Democratic scrutiny missing?
Prime Minister Narenda Modi government’s reliance on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube is unlawful according to a public interest suit in the Delhi High Court filed by K N Govindacharya, a former leader and ideologue of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party> But former information and broadcasting minister Manish Tewari is not convinced that the Public Records Act has been violated because the information which the government shares is meant for publication and broadcast. Modi is the fourth most followed world leader on Twitter.
The routing of data through foreign servers is not an issue, but its storage in servers abroad is, because the data can be shared with US intelligence agencies, Govindacharaya’s lawyer Virag Gupta said. The suit was filed in June 2012 when Tewari was I&B minister; the latest hearing was on 6 August, when the government informed the court that it had framed a new email policy for which cabinet approval would be soon sought. Thereafter, government officials will have to migrate to @nic.in email IDs for official communications. According to Gupta, the National Informatics Centre (NIC) has provided about five lakh email IDs, but the requirement is ten times larger.
Gupta says the use of private Ids by officials is understandable till such time as NIC upgrades its infrastructure but where is the compulsion for the government to use of social media without agreeing to Indian terms? Since India is a big market, Gupta wants the government to compel social media services to (a) store data in India (b) not make commercial use of it without sharing revenue with the government and (c) deny the jurisdiction of Indian courts. He says European law does not allow data transfer outside Europe without a guarantee of privacy and an undertaking that it will not be shared.
Gupta also wants the government to notify the validity of electronic signatures for easy authentication of complaints filed online with the grievance officers of Internet intermediaries. Absent this, according to him signed complaints have to be made on paper. Since Google and Twitter’s grievance officers are in the US and Facebook’s in Ireland, Indian complainers turn to the police, Gupta says, adding to their burden. Electronic signature can be one’s login name, password or signature scans. The government’s says digital signatures can be used instead.
Whether this is sophistry or there is merit in the arguments will be decided by the court at the next hearing on 26 September. A Facebook official who did not wish to be named complaining is not as difficult as made out; a button is provided on every Facebook page for users to report violation of service terms. There is a separate protocol for law enforcement agencies.
‘We are very concerned about data privacy,’ said Raheel Khursheed, who heads news, politics and government at Twitter India and ‘have locked horns with the US National Security Agency (NSA)’. User information is protected with NSA-proof technology called forward secrecy, he said. Like other Internet intermediaries, Twitter publishes transparency reports every six months. Khursheed admitted to ‘regulatory imbalances’ because of the pace of technological evolution, but this is a worry for all governments.
Khursheed compared government tweets to releases issued by the Press Information Bureau. If their publication (and storage) by the international media is not regarded as a transfer of data and breach of law, tweets cannot be seen as such, he asserted.
‘The Public Records Act needs to be repealed if there is a conflict,’ Tewari said. ‘It was meant for a different age,’ (It was actually enacted in 1993). He compared it to a 1956 cabinet resolution that allows foreign news agencies to supply news only through Indian agencies (craftily dodged). ‘The world had changed,’ Tewari said. ‘We have to march with technology.’
Govindacharya’s swadeshi angle has added another dimension to an issue that has rattled journalists because of Prime Minister Modi’s reluctance to engage with them, and instead communicate directly with people. This was the subject of a debate, ‘Only Tweets, No Press Meets,’ organized by the Foundation for Media Professionals in the capital on Friday, 8 August. FMP is a six-year old Delhi-based group that takes up matters of media freedom. The question before the discussants was whether social media could replace journalists in the government’s outreach.
The Foundation asserts it is not Luddite, referring to bands of English textile mill workers who destroyed labour saving machinery in the early 19th century for fear of losing their jobs. Journalists who are asking to be engaged by the government should not be bracketed with public sector bank employees who were protesting computerization in the 1990s, it says.
Prime Minister Modi has not appointed a media advisor. He did not take journalists with him while attending a five-nation summit meeting in Brazil in July. He kept them away during visits to Bhutan and Nepal as well. This was a break with the practice followed by previous prime ministers.
Though journalists on prime ministerial flights paid for hotel stay and food, they used to be lavishly indulged. ‘It was obscene,’ Ajoy Bose, political commentator and author of a political biography said about one such visit. Editors would use the occasion to cosy up to government leaders and secure personal favours. Such junketeering at taxpayers’ expense was also commented upon disapprovingly in an article by A K Bhattacharya, editor of Business Standard. But cutting off journalists was more dangerous for the government, ‘Bose said. The reach of social media was limited and the government would be denying itself feedback from journalists through discussions and analyses.
It is not the withdrawal of privileges, but the repudiation of the journalistic function that should worry those who want India to be a vibrant democracy, FMP says. Claims which the government makes, regardless of the vehicles chosen to broadcast them, should be interrogated if they are not to be regarded as propaganda or advertising.
‘Cutting off journalists or journalistic organisations does not augur well for democracy,’ Tewari said. ‘The lack of democratic scrutiny is not good.’
Tewari admitted that it was tempting for politicians to bypass mainstream media by taking recourse to social media. ‘If somebody is hypocritical to say it is not, it will epitomize hypocrisy in its ultimate manifestion,’ he wordily added. He exhorted journalists to be ‘sharper, quicker and far more investigative because the concurrent discourse with new media will continue.’
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, whom Modi disaparaged as Maun (silent) Mohan Singh for his extreme reluctance to speak, held very few press meets during his ten-year tenure. But when he did, there was no bar on the questions that could be asked.
Modi seems to regard communication as an exercise in message (and brand) management. As chief minister of Gujarat, he would not entertain questions only pertaining to ‘development’ and not the 2002 riots. The scope of interviews was agreed beforehand; often advance questions were sought. Knowing that he would not take questions, television channels in Gujarat got into the habit of sending only video cameras to his events. Modi would also record sound bites in his studio, which his information department would circulate. For Modi the media was merely an amplifier.
The government’s attitude to those who differ with it was made clear when Arvind Gupta, the BJP’s national head for information and technology failed to turn up at the debate, despite confirmation. Gupta said he could not share the dais with Khursheed and would instead sit in the audience. He then called sick.
Khursheed has been critical of the Indian army in Kashmir and has made some sharp remarks about Modi’s handling of the 2002 riots. When Twitter India appointed him in January, Gupta had said, ‘Twitter has been successful in becoming global by being a neutral as well as open-ended platform of communication. I am afraid that this appointment will hamper that image in India.’
Among government leaders, P Chidambaram stood out for his monthly rendezvous with the media as home minister in the previous government. When he assumed the portfolio after the November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, the public wanted reassurance, which Chidambaram strove to provide through his monthly hour-long Q&A sessions. These also had the collateral advantage of keeping his officials active, says former home secretary G K Pillai, as their slack could show up in public. Chidambaram discontinued the practice when he regained the post of finance minister, because, he said, there were more occasions to interact with the media.
Like Modi, US President Barack Obama has also been criticised for shutting off the mainstream media, says a long-time Washington correspondent of an English newspaper. He has held fewer press conferences than even President George W Bush. There is a lot of direct outreach that bypasses the filter of traditional journalism, via social media mainly. But Obama is also a master of the townhouse format, where he interacts with the American public and takes questions from them.
President Obama, according to his correspondent, has reached out to a wide, more diverse audience. He is very accessible to the Hispanic media. He talks a lot to sports and food journalists. This team has credentialed online media and bloggers in keeping with the times.
Prime Minister Modi uses US media technology with verve; he should imbibe its openness as well.
(Vivian Fernandes is a Delhi-based journalist and founding member of the Foundation for Media Professionals)