The cyber-world is ultimately ungovernable. This is alarming as well as convenient, sometimes, convenient because alarming. Some Indian politicians use this to great advantage. When there is an obvious failure in governance during a crisis they deflect attention from their incompetence towards the ungovernable. So, having failed to prevent nervous citizens from fleeing their cities of work by assuring them of proper protection, some national leaders are now busy trying to prove to one another and to panic-prone Indians, that a mischievous neighbor has been using the Internet and social networking sites to spread dangerous rumors.
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Explanation:
The cyber-world is ultimately ungovernable. This is alarming as well as convenient, sometimes, convenient because alarming. Some Indian politicians use this to great advantage. When there is an obvious failure in governance during a crisis they deflect attention from their own incompetence towards the ungovernable.
So, having failed to prevent nervous citizens from fleeing their cities of work by assuring them of proper protection, some national leaders are now busy trying to prove to one another and to panic-prone Indians, that a mischievous neighbour has been using the Internet and social networking sites to spread dangerous rumours. And the Centre’s automatic reaction is to start blocking these sites and begin elaborate and potentially endless negotiations with Google, Twitter and Facebook about access to information. If this is the official idea of prompt action at a time of crisis among communities, then Indians have more reason to fear their protectors than the nebulous mischief-makers of the Cyber-world.
Wasting time gathering proof, blocking vaguely suspicious websites, hurling accusations across the border and worrying about bilateral relation; are ways of keeping busy with inessentials because one does not quite know what to do about the essentials of a difficult situation. Besides, only a fifth of the 245 websites blocked by the Centre mention the people of the North-East or the violence in Assam.
And if a few morphed images and spurious texts can unsettle an entire nation, then there is something deeply wrong with the nation and with how it is being governed. This is what its leaders should be addressing immediately, rather than making a wrongheaded display of their powers of censorship.
It is just as absurd and part of the same syndrome, to try to ban Twitter accounts that parody despatches from the Prime Minister’s office. To describe such forms of humour and dissent as ‘misrepresenting’ the PMO- as if Twitterers would take these parodies for genuine despatches from the PMO- makes the PMO look more ridiculous than its parodists manage to.