China’s ‘Taobao’ model is worth emulating by Indian policy-makers to revitalise the e-commerce industry and harness multiplying effects of digital technology in rural areas
Soon, the din of a bitterly fought, fractious election, where the discourse veered around some of the most irrelevant issues, will recede and the focus of the new Government will revert to policy interventions and formulating the forthcoming Budget. Economic policies of an elected Government have the single largest bearing upon the destiny of its polity. An increase in per-capita disposable income is one of the most vital indicators of successful governance and one that invariably favours the incumbent. Undoubtedly, the predominant electoral issue, which was relegated to the background, hinged on declining rural and urban income, decreased savings and slowing consumption. Conversely, closer to voting, poll dynamics showed that by March 2019, “net future expectations about the economy clocked a positive 48.6 per cent” as people were more optimistic about the larger economic course of the country in the likely event of Modi’s second coming.
With the median age of India’s population being 30 years, this aspirational demograph has gone past the roti-kapda-makaan basics of the last century to mobiles, internet and entrepreneurship. As forward planning yields results only after gestation periods of a three to five year lag, policy-makers will have to find ways to leapfrog job creation once the new regime is in place by June. India’s consumption story has been losing momentum in major sectors like FMCG, cars and two-wheelers and services activity — slipping to multi-quarter lows as income stagnates — which is reflected in declining rural demand. The next Government will be confronted with the challenging task of lifting investment sentiments by remonetising the economy as consumption fuels jobs and income from job-earnings fuels consumption in turn.
Policy-makers have a key role to play in fostering an enabling environment that supports innovation for both agri-entrepreneurship and micro-entrepreneurship. Consider this: The combined market cap of the three largest IT companies of the US — Apple, Microsoft and Amazon — equals India’s GDP and importantly, just the Chinese e-commerce major Alibaba’s m-cap equals 20 per cent of our GDP. These growth models necessitate that policy-makers fire on all cylinders with newer paradigms to kick-start innovation and growth in the IT enabled sectors as also focus on the nascent digital platforms as job-creators.
The focus of this article is specifically on rural e-commerce as a propeller for job-creation. This will need public private-partnerships with the likes of Amazon, Walmart, Reliance Retail and other e-commerce platforms on a national scale. The nascent e-tail market in India is projected to grow at 30 per cent annually, targeting $73 billion by 2022. Herein lies the biggest untapped job-creation potential, a prerequisite for which is deepening electronic payments through smartphones in order to reduce cash payments and encourage digital mode of transactions for online commerce.
China embarked on creating rural jobs a decade ago by implementing the ‘Taobao’ model for expanding employment avenues, alleviating poverty and vitalising the rural economy by harnessing multiplying effects of digital technology in rural areas. Consequently, e-commerce grew rapidly in China as trade volumes increased from less than 1,000 billion yuan ($120.8 billion) in 2004 to nearly 30,000 billion yuan ($4.44 trillion) in 2017.
The prototype has thrown surprising results for India to emulate: Though e-commerce is always more developed in urban areas, surprisingly online retail sales in rural areas grew faster than the national average. From 2014 to 2017, online retail sales in rural China increased from RMB 180 billion to 1.24 trillion, a compound annual growth rate of 91 per cent, compared to 35 per cent nationally. So, replicating this model in India, we can just imagine how this surge can alter the rural job-scape, which is in need of policy interventions. The experience in Taobao villages has sparked strong interest among policy-makers to tap the potential of e-commerce as a tool for poverty alleviation, financial empowerment for stay-at-home employment and rural vitalisation. The breakthrough was seen most in the ratio increase of women-to-men entrepreneurs in e-commerce being at near parity, compared to a ratio of 1:3 in traditional businesses.
The Alibaba Group initiative of the Rural Taobao Programme, in collaboration with the Government, supported rural clusters with real-time access to a wide range of goods and services, replacing the expensive brick and mortar shop-floor business model. This helped farmers earn more for their produce as they could directly sell their produce to urban consumers in online platforms. The programme required job-stepping multiple initiatives to streamline cross-country linkages in infrastructure by laying the ground work for service networks in counties and villages; providing training in e-commerce and promoting entrepreneurship; and developing rural financial services through the Ant Financial subsidiary of Alibaba.
The Rural Taobao Programme has now expanded from 212 villages in 12 counties in 2014 to more than 30,000 villages in 1,000 counties in 2018, spreading from the coast to inland. It focussed on improving rural e-commerce supply chains, promoting connectivity between agriculture and commerce and enhancing e-commerce training. The scheme grew rapidly and by 2018, had supported 1,016 demonstration counties, covering 737 poverty-stricken counties (89 per cent of the total), including 137 counties with extreme poverty (41 per cent of the total). The experience in China offers a compelling model to pursue as a ‘Global Best Practice’ prototype for India. The report demonstrated how digital technology has the potential to harness inclusive growth, unlike previous revolutions, especially when policies and public-private sector work in synergy. Experience in other developed countries has made for a compelling case to adapt and integrate digitally enabled ecosystems as an engine for transformational growth in providing jobs and enhancing livelihoods to the rural population at their doorstep, without the need to migrate to bigger cities.
Achieving inclusive growth is a vital pillar to achieve Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. To achieve this, digitisation has been proven to have had a multiplier impact on inclusive growth in China as its e-commerce market has become the largest in the world within a span of just 10 years, moving millions out of poverty. To further this model, it needs collective collaboration with best research minds globally to work together and evolve paradigms that will optimise the power of digitisation in order to bridge income and opportunity inequalities.
The data coming out of the Chinese model offers great insights into how India can integrate open e-commerce platforms with mobile payments and digitally based financial services “in order to support SMEs access larger potential markets than the gravity model for trade in the physical world.” Why this model is best adaptable in India is because the platform-centered ecosystem has low entry barriers for capital requirements and also because education and digital skill requirements are minimal, which is a perfect fit to India’s rural demographics, where people with low literacy levels can be gainfully employed.
China, too, was earlier a high-cash economy until the mobile payment revolution happened. Before the advent of digitisation, in the pre-digital commerce era, only proximity to a well-developed commercial area afforded residents access to an array of physical marketplaces and consumer products. Now through Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall e-platforms, the average shopping distance on these platforms is close to 1,000 kilometres, compared with a few kilometers in traditional retail markets. And in less developed regions, people are buying a wider variety of consumer goods online, offsetting the disadvantages of their local markets. This has enabled 10 million SMEs and start-ups in remotest of villages to start businesses from home and work on flexi-timings, shrinking urban-rural income disparities.
