When a fox preaches, take care of your geese.
The cunning fox have preached us for long about the internet, we are told not to trust the internet for they knew when we do, distance will never matter, secrets won’t be kept, corrupt governments will never succeed.
The cunning fox, our Indian government has pushed for strict regulation of Internet Policies since the crowds swelled in Ram Lila Maidan for the Anna Hazare’s protest coördinated widely through the Internet. Revolutions in Egypt, Occupy Wall street movement in US, Riots in England, were a grim reminder to the governments across the world; people who stopped listening to them are now speaking to each other and forming a leaderless opposition.
In India Sibalification is the synonym for Internet Censorship. As per Initial reports, when Kapil Sibal publicly called for Pre-Screening of internet, he showed Facebook page that maligned ruling Congress Party chief Sonia Gandhi and told them it was “unacceptable”. Having realized he had no strong case to prove, he went ahead and gave it a religious overtone saying “Social media sites risked fanning tensions in India, which has a long history of deadly religious violence.”
The Cunning fox then silently (Negligible Coverage in Traditional Media) went ahead and submitted a proposal in the General assembly in New York on October 26, 2011 by which,
India has argued for a radical shift from the present model of multi-stakeholder led decision-making, to a purely government-run multilateral body that would relegate civil society, private sector, international organisations as well as technical and academic groups to the fringes in an advisory role. The proposal has been floated sans any public consultation, despite the move impacting the country’s 800 million mobile and 100 million Internet users. – The Hindu
The Censorship that followed and the Anonymous Invasion of India have been registered here in detail.
Though the Internet Service Providers provided access to the blocked websites after prolonged protests across the country by members and supporters of Anonymous recently, the cunning fox again found a brilliant opportunity in the recent NE Exodus to put forth its argument on Internet Censorship.
The sadistic smile of the cunning fox and Karan Thapars iterated question on whether Kapil Sibal was right when he called for Internet Censorship highlights the urgency with which our government is working to curtail freedom of expression.
The past few days have been very interesting for our country, what we have witnessed is one more case of political impotency which has again completely shifted its focus from the core issue of exodus and has turned its head on Censorship of Social Media.
How does it tally? North East Exodus & Social Media Censorship.
Our government needs to answer this,
Would they have fled had they felt Safe?
All the assurance from our government couldn’t pacify the crowd from fleeing; they didn’t feel safe in their own country which is unfortunate. Ministers, Policemen rushed to Railway stations and shouted on top of their voice requesting them to stay, but why did they leave?
Because the ministers were too late to react, the government was too late to notice the growing fear in the eyes of its own people. What people across the border could notice, which prompted them to create these Hate materials, was noticed late by our Intelligence Bureau & politicians.
People didn’t leave because we had no internet censorship and 5 SMS Per day rule, People are not coming back because we have internet censorship and 5 SMS per day rule now. It’s the Safety that matters! Not the social media.
The amount of Goodwill messages which flooded the internet by now would have negated the Hate Messages, that’s the power of social media. Even before the creation of special community centers by our government (Which is doubtful) to bridge the gap between its own people, hundreds of pages and groups have been created by Indians for Indians to join hands, that’s the power of social media.
Writing Derogatory comments and inflammatory messages are not new to us Indians! Show me a wall, bench which is clean in Railway toilets, Government Offices, Schools, Colleges, and Elevators! As a kid I learnt bad words from what was written in my school benches, Can the government promise to clean every single property in its possession before cleaning social media walls?
If our government finds SMS, MMS messages the main reason for the spread of Panic, why are they planning to give more mobile phones to people Below poverty line (bless them) and increasing its reach? Read Here.
Why is our government not focusing in creating a stronger Cyber Army like US to fight Cyber-terrorism and guard people of their fundamental rights, instead of grabbing all their rights in the name of providing freedom? And
If our government still feels Social media are too loud spreading hate messages, derogatory statements, morphed pictures of politicians, then why not create a website called Irecievedabribe.com similarly on the lines of ipaidabribe.com that would significantly bring down the amount of Hate messages!
Think.
When a fox preaches, take care of your geese.
Krzna 