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India turned off mobile internet for 63M citizens amid protests in Ahmedabad
- Indyan 11y agoI'm in two minds regarding this. This reminds me of the clampdown in many of the middle-eastern countries during the Arab spring. On Principle I don't believe that the state should be allowed to place such restrictions on civilian freedom. However, I can't deny that the measures worked. The protest had become extremely violent and needed to be defused instantly. This measure possibly saved lives.
- rmc 11y agoYes, it helped with the peace. But what effect did it have on justice? Those are not the same thing.
- mtgx 11y agoYou may not always want peace. Could Americans have "peacefully" convinced the Brits to turn back and leave them alone?
- flangloria 11y agoOh please. This isn't the same. What these guys were trying to do, was to bully the state into placing their community above the rest.
- meric 11y agoCould the revolt have been defused by Britain granting more voting power to American colonial authorities? Or would they continue to demand placing their community above the rest by being completely autonomous?
- gambiting 11y agoPoland is the prime example of getting rid of unwanted government(communist in this case) without resorting to violence, and that's despite the entire country being under martial law with severe restrictions on travel and trade for a few years. It can be done.
- kushti 11y agoIndians made this (see Gandhi & Indian independence movement), but I don't sure "americans"(mostly english people living overseas those days) were capable for that(especially with taking natives genocide & slavery into account).
- Manishearth 11y agoIn India's case Britain was already in a situation where it half-wanted to leave (due to the war, etc). This was not the case with the US. I'm pretty sure India would have had a violent movement too if WW2 hadn't happened and Indians had better access to firearms and stuff. Violence was less of an option because the British government deliberately ensured that the locals were suppressed. Whereas in the U.S. the British were exploitative of the colonies, but they did not suppress the people (until the movement started); after all, those were their own people. We did, in fact, have a violent movement, in 1857, just that it didn't work out too well. I don't think that "Indians are less violent" is really an argument to be made here.
- kushti 11y agoHow much time have you spent in India? I've been for half an year there, and 1.5 months in US. My feeling is americans are MUCH more aggressive in general
- Manishearth 11y agoBorn and brought up in the US, been in India for the last ... 8 years. (Indian origin). That's quite anecdotal at best. My experience has not been the same, I've seen ample violent elements in both places. Indians are generally subtler in our social cues, and that might make Americans "louder" (which feels like aggression), but certainly not more violent. It also might matter which area of either country you've lived in. Boston(-ish) and Mumbai here. An acceptable argument for India being more nonviolent would be the entire NAM movement among other initiatives, but there are still many, many other reasons why India's nonviolent independence movement worked -- Indians being nonviolent, if true, would be a small contributor to it, not the main reason. Besides, like I said, we had a violent independence movement and failed. Technically, two, if you count the INA, which actually managed to liberate many areas.
- retube 11y agoLike almost all policy & law there are trade-offs. Good governance is about enacting policy which attempts to benefit as many people as possible on average (but there will always be losers). People need to understand that issues are NOT black and white, and that "the thin end of the wedge" often needs to be broached in order to benefit wider society.
- kang 11y agoThere is a certain threshold below which this will work and beyond which it will backfire bad; if the majority is big, the message spreads nevertheless and more underground and uncontrollable ways. Also, this is not justice & anti-freedom.
- dharmach 11y agoIn general, freedom of expression, communication should not be curbed but that freedom also brings in misinformation, rumour, and anti-social activities. When panic can cause unnecessary destruction, government should be able to control communication channels for a short period of time. Remember, if government is wrong, it will not be able to hide the truth for a long.
- wolfgke 11y ago> Remember, if government is wrong, it will not be able to hide the truth for a long. The truth that the NSA is massively spying was hidden for a very long time (or rather: Hardly anybody really believed those who told the truth).
- mrits 11y ago"This measure possibly saved lives." Plugging everyone into the matrix will also save lives.
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- techaddict009 11y agoWell this was done as a precautionary move so that people stop spreading rumours and videos of affected areas. Also to stop mobs to communicate in mass with each other.
- nitrogen 11y agoSuch "precautionary" moves are putting the cart before the horse; they value the state over the freedoms of the people. They are incompatible with any honest representative government.