As China leads the world in mobile payments and online money transfers with 1.25 billion internet users, digital footprints, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and algorithms are helping in risk-assessment in real time. “So now, Chinese startups have access to credit without collateral via the innovative ‘310’ credit model: 3 minutes to apply for a loan, 1 second to get it approved, with 0 manual interference,” signifying speed, precision and efficiency.
Digital platforms have evolved into an institutional form where they act as the nodal institutions to create an enabling environment for SMEs with support in marketing, product management, online operations, customer service, cash management, logistics, business advisory and data analysis, covering essentially every aspect of running a business. The Tao Factory platform on Alibaba connects 40,000 factories from more than 30 industries with Taobao sellers to form an integrated supply chain market. This calls for well-tested pilot-modules if the Chinese experience has to be successfully Indianised. Once disadvantaged groups can participate in the modern digital economy, positive results could follow in a sustainable way.
I personally anticipate unprecedented rapid structural and growth oriented reforms to gather pace under Modi 2.0 because ‘Team Modi’ will be on performance overdrive in his follow-on term. Modi has the pulse of the nation right, knowing too well that emerging India strives to enter the middle-income category, with a per capita income of $2,000, wherein the aspirational classes seek empowerment through an honourable livelihood instead of welfarist handouts by the State.
(Multiple references have been made from the Digital Technology and Inclusive Growth Report of the Louhan Report 2019. The writer is an author, columnist and chairperson for the National Committee for Financial Inclusion at Niti Aayog)
Writer: Bindu Dalmia
Courtesy: The Pioneer
By signing an executive order to protect its networks from foreign espionage, the US has drawn the first blood on what was hitherto whispered as a need to counter Chinese ambitions
US President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order on ‘Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain’ that effectively walked the talk on clamping down on the growing Chinese presence and influence. While the order itself was ostensibly country-agnostic and company-agnostic, the unmistakable target was a leading Chinese company, Huawei. Predicated under security concerns, the statement from the White House said that the order, “declares a national emergency with respect to the threats against information and communications technology and services in the United States (US) and delegates authority to the Secretary of Commerce to prohibit transactions posing an unacceptable risk to the national security of the US or the security and safety of its people.” Soon, the US Commerce Department added Huawei to the ‘entity list’ of banned organisations. Against the backdrop of the ensuing US-China trade wars, this latest American salvo has huge implications for Chinese products and services going forward, as it questions the construct of “Made in China,” given the inextricable and complex Government-industry interlinkages that beset the ownership, interests and operations of major Chinese organisations.
Unlike most unilateral decisions initiated by Trump, this executive order had bipartisan support across the political divide, symbolising the overwhelming threat perceptions within the US that are emanating from China. The Huawei action was looming for some time and the US had been sabre-rattling on the same with other Western powers. While Australia had acceded to the warning and banned the organisation earlier, the European nations were sceptical about the US’ seriousness. Given that the Chinese multi-national had outmanoeuvered the European companies like Ericsson and Nokia in grabbing market shares across emerging markets of Africa, Latin America and Asia — the expectation of reciprocal protectionism would rise within Western capitals to support their own organisations as the Chinese state does.
The US went as far as threatening its allies to withdraw “intelligence” inputs unless they stopped using the Chinese manufacturers like Huawei for building their 5G infrastructure. At the heart of the fears is the new internet architecture that could possibly “link” industrial equipment, personalised data, security cameras and civic facility details among others and transport the data dump to a repository in China, from where a apocalypse-like situation of a virtual “shutdown” of American military-economic-civic infrastructure could be effected if China so wanted in a crisis!
Given the Chinese ambition, investments and strategic outlook, such fears of data protection are not entirely unfounded. Expectedly, the Chinese have likened the US move to a “cold war mentality” and alluded to the US fears as unsubstantiated paranoia. Given the construct of the organisation itself and the rules governing its principal place of origin and headquarters ie, China, it is certainly obliged and vulnerable to the diktats of its Ministry of State Security.
Like most Chinese offerings, the winning appeal of Huawei was in its cost-effective technology and terms of trade. However, the recent move has added a ‘non-commercial’ angularity of dealing with Chinese companies. Last year, the global list of top 500 companies, as measured by Fortune magazine, had an unprecedented 120 Chinese companies making the cut (just shy of 126 by the leading nation, US). This sudden emergence of Chinese companies owes its success in huge measure to the complex commercial-political wiring of Chinese organisations that baffles most corporate-watchers as to their real ownership and control structures. Founded in 1987 by a former People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officer, Ren Zhengfei, who now owns only one per cent of share, it has grown into a $106 billion global conglomerate with a mammoth $14 billion dedicated towards R&D. Despite its immense size, scale and the competitive intensity of its domain, it still grew at a staggering 21 per cent over the previous year. Today, it serves 45 of the top 50 telecom operators worldwide and its network already reaches one-third of humankind. Somewhere, questions abound about such rapid rise, access and the ‘invisible-hand’ that drives such surreal growth. Given its formidable presence and invaluable necessity in the infrastructure of some third-world countries, it will not be easy to ‘ban’ its products across such countries — though it certainly marks the beginning of larger implications for ‘Made in China’ that go beyond a corporate entity.
Partly on account of genuine fears and partly on account of the escalating trade war, the recent US move has drawn the first blood on what was hitherto whispered as a need to counter the Chinese juggernaut. In a barely veiled threat, the Chinese have reminded the US about its own vulnerabilities with American organisations like Qualcomm, who generate over half of their revenues from China, as indeed the likes of Intel and Apple, who rely on Chinese parts and market! Many of China’s strategic sovereign imperatives like the ‘One Belt, One Road’ or in this case, the ‘Digital Silk Road’, which promises hyper speeds and capacities of 5G (promoting ‘Internet of Things’) communication, envisages a pivotal role for organisations like Huawei. The sovereign intent on becoming a Cyber and Artificial Intelligence (AI) superpower has fuelled the Chinese State to support and fund many aggressive and audacious investments that make the world nervous, given the known Chinese ambitions and penchant for means. The temerity and commitment behind developing cutting-edge technology that could have multiple “spin-off” usage and data-sharing has the Western world worried.
The Chinese are past masters in reverse engineering and sourcing technology licitly and illicitly, especially in matters of defence equipment and overall security preparedness. However, due diligence and care has to be ensured with evidentiary proof of potential misuse or “leakage” before censuring or ascribing any questions on the Chinese organisations as it should not violate the principle of fairplay in the global economy. The onus is now on China to demonstrate transparency and unveil its control and command structures behind its corporates as also convince the wary world of its intentions and ambitions. Unfortunately, it will be an uphill battle for China given its history and its prevailing instincts to convince the world, otherwise.
