Introduction



“niiti”, a Sanskrit word means, in different contexts, policy, ethics, tenets. To us, who belong here, it is our raison d’etre, our touchstone. So we constantly turn to our ethics and tenets when we re-examine the basis of what we do and how we do it over and over again. This is our space to engage with our core, with you, our readers and companions on the path towards an equitable society in the deepest meaning of the word. Over the past years, there are several social issues and organisations that we have engaged with and been enriched with both experience and knowledge along the way. We believe that in creating a conversation platform for those engaged in the field, including some of our clients, partners, all of you out there who have reached this site wanting to be the change and others who have expertise to comment and critique, we can actually crowd-source actions and solutions for some of our most pressing social issues.

Some of these stories feature organisations and people who have been the change; others highlight innovative approaches to long-entrenched social issues; yet others point to ways in which change can be facilitated, simply. If you are inspired by them as well and motivated to replicate their work, or want to share inputs on other bright examples like these, do write to us at info@niiticonsulting.com.

This is your platform. Feel free to contribute, critique, and most importantly, converse.

Monday, August 20, 2012

Tech-sec

When it comes to issues of security, technology and new media get a bad rap. Something to do with the internet making people too anonymous and locations too visible. Something about how sites like Facebook have us willingly spilling the most sensitive information we own on a public forum. Something about how apps like Four square have us exploiting our phones' GPS to show off how well-travelled and finely-dined we are. And, let's not forget, something about how even the simplest of cell-phones aren't safe from incessant SMSes after a single poorly-thought out, socially lubricated decision.
The reports don't do much to quell our fears. There was the notorious MySpace case where a woman managed to get her next door neighbour's daughter – the high school rival to her own – to commit suicide by posing as a boy she had (or developed?) a crush on and then breaking her heart. Or the one where a group of kids web-camming across different cities egged on a peer to OD in front of them. Back online, Something Awful stands as a testament to how far the most basic of information can go in the hands of a couple of teenagers. Think of all the information about yourself you've ever revealed when creating a profile on the internet. And think about how all of it is owned by somebody else – several somebody elses. With all this in mind, it seems pretty evident that the internet is a scary place, and now that it's invaded our phones, we should be downright terrified. No?
No.
The internet is not a scary place. It doesn't exist in a vacuum free from the laws of the realworld. Sure, the legalities concerning online activity are more sketchy that most given that the speed of the latter's development far outstrips the former's incurably sluggish pace. There is nothing inherently dangerous about the internet or technology. If there's anything to fear, it's our own (limited)capacity to consider the consequences of our actions online. The internet iseasy – it's fast, it's convenient, and it's tempting. It now lives in our phones and follows us wherever we go. It's also solitary, and there's your problem. You never know how many people are 'watching' you, where they are from, and what fraction of them are perfect strangers.
But how is that the internet's fault? Who twisted our arm and forced us to share pictures of one 'crazy' night out with our friends, our friends' friends and Mark Zuckerberg, but our own ego? How many of us use Four square to reap rewards from the few venues that are privy to its concept of specials, and how many of us just for the satisfaction of being in a trendy place and making sure people know we're there? And - for all our own lurking on perfect strangers or high school strangers on social and professional networks, how many of us could honestly be bothered to track them down IRL? Not none, sure, but not many. If we wouldn't, what are the odds that anyone else would?
For me, the implications of technology and new media are far more positive than negative. I WANT my friends and family to know where I am. I want them to know which cafe I was last at. I want them to send me a message when my Twitter account falls silent for over 18 hours. I want them to be my friends on Latitude. The internet is a wonderful thing because it puts you in control of what information you want to share, whether you want to share it or not, and who all can see it. The most insecure component of technology is the human being using it.


Ed - RadhikaTakru (who, amongst other things, handles digital media for Bell Bajao, one of India's most popular campaigns against domestic violence) shares her perspective on the Internet and technology and how they can be either used or misused from a safety perspective.

Radhika recently started work in the NGO sector as an online strategist, but has been moonlighting as an online music journalist for years. You'll find band interviews and album reviews by her here. Also look up the tweetathon moderated by her on Technology for Security #techsec on Twitter.

