Remember Nineteen Eighty-Four? Not the anti-Sikh riots but the book written by George Orwell?

In that book the government controls and monitors your every action, your every thought, and every aspect of your life. Everywhere there are human and technological spies monitoring whatever you do.

The same thing seems to be happening with the latest effort of the government to monitor content on the Internet on the basis of what is “objectionable”, “defamatory”, or whatever label the so-called government is uncomfortable with.

To be frank, the Internet scares the shit out of them, especially after WikiLeaks, the unshackled conversations over Twitter and Facebook and social networking-supported civic unrests. And it’s not just the government; all the agencies, may it be bureaucracy, the conventional mainstream media and the old school businesses that thrive on people’s inability to communicate with each other, would like to throttle the free flow of information on the Internet. Precisely this is the reason why there is no hue and cry on TV channels on the government’s new censorship drive.

Wondering what’s the big deal?

According to the new Information Technology Guidelines notified by the government

• Your Internet service provider must store your every online activity-related data that the government agencies can access any time without notification or without you ever knowing it
• All your private conversations via e-mail and Skype (and communications via other platforms) will be accessible to the government agencies
• All your private photographs and messages will be available to the babus
• If your content on your blog or Facebook or anywhere else is found “objectionable” it has to be taken down within 36 hours
• Anyone can say that your content is “defamatory” and get it removed from the World Wide Web
• Your every tweet, every Facebook post, every video, every search on Google (and other search engines), everything is going to be monitored

The government has invested Rs. 450 crores (yes, your money) to track the undersea cables for encrypted data and more than 53 modules have already been established. It means, while I’m typing this blog post, this might already be monitored and I may have to take it down in case some nut case finds it objectionable.

This is not just an India specific problem. In the name of SOPA there are efforts also in the USA to censor the Internet and many of the Arabian countries have already convinced the rest of the world why the Internet is to be censored.

The Internet censorship is more nefarious compared to  the usual censorship because no media has impacted the world as the Internet. It is now cliched, but had Facebook been a country, it would have been the third most populated country in the world, so you can very well imagine why even the biggest governments feel sort of powerless in front of its reach. Another problem (from the control freak government’s point of view) is that you no longer have to depend on computers and laptops in order to access the Internet and social networking applications. You can interact on Twitter and Facebook even from cheapest mobile phones these days. You can even post blog posts from your smart phones. It hardly takes a few seconds for the news to spread across the country, whether you are in a train, in a bus, having lunch, having a poop, or whatever you are doing. Hence, the zeal to control it, to censor it, to severe its most important vein — freedom of expression.

Can you stop it?

You can only stop it with collective effort. Make it more damaging for the government to censor the Internet. In India it might be difficult because there is just a small portion of the population that is active on the Internet and it might not be a vote bank but were it so insignificant, why would the government try to choke it? It certainly feels threatened. It certainly has an impact.

To begin with, you can sign this online petition against the government’s new diktat. You can also approach your local MPs and MLAs and your representatives and convey to them what you think of this censorship drive (realistically, I’m not too optimistic of this approach).

Write against it on your blog. In fact, I’m going to link from this blog post to all the blog posts and articles written on this subject.

Create online forums to discuss the matter.

I mean, do whatever you want to do, but do something. Once the damage is done, it will be nearly impossible to undo it.

Related reading

• How India made it easy for everyone to play internet censor
• इंटरनेट की अभूतपूर्व निगरानी शुरू
• What’s behind India’s Internet censorship?

In the morning my wife pointed at Google’s latest Google-Doodle on Charles Dickens’ 200th birthday.

We have been really preoccupied trying to find a new place to  move to because we need to vacate our current house in a few days. With lots of uncertainty looming around coupled with an anxiety to meet professional commitments ensured that the mention quickly got forgotten. Just now while quickly checking my Facebook messages I came across this blog post dedicated to Charles Dickens, and I just thought, what the heck, Dickens is perhaps the first writer I started reading seriously and he must have left an indelible mark on the way I express myself (or at least used to  express myself a few years ago) through my writing, and I can’t even write a quick blog post on this occasion?