(The writer, a military veteran, is a former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry)
Writer: Bhopinder Singh
Courtesy: The Pioneer
India is home to abundant non-conventional energy sources such as the sun, water and wind that can be harnessed to supply reliable electricity to households and micro-enterprises
The pandemic and the resultant lockdowns put a temporary stop to economic activities across the globe, impacting millions of people and their livelihoods. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates this loss to be around $4 trillion, which is nearly five per cent of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP). As a young, developing nation with 65.97 per cent of the population still residing in the villages, the pandemic not only tested India’s economic resilience but also exposed the growing urban-rural divide and income inequality. As we continue to step up our fight against the Coronavirus, we are certain that the post-pandemic world would be different from what we left behind. The rebuilding exercise should, therefore, begin with rural India — where, as Mahatma Gandhi said, “The soul of India lives.”
Rural India has always found it challenging to unleash its economic potential due to a variety of fiscal and social factors. A major reason among them is the continued unavailability of reliable power. Per capita electricity consumption in rural areas still remains significantly low due to erratic power supply. Research data show that there is a strong positive correlation between economic development and electricity consumption. For example, China started growing at double digit when the demand and consumption of power in rural areas doubled and the small-scale businesses expanded rapidly. Similarly, rural India, too, has a growing demand for reliable electricity but due to supply side constraints, this demand remains partially unfulfilled.
How do we address the challenge and ensure reliable power for all? We must strengthen the last-mile power delivery system, which is largely dominated by State-run Distribution Companies (DISCOMS). But as DISCOMS continue to remain trapped in mounting losses and operational inefficiencies, last-mile power delivery has taken a backseat. The DISCOMs, therefore, need to streamline and strengthen their distribution networks with greater focus on enhancing customer satisfaction, timely complaint redressal, regularised billing processes and transparency in finances at all levels. Addressing challenges such as power theft and billing inadequacies can help DISCOMS enhance their delivery efficiency.
In addition, the proposed amendments to the Electricity Act, 2003, particularly the unlicenced sub-distribution and payment security mechanism, will boost private sector investments in the distribution sector, reduce their losses and strengthen operational efficiencies of DISCOMS. Private investments will not only help DISCOMS deal with financial stress but will enhance the quality of services and healthy competition. This will ultimately have a transformative impact on last-mile power delivery and ensure access to reliable power for rural households.
India is home to abundant non-conventional energy sources such as solar, water and wind that can be effectively harnessed to supply reliable electricity to rural households and micro-enterprises. Renewable energy provides low-cost power models and can be deployed even in remote areas despite the geographical barriers. Expansion of renewable energy-based mini-grids in rural India can be further incentivised and be provided additional policy support for generation and distribution of electricity at affordable rates to rural households.
Mini-grids serve as the primary source of electricity in regions where grid-connected power has not found its way yet. A recent survey on the impact of COVID-19 in mini-grid villages of Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar revealed that 90 per cent of the rural households trust mini-grids for reliable power supply. However, despite mini-grids becoming a trusted source of reliable electricity for rural India, they often run the risk of reverse migration of customers to centralised grids when the necessary infrastructure is available.
This concern, however, can be addressed by integrating mini-grids with centralised ones to provide enhanced access to electricity supply. A fully-integrated power system is an optimal solution for electrifying un-electrified villages with reliable power. Integrated power supply models can minimise the cost by introducing efficient planning, investment and operation of assets with significant economies of scale. Ghana, for example, built an integrated grid, providing power to 85 per cent of its urban population and 41 per cent of the rural population. Integrated power systems can speed up the rural electrification process and ensure reliable supply.
The health and economic crises triggered by the pandemic clearly underline the significance of providing reliable power for all critical rural infrastructure such as health centres, micro-enterprises and schools. Productive uses of energy such as for irrigation, small businesses, tailoring, food storage and so on will further ensure adequate livelihood options for rural communities with greater economic resilience.
How will reliable electricity help rural India rebuild its economy?
Rural healthcare: This is a key area that will lead to a new economic revolution in the post-pandemic world. India’s healthcare preparedness was found to be inadequate during our fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Primary health centres, which approximately serve 65 per cent of the rural populations, need to be modernised with state-of-the-art infrastructure, especially uninterrupted power supply. Reliable supply can provide crucial support to critical functions of these health centres, especially during medical emergencies. The survey also revealed that a majority of the rural households depend on community health centres for their medical needs. Inadequate and irregular supply of electricity may affect their functioning with critical implications for rural populations. Electrifying and modernising the health centres will, therefore, be a key step towards rebuilding the economy and reshaping the lifestyle of rural populations. Millions of dollars can be saved if rural populations have access to high quality healthcare services. This will not only have a lasting economic impact on health delivery but will lead to better social outcomes such as improved health and hygiene.
Modernising agriculture: Farming remains the primary source of livelihood for nearly 65 per cent of Indians. Yet, agriculture productivity is significantly low in India and accounts for only 15.4 per cent of the GDP. The growth in agriculture has been moderate in the past decade at nearly three per cent per annum. Critical functions such as irrigation, harvesting, post-harvest handling and storage, all require reliable power supply. In regions where rainfall is scanty, groundwater is the main source of irrigation. Electricity demand in rural India is majorly driven by irrigation. Villages with access to electricity have seen an uptick in agricultural productivity with availability of low-cost irrigation technologies. For example, rural households that would sell paddy at a low price earlier sell hulled rice as there is an electricity-powered rice huller in the village. These are few of the examples of the transformative impact of reliable electricity supply. Modernising agriculture will unlock myriad employment and business opportunities for rural India.
Big push to micro and small businesses: Formalisation of the rural economy is an essential step in providing necessary infrastructural support to budding micro and small businesses. Reliable electricity supply encourages creation and expansion of new businesses in rural areas and can potentially open the door for greater economic activity and investments. Villages with access to reliable electricity have already seen the emergence of micro enterprises such as training centres for computer skills, coaching institutes and travel agencies. The income levels of households engaged in small business have witnessed a steady increase, too. These are replicable models that can be extended to other villages and reliable power can help rural India unleash its economic potential.
As we seek to rebuild the rural economy, reliable electricity will play a crucial role in promoting micro-enterprises, doubling farmer incomes and creating sustainable job opportunities. The cumulative impact of improved healthcare, modernised agriculture practices and rise in rural enterprises will be significant and will enable rural India’s transformation into a hub of economic activity. A new India is waiting to be born out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
(Writer: Jaideep Mukherji; Courtesy: The Pioneer)
A fear of surveillance made users switch to this platform but now it has admitted it has been compromised. What next?
