In the wake of the agitation over the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens, internet services were snapped in many districts of Uttar Pradesh and, for some time, even in parts of the national capital. Evidently, it didn’t have the impact that the authorities had hoped for, as city after city in UP experienced violent demonstrations on 20 December despite the online curfew. Again, a week later, the authorities in UP’s several cities imposed internet curfew, in view of the protests and Friday prayers. How on earth a ban on the internet services helps in containing violence is a question nobody has bothered to answer.
Is there a cause-and-effect relationship between the internet and disturbances? One has to be absolutely ignorant to answer in the affirmative, for there have been riots, unrests, revolts, uprisings, insurrections, etc., in India and elsewhere before the internet, before computers.
Can the internet trigger or exacerbate a riot? Surely, it can, but so can a rumour. In fact, it was a rumour—that the victorious raider Nadir Shah had been killed or subdued—that led to a general massacre (qatl-e-aam) in Delhi in 1739. It continued for six hours and cost 20,000 lives. Twitter or Facebook didn’t spread that rumour.
What would cops do to stop rumours? Stop people talking on phone? Stall telephone services as well? Or, worse still, stop citizens even talking? Is it a democracy or a totalitarian state where lives can be disrupted just because some bureaucrat or policeman gets suspicious about something?
Politicians, bureaucrats, and cops refuse to see how badly people’s lives get hurt by such diktats. With different walks of life synced with the net, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to function. Car aggregators, for instance, get immobilised, so do food-serving agencies like Swiggy and Zomato. Filing of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) is online; it gets disrupted. Life and business get adversely affected in a zillion ways. Tourism will never get a boost against this backdrop.
Besides, is internet ban effective? Livemint reported on 18 December, “Due to shutdown of internet services, a new offline messaging app known as Bridgefy has started to gain traction among Indian citizens. The social media is abuzz with people recommending using this app in case there is a shutdown of internet services.” Other such apps may follow.
If life has become difficult in UP because of internet curfew, one can imagine the plight of the people in Kashmir. Dealing terrorists and stone-pelters resolutely is good, but should the authorities also be tough on the people of Kashmir? With jobs lost and life derailed, do we expect this will make the Kashmiris shout “Bharat Mata ki Jai”?
And, by the way, whatever happened to the Digital India programme? According to a government website, “it is a flagship programme of the Government of India with a vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy”.
The journey of e-governance initiatives in India took a broader dimension in the mid-1990s for wider sectoral applications with emphasis on citizen-centric services, says the website. Later on, many states and Union Territories started various e-governance projects. Though these e-governance projects were citizen-centric, they could make less than the desired impact. “It has been felt that a lot more thrust is required to ensure e-governance in the country promote inclusive growth that covers electronic services, products, devices and job opportunities. Moreover, electronic manufacturing in the country needs to be strengthened.”
The government wants order to transform the entire ecosystem of public services through the use of information technology—a laudable objective indeed. But it doesn’t occur to the officials and cops that the ecosystem collapses with internet curfew. This is not to say that maintaining law and order is not important; it is extremely important, but it cannot be at the expense of other services.
If terrorists threaten to strike on Diwali or the Republic Day, do we stop Diwali celebrations or call off the R-Day parade and pageantry? No, we take on the challenges; we don’t run away from them. This is how it should be.
Administrators and cops seem to suffer from the Luddite syndrome. Technology is bad, dangerous, so it should be shunned, or at least suppressed as far as possible. There is no reason to believe that technology is a tool that only criminals can use; law enforcement agencies can also use it, and do it better. They do actually; CCTV, advanced forensics, etc., offer considerable assistance to investigators and cops.
Further, there is no reluctance on the part of the Narendra Modi government to modernise police force. In an official press release, the Ministry of Home Affairs said on 2 July this year: “Central assistance is provided to the state governments for weapons, equipment for forensics, information technology, communication, training, etc.” Also, there is an approved Central outlay of Rs 7,380 crore for the three years from 2017-18 to 2019-20.
It is time the authorities in states started using technology rather than fearing it.
Ravi Kapoor is a freelance journalist