I have always loved his dark, gloomy and romantic narratives and unconsciously tried to imitate him. Although later on I began to find his work less impressive as I read more and more of Dostoevski, Tolstoy, and Somerset Maugham, “Great Expectations” still remains a novel I have most repeatedly read and I may still read again and again.

So before my clients say, “You have enough time to write a blog post on Charles Dickens but you don’t have time to work for us,” I must end this hurried commemoration and get back to work. Happy Birthday Charles Dickens. You have really enriched the world of literature. No matter how you were in your personal life, you were a great gift to the world.

There is lots of buzz on the Internet regarding the recent announcement by Twitter that it would be blocking certain tweets in certain countries, although the same tweets will be available in the countries outside of the jurisdiction of those countries wanting to block that particular content.

In the beginning, as soon as I came across this news my first reaction was, “Whattha…” but then I did some reading on the issue and found myself agreeing to many commentators who, although cautiously, understand Twitter’s point of view and deem the development not as bad as it sounds.

The thing is, we don’t live in a Utopian world where freedom of expression and speech is available unshackled. It is not. While tapping on your keyboard, writing for your blog or for Twitter (or Facebook, or for that matter any publishing platform on the Internet) you may take your right to express yourself for granted, but your freedom ends where another’s discomfort begins, and this discomfort can be anything – political, social, ideological or religious.

In the current scenario the governments can block Twitter completely and this doesn’t work good for anybody. Countries like China can block Twitter for just a single tweet. There are many media companies that remove the content from their servers and it is available nowhere in the world. This is the worst case scenario.

Although it is a cyber platform, it works and operates in the real world. Also, it is not a non-profit entity. Somewhere down the line Twitter needs to earn money and it will be earning money via its presence in various countries, and when it plans to have presence in various countries it needs to comply with local jurisdictions whether one likes it or not.

While trying to comply with the local laws Twitter has very carefully drafted its censorship policy and has made censoring content a bit difficult. Particular tweets, while blocked in a country whose government wants them blocked, will be available to the rest of the world and you will also be notified when those tweets are blocked. At Twitter help Center they say:

Many countries, including the United States, have laws that may apply to Tweets and/or Twitter account content. In our continuing effort to make our services available to users everywhere, if we receive a valid and properly scoped request from an authorized entity, it may be necessary to reactively withhold access to certain content in a particular country from time to time.

We have found that transparency is vital to freedom of expression. Upon receipt of requests to withhold content we will promptly notify affected users, unless we are legally prohibited from doing so, and clearly indicate to viewers when content has been withheld. We have also expanded our partnership with Chilling Effects to include the publication of requests to withhold content in addition to the DMCA notifications that we already transmit.

I think this is a clever thing to do. The governments will have to follow procedures in order to block particular tweets. The same governments will not have an excuse to block entire Twitter at the drop of a hat. Twitter can always say, look, we’re complying with your local laws so you cannot block us.

The good thing is the transparency factor and also a clever way of keeping the content visible in the regions where the local laws are not applicable. Transparency in the sense that the content that is blocked will be marked as blocked content and as mentioned in the above quoted text from Twitter, all the requests to withhold content by particular governments will be listed at the Chilling Effects website.

Since all the Internet companies have to operate in the real world, they have to follow the real jurisdictions. Perhaps one day we will have utopia and the cyber world will be totally different from the real world, but right now everything boils down to the real world, where we all have to operate. Twitter is trying to comply with local laws as well as allowing free flow of information wherever it is possible. So far, it sounds fair.

Initially when I had thought of the topic my immediate reply was “no”, but then I thought as an identity, as an entity, what is Twitter and how much independence it should get when it comes to adhering to various regulations? The problem with Twitter is that although it is a US-based company its users come from all over the world and it has become a platform of freedom of speech and expression. Since I’m not an expert on IT laws and also international laws, I am a bit confused here. When we post on Twitter, are be governed by US laws (because Twitter, I think, operates under US laws) or our individual laws are applicable? For instance, if I’m using Twitter from India, is it Indian laws I abide by or US laws? Take for instance a car; even if it is manufactured in the US, if it has been sold in India and the person is driving it around on Indian roads, he or she has to abide by the Indian traffic rules.