Security and the knowledge that communications are direct and private are the underpinnings of any major communications service. So the knowledge that Whatsapp, the world’s most widely-used communication service with an estimated 1.5 billion users across the planet, was targetted by a private intelligence firm, wherein spyware could be installed on a target’s phone, is deeply unsettling. It is unclear how much access the spyware gave governments. The Israeli firm behind it claimed it only sold to governments it had ‘vetted’ but it is clear that the spyware defeated the purpose of the social platform encrypting its messages from end-to-end. It is also unclear how many people were impacted by the breach, how long it was active and who used the breach, which some suspect was the Saudi Arabian government. But it is clear that governments and intelligence agencies across the world are constantly searching for ‘backdoor’ entries to software systems, targetting everybody from political opponents and human rights activists to journalists or even spouses. In fact, in many countries, including Western democracies that take human rights seriously, laws allow spy and police agencies a huge amount of leeway to legally intercept calls and install spying software on devices.
Will this scare users away from WhatsApp onto other platforms that claim that they are even more secure? Unlikely as WhatsApp has a huge user base though smaller groups of users could use services such as Telegram to communicate, as several terrorist cells already do. Not that they are perfect. In fact, they are more than likely to have vulnerabilities that have been exposed by intelligence agencies and private firms and are being used by governments as we speak. In fact, larger services like WhatsApp can ironically be more secure because their large software development teams can patch up security holes quickly if they want to. And for most regular users of such applications and of software in general, there is usually nothing to fear, but when dictatorial governments use such intercepts without any judicial oversight, there is a problem. One thing is clear though. In the cat and mouse game of spying and information arbitrage, things are unlikely to change anytime soon. Software will always have holes that will be exploited. We can only hope that those doing the exploiting are not making fools of us all.
Writer: Pioneer
Courtesy: The Pioneer
Chris Hughes has argued that the platform is an existential threat to the world and needs to be fragmented
Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes made his millions when the social networking giant went public, but after that he has taken a strong advocacy point and even during a visit to India almost eight years ago, warned of the dangers of the social media platform. Now in an opinion piece in The New York Times, titled “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook”, he lays out in plain detail why the social media behemoth should be fragmented. In essence, he says, it is a clear and present danger to modern life and a threat to democracies. It is a cause taken up by US Senator from California and contender for the Democratic nomination for the 2020 US presidential election, Kamala Harris as well, who ironically represents the San Francisco Bay Area where Facebook is based. Other nations, too, particularly in Europe, have tried to look at ways to curb the social media giant.
But this takes us back almost 15 years when the world was railing against the massive power of another American technology giant, Microsoft. But look at where it is today. And while Microsoft is a pale shadow of the consumer company it once was, it remains a technology icon and a vital piece of the software puzzle. Breaking up Facebook may be as impossible to achieve as breaking up Microsoft was. However, there is little doubt that it does need to be reined in. It has played havoc with the media and has become a tool of fake news and promoting hate. Mark Zuckerberg might have a baby face but his company is doing more harm to humanity than helping it, and there needs to be a proper global consultation on how to combat social media firms and their viral manner of spreading news. Companies like Facebook and Twitter cannot use the fact that they are technology companies as an excuse to prevent being regulated like media companies, considering that they have played havoc with the rules and regulations of fairplay and objectivity. There is no doubt that technology has democratised the media, making it more accessible and able to demolish constructed narratives but it has also allowed hateful agenda to spread very fast with disastrous consequences. India should also sign up with other democracies and look to read the rulebook to Facebook.
Writer: Pioneer
Courtesy: The Pioneer
India does not even have a data protection policy. This is something that our policy-makers need to look forward to instead of batting for the right to be forgotten
As a concept, the Right To Be Forgotten (RTBF) evolved in the 1990s in western Europe and subsequently developed as part of human rights jurisprudence. France became a pioneer of this issue when it recognised the “right to oblivion.” This right was available to all convicted individuals, who had served their prison sentences. Often, in cases like these, social stigma is attached to individuals even after they have served their punishments. In general, people had ready access to the criminal history of such cases and the actual commission of a crime would perpetuate stigma. As a result, individuals suffered regardless of the geographical location.
The RTBF is reflected in Article 17 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union (EU). The EU Parliament took nearly four years of preparation and debate to approve the GDPR in 2016, which was finally enforced on May 25, 2018. The GDPR framework replaced an outdated Data Protection directive from 1995. It contains provisions that require businesses to protect their personal data as well as privacy of the EU citizens for transactions that occur within the member states of the EU. It also regulates the exportation of personal data outside its boundaries.
In the Indian context, RTBF is envisaged in the Justice BN Srikrishna Committee report (2018) on Data Protection Bill. The report held that the “rights of the citizens have to be protected, the responsibilities of the States have to be defined but data protection can’t come at the cost of trade and industry.” Thus, there is also a strong possibility of this right making its way into the Indian legislature. The rationale of the Supreme Court of India in the Puttaswamy judgement has upheld other fundamental rights securing individual liberty in the Constitution. In addition, individual dignity is one of the basis for right to privacy. Privacy itself was held to have a negative impact (the right to be let alone) and a positive one (the right to self-development).
The sphere of privacy includes the right to protect one’s identity. This right recognises the fact that all information about a person is fundamentally their own and he/she is free to communicate or retain it for himself/herself. This core of informational privacy is, thus, a right to autonomy and self-determination with respect to one’s personal data. Such a notion has also been echoed in the Srikrishna Committee report (2018) on data protection.
Further, it believes that a free and fair digital economy, one that empowers the citizens, can only grow on the foundation of individual autonomy, working towards maximising the common good. However, the report manifests an approach to balance free speech with RTBF. Many have pointed out that the Bill doesn’t lay down the golden principle of allowing individuals to be true owners of their own data. The report further includes a balancing test with five criteria for the judiciary to weigh the freedom of speech and expression with RTBF.
RTBF is sometimes referred to as the Right to Erasure (RTE). As it is commonly misunderstood, RTBF is not synonymous to the RTE. It is rather an extension of it. The underlying principle of RTE is that when there is no compelling reason for the subject’s data to be processed, he/she can request the data controller to erase/remove their personal data, stop any further distribution of their personal data or potentially prevent third parties from processing their personal data.
RTE was applied to only proprietary databases. For example, if one wishes to unsubscribe from a
magazine, he/she can ask the concerned firm to delete all information that they possess of him/her. RTE did not apply to search databases as RTBF does. Hence, RTBF is actually an extension of the RTE.
