Sunday, December 11, 2011

Reverse Migration Of Workforce To India Is Anticipated

There was a time when brain drain from India was happening at a great pace. This was because the employment opportunities and living conditions of other nations, especially developed nations, was incentive enough to migrate to such countries.

With the economic growth of India and better working conditions available at India, workforce is considering returning back to India. Further, areas like business process outsourcing (BPO), legal process outsourcing (LPO) and knowledge process outsourcing (LPO), etc are already dominated by India.

Legal process outsourcing in India (LPO in India) and knowledge process outsourcing in India (KPO in India) are now attracting not only foreign employers but also foreign employees. Even Indians working abroad are considering returning back to India. LPO and KPO in India have matured into big commercial industry in India and LPO and KPO companies and firms in India are world renowned.

According to various reports Indian workforce working abroad would return back within few years. Industries like cement, automobiles, oil and gas, alternate energy and construction are the main industries attracting reverse migrants.

Qualitative education was also one of the reasons why many professional migrated abroad. Establishment of virtual campuses in India would ease up this educational migration. For instance, Perry4Law Techno Legal Base (PTLB) is managing the exclusive techno legal e-learning portal of India and world wide. It provides many qualitative and highly specialised courses that would remain a dream through traditional Indian educational institutions.

This is a good trend for India. However, India needs to take care of many issues. Skills development in India is one such area. Technical education and skills development in India requires special attention. Higher research and education also needs to be strengthened in India. PhDs in India are dying and corruption is undermining the higher education in India. Even the higher legal education in India needs urgent reforms.

Similarly, Indian LPO and KPO industry must be innovative and competitive to deal with various competing destinations. This is more so regarding the knowledge process outsourcing services in India. For example, the e-discovery outsourcing, LPO and KPO services in India are still in infancy stage despite tremendous potential for the same. LPO and KPO in India need to adapt to technology so that techno legal assignments can be managed.

India must gear up to encash this reverse migration trend. Various techno legal initiatives and policy decisions must be made in this regard so that this migration can be as smooth as possible.

Internet Censorship In India

This article has raised very pertinent points regarding internet censorship in India. Internet censorship in India should not be a norm in a democratic country like India. Better solutions exist to address this crucial issue. Censorship of internet in India by bypassing the constitutional mandates amount to anarchy that should not be the norm in India.

Internet in India is under potential threat of censorship and e-surveillance. Internet censorship in India has increased a lot. Similarly, e-surveillance in India has also increased to intolerable limits.

India has a draconian but cyber criminals’ friendly cyber law in the form of information technology act, 2000 (IT Act 2000). It was amended in 2008 to confer unregulated e-surveillance, Internet censorship and website blocking powers to Indian government and its agencies. The present cyber law of India is an unconstitutional one in the absence of procedural safeguards that can prevent these abusive draconian powers under the IT Act 2000. It requires an urgent repeal.

On top of it we have the proposed central monitoring system (CMS) project of India that has been proposed without any parliamentary oversight. Further, stress upon Internet kill switch is also given by India without realising that Internet kill switch is not a solution to cyber threats. Anti Internet kill switch measures are needed to prevent Indian government from taking recourse of any such unconstitutional and draconian action.

Website blocking and Internet censorship should be resisted as far as possible in India. This fight should be techno legal in nature where both technical and legal measures must be adopted to thwart surveillance and censorship activities of Indian government and its agencies. Proactive self defence in cyberspace is needed not only against alien enemies but also against our own Orwellian government.

Self defence in cyberspace is a concept whose time has come at both national and international level. At the national level of India self defence is required not only against cyber criminals but also against our own over zealous and e-surveillance oriented Indian government. Suggestions have been given in the past that United Nations (UN) must protect human rights in cyberspace as well. However, UN is not serious about protecting human rights in cyberspace.

At the national level, Indian government acquired itself unregulated, illegal and unconstitutional e-surveillance, Internet censorship and website blocking powers with no procedural safeguards. The information technology act, 2000 (IT Act 2000) was amended through the information technology amendment act 2008 (IT Act 2008) and this amendment gave unconstitutional and illegal powers to Indian government and its agencies. With the notification of the IT Act, 2008, the journey from welfare state to a police state was completed for India.

Instances of website blocking in India and Internet censorship in India have increased a lot. What is more worrisome is the fact that e-surveillance and Internet censorship in India have increased without any lawful interception law in India. Lawful interception law in India is missing and phone tapping in India is done in an unconstitutional manner.

Of all e-surveillance project, nothing is worst than the Aadhar project of India and its implementing unique identification authority of India (UIDAI) headed by Nandan Nilekani. Irrespective of what Nandan Nilekani and Indian government says, Aadhar project and UIDAI are serving a very vicious, evil and nefarious objective of e-surveillance without procedural safeguards. Surprisingly, even Google is censoring results pertaining to Aadhar project and UIDAI and is messing up with search placement results.

Now Internet intermediaries in India have been asked to pre screen contents before they are posted on their platforms by the account holders. India wants companies like Google and Facebook to censor users’ contents. In fact, Goggle web censorship has greatly increased in the past. Perhaps somebody at Google was already doing the pre screening of some web contents in India, with or without knowledge of Google.

Google has been in controversies from time to time. Whether it is illegal data gathering, censorship of Google news searches, manipulation of search results, etc, Google has been doing it all. In fact, it seems Google was actively helping Indian government and its agencies for messing up with Aadhar project, UIDAI, World Bank or any other similar post that questions the wrong practices of Indian government. During that period Google continued its censorship drive in India and many posts failed to appear in news, blogs and search segments.

What Internet intermediaries are facing now is a direct result of their succumbing to Indian government pressure and unconstitutional laws like IT Act 2008. They should have challenged the constitutional validity of IT Act 2008 that is the root cause of all these troubles. Fortunately Yahoo took Indian government to court over e-surveillance and more such litigations are expected in the near future. Let us see how cyber law of India would develop in this regard.

Source: PTLB Blog