In a recent judgment Twitter has been ordered to turn over data on WikiLeaks supporters by a US district judge. What if some of the backers belong to other countries? Do they become criminals if the US authorities think that they used Twitter to exchange and disseminate “harmful” information? What if I, while living in India, helped WikiLeaks in a manner objectionable to the US law authorities?

Using a real example, what if the Libyan government asked Twitter to share information on people helping the rebels? Would the company comply? What about China? Yes, Google and other companies comply with local laws but what if they reveal the identity of some person and based on that revelation the person is executed by an authoritarian regime? As far as we know, the US begins to cry esoteric expressions like freedom of speech and privacy when it comes to other countries but when it comes to its own land all of a sudden it needs information even when that information is deemed private and confidential.

But then, is Twitter confidentially supreme even when it is being used by murderers, rapists and terrorists? Recently the British government asked Twitter and Facebook to help identify people who got involved in the riots. I don’t know whether Twitter and Facebook handed over the information or not, but logically, it should. Where do we draw the line then? Any country can say that they need information on criminals whether those Twitter users are criminals or not. What about political activists? Many activists prefer to remain anonymous to avoid persecution. There are many politically and socially active individuals on Twitter who are quite vocal and continuously talk against the government and at the same time have good jobs. If their identities are revealed they will not only be targeted by the authorities, they will also lose their jobs and even their careers. Anonymity, especially on the Internet, engenders unparalleled empowerment. You cannot directly confront people you oppose but you can surely spread your opinion unrestrained.

This is a debatable issue and as more and more such platforms evolve, such socio-legal issues will rise again and again. There is a difference between criminals (in the category of murderers, rapists, child abusers, psychopaths and religious fanatics) and political dissenters. There has to be an international consensus on how to deal with such people. Unless there is an international consensus, any government can force Twitter and other social networking platforms to reveal the identity of their users putting them in great peril. What do you think?

I was just reading this article on a village in Bihar that has no electricity, no water supply and none of the facilities we take for granted like a health centre or a school. And this village is represented by Lallu Prasad Yadav, a walking and talking political nuisance and windbag. So I was just wondering, why couldn’t these villagers vote for electricity, water supply and a school, instead of empty promises and perhaps bottles of country liquor? For instance, get us electricity and water supply within the next two months and we will vote for your party, something like that. Getting electricity and water to a village within a couple of months isn’t impossible.

Most of the goons like Lallu are elected to power not because of their work, but the useless stuff they distribute and the pathetic promises they make during pre-election campaigns. You might say but then these villagers deserve what they get but that is not the point. Ours is a highly patriarchal society so whatever the males of the village do, the children and the women have to bear the brunt. Once country liquor or lose cash is distributed among these men they do not only vote for the wrong people themselves, they also make the women and the young adults to vote for the same charlatans (assuming they are not threatened into voting for wrong candidates by the henchmen of these charlatans).

These silly people don’t understand that they are prolonging their misery by focusing on immediate gains. But is this the only story? Is it about silly and stupid and backward villagers constantly trapped in their own imprecation of ignorance and greed? It might be (and that’s why recently I suggested that illiterate people shouldn’t be allowed to vote, but the issue is debatable), but the problem is not confined to backward Bihari villages. Even among the intellectuals and the middle classes dwelling in the cities and towns, the same problem persists: either they don’t vote, or even when they do, they have no clue whom to vote for.

We are not aware in terms of our rights and responsibilities. We see elections as just days when we have to go and cast our votes and then flaunt that little mark on the tips of our fingers. We are not politically conscious and we don’t have strong opinions regarding our politicians. We don’t realise that these politicians impact the way we and our children live our lives and spend our days in this country.