The debate around this has gained a lot of traction in India after the Supreme Court recognised Right to Privacy in its landmark case of Justice KS Puttaswamy (Retd) and Anr vs Union Of India and Others. The apex court held that right to privacy is part of the right to life and personal liberty as guaranteed under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. A nine-judge Bench held that “life and personal liberty are inalienable rights. These are rights which are inseparable from a dignified human existence. The dignity of the individual, equality between human beings and the quest for liberty are the foundational pillars of the Indian Constitution…” The verdict has given impetus to demands for recognition for other fourth generation human rights in India, like the right to be forgotten and RTE.
The right to privacy guarantees liberty in private spaces, electronic or otherwise. This means that the information, which is not in the public domain, is protected from coming into the public domain. Right to be forgotten, on the other hand, involves information that is already in the public domain and is required to be delinked from the individual, who has claimed the right to be forgotten.
Further, the RTE operates in an even niche area, where an individual can target a specific database and claim a RTE against it for the removal of information which concerns them. But the fourth-generation communication rights, like the right to be forgotten, come with their own set of flaws.
First, one of the major problems is that the guarantee of the right vests with only a few individual corporations. Take the example of Google. As per Google’s Transparency report, it can remove only 41 per cent of the URLs against which some issue was raised. This means that the authoritative framework for implementing such a right now vests with a corporation and it is performing an adjudicatory function while deciding to accede to a request of removal. This is something which the Indian legal system does not envisage; wherein adjudicatory role is an essential state function.
Second, there is a concern that accused criminals can wipe out valuable evidence while their guilt is under adjudication. This can turn out to be an implementation nightmare for security agencies, especially those who are collaborating on international crimes and possibly terrorism.
Third, the sheer reach of the internet make a case for something, like the right to be forgotten absolutely impractical. If there is an adjudicatory order, for instance against Google, the information, which a claimant is seeking to protect, is not necessarily saved by such a request. This simply because Google is not the sole repository of that information. Details may be available through other search engines and may still be hosted as it is a primary website. Hence, it is highly problematic to put such a right in motion. Regardless to mention, it also involves significant expenditure to bring it into force.
Fourth, India does not even have a data protection policy. This is something that our policy-makers need to look forward to instead of batting for the right to be forgotten. Because in the absence of such a system, multinational corporations, which practically administer and govern the internet, are beyond the jurisdiction of the Indian law and courts. Hence, even a guarantee will be meaningless if the decisions of our courts are not respected/recognised.
(Raghav Pandey is an Assistant Professor of Law and Anoushka Mehta is a student of Law at the Maharashtra National Law University, Mumbai)
Writer: Raghav pandey/Anoushka mehta
Courtesy: The Pioneer
Instead of imposing blanket rules, Governments globally can implement a regulatory model involving a negotiation with technology companies that is based on identified issues
Technology companies have fundamentally changed the way in which we obtain information, communicate, travel, transact in goods and services and consume content. However, they’ve also been responsible, in many ways, for some of the most pressing issues we face today. For example, concerns that TikTok exposes children to predatory behaviour led to the app being taken off the stores of Google and Apple; although this has since been reversed. YouTube has faced similar issues in the past. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are being used to bully and harass, especially those from socially marginalised communities and to magnify extremist content and propaganda. There are multiple instances where Facebook has been involved in leaking user information, harvesting user data, using targeted advertising to influence election results and pushing political propaganda. It has, along with Whatsapp, also been used to propage “fake news” and spreading disinformation and misinformation, which has been linked to violence and deaths in India, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Uber, Amazon and Apple have all been criticised for their lax labour standards. And Google, Facebook and Amazon have been accused of (and sometimes held liable for) anti-competitive behaviour. More generally, there is also a lack of transparency in the way these companies function and most of them have access to vast amounts of user data, which is collected, stored and sold to advertisers with minimal oversight.
Many of these issues exist and are exacerbated because some of these technology companies, especially “Big Tech” firms (generally refers to Amazon, Facebook, Alphabet, Microsoft and Apple), have large businesses and because of their significant global market share and revenue. A major reason as to why these companies were able to rapidly scale to their current sizes lies in their leveraging what is known as the “network effect”, wherein the value of certain goods or services increases as they gain more users. These platforms have also been able to invest in improving their services, especially by collecting and leveraging large pools of user data to improve their machine-learning algorithms.
While utilising network effects is not problematic by itself, the vast wealth of these firms has also meant that they could often simply buy out and integrate the products or services of competitors, or prioritise their own platforms over others and, hence, entrench their dominant positions. Furthermore, until recently, they faced virtually no regulatory oversight and were given free rein with how they chose to conduct businesses. This was, in large part, a consequence of the public support that these companies enjoyed and because they, and technology more generally, were seen as offering a way to enable access to information — providing “free” services or helping consumers obtain goods and services at lower costs. However, issues that have arisen have made it clear that there is no longer a question of whether to regulate technology companies but rather one of how best to do so.
Regulators around the world are grappling with this problem in multiple ways. The European Union (EU) introduced the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to regulate the use of personal data of those in the body. Germany introduced a law requiring platforms to remove hate speech and other illegal content within 24 hours of being informed of such material. Singapore introduced a Bill that seeks to impose penalties on users and platforms for spreading “false statements of fact” in the country. Furthermore, Australia passed a Bill that forces technology companies to hand over encrypted data to the police. More recently, the lower House of the Russian Parliament went so far as to vote to support a Bill that would essentially allow it to create its own domestic internet, ostensibly for national security reasons.
Some of these measures can have unintended consequences. For instance, the GDPR has been criticised for its broad definitions and because its stringent data protection requirements are more likely to disproportionately affect smaller companies by driving up costs, potentially stifling competition. Similarly, in India, there are concerns that regulations, often aimed at fixing issues caused by larger platforms, could significantly impair the ability of start-ups to scale their businesses. Moreover, some of the more extreme measures that have been introduced (such as those requiring building in backdoors to encryption and restricting the Internet to national boundaries) have the potential to alter the nature of the Internet itself and have wide-ranging implications for civil liberties, security and rights such as privacy.
