than a shortage of financial resources.Read the full article on The Telegraph here.
What India really needs: A mass uprising to ensure inclusive economic growth
The focus on the country’s middle class ignores the problems of the millions in the informal sector.
In 2001, Jim O’Neill, a British economist working with Goldman Sachs, first coined the acronym BRIC to identify the four rapidly growing economies at the heart of the shift in the global economic power – Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Pivotal to the growth of these economies was the growing middle-class population in these countries, a segment of people with upward economic mobility, increasing spending power, and growing aspirations.In India, the rise of the middle-class has caught the fancy of economists, educationists, developmental organisations, industrialists, and politicians alike. The most common narratives about the middle class continue to be that many of them are young (so provide a large talent pool and workforce), have growing incomes (and significant spending power), and the ability to influence the outcome of economic and political strategies.
The full article is published in and available on Scroll.in
On US President Trump's India Visit
The Print’s daily roundtable TalkPoint posed a question connected to the US President's upcoming India visit: Will the spectacle of Trump's visit without a trade deal boost India-US ties?The US-India relationship over the last four years has been a case of one step forward, two steps backward. The convergence of the threat posed by China has led to a deepening of military ties between the countries with the operationalisation of the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) and the signing of the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA).At the same time, both the US and India have been unable to move forward on the issue of trade. While the Donald Trump administration has hung on to notions of ‘reciprocity’, the Narendra Modi government has raised import tariffs and pushed itself into a corner. Trump’s position on Pakistan has also changed; the plan to reduce and eventually withdraw US troops from Afghanistan is contingent on an understanding with Pakistan. Finally, India’s falling economic growth trajectory has restricted our ability to negotiate both with the US and China.Trump’s visit is unlikely to change any of these structural factors. Apart from a few defence purchase agreements, there is little to look forward to the US president’s tour.Read the entire discussion on ThePrint. here.
NRC website imbroglio highlights need for govt accountability
This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle.
Last week, multiple news outlets reported that the website housing NRC data had gone offline. Reportedly, this happened because a cloud services contract procured by Wipro on behalf of the State government of Assam was not renewed and thus, turned off due to non-payment. For now, officials have made assurances that the data itself is safe. Some aspersions have also been cast on former state officials working on the NRC project. This is still a developing story and there are multiple conspiracy theories being floated about the root-cause ranging on a spectrum from malintent to negligence and good old-fashioned incompetence.
From a public policy perspective, there are multiple questions that come up — should the state be contracting with private enterprise? How accountable should the state be when there is a loss of data or harm caused to people by accumulating this data? How much data should the state gather about its citizens and the potential for misuse? Let’s look at them starting from the narrowest question and then expanding outwards.
AWS V/S MEGHRAJ One of the reasons for outrage has been the use of Amazon Web Services to host this site especially when the National Informatics Center (NIC) itself offers a cloud service called ‘MeghRaj’. The concern cited is that the data may leave the country, or that private contractors will potentially be able to access sensitive data. It is almost cliched to say that the Internet has no borders, but this distinction is important. Data is not any safer just by virtue of it being in India and at a state-operated facility. On the contrary, it is probably better for a website and its data to be hosted with industry-leading operators that follow best-practices and have the expertise to efficiently manage both operations and security. One must consider both the capacity and role of the state in this context. What is the market failure that the state is addressing by offering cloud hosting services in a market where the likes of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft operate?
The objection regarding contractor access to sensitive information is important and merits further consideration. To a large extent, this can be addressed by a contractual requirement to restrict access to individuals with security clearances. Yes, this brings the dimension of a principal-agent problem and lax enforcement of contract law in India. But it is important to contrast it with the alternative — an individual representing the state, where the principal-agent problem is even more acute. As things stand, there are still options to hold a private entity accountable for violation of contract, but there is a lower probability of punitive action against an individual representing the state for harm arising out of action/inaction on their part. As far as causes for outrage go, the fact that the data was stored with AWS should not be one. There are larger aspects at play here.
STATE ACCOUNTABILITY This incident brings with itself a much larger question on the accountability the Government should have towards data. The Indian government keeps a substantial amount of personal and sensitive data on its citizens. For example, data on how much gas you consume, your physical address, the model, make, and the number of your car as well as how many times you traveled out of the country in the last 10 years. That is more sensitive information than most companies in the private sector hold.
Keeping this (and the social contract) in mind, how accountable should the government be? According to the draft of the Personal Data Protection Bill, not very. Section 35 of the bill allows the Government to exempt whole departments from the bill, removing checks and balances that should exist when the Government acts as a collector or processor of your data.
How does that make sense? Why should the state be any less accountable than a private enterprise? In fact, the Government has sold the data of its citizens, without their consent (~25 crore vehicle registrations and 15 crore driving licenses) to the private sector for revenue. As of now, it is hard to conclude whether the incident occurred due to malintent, negligence, or incompetence. But regardless of the cause, it brings with itself a lesson. The Government and all its departments need to be more responsible and be held more accountable when it comes to the data they store and process.
IMPLICATIONS OF A DATA-HUNGRY STATE A case can be made that the state is not a monolith and there exist certain barriers and redundancies due to which databases in the Government do not talk to each other… yet. Chapter 4 of the 2018-19 Economic Survey of India envisioned data as a public good and advocated “combining … disparate datasets.” The combination of limited state capacity, lack of accountability, and a hunger for data can be a dangerous one. While capacity can be supplemented by private enterprise, there is no substitute for accountability. In such a scenario it is extremely important to consider, understand, debate the chronology, implications, and potential for misuse before going ahead with such large-scale activities that could end up severely disrupting many millions of lives.
Section 35 of the draft Personal Data Protection Bill allows the government to exempt whole departments from the Bill, removing checks and balances that should exist when the government acts as a collector or processor of your data.
(The writers are research analysts at The Takshashila Institution All views are the author’s own and are personal.)
No need to panic. ‘Westlessness’ just means world without West’s dominance, not its ideas
If Westlessness is to mean the shifting of the global balance of power away from the victors of a world war fought 75 years ago, then yes, it is both objectively true and, from India’s perspective, quite desirable. The composition of the United Nations Security Council is not only outdated but is the single biggest reason today why the UN is increasingly at the margin on managing international security. To the extent that the change in the global balance is acknowledged and the contemporary balance reflected in the UN, this interpretation of ‘Westlessness’ is useful.Read more