Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Feb 23: Psychological warfare is arguably the most important sector in a war when the countries are not going to the battlefield with their army, air force and navy due to the nuclear deterrent or economic constraints. In the pre-Internet era for millions of years, slogans, songs, murals, batons, bows, arrows, lancers and match-sticks were the medium of all rebellions and uprisings against the State or a monarchy or on alien ruler. The State in turn would successfully or unsuccessfully crush all uprisings, mutinies, rebellions and revolutions with its might. Over the past few decades, low-cast proxy wars have replaced the expensive regular wars.
Communication Revolution and Information Technology, or call it the era of Internet, mobile telephony and broadcasting explosion have completely changed the world in the last 30 years. The 21st century media social media became implicitly and explicitly part of the hidden war machinery in many of the 21st century countries and conflict zones.
Until yesterday, the self-styled champions of freedom, liberty and democracy would extensively lecture the non-NATO countries like India on “human rights” and “freedom of expression”. It was immediately after the 9/11 that the USA introduced the draconian Homeland Security Act. Equivalents of our notorious POTA and TADA followed. Then came the Abu Garaib, Guantanamo Bay and the drone.
Here in India, the dreaded guerrilla commanders of yesteryears, who have no qualms in visiting Pakistan on the Indian passport, marrying in that country and hugging the top terror icons, claim the freedom of speech and movement as a “fundamental, constitutional right”. Under the same excuse, the State has provided Police guards, bullet-proof cars and luxuries to the rebels involved in brutal killings and hate speeches. As they are treated to VIP protocol at the airport lounges, their counterparts in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and other countries are made to bleed through the nose.
Killing of the 85-year-old Akbar Bhugti with a missile in a cave hideout in Baluchistan and the cold-blooded murder of the LTTE chief Prabhakaran’s 12-year-old son in custody are the two-odd chilling reminders of India’s outstretched democracy that has arguable proved more beneficial to its rebels than to its lawful citizens. Its rebels occupy on its national television channels only to call India “a terror state, a crushing force with no regard for law and democracy”!
This said, the flood of “Arab Spring” is sought to be justified, sanctified and legitimized as “freedom of expression” in Jammu and Kashmir. Why should there be the organized and accountable media—the newspaper titles allotted and regulated by Registrar of Newspapers or the licenses issued to satellite television news channels and the FM broadcasting stations—if the ‘Social Media’ [YouTube, Facebook, Internet etc.] gets rampant power and legitimacy from the Articles of the Indian Constitution?
The social media exists in the West simply for the fact that the authorities swing into action within minutes of a complaint if someone is threatened, harassed, terrorized, blackmailed or sullied through an email or a Facebook post and he or she lodges the complaint with the Police. Here in India, social media and Internet has been a “free-for-all” platform. There have been blasphemy and no-holds-barred vilification campaigns and threats through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs. Masked users have been free to open their accounts in fictitious names. This malaise in Jammu and Kashmir caught the wide public attention only after the 2008 and the 2010 street turbulence in Srinagar.
Even the most of the serious and responsible politicians, journalists and intellectuals raised the questions as to why and how the State could “gag” the media—-including the completely unauthorized local cable television channels which have no mandate of operating news under the 1995 law. Likewise, the ‘Civil Society’, which is often a combination of the Government employees left free for all sorts of mischief by the State, has raised a typhoon over blocking the unlawful matter on the Internet. Perhaps the first saner voices rose over abusing and threatening of a music band of three teenage girls in Srinagar earlier this month.
The reach of the unbridled cable TV and social media could be gauged from the fact that over 5,00,000 people are estimated to be regularly operating Facebook and email in Kashmir alone. There are over 1,50,000 cable connections. Even after the 2010 ban on the bulk SMS and the text traffic on the prepaid cellphones, then over 20 lakh in number, SMS on the postpaid continues to be a regular feature of communication.
Authorities are said to have discovered that thousands of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube contributors were uploading videos, tagging photographers and posting nakedly criminal and objectionable comments either on their own walls or those of the countless of their chains of ‘Friends’ without an iota of accountability. They threaten, harass and abuse the genuine social media users, making wanton abuse of technology. Government has rarely initiated action or taken an investigation on a complaint to its logical conclusion for a slew of reasons.
Obviously, it becomes hard to act against the social media users when the Chief Minister himself communicates more through Twitter than his Department of Information. Lines of demarcation have never been drawn between the legitimate and illegitimate use of the Internet, even as both, the satellite news as well as the social media, operates either on the State’s own BSNL or the private telecoms licensed by the Government of India. Nothing comes directly from the skies.
Reassuringly, it is for the first time that the J&K Police have got 150 “offending, unlawful and incendiary” URLs blocked through court orders after Afzal Guru’s execution at Delhi’s Tihar Jail. Arguably more needs to be done to delineate the genuine social media from the criminal usage of the medium as nobody has been booked or arrested in a criminal matter other than the three youths who allegedly threatened the music band.
At the same time, it has become clear that even in this advanced age of science and technology, the J&K Police have been dealing with the cyber crime with the obsolete analogue infrastructure of 1990s. With the exception of a Cyber Police Station in Jammu, it has neither the professional, qualified and properly trained manpower nor the likes of modern equipment which has become old even in the States like Chhatisgarh.
Even after 23 years of the proxy war, when the other side has excelled in the use of Internet and mobile telephony, J&K Government has no means to intercept, scan or block email or the Voice Over Internet Protocol [VOIP]. On someone’s advice, it has just gone to the court and got the anti-national URLs blocked by the Internet Service Providers and the Telecom Service Providers.
It is but impossible for any Government to always rush to a court in the matter of hundreds of thousands of URLs, posts and uploads of the hundreds of millions of the Internet users. All that needs to be done is the updated legislation in accordance with the fundamental rights, as guaranteed by the Indian Constitution, and implementation of the laws with the use of the most modern and the state-of-the-art infrastructure.
Last, but not the least, the fundamental rights of the democratic countries are for their lawful, genuine, bonafide, identifiable and accountable citizens [who should have free access to the licensed and authorized news portals including the social media] not for the ghost subscribers holding this nation of 1250 million people hostage with the uncontested interpretation of the freedom of expression and movement.
The non-functional CCTV cameras on the elevated electric poles in Srinagar, which have been found always shut at the time of a shootout and grenade blast, are definitely no answer to the amazing use of technology and Internet by the militants and their cheerleaders in the so-called ‘civil society’, academia, media and the elements in the Government’s own organs. They include the wonderful Ibni Batutas works in a State-controlled bank and contributing megabytes of the anti-India venom regularly to some news portal, sometimes in their real names.
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