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India Sleepwalks Into a Surveillance Society
An anonymous reader writes "ZeroPaid has a fascinating roundup of news stories surrounding the latest surveillance laws passed in India, including a first-hand account of someone writing from inside India. The legislation in question is the Information Technology Act's amendment bill 2006, which was recently passed in the Indian parliament. Things you can't do with the new legislation include surfing for news in Bollywood and looking up porn on the internet. The legislation also allows all transmissions over the internet to be monitored for any form of lawbreaking and permits a sub-inspector to break into your house to make sure you aren't browsing porn on your computer."
I visited India as a teenager in 1968. We went to Calcutta in the eastern part of the country.
I remember thousands of beggars on the street. All of them dirt poor and in horrible condition. But what I remember most is the dozens of begging lepers with missing limbs and faces pushing their baby children into our faces. Trying to sell their babies to 13-year-old American tourist for a few pennies.
Now as programmer I hear a lot about the 'rise' of India. About how they are the biggest democracy in the world, how they have the world's largest 'middle class', how much development there is now in the electronics and technological sectors, how much energy and spirit there is among the young people and how smart and ready they are to bring their talent and knowledge to the world.
I always ask them (well not always, after all, one must be discreet and diplomatic)... Have you been to Calcutta? Are the thousands of beggars still in the street? Are the lepers still trying to sell their babies to tourists for pennies?
I ask..if India is so advanced, so democratic, so full of spirit and energy, then why are the beggars and lepers still there in the street?
Almost always at this point the conversation ends. I get the meanest look possible from the Indian and they walk away.
But every now and then the other person that I am talking to from India just looks at me and says that it is the will of the Gods that these people are in such a horrible condition. That they are this way because in previous lives they were horrible people and if they were to be helped, then the Gods themselves would be angry at us for meddling with their placement of people on the earth and that we could end up as lepers and beggars ourselves in our next lives if we were to help them.
Sometimes they even try to explain to me the four levels of humans in the natural order. But usually they just give me the old dirty look and walk away as if they were just discovering that I was a subhuman placed into an European/American body as a joke played on the world by one of their Gods.
But for someone with a Christian European/American upbringing, it's hard for me to ignore the begging lepers. And it's hard for me to listen about the rise of India and their space/moon program. It's hard for me take India seriously since I've had baby lepers shoved in my face and 30 years later have some IIT graduate tell me that this happens because some six-armed blue elephant-headed god wants it to happen.
So, my Indian brothers and sisters, ignore the porn and deal with beggars.
Namaste