I got a forwarded email from my brother, essentially describing the heights to which a college can go in curbing the freedom of expression among its student community. The college in question is one of the reputed institutions for engineering stream, in Bangalore - PES Institute of Technology. I would not have been that bewildered by this development in PESIT, which has a tradition of trying to make the lives of students miserable, if this had happened when I myself was student, 5 years back. But I was expecting things to have ameliorated with passage of time. Well, that does not seem to be the case. I cannot begin to fathom the reason for this, though. Either the students are becoming more complaisant, which is quite implausible, or the dogmatic standards have reached new benchmarks.
I am totally flabbergasted by the set of rules which, if violated by a student, would result in him being issued an infraction slip (card) under minor (green), major (yellow) and severe (red) categories.. and here is the "icing" on the cake - anyone with any semblance of authority in the college, starting from a lecturer to a warden, can issue the slip to a student, at their whim and fancy, even as their own personal vendetta. Having such infractions in the record may lead to suspension and black marks on the certificates.
The rules are totally absurd - wearing collarless T-shirts, cargo pants, flimsy dresses, sleeveless tops, low-waist pants could get you a card. Preposterous, is it not? Who is going to be the judge of what "flimsy" is? Why should a student now wear a round-necked T-shirt, with a pair of cargos, as long as it is perfectly comfortable to him/her? Who are these guys to tell them what to wear and what not to wear? It just doesn't end there. Styly beard, fancy moustache, punk appearance are cited as infraction as well. Just because they do not have any sense of fashion, it does not mean that they should curb the same among the youth as well. Bigoted, close-minded, tyrannical f****rs... There is a long list of such activities that are stated in the college’s "student infraction slip", with a final "any other (to be detailed by the faculty)". I have never been much of a rebel or a revolutionary, but even reading through them makes me want to revolt. For God's sake, if the kids are old enough to vote, don't you think they are old enough to make a decision regarding their clothes? These rules are totally absurd and outdated.
The principal of the college justified the decision saying that these measures were necessary to raise the standards of the institution - what a load of tarradiddle! Absolutely outrageous! Don't even get me started on the "standards" of the college. For one thing, if they want to elevate the standards of the college, they should start behaving like a professional institution, rather than a prison for mentally unstable, psychopathic kids who are waiting to jump at an opportunity to create problems. There are tons of ways to "raise the standards", that are currently minimal, to say the least: Hire the best talent in the industry to teach the students, make the kids want to come to college, than force them out of fear; Improve the infrastructure - just to name a few.
I am getting a feeling that this is a slow, but sure "talibanisation" - curtailing individual freedom of speech and expression. I could go a step further and say that these people are almost equivalent to, or on their way to reach the same "standards" as the a**h**es who call themselves the "moral police" (aka Ram Sena) of the modern society in India.
The parents should try to step in and make the college administration deviate from this path of annihilation of self-expression. This could hinder the overall development of the personality of kids of that age. Students should themselves rebel against this gross mishandling of affairs - maybe form a council and protest - something... anything - inaction is definitely not the way.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
Ludicrous bill passed by the Indian government (yet again? ;))
It's been quite a while since I blogged. "Same old" reason, I guess - got busy with things. Anyways, something in today's news caught my attention and I felt like blogging about it.
"Email providers will need to have servers in India" - so goes a headline in the Times of India. The article says - according to the recent amendments in IT act, internet behemoths like Google, Rediff and Microsoft, which provide free email services to users, need to set up Indian servers. In addition, they may need to provide Indian email accounts for Indian nationals. Supposedly, this change is going to make a huge difference to the investigating agencies dealing with cyber crime, including data theft.
What a shitload of baloney this is! I agree that the intelligence agencies might have had problems with getting account information from companies with servers overseas. But is this the solution to the problem? Or, putting it more blandly, is this even "a solution" to the problem?