Our current political mess is simply because we don’t vote for the right reason whether we are living in villages or cities. We either vote indifferently as if we couldn’t care less who comes to power because basically they are the same (very convenient) or we can be easily incited/enticed. Both these problems have attained an alarming state. The political class isn’t going to do anything about it because it works in their favour. The more indifferent you are, the more corruption they can indulge in with greater impunity because they know  that your indifference is going to help them maintain a political status quo. But what if all the candidates listed are basically of the same variety? This is why it is very important to fully support movements like Anna Hazare’s. He may sound a bit loony sometimes but the fundamental approach isn’t misplaced. He is raising all the issues whether rightly or wrongly, that we should be raising as concerned citizens. Take for instance the right to recall. But that is another topic.

So unless we start voting for the right reason we are never going to get the sort of politicians needed to give us a balanced growth.

This is the question being asked in this Forbes article. The theme of this article is slightly legal and US-based, but I am thinking in general, what makes a blogger a journalist? The answer is very straightforward. Not everybody who writes is a writer. Blogging is a form of journalling where you express your thoughts and opinions. It doesn’t necessarily have to be analytical and professional unless you are hired by a professional media house or a newspaper. There are many professional journalists who also blog and there are many bloggers who also take up journalism assignments on a full-time as well as part-time basis.

In the new-age media there are definitely many terms that are coming up and our legal terminology is need to be redefined to accommodate these terms and activities. For instance, even 10 years ago there were no such concept as a “citizen journalist”. Even right now it is a vague concept, but what if some people take up “citizen journalism” is a full-time career, I mean, who knows? For many blogging is a full-time career. There are already many blogs that are bigger than newspaper publications. There are many bloggers who are more trusted than journalists. Similarly, there might come a time when citizen journalists might be more trusted than our conventional journalists (especially in India due to the paid content problem in the news media).

Orthodox journalists might feel uncomfortable with such developments, as it has already been manifested. Anyway, the point is, there can be different definitions for different case scenarios. You might be a journalist if you are blogging for a newspaper as a columnist, and you might be a simple, non-affiliated blogger if you’re writing for yourself. Again, what about publications like TechCrunch that are not affiliated to any newspaper, they also report news and opinions, and they are published as  blogs?

The Union Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal definitely bit more than he could chew when he peremptorily demanded that content on popular websites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube must be reviewed before it appears online. He actually suggested that dedicated employees of these websites must individually go through each post, review it, and let it be published only after approval according to the guidelines provided by the government.

Deservedly, #IdiotKapilSibal or something of that nature was one of the hot trends on various blogs and social networking websites. Deservedly, because being the Telecom minister he should know that, given the amount of information generated on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google, it is not, with current technology, humanly possible to go through each post before it is published, because millions of updates are posted every day. These guys still seem to be living in the 80s when government babus and politicians decided what people should know and what they should say. They don’t realize that the Internet is a communication and information juggernaut that cannot be controlled by a single government or a single agency.

Can it be controlled? Sure it can be, but then multiple countries will have to come together and take collective measures.

But that’s not the point. The point is, censorship can never be selective. Kapil Sibal says he never meant to censor all of the Internet, he just wants “objectionable” content to be removed from these websites. What’s objectionable? Anything, according to him and his supporters, that can incite communal violence and social unrest. But according to the Congress the Anna Hazare movement was a sign of social unrest. Would it want its online presence removed, such as Twitter accounts and Facebook pages?

Even among the so-called intellectuals there is lots of confusion and obfuscation regarding what can be deemed as objectionable. On a TV debate yesterday on the same issue Suhail Seth first supported the stand of the government saying that content that can cause communal and religious strife must be removed or censored, and then in the same sentence he lamented the fact that MF Hussein paintings depicting naked Hindu gods in various awkward positions cannot be displayed publicly. So why cannot works of “art” that a certain community finds obnoxious be removed from public view when objectionable content should be removed from the Internet? Who decides that your work is art and freedom of expression and mine is an incitement?

