APC, Bytes for All, DEF and EMPOWER have submitted a written statement to the United Nations Human Rights Council welcoming the appointment of Dr. Ahmed Shaheed as the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief. The coalition looks forward to his report to be presented at the 34th Session of the Council. Read More

Ritu Srivastava, from Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) India, participated in the workshop Freedom of Expression Online: Gaps in Policy and Practice at the Internet Governance Forum in Brazil. She writes:
We are no longer living in an offline society. We are living more and more in an online world, connecting with people from different countries, sharing Read More

Author’s name: Buddha Deb, Digital Empowerment Foundation India

João Pessoa, Brazil

IGF 2015: The right to protest online

Internet Governance Forum: The right to protest online
In the digital age, protests are no longer limited to assemblies and gatherings in physical spaces but are increasingly taking place, in whole or in part, online. Although calls have been made to recognise Read More

Net Neutrality is a universal concept where Telecom Service Provider as an access provider has no right to select services, applications and content that consumers want to access. It is consumer/user’s right to select services, applications and content that they want to access. It functions under the basic assumption that Read More

After the recent earthquake in Nepal, the United States Geological Survey has stated publicly that predicting the time and magnitude of earthquakes is next to impossible. Thus, with regards to earthquakes and some other geophysical phenomena, the focus shifts to response after the fact. Read More

Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) submitted views on the consultation paper on the Regulatory Framework for OTT Services, Internet Services and Network Neutrality released on March 27, 2015 by the TRAI (referred to as the “Internet Licensing Paper”). We are signing onto this letter and the supporting submission Read More

Dasra recognizes an urgent need for inspired and uncompromising competence to touch and transform the lives of 800 million Indians. Through knowledge creation, capacity building, collaboration and fundraising, we nurture powerful partnerships with funders and social enterprises. Read More

Global Information Society Watch 2014
The internet is a key tool to exercise the right to freedom of expression. It not only allows us to exercise the right to receive information, knowledge, ideas and opinions, but also allows us to exercise the right to express these – be it in the form of video, audio or Read More

In December 2014, DEF conducted a study to analyse connectivity in the pilot locations of the NOFN (which consists of 30 Gram Panchayats in Rajasthan, 15 in Andhra Pradesh and 14 in North Tripura). The study reveals that there is a fairly large gap between the initial claims made and the re-alities. Read More

1. Which themes should be addressed in the inter-sessional work of IGF 2015?
Access Issue should be taken through inter-sessional work. In terms of access, affordability, mobile technology is inclusive in terms of existing infrastructure, affordability, wide-range of communication medium, etc. Read More

India is home to 1.2 billion and is projected to be the third largest economy in the next decade.1 India also accounts for 33 percent of the total population living in poverty, according to the UN2 and spends 1.3% percent of its GDP on health compared to 3 percent by China and 8.6 percent by Read More

The International Telecommunications Union put the number of people using the Internet by the end of 2016 at 3.5 billion, out of a global population of 7 billion. This means that there are 3.5 billion people who are yet to be connected. Read More

Public spaces in the physical sense are shrinking, and we also visit them less frequently than before. This trend can be traced back to the entry of electronic media in our lives—starting from the time TV sets made their way into our homes to mobile phones becoming ubiquitous in our hands today. Read More

The government seems to have hit on a new recipe to curb discontent and dissent in the Kashmir valley. It’s particularly ironical that the Jammu and Kashmir director of information and public relations used his Twitter handle @listenshahid to announce the suspension of 22 social media sites in Kashmir. Read More

Privacy is not a state of maintaining secrecy. Rather it is defined as “the state of being alone and not watched or disturbed by other people” or “the state of being free from the attention of the public”. Read More

India is at the crossroads of a digital revolution and identity, and yet we are grappling with the right to privacy, illiteracy on a massive scale and lack of basic information infrastructure.  Read More

Ram Avatar Singh lives in a remote village in Jharkhand. He is one of the 400 million people who live in extreme poverty in India.

India’s population of the poor is equivalent to one-third of all of the world’s poor. Ram Avatar’s village is in an area where no road exists. Read More

Latest statistics released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reflect a massive spike in cybercrimes in India. The total number of cybercrimes reported in 2013 was 41,319, which rose to 49,455 in 2015. The number of cases reported this year till March stands at 14,363.

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My dear readers, as I write to you this week, I am a bit unhappy. While I would like to apologize for the tone of my piece, I would also like to say that I have some expectations of you, which is the reason I’m writing this.

I hope it is not wrong to assume that most of you reading this column speak English

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We all aspire to become a part of the cashless economy. Ironically, there are more cashless people in India than the number of people who have the means to live cashless lives.

Two days after the announcement of the cancellation of Rs500 and Rs1,000 currency notes in India,

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With the financial technology companies, e-commerce names, big data firms, and cloud based software and service, the digital element is truly revolutionizing things, quite quickly and effectively. And it becomes even more relevant to take a moment to contemplate where the banking sector figures in the midst of all these changes. Read More

I do not want the Internet for the sake of it.” “I need broadband.” “I need connectivity speed.” These are the general voices of the people, including those who are poor and live in villages, small towns, mufassils, micro enterprise clusters, geographically remote areas, slums or tribal areas Read More

With online access becoming ever more important, there are concerns over how access can be restricted by censorship and surveillance.