- techaddict009 11y agoWell I am from the effected area. Believe it or not this move has surely helped to maintain peace. No doubt it has effected many peoples work. But this was one of quickest way to control mass communication. Plus the ban is on 2G/3G & SMS on mobile network not on broad band or usual wired network. On wired network probably only fb & whatsapp are banned.
- mirimir 11y agoSo did they declare martial law? Edit: Yes[0] [0] http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/08/indian-army-deployed-riot-hit-areas-gujarat-150827052532462.html http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/08/indian-army-deployed-r...
- techaddict009 11y agowhat does that mean?
- arsalanb 11y agoThis is very common in India, for the government to take bizarre actions and then retreat shamefully when they figure they're exposed. The porn ban is just one example — for those of you who don't follow, the Indian government tried to ban porn and did it, albeit half-heartedly, and then were forced to undo and lift the ban. Even the story in reference here isn't an uncommon sight. In Jammu & Kashmir (A state which has a disputed status, yet is claimed to be an "integral part" of India by the ruling political party) it is very common for the government to shut down mobile internet and all mobile facilities on 14th and 15t h August (Which are the countries independence day) Heck they had even banned text messaging here until 2013. Some "freedom of speech", eh?
- starving_coder 11y agoJ&K is an integral part of India, get used to it. > Heck they had even banned text messaging here until 2013. Looks like you've earned it.
- selimthegrim 11y agoDo you really think you sound any less dumb than Pakistanis going on about their 'jugular vein'?
- prapam2 11y agoA state which has a disputed status, yet is claimed to be an "integral part" of India by the ruling political party - Its considered integral part of India by its citizens does not matter which political party is at power.
- arsalanb 11y agoThis is a factually incorrect statement, as a citizen of the place myself.
- eklavya 11y agoSure it is a factually incorrect statement. J&K is special in that it has been given special powers of autonomy etc. But I wonder what you mean when you say disputed, just because someone starts to dispute that something of mine belongs to them doesn't make it disputed. The agreement of accession into India should make it pretty clear.
- apjana 11y agoThe website http://thenextweb.com/ http://thenextweb.com/ accesses your FB credentials without asking for your consent. The headline can't be more misleading by the way. It was done to contain spread of violence, not to stop discussions.
- hobs 11y agoHow would their website accomplish that? That seems to be an interesting first post, especially considering people communicating openly seems a way to prevent violence and rumors. It seems you might want to provide more detail or justification behind your words, or people may consider you an astroturfer.
- amrrs 11y agoWhile Indian PM addresses people on Twitter, the countrymen can't even access basic Internet. Cry for Freedom of speech? Irony!
- sklogic 11y agoThis is exactly what mesh networks are for.
- mtgx 11y agoI haven't heard much about FireChat in a while.
- jor-el 11y agoIn first look it doesn't speak well of a democratic country. But loads of false information is spread using SMS, other messaging services (like watsapp) and social platforms. If lives can be saved and bring back things to normal by doing so, then it is very much justified. The people who are being killed or facing inconvenience because of the protests are also citizen of the same democracy. Right to live is more important than right to have internet.
- makomk 11y agoLoads of "false information" which happens to be true is also spread using SMS, other messaging services, and social platforms. This is the excuse of every authoritarian state.
- nowarninglabel 11y agoThis is something that speaks to the need for rumor dispelling engines http://www.unahakika.org/ http://www.unahakika.org/ Instead of cutting off information it should be directed and rumors dispelled through disseminating the truth.
- jsudhams 11y agommm so the digital world will also be part of bans/strikes going forward. So parties will now call for bundh will ensure online shops are also closed. <joke>If telephone booth and post office is closed why should the 2g/3g/4g and land line should work they should also stop..</joke>
- prateek_mir 11y agoNot a freedom of speech issue. whatsapp messages spread quite virally. A large number of users of such services who have got access to mobile internet quite recently are susceptible to take a spam/hoax message as an authentic piece of information, specially the ones which can directly affect the person. Also, you need to keep in mind that services like whatsapp have become a significant source of information for many people. A large number of such messages that I have come across are photoshopped images, mix it with the ease of sending bulk messages and you get an explosive mixture. One way to tackle such situation will be, IMO, to make bulk messaging an expensive (computationally) operation, something of the nature of HashCash.