Of course there is tons of objectionable content on the Internet and some of it can make you puke instantly, but there is one thing people don’t understand. The Internet is not the conventional “media”. It is just like the real world, but existing digitally. It is a parallel world. Just like in the real world there are good things and bad things and we have to take the both, the similar is the case with the Internet. You have social groups, you can hold interactions and meetings, you can post content, you can react to the content being posted, you can hold protests, you can organize campaigns, you can virtually visit different parts of the world, you can be exposed to various new ideas and ideologies, you can meet new people from all parts of the world, and you can obtain information that would have been available to you so easily had the Internet not been there. Just like the real world, there are good people and there are bad people. And in fact, there is greater restraint on the Internet compared to the normal world because it is actually in your hand what you want to see and what you want to propagate.

The supporters of Internet censorship say that something really vile and revolting can go viral and hurt certain communities. First of all, lots of content has gone viral on the Internet and up till now there has been not even a single instance of something hateful and obnoxious going viral. People don’t forward or repost videos and images that can hurt religious sentiments. Of course there are lots of videos and images lampooning our “esteemed” politicians that sometimes go viral, but then who says that our politicians must be kept on a pedestal and be treated like holy cows? Why is it blasphemous to show Manmohan Singh dancing with Sonia Gandhi in a morphed image taken from Dirty Picture?

Should people like Kapil Sibal and his cronies be taken seriously? They should be, because these people run the government and they are actually in a position to cause grave injury to our democracy and freedom of expression. Even if they cannot curtail the Internet and implement censorship in a degree they want, their mentality is quite dangerous and this is not a new manifestation. Remember that it was the Congress that imposed the Emergency. It was the Congress that tried to curb the freedom of the press through the Press Bill. In the early 2000s as soon as it came to power it tried to block popular blogging services so that people could not express their opinions. So this is a party that nurtures Draconian proclivities, so definitely such pronunciations must be taken seriously and people must protest as vocally as possible. In the guise of censoring objectionable content they want to throttle your freedom of expression and the only outlet you have got – the Internet.

Their hatred for freedom of expression also emanates from the fact that most of the Indians are lowly creatures, perpetually wallowing in the “mai-baap” mentality and how dare they speak up against the Almighty ministers? I think that is the biggest issue, not some security threat or a possibility of communal violence that is nothing but balderdash.

Yesterday after my usual “riyaaz” I was humming this song

Hue hum jinke liye barbad wo humko chahe kare na yaad
Jeevan bhar, jeevan bhar ubki yaad mei
Hum gaye jayenge, gaye jayenge

It translates to: for whom I destroyed my entire life, even if she never thinks of me, I’ll keep singing songs in her memory.

Theoretically these lines seem fine, but in the movie what he means is that now he will simply roam around the streets, do nothing else and just sing sad songs.

Love is without a doubt beautiful emotion and one time or another we all experience it. We also face rejection and degection, and sometimes also betrayal. Sadness and momentary depression too is normal. But some people get too obsessed and don’t know when to put a stop to their love binge.

These kind of people need urgent help, or counseling. They need to be shaken out the stupor they have gotten themselves into. If not taken care of in time it can be even fatal. I’m aware of 3 cases where people killed themselves because they were ditched for another person. There was a physiotherapist I used to know who had a promising career ahead of him. He was quite happy and upbeat when he was in Delhi. Then he went to Jalpaiguri to start a special school there and suddenly I heard he had jumped off a railway bridge and killed himself. He had been rejected by the girl he loved.

Then there was my cousin’s son who hanged himself because his girlfriend left him for another boy. His mother still hasn’t recovered from the trauma and keeps talking to her non-existent son.

My wife’s nephew told us about his friend’s elder brother who, again, hanged himself when he was betrayed or abandoned by the girl he loved. He was a promising footballer.

It’s totally unintentional that all the three instances listed above involve guys killing themselves for fickle-minded girls. But the point is, by killing yourself or by losing your balance of mind you aren’t proving your eternal love, or you are not going to cause lasting emotional pain to a person who has ceased to have feelings for you. All you are going to achieve is cause a lasting pain to your parents, your siblings, and all those who really care for you or love you. Losing yourself over “unrequited” love is a highly selfish act.