India is also in the process of framing regulations applicable to this space. Over the course of the last year, the Government published the draft Information Technology [Intermediaries Guidelines (Amendment) Rules] 2018, the draft Personal Data Protection Bill and the draft National e-Commerce Policy. While each of these regulations was ostensibly introduced to solve specific issues and sought to regulate distinct areas of the digital economy, they also had overlaps, which affected each other. For instance, the Intermediary Rules primarily sought to address misinformation and “fake news” on social media platforms by requiring intermediaries to take certain steps, such as proactively monitoring their platforms for unlawful content. However, the definition of “intermediaries” is broad enough to encompass practically all entities from social media sites, messaging platforms, e-commerce platforms, cyber cafes, payment companies and internet service providers, thereby making these rules applicable to these entities as well. The draft e-Commerce Policy, in addition to introducing data localisation and other requirements, also seems to be conceptualising a State-controlled, community-owned-model for data, referring to it as a “collective resource” and a “national asset.” This has implications for entities beyond e-commerce companies and can impact how the right to privacy is developed in India. It also potentially runs counter to the Supreme Court’s decision in Puttaswamy vs Union of India, where privacy, framed primarily as an individual right, was held to be a fundamental right.
Technology companies can vary widely in the function and services they provide, even though they all share the attribute of providing goods and services through the internet. Therefore, in order to avoid unintended consequences and over-broad application, regulations must be narrowly crafted to address specific identified issues. Regulations must be framed in a manner that they are differentiated on certain metrics (such as the function served by the platforms, the potential impact on users and businesses and the aim sought to be achieved by regulation). One possible method for crafting regulation on this basis is by having more stringent requirements apply to companies that are of a certain size and scale and cross certain prescribed thresholds (whether measured in revenue, user or subscription base, or a combination of such other metrics). Another is by regulating intermediaries based on the function they undertake or the service they provide. However, given how digital companies integrate multiple services such as payments, chat, networking and the like onto the same platforms, this could also be challenging, and would require extensive collaboration with other regulators.
Another key component to consider in this context is the companies that are being currently regulated. It is especially important to include dialogue with technology companies in the context of the digital economy, given that platforms are best placed to understand the limits and abilities of the technologies they deploy. This is also why it might be useful, instead of just seeing regulations as a way to impose liability on companies, to also see them as a means of increasing platform accountability. A regulatory model that takes into account dialogue with these companies, and is based on principles of platform accountability, transparency, and ensuring effective redressal mechanisms may be a more effective way to address some of the challenges presented by digital platforms, than the sort of blanket regulations that are the norm today.
(The writer is junior fellow at the Esya Centre)
Writer: RK Pachauri
Courtesy: Aishwarya Giridhar
With the country taking on the Coronavirus pandemic head on, cybercriminals have lost no opportunity to exploit fears around it. We need to crack down on this fast-growing menace
For the world, the outbreak of Coronavirus has meant solitary confinement for so long. There’s nothing much to cheer about. In the words of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, “Home is the new office and the internet is the new meeting room.” Even those, who had otherwise been “digitally ignorant,” have now taken to the internet to stay connected, air anxieties, share information and bide the quarantine time. According to data from the department of telecommunications, Indians consumed 308 petabytes (PB) or 308,000 terabytes (TB) of data daily on an average for the week beginning March 22. Such rapid consumption of data has also lured cybercriminals to “harvest free-floating” data to accelerate the spread of malware. But are internet users even aware of the socio-technical challenges that come along? With the spread of the disease, we are (rightfully) bombarded with health advisories almost every day but are we even aware of the importance of preserving user privacy so as to maintain cyber hygiene in these turbulent times?
Some forms of cybercrimes that have assumed importance in COVID-19 times include phishing, malware distribution, ransomware, fake news, cyberbullying, zoombombing and even child pornography. Phishing is a type of social engineering attack, which is done to steal personal data using emails or phone calls. Many more techniques are applied to lure the victim to click at mischievous links or to share the OTP. Only late last month, a Mumbai resident reported to have lost substantial money after he was coaxed to share an OTP on the recently downloaded malicious contact-tracing app. Similarly, social media platforms, emails and apps have also been “weaponised” with malware (also referred to as “spyware”, “payloads”, “trojans” and “rootkits”), which stealthily steals personal data from the device of the unwitting victim. In the wake of the spread of Coronavirus, a threat map website, too, was launched to steal personal information from a panicked public.
To top it all, sextortion email scams are back with vengeance. Such dubious emails falsely claim to possess porn videos of the victim and demand ransom, usually in bitcoins. In certain instances, IT resources of the victim could be “locked”, this is termed as “denial-of-service” (DoS) attack. Another prevalent category doing the rounds amid Corona pandemic is that of misinformation (fake news), which has only further alleviated fears. To cite an example, a fake message claimed that administrators of 52 WhatsApp groups were detained by the Dadar Cyber Crime Police. Another viral message alleged that Prime Minister Modi is offering Rs 15,000 to all Indians and that the Government has launched a video conferencing tool, “Namaste” as an alternative to Zoom.
Several spurious websites advocating safety tips and treatment methodology have mushroomed, too. The latest scam using UPI revolved around the PM Cares Fund with a fake UPI ID being floated. Likewise, several duplicate websites have emerged where the unemployed are expected to deposit some money to have access to potential job givers. Scams offering discounted services from Reliance Jio and Netflix have been there, too. Believe it or not, fraudsters even tried selling the world’s largest statue for $4 billion, claiming the proceeds would be used to help the Gujarat Government fund its fight against the Coronavirus.
Besides, Zoom calls have witnessed undesirable videos and leakage of sensitive office information. What is most unfortunate is that there has been a sharp rise in the demand for child pornography. The digital preoccupation of children has increased because of lockdown-related compulsions of using digital collaboration tools for “study from home” and they have gone more vigorously on online dating and gaming platforms, too. As a result, “children, teens face a bigger risk online” warned a report. Cyberbullying, including unpleasant social media retorts and humiliating posts against individuals or a community, particularly the Chinese and their look-alike communities, have also inflated to almost 900 per cent in the last few weeks.
All such criminal activities on the cyberspace echo the view that a quarantined world has become like living on a block of thin digital ice that calls us to be extra cautious. To avert COVID-related cybercrimes, we must practise basic “digital distancing” and maintain “cyber hygiene” norms. One must particularly be wary of “unsolicited emails” or unknown “friend requests.” One should never open links made available through unknown addresses. It should also be a complete no-no to apps that originate from unreliable locations or expose our personal details on social media.
Increased digital activity from domestic devices insists that we install anti-virus and virtual private network (to camouflage real IP addresses). We should also regularly upgrade our software. Let us develop a habit of creating stronger passwords, consisting of “caps”, “special symbols” and “numbers.” We must also keep changing your passwords regularly; for this one can rely on inbuilt password managers.
Using two-factor authentication is a must; maybe we can purchase hardware keys like Yubikey. Let us keep our webcams closed when not in use. Adopting a very strict “zero-trust” approach, which includes keeping privacy settings of all the devices and apps stringent, is essential. One must make sure that everything and everyone is verified before we grant any information or access to it. After all, where there are vulnerabilities and weakness, there is space for greater harm — both physical and cyber.