- ypcx 11y agoNo, no government should ever be able to do this. Why? Because when you track it down to the person getting the switch flipped, it is always someone with an interest not serving the whole, a.k.a. private interest. And the government should serve the whole, otherwise it is oppressing a part. And in regards to your argument — the longer you keep the immune system from exposure to a threat — the longer you allow the threat to evolve and become even more dangerous. Let the people learn what is hoax and fake. Yes, they are perfectly able to do that.
- prateek_mir 11y agoThis is not a lot of oppressed people standing up for their civil rights. The issue is very different than that. More over, the size of crowd is way to large for the law enforcement to handle swiftly. This is not a flashpoint event, huge number of people were mobilized from the neighboring states for the main rally that took place before the violence broke. (the number of people gathered there were more than 100K, and this will a very conservative estimate) In such a politically charged environment, the spamming ease becomes a real threat to the law and order, and above all, to human lives. I would very much like the system to evolve, but not at the expense of innocent lives.
- Sven7 11y agoThe threat is a large mass of illiterate people being riled up by inflammatory rumors they see on their phone. They aren't the kind of people who know what the words "fact check" means. Add to that a semi-educated police force and you end up with 3 people dead and a whole bunch of public infrastructure burning. If you are in government, you don't really have the option to call the protesters in to have a nuanced debate.
- simondelacourt 11y agoIndia has quite a history of communal riots[0], and Gujarat is a state where violence tends to become really wacky. As a kid I've lived a few years in Rajkot, Gujarat, during and after the Ayodhya riots and violence spread easily based on rumour. But it also has a long history of censorship. I can understand why the Indian government shuts down a service like mobile internet, they have had a great number of casualties due to these communal riots. But it seems far from the right thing to do. But the root of the problem is so much a social problem, and the current government (as well as the past governments) have done way too little to introduce more social equality. The backward class programs have not fixed the problem of the caste society, and the country still benefits largely of the enormous cast differences. Modi and his BJP have used the caste system, both for their businesses (Gujarat mainly is a booming business state) and political benefit (it is way easier to get your election going through the system of castes). Modi and his group had a strange role during the Muslim-Hindu riots of Ghodra, and his stance towards Muslims is highly doubtful [1]. I wonder what more will come up on this story in the following days. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_violence_in_India#Gujarat_communal_riots_.281969.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_violence_in_India#Gu... [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/opinion/being-muslim-under-narendra-modi.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/opinion/being-muslim-under...
- notfoss 11y agoNice, carry on the FUD. You are conveniently ignoring UP, Bengal and several other states where violence is a daily norm. But because Modi is closely related to Gujarat, so it is the one singled out.
- adityab 11y agoI downvoted you because while what you say has some truth in it, your point is almost entirely unrelated to the issue at hand.
- owaislone 11y agoIndia turns off mobile internet, calling and SMS facility in the state of Jammu and Kashmir multiple times a year. India turned off SMS facility for ~4 years from 2009 to 2014 in the state of J&K.
- pjc50 11y agoIt's amazing how many people on this thread are keen to go for the easy, rights-restricting solution (just turn off the internet locally for a bit!) rather than the harder question: why are people primed to riot? Like Ferguson, it's usually a combination of longstanding grievance and trigger event.
- prateek_mir 11y agoOne should note that in cases of communal violence and riots, indoctrination plays a bigger role than grievances.
- kang 11y agoBecause Indians have accepted that justice won't be served. If you assume that mob justice is what there is, it's the right thing to do. Very sad to say this.