But I think it would be unfair to call these people “selfish”. They are going through extreme mental distress and during this distress the mind pushes either the self-destruction button, or goes into a deep depression where sound decisions are not possible. This period is very critical and the person needs some serious help. It’s not live, it’s an uncontrollable obsession.

Of course folklore, and these days films too promote such extreme emotions. There is a beautiful song to counter this destructive state of mind:

Chhod de saari duniyaa kisi ke  liye
Ye munaasib nahin aadmi ke liye
Pyaar se bhi zaroori kayi kaam hein
Pyaar sab kucch nahin zindagi ke liye

For those who don’t understand Hindi:

It’s not right to abandon the whole world
Just for a single person
There are many things more important than love
Love is not everything in life

It’s very appropriate.

In the morning a client called and it was crystal clear from his tone that he is totally into bossing people around (he was making his secretary talk to me). He was trying to tell me how much he was going pay and when.

I politely asked his secretary to tell him that as a policy (so please don’t take this personally) I don’t alow my clients to dictate terms and it’s I who decides how much a client needs to pay and when. Deciding who decides my payment terms is not the main issue. The issue is, how a person thinks of himself or herself when he or she thinks that earning more means you are more powerful than the other person.

Power depends on lots of factors; of course money is one of them, but it is not the only factor that makes you powerful. Your power is gauged by the degree of influence you weild in this world.

Influence, and also independence. How powerful you are also is reflected by how independent you are. Suppose you think that you are powerful because you own an Audi? Then you sense of power depends on the fact that you own an expensive car or you have the means to own it.

A person who cannot afforf an Audi and doesn’t need an expensive car to feel powerful is much more powerful than you. I know this is rhetorical, because having money didn’t just mean owning an expensive car; it also means you can provide worldclass opportunities to your family in terms of education, medical care (when needed) and general quality of life. Just random thinking.

I started reading The Enchantress of Florence simply because I try not to miss a Salman Rushdie book. Ever since I read his Ground Beneath Her Feet and then Shalimaar The Clown I am no longer a big fan of his writing. He is a marvellous writer, no doubt, but he is too obsessed with a particular writing style.

The central character of almost all of his novels is semi-magical. Surrealistic things keep on taking place around him or her, and predictably, the same thing happens in The Enchantress of Florence. He has a great writhing style without doubt and among the contemporaries he is my favourite writer (although I haven’t read many contemporary writers). But a great writing style doesn’t mean you have a good story at hand. Most of his time is spent trying to establish how devine his characters are, whether it’s Niccolo Vespucci or Angelica (The Enchantress of Florence). Page after page is covered on how devinely beautiful Angelica is and how different segments of the population of Florence are affected by her beauty; in fact so much that at a particular point you feel that the story isn’t going to move forward. But it does eventually, and by the time it does, you are at the last page of the novel.

Among the contemporaries he’s perhaps the best, but somehow he has gotten himself trapped in the surrealism loop — the main protagonists and antagonists have to have some strange, inexplicable powers: they can appear or disappear like ghosts, they can perform tricks that don’t fall under the realm of the natural world, good things or bad things happen to people who do good things or bad things to them, etc. It means you cannot deal with plots unless they have esoteric, preternatural characters. I’m not saying such writing doesn’t have its own intrinsic charm, but after a while it becomes a bit of a drag.

As a reading experience it is a good book, obviously, coming from Salman Rushdie, but in the end you don’t feel satisfied. At first I thought maybe before reading this book I had read War And Peace by Leo Tolstoy so my expectation was perhaps higher, but I know that even if I hadn’t experienced Tolstoy before reading The enchantress of florence, I wouldn’t have appreciated the book that much.

I wouldn’t say don’t read the book, but if you skip it, you aren’t missing much. Right now I’m reading The Great Gatsby, and I can already feel the difference.