01 Mar 2021: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

B. GS 2 Related

Category: EDUCATION

1. Rural engg. colleges to lose 1,200 teachers

Context:

A World Bank-funded project TEQIP [Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme] project is coming to an end in March 2021.

Issue:

• With the project coming to an end, more than 1,200 assistant professors are left without a job.
  • About 300 faculty have already quit TEQIP for other jobs, but 250 of those remaining have filed cases in the Delhi High Court.
• Some rural colleges would be deprived of half their faculty, with the faculty’s contract under TEQIP coming to an end.
• Neither the States nor the Centre is willing to commit to continuing with the funding.
• While the Centre is preparing its own MERITE project with some similar objectives to improve technical education, that may be too late for the faculty employed under the current project.

Way Forward:

The government should sustain the gains of the existing project until the new project has been conceptualised for implementation.

E. Editorials

Category: GOVERNANCE

1. Big brother is watching you

The article argues how the new guidelines to regulate digital content i.e, Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 gives the executive unbridled power without any checks and balances.

Read more on this issue covered in 28^th February 2021 Comprehensive News Analysis.

Details:

• The guidelines include social media sites, messaging apps, over-the-top streaming services (popularly known as OTT services), and digital news publishers.
• Under the guidelines, it appears as if the citizens have been empowered and that there is now a fair grievance redressal mechanism for users of digital platforms.

Issue:

• The new governmental guidelines to regulate digital content raise a fundamental legal and ethical question: are they contra constitutional?
• For many advocates of the freedom of expression, the guidelines virtually undermine the enabling provisions of Article 19 of the Constitution.
• It weaponises the restrictive clause of reasonable restriction, without really spelling out what constitutes reasonable restriction.

Concerns:

Tricky Rule:

• The tricky new rule states that big social media companies will have to take down unlawful content within a specific time frame of being served either a court order or notice by an appropriate government agency.
  • There has been no satisfactory answer from the government on what basis it issues a takedown instruction to major social media platforms.

More opacity:

• The new rules pave the way for more opacity and secrecy rather than transparency and accountability.

Unbridled power for the executive:

• While the earlier regulatory framework was murky with many lines blurred and the onus of responsibility constantly oscillating between the originator and the intermediaries, the new guidelines give the executive unbridled power without any checks and balances.
• From arbitrary takedown notices to selective shutting down of Internet services, the executive has been arming itself against the citizens, and the two important estates of democracy — the legislature and the judiciary — are not sufficiently reflecting on the question of overreach.
• In a polarised environment, an informed debate is restricted to some print and online organisations.

Issues relating to individual privacy:

• To ensure individual privacy on social media platforms, the introduction of end-to-end encryption was seen as a technical solution to a truly vexatious issue.
• However, under the new rule, social media intermediaries must enable tracing of the originator of information on their platform if required by a competent authority, yet again raising the question of individual privacy.

2. A wolf in watchdog’s clothing

The article talks about the recently introduced Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.

Concerns:

• They represent a dramatic, dangerous move by the Union Government towards cementing increased censorship of Internet content and mandating compliance with government demands regarding user data collection and policing of online services in India.
• This has happened in the absence of open and public discussion of the full swathe of regulatory powers the government has sought to exercise, and without any parliamentary study and scrutiny.
• The ability to issue rules under a statute i.e. to frame subordinate legislation is by its nature a limited, constrained power.
  • When the Union Government issues subordinate rules, it is limited to the substantive provisions laid out by Parliament in the original act passed by the latter — the executive branch is subordinate to what Parliament has permitted it and cannot use its rule-making power to seek to issue primary legislation by itself.
• The Government of India already has significant legal powers, with practically no institutionalised oversight or true checks and balances, to force censorship and surveillance on Internet platforms and other web services in India.

Criticisms:

• The rules will end up giving the government a good deal of leverage over online news publishers and intermediaries, which holds troubling implications for freedom of expression and the right to information.
• These rules mandate digital news publishers and video streaming services to adhere to a cumbersome three-tier structure of regulation, with a government committee at its apex.
  • This is unprecedented in a country where the news media have been given the space all along to self-regulate, based on the mature understanding that any government presence could have a chilling effect on free speech and conversations.
• That the new rules pertain only to digital news media, and not to the whole of the news media, hardly provides comfort.
  • Digital news media is increasingly becoming a prime source of news and views.
• The purview of the IT Act, 2000, has been expanded to bring digital news media under its regulatory ambit without legislative action.
• According to the rules, “Any person having a grievance regarding content published by a publisher in relation to the Code of Ethics may furnish his grievance on the grievance mechanism established by the publisher.”
  • Anyone could force a digital platform to take up any issue.
  • It has to be taken up first, under the new rules, by the digital platform’s grievance officer.
  • If there is no resolution or if the complainant is dissatisfied, this can be escalated to a self-regulating body of publishers. This can then be escalated to the highest level, the government’s Oversight Mechanism.
  • The potential for misuse is enormous.
• The new rules have increased the compliance burden for social media platforms too.
  • The bigger of these platforms will have to appoint chief compliance officers, to ensure the rules and the laws are adhered to, and a nodal officer, with whom the law enforcement agencies will be coordinating, apart from a grievance officer.
• The platforms in the messaging space will have to enable the identification of the first originator of the information on its computer resource based on a judicial order.

Conclusion:

• Some amount of tightening of policy is inevitable given new challenges.
• The government’s involvement in grievance redress could prove counterproductive in a country where the citizens still do not have a data privacy law to guard themselves against excesses committed by any party.
• Regulation has an important place in the scheme of things. The laws to combat unlawful content are already in place. What is required is their uniform application.
• Given an environment where people are sensitive to content, the regulatory mechanism could become an operational nightmare.
• Creativity and freedom of expression could be affected.

Q1. Consider the following statements with respect to Chilika Lake:

Q2. Consider the following statements with respect to the Technical Education Quality 
Improvement Programme (TEQIP):

Q3. Consider the following statements:

Q4. Consider the following statements:

I. UPSC Mains Practice Questions

1. Regulation of social media and digital media should ensure a balance between individual rights and the nation’s integrity. Elucidate. (10 Marks, 150 Words) (GS 2 Governance).
2. Discuss the implications of the newly introduced Information Technology Rules, 2021 on individual privacy and fundamental rights. (10 Marks, 150 Words) (GS 2 Governance).

Read the previous CNA here.