- Manishearth 11y ago> it's usually a combination of longstanding grievance and trigger event That's because riots and such protests are rare in the US; and Ferguson brought new issues to light, not the same old issues. That's not the case in India. The concept of a "bandh" (close the city and shops, if your shop doesn't comply, you might get beaten up by party thugs) is a common one used by political parties for various reasons. If someone told me that there was a bandh in Mumbai tomorrow, I'd not be surprised, not even really annoyed. One gets used to this stuff. Riots are a few steps above this, but aren't too uncommon either. Many of them have legit motivations. India is a country of many, many communities and many, many views and it's common for some community to feel aggrieved by something; often rightly so. This one, I don't think it has a legit motivation either, but I'm not so sure. The reservation system is a rather broken one -- not that I'm saying it should be removed (affirmative action can be quite effective) -- but that it could be improved quite a bit, checking against income and with more safety nets for students/etc who are boosted by this but don't do well. This case seems to be one of people from a non-suppressed community clamoring for reservation, motivated by other non-suppressed communities who got reservation due to a political move (ICBW here). Thing is, fixing the overall reservation system is a really, really hard problem in practice. There's a lot of politics involved -- anything perceived to weaken it will severely affect your image, and besides, most of these laws need a majority of folks from the relevant minority group to approve them, and due to the way folks vote here, politicians from a minority group depend on that minority group for votes, and if they were portrayed as weakening the reservation system, their political career would be doomed. So the reservation system is something that can only monotonically get worse. Most folks have resigned themselves to this fact. On the other hand, in Ferguson, the issue is something which the minority group was very aware of, but not the majority group. Many people are now realizing that African Americans look at the police very differently due to the way the police treats them. There's a lot of new information in the system, and there are many proposed solutions, most of which do not qualify as political suicide. It's not the case here, everyone already knows about the issues here, and most if not all solutions are political suicide.
- adityab 11y agoI'm from Ahmedabad. Background information: What is happening is not a religious issue or in any way related to the communal riots 15 years ago. From Wikipedia: In India, the Other Backward Castes (OBC) status invokes affirmative action which provides reserved quotas in education and government jobs. In Gujarat, 27% of seats are reserved for OBC (Other Backward Castes), 7.5% for Scheduled Castes and 15% for Scheduled Tribes for a total of 49.5% of all seats. The Supreme Court has capped the maximum reservation at 50% in their 1992 judgement. What decides if you are OBC, SC, or ST? Your surname, and the community your family belongs to. Note that membership to one of these segments used to strongly correlate once with lower economic status (and therefore opportunities), but in recent years this correlation is significantly weaker. The agitation is a result of the unsustainable caste politics quoted above. 49.5% of people getting in through a quota is absurd. Now I think that elevating downtrodden sections of society (through economic incentives, or even a reasonable quota) is a good thing. but when half of all seats in universities and stable government jobs are tied to a quota, the playing field for the "general category" is significantly shrunk, and people are going to get frustrated. The community that is protesting are the Patels. They are huge in Gujarat; they're all over the strong middle class spectrum, and parts of the upper class. What I mean to say is that they are not even remotely an oppressed downtrodden segment of society. They happen to be an entrepreneurial and dynamic class; if you're in the UK or the US, you probably are aware of Patels because they constitute a huge percentage of Indian immigrants/expats. My point being: Patels asking for reservation is ridiculous. I guess only in India can a community demand to be labelled as "backward". But when the playing field is so small, is it a surprise that everyone now wants their own space carved out? I hope this protest will die, because animosity between such a large segment of society and others can become a source of problems in the future. But I also hope that it will force the government to rethink the crazy huge reservation system. People in Ahmedabad are feeling scared and angry right now. Just outside my parents' home, protestors/vandals lit three buses and a bus terminal on fire yesterday. Then there's the police, here's a video of the them going on a power trip: https://twitter.com/ndtv/status/636808983131525120 https://twitter.com/ndtv/status/636808983131525120 PS: Not all Patels are asking for reservations, there are a number of dissenting factions as well.
- naveen99 11y ago
- okgabr 11y agoThe Egyptian government did the exact same thing during the January 2011 revolution. And they even took it a step further by cutting all mobile communications (calls and texts) and cutting landline internet (ADSL). Surprisingly, not a single person was asked or blamed till now. Very sad to see the same situation happen again!
- known 11y agoPATEL population is less than 1% in India; Tell PATEL to take 1% CasteShareOfLand from India and go build their own nation;
- pjc50 11y agoBecause partitioning India worked so well last time?
- uberneo 11y agoThats why India should have more communities like http://battlemesh.org/ http://battlemesh.org/ for creating decentralized adhoc networks