Friday, August 3, 2012

Why technology can whisper humanity in politics

The Romans had it right.

On the triumphant chariots, bedecked with triumphant generals or emperors and their laurel wreath, they put a slave shadowing the victor, whispering amid the confetti showers, memento mori, roughly translated you are only a man. It was not a new idea to show a man his proper place. The Greeks had a name for the disease of hubris, pleonexia, or the craving for more than one's share.

The Guardian has referred to pleonexia while talking about Joseph Stiglitz's new book The Price of Inequality which talks about the defining theme of our disturbed times - why so few gain at the expense of so many?

Pleonexia could be a unique trait of the average Indian politician - the desire to gain much more than your share, often at the expense of others.

Why does this happen and why do people get away with it? We believe in India especially it happens because we have a functional democracy but not an experienced democracy.

The difference is simple: India is a democracy, every five years we vote in whoever we want (at least among the pool contesting) but otherwise our connect with democracy, our sense of daily democracy is missing. This means we rarely know our representative, the one we ostensibly knowingly select or elect, and have little or no interaction with the decision-making that happens on our behalf.

Power in India has always been applied by grandeur and fuelled by pleonexia. It comes from hundreds of years of invasion and rule through which the rulers, always a tiny set, could reign over vast millions by impressing an everlasting stamp of superiority and distance. It is a legacy we carry from Mughal and British rule and it has continued mostly unchallenged till now.

For the first time in India's independent history, there is a palpable sense that the gap between those who govern in the name of the people, and the people themselves, is thinning.

Why is this happening? There are multiple reasons from rapid urbanisation which brings people closer to pedestals of power and thereby takes away the mystique; the spread of education breaks the infallible myth; mushrooming media shows demolishes powerful people in our living rooms and bedrooms every night and technology brings not just people but also people in power closer and makes them human.
 
It is fashionable in some circles to laugh at media, and social media, as naiveté of the political imbecile. Ask many an Indian politician today and they will still tell you that elections are won and lost on money, caste and shenanigans, and on little else. That is true - in many cases. But in many more, the tide is turning and anger of the Indian politician, the private bitter and abusive jokes about the media (sometimes well deserved) come from a sense of insecurity that the politician in this country has never felt before.

We believe that one of the greatest boons of much abused technology is that it gives an instantaneous voice to millions - and immediately millions say nonsense - but with time, from the white noise, comes real, steadfast critique which incrementally changes the system.

We believe that the power of technology is not immediate revolution but a relentless barrage that wears, and ultimately, tears off an unjust system.

Technology is not the instant power of an army raised by Subhash Chandra Bose but the wearing effect of Gandhian satyagraha, every drop, every tweet, every post, every phone call, every email, every SMS attacks the unjust and refuses to let them sleep, until, tired and weary, they give up.

Think of a system where every allocation to a bed in a government hospital can be tracked real time - who is it going to, what is the need - is all in one hub that can be accessed at any time. Too big you think? But why? Do we not live in a world where one website caters to the relentless mutterings of reportedly 900 million registered users everyday (Facebook)?
Think of a system where the admission to every government school is online and on the cloud and can be accessed from anywhere, any time. You know who was admitted, from where, how and why.

Think of attendance records of students - and, most critically, teachers - of every government school placed online and on the cloud to be accessed any time, anywhere.

That's why at Whypoll we are staring with the small things - a platform to complain harassment, an app to reach out to friends and family, a system to ask questions of our MPs and MLAs. Every long journey begins with a question.

At Whypoll, we start at the start, at the why.

So when you dream of change, dream with us of a world where change happens in countless ways everyday, at every moment, and leave the age of the guillotine behind. Because technology today can help you whisper in powerful ears - oh, but you too are only human.

Hindol Sengupta is one of the two founding trustees of the not-for-profit Whypoll Trust, India's only open government platform. Whypoll works to create technological interfaces between the citizen and government. He is the author of The Liberals, on living through twenty years of Indian economic liberalisation, out by Harper Collins in August, 2012.