If despite all the aforementioned precautions, one unfortunately gets entrapped in any kind of cybercrime, the easiest way out is to seek help by dialling “100” and registering an FIR/complaint. However, in doing so, the victim must provide all supporting documents and details of the crime, including his/her name, date and time of the incident, email, mobile number, hard copy and soft copy of the screenshot of the malicious message. A complaint can also be lodged with the national central portal, cybercrime.gov.in. Simultaneously, it is prudent to report to the respective service provider of the digital platform where this crime has happened (such as Google for Gmail).
Indeed, these times have imposed serious challenges on us. As rightly remarked by Lt Gen Rajesh Pant, National Cybersecurity Coordinator, “Cybersecurity is everybody’s responsibility” and “…the end-point of cyberspace is our mind.” Let us all join hands together and stay extra vigilant on internet spaces and dampen the celebratory din echoing from the corridors of cybercriminals, a la’ Jamtara. After all, digital trends are here to stay in a post-pandemic period, too.
(Writer: Charru Malhotra; Courtesy: The Pioneer)
The Supreme Court has directed the Reserve Bank of India to disclose the names of wilful loan defaulters in RTI requests
With the Supreme Court making it clear that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) must heed Right To Information (RTI) requests for its Annual Inspection Reports (AIR), which would reveal the names of those who have wilfully defaulted on loans, it seems we have taken a crucial step in ensuring financial transparency. While the RBI asserted that this would imperil banking secrecy laws, its argument was dismissed by Justices Nageswara Rao and MR Shah with some exceptions. They clarified that the statements of the bank, reports of the inspections and information related to the business obtained by it does not, in fact, fall under the pretext of confidence or trust. However, the question remains about whether naming and shaming will do any good.
One potential prospect is that many of those, who are afraid that their names will be revealed once the Supreme Court order is implemented, will make an offer to pay up to keep their good name. There is no doubt that there are a large number of people who owe money to the Indian banking system and have the ability to pay, but often, sometimes in connivance with bank officials, as happened with Nirav Modi and Punjab National Bank, they do not pay back, knowing full well that they will not get prosecuted. However, many ‘wilful’ defaulters are often individuals who have not quite bankrupted themselves but have failed in their business ventures. In that ambiguity, there are some aspects of privacy that are also violated, and some modifications might be necessary in the classification of wilful and ‘non-wilful’ defaulters. Then again, naming and shaming people who break the law is possibly one of the only ways to get them to repent. Unlike the Panama Papers, this data, once released, will have perfect provenance and that will mean that many of the excuses that people make when caught will be just that, excuses. There is the possibility of another major risk. Much like the hundred plus individuals, who have run away from India, some even acquiring foreign citizenship using their ill-gotten gains, will many more take pre-emptive flights out of the country? Will the fear of knowing that they might be exposed make several hundred rich fraudsters run away from Indian banks and the law? However, this is a risk that we must take, considering some countries like the United Kingdom, have opened their doors willingly to financial fraudsters. Yet other nations are very strict with such individuals and extradite them promptly. Clever fraudsters tend to hide in nations where they know their chances of prosecution are limited. They are the worst type of criminals, knowingly not paying their dues and, thus, making life harder for everyone else who pay back their loans for homes, cars and everything else properly. As the saying goes, the hands of the law are very long. But those hands should know who to catch. Lest there be any objections, remember that the banks’ total non-performing assets amounted to Rs 11.2 trillion in FY18.
Writer & Courtesy: The Pioneer
As robots take over frontline duties for Covid-19 patients, it is time to look at AI’s potential in healthcare
As healthcare personnel on the frontline of humanity’s war against the Coronavirus fall prey to it daily, more and more countries around the world are beginning to bank upon Artificial Intelligence (AI) and AI-powered robots to fight the pandemic. Even though the scientific community, technocrats and even techpreneurs like Elon Musk have time and again warned mankind against the possibility of AI and robots costing people their jobs going forward and creating mass unemployment, right now they are partnering with the human race and playing a major role in the fight against COVID-19. In fact, robots seem to be a good option in fighting any infectious disease in the future. Right from AI predicting the spread, interpreting and analysing data to robots replacing humans in hospital wards to save medical personnel from infection, we are living this science fiction scenario for real. For instance in the US, one of the major COVID-19 hotspots of the world, robots are replacing clinicians in hospitals, helping disinfect rooms, providing telehealth services and are processing and analysing test samples from patients. In fact, doctors even used a robot to treat the first person diagnosed with COVID-19 in Everett, Washington. The robot in question was equipped with a stethoscope to take the person’s vitals and a camera for the doctor to communicate with the patient through a large video screen. AI systems are also helping doctors identify COVID-19 cases through CT scans or X-rays at a rapid rate with high accuracy. Italy and China, too, have used robots to deliver healthcare and minimise contact with Corona positive cases. In India, hospitals in Kerala, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu have used robots for monitoring patients in isolation wards and for delivering food and medicines to minimise contact with doctors. AIIMS, whose healthcare professionals have borne the brunt of the virus during treatment, is now mulling using robots in its Delhi and Jhajjar facilities where COVID-19 patients are being treated. The Milagrow Humanoid ELF that AIIMS intends to use enables doctors to monitor and interact with COVID-19 patients remotely. Patients in isolation wards can also interact with their relatives from time to time through this robot. ELF can navigate around the ward independently and record the activities in high definition video and audio. The advanced humanoid features eyes with emotion and open application programming interface (API) for further development and customisation. There may not be the human touch but there is no lack of human emotion and intent. Milagrow iMap 9 is a floor disinfecting robot that can navigate and sanitise the floors without any human intervention. It can destroy virus spores on floor surfaces using sodium hypochlorite solution, as recommended by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). The robot moves around autonomously without falling while planning its own path.
Globally, AI is at the forefront of Coronavirus vaccine and drug research, too, as it has the ability to scan billions of papers and researches in a short while and collate data, thus saving researchers and scientists a lot of grunt work and time taken to come out with a probable cure. Perhaps, that’s the reason why vaccine trials can take place sooner than estimated. However, the use of robots in healthcare is nothing new and has been around for over 30 years. Robots have been used to perform simple laboratory tests or highly complex surgeries, either independently or as an aid to a surgeon. They are also used in hospitals and labs for repetitive tasks, in rehabilitation, physical therapy and in support of those with long-term conditions. AI has been around in the diagnosis of diseases like cancer and heart ailments. In fact, its use is enabling review and translation of mammograms 30 times faster with 99 per cent accuracy, reducing the need for unnecessary biopsies. Plus, what about the health apps and wearable monitoring systems that we use? This is all AI-powered and we don’t even realise how deeply-entrenched it has become in our lives. As science makes rapid strides each day, more possibilities of the use of AI and robots in healthcare are opening up. AI and robots are even being used to provide end of life care to senior citizens and interact with those who live alone to sharpen their minds. The possibilities are endless; it only needs a real human mind to unlock them.