Sitting at my desk in my office, in just a few seconds, I could come up with at least half a dozen ways to circumvent the "provisions" of this act. One could enter false personal information while registering. If IP Addresses are being used to trace the country of origin, email-id's could be created in a foreign country and could then be used locally - there is no practical way of preventing usage of email-id's created overseas, in a given country. The country would have to literally ban foreign tourists from using email facility, which is unviable. What if people go to an email provider through an anonymized website and then create an ID using a foreign domain? There are definitely simpler as well as more complex ways of preventing "being caught" by this act. Terrorists who can get a hand on the cutting-edge weapons, can as easily find state-of-the-art, sophisticated ways of dealing with this law.
This bill is asinine and puerile, causing inconvenience to the common man, as well as huge expenses to the companies, while not achieving anything that it seemed to aim at! One of the simplest ways to deal with the problem is to have better laws to facilitate the expedited recovery of required information from companies with "servers" overseas. Any kid in his second year of engineering, or in fact, any kid who has the technical know-how of how internet works, would know the loopholes in this law, and could easily come up with a simple solution to the problem.
I understand that the politicians in India are not as tech-savvy as their counterparts in most countries. But when such laws are passed by the Parliament, do they not go through officials who are more educated about the subject at hand? Or are government officials in India totally clueless about the leading edge technology? I am appalled by the lack of knowledge in the Indian political machinery which, in addition to continuing to uphold antiquated laws like article 377, has started passing new meaningless laws like this one!
One other facet of the issue is that the very notion of "internet" is it is a global interconnection of networks. I personally feel that the government should not have access to personal information of the citizens. On the other hand, like any other technology, "internet" could be used for destructive purposes and the government should be able to counter that. There is a fine line that needs to be walked between personal freedom of privacy and expression and governmental control.
In conclusion, I feel that the government should employ personnel with appropriate level of technical expertise, as well as those with a broader view of the moral/social issues involved, in positions that should be involved in taking such decisions.
"Email providers will need to have servers in India" - so goes a headline in the Times of India. The article says - according to the recent amendments in IT act, internet behemoths like Google, Rediff and Microsoft, which provide free email services to users, need to set up Indian servers. In addition, they may need to provide Indian email accounts for Indian nationals. Supposedly, this change is going to make a huge difference to the investigating agencies dealing with cyber crime, including data theft.
What a shitload of baloney this is! I agree that the intelligence agencies might have had problems with getting account information from companies with servers overseas. But is this the solution to the problem? Or, putting it more blandly, is this even "a solution" to the problem?
Sitting at my desk in my office, in just a few seconds, I could come up with at least half a dozen ways to circumvent the "provisions" of this act. One could enter false personal information while registering. If IP Addresses are being used to trace the country of origin, email-id's could be created in a foreign country and could then be used locally - there is no practical way of preventing usage of email-id's created overseas, in a given country. The country would have to literally ban foreign tourists from using email facility, which is unviable. What if people go to an email provider through an anonymized website and then create an ID using a foreign domain? There are definitely simpler as well as more complex ways of preventing "being caught" by this act. Terrorists who can get a hand on the cutting-edge weapons, can as easily find state-of-the-art, sophisticated ways of dealing with this law.
This bill is asinine and puerile, causing inconvenience to the common man, as well as huge expenses to the companies, while not achieving anything that it seemed to aim at! One of the simplest ways to deal with the problem is to have better laws to facilitate the expedited recovery of required information from companies with "servers" overseas. Any kid in his second year of engineering, or in fact, any kid who has the technical know-how of how internet works, would know the loopholes in this law, and could easily come up with a simple solution to the problem.
I understand that the politicians in India are not as tech-savvy as their counterparts in most countries. But when such laws are passed by the Parliament, do they not go through officials who are more educated about the subject at hand? Or are government officials in India totally clueless about the leading edge technology? I am appalled by the lack of knowledge in the Indian political machinery which, in addition to continuing to uphold antiquated laws like article 377, has started passing new meaningless laws like this one!
One other facet of the issue is that the very notion of "internet" is it is a global interconnection of networks. I personally feel that the government should not have access to personal information of the citizens. On the other hand, like any other technology, "internet" could be used for destructive purposes and the government should be able to counter that. There is a fine line that needs to be walked between personal freedom of privacy and expression and governmental control.
In conclusion, I feel that the government should employ personnel with appropriate level of technical expertise, as well as those with a broader view of the moral/social issues involved, in positions that should be involved in taking such decisions.
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