Chief minister Vasundhara Raje on Monday launched a multi-mode connectivity network connecting Jaipur with all 9,894 gram panchayats and 183 municipal areas in Rajasthan. RajNET facilitates voice, video and data connection, enabling effective delivery of citizen services like Bhamashah, e-Mitra and MNREGS across the state. Raje launched RajNET through video conferencing with interlocutors at eight…
During the year 2014-15, Gujarat Information Commission had fined total 69 government officials or officials of government authorities for their deficiencies in providing information under the provisions of Right to Information Act (RTI). The total amount of such fine slapped on government officials for violation of RTI Act comes around Rs 8.8 lakh. This has…
Net Neutrality is a really stupid, anti-capitalism policy – that outlaws on the Internet several basic, fundamental free market tenets that are in practice in every other sector of a functioning economy. How anti-capitalism? College communications professor and avowed Marxist (please pardon the redundancy) Robert McChesney wrote: “(T)he ultimate goal is to get rid of…
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) expects to finalise its view on net neutrality in “a couple of months”. “DoT has sought a comprehensive view from us on net neutrality. It should be done in a couple of months,” TRAI Chairman R.S. Sharma said on the sidelines of an event of the CASBAA India…
An Indian worker from Karnataka was detained twice by Saudi Arabia after he sent a video to a social activist and sought help for leaving the country due to harsh working conditions, BBC Trending reported on Saturday. Abdul Sattar Makandar, 35, was detained on March 15 and again on March 18 under a Saudi law…
The hydrocarbon powered Boeing jet touches down with a squeal of tires. Turbines whine down and we step off of the plane into another world completely. It is dark out. Over 20 hours on a plane and you begin to question reality. We find ourselves in the pickup zone of Bangalore International Airport. Uber and…
The digital divide here in the United States has nothing on India, where a billion-plus residents remain un- or under-served by telecoms. In some large part, this is a feature of the country’s growing rift between its relatively small urban upper-crust and rural everyone else. Some 70 percent of the country lives in diffuse villages…
Content regulation on the Internet is at the forefront of discussion in India due to a build up of events over the past 12 months. Last August the Department of Telecommunications tried to prevent telecommunication providers from allowing their customers to access 857 pornographic websites. This mandate was immediately appealed and subsequently overturned by the…
On March 11, the Aadhaar Bill was passed by 73 of the 545 members of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament, after three hours of discussion. It sanctions the bulk collection and centralisation of biometric and demographic data by the government and private businesses. Many people argue that the controversial Bill contains inadequate…
Aadhaar forms the backbone of the current government’s JAM (Jan Dhan frills-free bank accounts, Aadhaar, Mobile phones for transactions) trinity to deliver public services and entitlements such as student scholarships and cooking gas, food and fertiliser subsidies which currently amount to a little less than 2% of India’s GDP. For decades, India has poured many…