(Courtesy: The Pioneer)
If India’s demographic dividend is to be tapped into, the country must be innovative in its approach and work out policies to boost research. The way forward should be advancing research
Research is the cornerstone of great institutions. Without it, a professor should not be eligible to teach at the university level as he/she will not be in a position to teach anything new to the students other than what is available in textbooks. The only benchmark to judge the quality of a university is its research standard. And Indian universities and prized management institutes do not fare well going by this count. Quality in research is deteriorating and so are the great institutions that were built so painstakingly by our great researchers.
According to the World Bank, India’s higher education system is the third largest in the world, next to the US and China, but it fares miserably in terms of expenditure per student as well as per teacher. In the last decade, access to higher education has improved as more IITs, IIMs and Central and State-level universities have been established. However, this proliferation has also raised concerns about an imbalance between excellence and inclusion. Regional and State-level universities suffer from shortage of good quality teaching staff and laboratories, although they are more inclusive in terms of their geographies and social groups. More than 70 per cent of Indian students study at local and regional universities but these institutes have smaller budgets and are known for inflated grades, deflated quality and absenteeism among students, even teachers.
Statistically, out of India’s 1.3 billion population, there were only 216 researchers per million population in 2015. India’s investment in research is a measly 0.62 per cent of its GDP. These numbers are well below global practices. France, for example, spends 2.25 per cent of its GDP on research and the US spends 2.74 per cent. Both countries have some 4,300 researchers per million population. China, for its part, invests more than 2.11 per cent of its GDP on research and has 1,200 researchers per million population. Particularly in higher education, India’s research expenditure is only four per cent of its GDP. There were some 1,61,412 students enrolled in PhD programmes in 2018. This comprises less than 0.5 per cent of the total student enrollment in higher education in the country, which constitutes students enrolled in universities, colleges and standalone institutes pursuing undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.
After the first revolution of education, which was the massification of education and providing education for all, the second revolution is the arrival of the global knowledge economy, which means universities now compete globally in any given field of study. Forces in the global knowledge economy act in contradiction to massification. All countries need to have top universities that can compete and cooperate at the highest levels in the broader society and the economy. More specifically, this role can be played by research universities.
Research universities are a very small part of any country’s academic system and because they are expensive to fund, nations need to think about how many such universities they need to maintain. In the US, about 200 of the 2,300 state-funded universities are research universities. Of these, 200 are of central importance in the pyramid of the higher education system. In order to have research universities that can talk to the top universities in the world, these campuses need to be given adequate support to enable them to partake of the global knowledge economy at the same level as other universities. Interaction among world class universities entails international student mobility, faculty exchange, research and teaching programmes that require a globally mobile academic labour force.
Realities in context of the higher education mean three things for research universities and their role in the academic system. First, contemporary higher education needs differentiated academic systems. Not all higher education institutions are research universities; not all post-graduate institutions need to be universities.
Second, there only needs to be a small number of research universities but they are important in the system. Research universities play a number of complex roles and at the top of the list is research. Often, research universities are asked to do many things but they are not social service agencies. They do not earn from applied research or consulting but focus on research and teaching. Universities have been the source of research for more than 200 years and need to continue as such. They are the only societal institutions that will carry out basic research and they need to be supported by the Government. It is evident that a balance between basic and applied research is important. The former is what will win Nobel prizes, which in the long run will contribute to applied research. For example, it is only recently that Einstein’s theory of relativity was proven through basic research by the universities.
Third, universities, especially research universities, are in the education business. They educate people with the end-goal of helping them to attain the skills and knowledge required to land jobs. The evidence of universities fulfilling this role is when those that are well-educated find jobs, especially the kind of jobs created in the rapidly changing 21st century. So what kind of education should research universities provide? They need to teach people how to think and communicate in a way that brings forth the importance of being trained in more than one type of job as going forward, training for just one type of job or career in a person’s lifetime is becoming less and less applicable.
But how does academic research contribute fundamentally to the well-being of our society? People benefit from quality, ethical research and should rally to support and defend it. There is, however, a growing reliance on and acceptance of the commodification of research, ie, research projects are increasingly defined on the basis of economic criteria. This practice infringes on academic freedom and narrows the scope of research. The result is that faculty are discouraged from engaging in research that benefits society and are forced to accept research projects that are funded by the private sector or ones that are heavily influenced by the private sector. Public/private partnerships can undermine collective bargaining agreements.
There are several challenges to academic research. Some of them are:
Funding: Public funding for academic research, including basic research, is not meeting the need. Funding needs include but are not limited to creation and maintenance of quality facilities, modern equipment, staff support, informational infrastructure and funding of scholarly activities such as conference attendance. Public/private partnerships must not replace public funding of research. The challenge is to be vigilant about funding opportunities that may allow excessive outside interference and unduly influence the research.
Respect for research within institutions: Many organisations do not adequately address the need for “release time”, reduced teaching loads or other compensations for scholars carrying heavy responsibilities for research.
Academic freedom: Academic freedom of researchers is threatened by a variety of non-academic forces. Situations repeatedly arise where public/private funders assert influence over research priorities and tamper with findings. Those funding research should not be allowed to exercise control over, edit or limit dissemination of findings with which they might disagree.
Intellectual property: Academic researchers are often deprived of their intellectual property rights. For example, there are instances of copyright infringement, conflicts around the ownership of research data and findings and restrictions on publication and presentation of findings by private funders. Such disputes can negatively affect the tenure process for non-tenured faculty. For faculty conducting international research, there may be other barriers due to different or fewer legal protections of their intellectual property rights.
Another important factor to boost research and the quality of higher education is to unshackle quality higher education institutions from Government controls and give them freedom to operate, develop their own roadmaps and pursue ideas of excellence. The status quo in education has resulted in a situation where it is not only sub-standard but has also failed to open inquiring minds to the world of research. India must be innovative in its approach and open its policies to boost research if its demographic dividend is to be tapped into.
(The writer is Assistant Professor, Amity University)
Writer: Hima Bindu Kota
Courtesy: The Pioneer
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