Freedom House, a US-based non-government organisation, in its Freedom on the Net Report 2015, ranks online freedom in 65 countries Read More

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) is a type of cyber attack in which multiple malware-compromised systems are used to target and overwhelm a single server, causing service disruptions. The State of the Internet/Security Report for the first quarter of 2016 by Akamai Technologies Read More

While more and more people across the globe are getting connected to the Internet, the growth is still a bit lopsided. A social insight firm, We Are Social, has released the Digital in 2016 report, which suggests that North America and West Europe are the top two regions in terms of Internet penetration, at 88% and 83%, respectively. Read More

If the Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, 2016, becomes a law, many things you have come to take for granted will become out of bounds for you.

You won’t be able to geotag photos and post them on social media. You won’t be able to check in on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat. You won’t be able to record your running, cycling, driving or walking activities, Read More

More than 430 million new unique pieces of malware were discovered in 2015, a 36% increase over 2014, according to Symantec Corp.’s annual Internet Security Threat Report, Volume 21.

The report says the maximum malicious activity originated from China (23.7% of all global cyber-attacks), which is ahead of the US (18.9%) and India (3.4%) Read More

Only 36% of news on the Internet is about women in India. Social networking platforms such as Twitter are male-dominated, with men taking up 64% of news space. However, when it comes to online reporters, India outnumbers most countries with 59% women, while neighbouring Bangladesh does not have a single woman involved in reporting news online. Read More

Companies in the US are the most active when it comes to using encryption to protect their data, while India is not far behind. Encrypting data is perhaps the safest way of protecting critical information, because it allows only the receivers who have the unique unlock keys or passcodes to access the data. Read More

The total number of Internet subscribers in India is 302 million, according to the Indian Telecom Services Performance Indicator Report 2015. Of this, 94% access Internet on their mobile devices, while only 6% use a wired broadband connection. The Delhi telecom circle recorded the highest teledensity with 221 connections per 100 people, Read More

Raghav Mahto was 20 when I first met him in 2006. He was from a small village in Mansoorpur in Bihar’s Vaishali district. His house is hardly 10km from the famous Vishwa Shanti Stupa. He belongs to the Kumhar caste classified under other backward classes. He has not studied beyond Class II; yet, Mahto has the most innovative engineering mind I have ever come across. However, in the world of certificates and education, he will be considered barely literate Read More

When I first visited Puducherry in 2004 on my travels to look at all the marquee projects in Internet and communication technologies for development and governance, I learnt about the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation’s work with the local fisherfolk. The initiative was supposed to get weather reports and broadcast them through a public announcement system that was installed in a temple in a fishing village Read More

Even as the debate on Net neutrality rages, I see a possibility of many Internets and their customization, packaging and new colonization. Two tribal girls from the villages of Baran in Rajasthan have taught me that there is a possibility of community Internet—made, run and maintained by local communities by and for themselves.

About five years ago, I went to Baran for the first time and the destination was Sankalp Sansthan, a non-profit organization Read More

Most of us experts were above 40, not really the nation’s median age. None of us represented the villages that made up 70% of India’s society. Nearly all spoke English, used by a mere 5% of the country. And critically, none of the stakeholders could be called a digital native.

Yet there we were, at a seminar called to gather ideas for a university on communications for a nation as vast and diverse as ours Read More

I was recently in Geneva to attend a meeting that discussed the experience of growing e-commerce in developing countries. The meeting was organized by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) Geneva, a non-profit organization that works in the areas of trade, development and human rights.

There were representatives from countries such as Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Read More

Dear Mark,

I read your article in Mint (16 April, mintne.ws/1yudRTC ) and realized that you are in the dark about Net neutrality as much as I am but you have also violated it.

The reason I’m responding to your article is because you mentioned your trip to Chandauli in Alwar district in Rajasthan last year and used the example  Read More

Is using a mobile phone a symbol of independence? Is it a simple tool of communication or a medium that provides rights? Why do women lag behind among those who use cellphones? Why do women have to take permission from men before buying a mobile phone that connects them to the world out there? Read More

What is the cost of information, or the lack of it?

For some, it is a life, for some other, a monthly pension, and for yet another, the monthly subsidized ration. In India, millions of people lose their rights, entitlements, assets, education, pension, wages, food and water, land and livestock, housing, medicine,  Read More

The people in Gop block in Odisha have something more powerful than anyone else in the country has—an FM community radio station (CRS) called Radio Namaskar with a licence to broadcast using a 50-watt transmitter, enough to cover a 20km radius. Sometime in 2011, the local community heard jingles about the government’s integrated child development scheme (ICDS). Read More

Into the second decade of the 21st century, it is commonplace to speak of the information economy and the world being a connected globe. India is very much a part of that story because our country has the third-largest number of Internet users in the world, after only the US and China. But that rank hides more than it reveals since 80-85% of India is still not connected to the World Wide Web. Read More

The difference between cities and villages in India has always been stark. Services that people in urban areas take for granted are often simply not available in the countryside. This is particularly true when we look at the digital divide that creates a gulf between urban and rural India Read More

Libraries are the life blood of a nation. This is particularly true for a country such as India, which has a large number of young people aspiring for a better life. Yet, our public libraries are grossly neglected. Each one of the country’s 676 districts has at least one public library, an enormous resource that can deliver a critical public good if properly utilised Read More

Three-and-a-half months after the launch of the Digital India initiative, there is a feeling of directionlessness in many sections of the government, companies and the community of activists about how to implement the ambitious programme and make the best of it. Read More

According to the Census of India 2011, there are 118.9 million cultivators across the country, or 24.6% of the total workforce of over 481 million. The proportion was about 50% in 1951. On the other hand the number of people working as agricultural labourers has increased from 19% in 1951 to 30% in 2011, standing at 144.3 million. Read More