Asia Times: Information technology fires Indian political passions


	May 19, 2000	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Information technology fires political passions
By Mahesh Uniyal

NEW DELHI - Information technology (IT) has again been thrust into India's acrimonious political arena, with opposition parties putting the government on the defensive over the country's first proposed cyber law.

Under pressure from the opposition, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government has watered down controversial provisions to police Internet use.

However, IT industry observers have advised politicians not to play politics with matters of which they have little understanding.

The bill was approved unanimously by the lower house of parliament Tuesday after the government accepted more than 30 modifications suggested by an all party panel.

Admitting that there may be some flaws in the legislation, Information Technology Minister Pramod Mahajan assured the house that these could be overcome by subsequent amendments.

Industry observers compared the heated protests to the information technology bill that was tabled in the house Monday, to the noise made in past months over a multi-million dollar government deal with a US-based company to set up a high-technology electronic information transmission network in the country.

''The IT bill is a great piece of cyber art to herald the arrival of electronic commerce in India. It attempts to change outdated Acts and provides ways to deal with cyber crimes,'' said Dewang Mehta of the National Association of Software and Service Companies, better known by its acronym NASSCOM. ''We need such a law so that people can buy over the Net through credit cards without fear of misuse. (It) would eliminate . . . uncertainties over writing and signature requirements . . . spurring the use of the Internet, email and e-commerce,'' he added in a media column.

According to NASSCOM estimates, India recorded a more than $100 million e-commerce turnover in 1999-2000. The new cyber law will for the first time, grant legal recognition to digital signatures and electronic documents.

The government had Monday used similar arguments in vain to convince an agitated opposition that the legislation be enacted in this session of the lower house of parliament that ends Wednesday.

''The country's entry into the 21st century will not be affected if we wait for two months (when the house will reassemble),'' said Shivraj Patil, former parliament speaker and senior leader of the main opposition Congress party. He was responding to the information technology minister's assertion that if the law were not enacted in the current session, India would lose competitive edge in the information technology field to other developing nations.

However, the government was caught on the wrong foot over certain controversial proposals that had caused a media outcry and protests by civil rights groups. The opposition forced the government to drop provisions that would have made it compulsory for cyber cafe owners to maintain a log of websites visited by clients and mandatory for all websites based in India to register themselves.

But the most controversial provision was retained - one that would allow police officers to enter a public place where they suspect a cyber crime is about to be committed and arrest suspected cyber criminals. Defending the provision, Information and Broadcasting Minister Arun Jaitley said that swift action was necessary to tackle criminals using the new technology. ''Cyber crimes can be committed much faster than other crimes. Money can be laundered a hundred times within a day. Are we to create a cumbersome procedure by bowing to populism?'' he asked.

Rights groups, media commentators and some opposition lawmakers have described the provision as ''draconian'' and violative of human rights. ''The Information Technology bill . . . has a paranoid inquisitorial streak that sits uncomfortably with the notion of India being at the cutting edge of the Internet revolution,'' said The Times of India newspaper.

Describing the provision as ''misguided'' and ''downright dangerous'', the daily said that the Indian police are still not trained to detect cyber crime. It warned that the provision could be used to harass the government's political opponents who used the Internet for legitimate political activity.

According to NASSCOM's Mehta, cyber crimes are better controlled using technology rather than the law.

According to Vinnie Mehta, Director of the Manufacturers' Association for Information Technology, the idea of regulating the Internet goes against the basic premise on which the technology is based. ''Any amount of deregulation of the industry would accelerate the growth of Internet and facilitate e-commerce in India,'' he was quoted as saying.

The furore over the IT bill closely follows a much bigger uproar over the controversial Sankhya Vahini (data carrier) project that will set up a state-of-the-art data transmission network across the country.

A joint venture between several government departments and IUNet, an affiliate of the US-based Carnegie Mellon University, Sankhya Vahini has promised to set up a 25,000km, high bandwidth data transmission network that will be 100 times faster than the existing telecom network. The $300 million project will link up educational and research institutions and business houses. However, the project would have huge business potential as it would offer Internet services hundreds of times faster than current speeds in India.

But the project, cleared by the government in January, has caused much embarrassment to the ruling party. Its critics include staunch ideological allies of the BJP. Among other things, the government has been rapped for allowing a foreign organization to use communication network hardware that is actually to be set up by the Department of Telecom. Another sore point with the critics is that the government signed the deal with IUNet at a time when the company did not even have legal status in the United States.

The Swadeshi Jagran Manch (National Awareness Front), a BJP affiliate that espouses a hardline economic nationalism ideology, has also campaigned against the project. The Front published a pamphlet alleging that the project would be a national security risk as it would open up India's communication network to prying by Western intelligence agencies.

That the controversy was yet another instance of the Indian political class exposing its ignorance on matters of high technology, could be seen from an editorial comment by the leading The Hindu newspaper that has rarely backed the BJP government.

''Large projects in which the government is involved invariably attract controversy but few have been subject to as much disinformation, inter-ministry squabbling and ill-informed criticism as Sankhya Vahini has been,'' the daily noted.

(Inter Press Service)

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