[Essay] Cyberactivism in India – Nalineesh Chand

    “When God informed a 17 year old teenage urban girl that world is about to end in next 15 minutes, the first thing she did was to update her status on Social Networking Website – “World Ending in next 15 Minutes – Will Miss Mother Earth“.

Cyber activism means activism or awareness of people about Cyber or Internet. Internet is contributing in each and every aspect of Human Life be it shopping of clothes, purchasing flats, ordering food items or any other aspect. It has not only actively contributed to the social awakening of masses in India but also all over the world. But every medicine has its side effects; Internet too has its share of drawbacks. We will now try and understand the advantages and disadvantages of ‘Cyber’ world in India.

For a developing country like India, Internet is a recent phenomenon and its penetration has also been less than 50% in India, mainly due to higher level of poverty, which makes its difficult to be accessed by people from rural areas. However the draft Telecom Policy released in 2012, aims to ensure that every household has a Broadband connection with minimum speed of 2 Megabytes. Prima Facie, it would be a challenging task for the government to implement the policy, but nevertheless it is a step in the right direction. As compared to 1990s the accessibility of people to Internet has grown manifolds, today a person living in rural or urban, whether has Internet access at home or not but still is able to access it, that is because of the Cyber Cafes, who have played a greater role in creating the awareness and facilitating the use of internet in rural areas. For example the recent change in the application process by UPSC (Union Public Service Commission), making it mandatory for the Civil Services Aspirants to apply online ( through their website). Around 4.5 Lakh aspirants apply for the prestigious exam every year and a major portion belong to rural areas, still all the applicants were able to submit the applications online due to support provided by Cyber Cafes.

Internet has become a very important member of family of urban population. Especially in Metropolitan Cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta and Bangalore, it is quite common to have both the spouses working to sustain a good living, and with rising nuclear families, there is very less time available for fulfilling various family needs. In such a situation Internet has played a far greater role than the expectations of people. I would like to explain the points with various examples mentioned below.

In 2004, I had to stand for hours to book a railway ticket and finally when, I reached to the window of Booking Clerk, she informed that the tickets are waitlisted and that too in an arrogant manner. I had fought a lot with her but to no use. In 2005, the Government of India started a new corporation viz Indian Railways Catering & Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) with 23.5 hours online Ticket Booking System. For last 7 years, I have booked numerous confirmed tickets of mine and of friends and family members and have not even visited the Booking Counter once also. This was possible only due to Internet, which has strengthen the ‘Aam Aadmi’ by reducing the time in processing and procuring the tickets (from 1 day to 10 minutes), it has increased the comfort, in a way that one day leave is not required for booking the railway ticket & more importantly attitude of arrogant booking clerk has changed, since the pressure of Indian Railways has reduced, which in turn had made her more competitive & cordial and well behaved so that her job is retained.

I still remember my mother standing outside the bookstore in the month of June (when school used to open) every year so that she could buy the books for me and my brothers & mostly she would not get all the books required for us & hence it was quite common for her to go to market twice or thrice for the same work. Yesterday, I had to order a book on “Organization Behaviour”, I opened my webpage and just “Googled” it and then there was flipkart.com, books4u.com and never ending list of websites offering their services at the click of my mouse button. I hardly spent 6-7 minutes in purchasing the book I want (sitting in the office) and the book was delivered (free delivery) in next 2 day in excellent condition ( well packaged with Tax Invoice and also a couple of Bookmarks). The whole experience is a win-win situation for both of us (purchaser as well as seller) as time is saved in the whole transaction and all the options are available on the website.

I have just quoted two examples in detail, the other areas are paying various bills viz. Electricity Bill, Telephone Bill, Broadband Bill and Insurance Premium or Searching for renting a house online, Applying to various examinations online, Ordering Dominos Pizza or any other food item, Shopping for any commodity online, Trading on stock exchange, Performing any Banking Transaction or the latest filing of Income Tax Return. The list of utilities provided by “Cyber World” is unlimited and many more are yet to be explored.

Let us now move from Utility to Social Interactions or Awareness created by Internet. “Need for Recognition” is human need, pointed by various theories on Motivation be it Maslow , Mcgregor or Herzberg. Internet has indeed satisfied that very need of Indians. In a society, where raising your voice is not considered good, Internet, at a click of mouse of Twitter, Facebook or other social networking websites has provided us a forum or platform to express our opinion and also it helps us know people who support us on the cause. The Anna Hazare movement against corruption last year for enactment of Lokpal had got a huge response on these website and daily updates of parliament were being commented on by the masses on these websites, which in turn is strengthening the democracy of the country. These social networking websites have already been successful in Tunisia and Egypt, wherein the masses have used it for creating awareness against the despots and moving toward democracy and have been fairly successful, which is evident from the uprising in middle east.

Every coin has two sides and the other side of Internet has brought it with various issues like, wastage of time by children on these social networking sites, extra information on the websites and more importantly, invasion of the privacy of an individual. It takes hardly seconds to circulate and indecent MMS or any other matter which is not suitable to be viewed otherwise; Internet has diluted the line between the private and public life. Though not in India, world over people have been jailed and convicted for publishing indecent content and hate speech over websites.

Overall it will be appropriate to conclude that the benefits due to cyber activism are more than its disadvantages. We need to appreciate the technology which has enabled us to work faster and reduce the barrier of communication world over and hence the advantage of saving time and money, at the same time we need to be cautious of not uploading personal information on the websites which can be used to defame us and we need to ensure that the steps taken by us in e-world do not disturb the tranquility and peace of real world

This Essay was contributed by Target 2012 Member – Nalineesh Chand