Biju Gayu
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Monday, October 28, 2013
One Day National Seminar on Changing Dimensions of Party Politics in India on 10 January 2014(Dept. of Pol. Science, Govt. Brennen College, Thalassery, India)
Changing Dimensions of Party Politics in India
One-Day National Seminar on 10 January 2014
DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
GOVERNMENT BRENNEN COLLEGE.
Reaccredited by NAAC with “A” Grade
Affiliated to Kannur Univesity,Kerala,India.
Venue
Hindi seminar Hall
Seminar Concept Note
Over
the six decades, the nature of our electoral democracy seems apparently
changed. One major change reflected over the years was the party system. Beginning
from a Congress dominated ‘One Party Dominant’ system, now it has extended on to
an unwieldy multiparty system. In between, party politics in India has seen
many ebb and flow.
Now
party politics characterises many players. It composes a wide stream of groups
such as umbrella system like Indian National Congress to single-issue system
like Aam Aadmi Party. In between, the party politics inhabits political parties
in which one person pulls all the strings, parties having pre-election agreement with smaller parties on joint candidates, Cadre
parties, regional parties, identity parties, and so on.
Dominated by issues such as inner party democracy,
gender, professionalism, funds, ideologies, values, leadership quality,
campaigning methods, regionalization, caste; now the spectre of party politics
in India over the fifteen general elections dissected call for vital scrutiny. On
this backdrop, the One-Day National Seminar on Changing Dimensions of party
Politics in India seeks to uncover the trends and tendencies found in our party
politics and the electoral scenario.
The whole issues briefly pinpointed here cover up in
the sub themes pertaining to (1) Political Parties and Elections; (2) New Media
and Political Communication; (3) Party System in India; (4) State, Political
Party and Market.
How to send abstract
The
scholars planning to present papers have to send an abstract of 300 words,
Times New Roman, 12 font size, single line space, with key words. The last date
for submission of abstract is 15 November 2013.
Abstract
should be sent to bijugayu@gmail.com.
Acceptance of paper will be communicated on 20 November 2013.
How to send full paper
The
scholars, whose abstract got approval letter has to send the full paper to bijugayu@gmail.com on or before 20
December 2013.
Style sheet
Times New Roman,
Font size 12, Single Line Space (with Alignment Justify) and Author Date System,
8000 Words. End Notes with 11 Font Size at the end of the paper (Alignment Text
Left), Reference with 12 Font Size (Alignment Text Left).
Publication
Quality papers
will be considered for publication with ISBN Number.
Contact
Convener
Biju P R,
Assistant
Professor,
Department of
Political Science,
Government
Brennen College, Thalassery,
Kannur, Kerala.
670 106,
Mobile:
9847477116,
Email:bijugayu@gmail.com
How to Reach the College
The
college is situated on the NH 17; 5 KM away from Thalassery Railway Station; roughly
60 KM away from Calicut Airport and 167 KM away from Mangalore Airport.
Short Notes on Multilateral Forums for Degree Students
The Group of Eight (G8)
The Group of
Eight (G8) refers to the group of eight highly industrialized nations--France,
Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States, Canada, and
Russia--that hold an annual meeting to foster consensus on global issues like
economic growth and crisis management, global security, energy, and terrorism.
The forum enables presidents and prime ministers, as well as their finance and
foreign ministers, to candidly discuss pressing international issues. Its small
and static membership, however, excludes emerging powers from key talks
concerning the global economy and international security, and as an informal
grouping, states have little leverage over other members with which to secure
compliance on agreements beyond imposing reputational costs.
There are no formal
criteria for membership, member states are expected to be democracies and have
highly developed economies. The G8, unlike the United Nations, is not a formal
institution, and there is no charter or secretariat. The presidency, a position
responsible for planning ministerial meetings and the annual summit, rotates
among the member states.
The
Group of 15
The G15, a group
of 17 developing countries from Asia, Africa and Latin America, was set up to
foster cooperation and provide input for other international groups, such as
the World Trade Organization and the Group of Seven rich industrialized
nations.
The G15 is
comprised of Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Egypt, India, Indonesia,
Jamaica, Kenya, Nigeria, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Venezuela
and Zimbabwe
The Group of
Fifteen (G-15) was established at a Summit Level Group of Developing Countries
in September 1989, following the conclusion of the Ninth Non-Aligned Summit
Meeting in Belgrade. The Group was originally founded by 15 developing
countries. While there are now 17 member countries, the original name of the
Group has been retained.
AIMS
AND OBJECTIVES
1.To
harness the considerable potential for greater and mutually beneficial
cooperation among developing countries.
2.To
conduct a regular review of the impact of the world situation and of the state
of international economic relations on developing countries.
3.To
serve as a forum for regular consultations among developing countries with a
view to coordinating policies and actions.
4.To
identify and implement new and concrete schemes for South-South cooperation and
mobilize wider support for them.
5.To
pursue a more positive and productive North-South dialogue and to find new ways
of dealing with problems in a cooperative, constructive and mutually supportive
manner.
G20
The G20 was
formally established in September 1999 The G20 was created in 1999 in response
to the financial crises in the late 1990s, the growing influence of emerging
market economies on the global economy, and their disproportionately modest
participation in the decision-making process. G20 Leaders met for the first
time in 2008 in Washington, D.C. And at that time the G20 was to play a pivotal
role in responding to the global economic and financial crisis. The main
objective of upgrading the level of consultations within the G20 was to cope
with then current and set a framework for preventing future financial crises,
while securing sustainable and balanced global growth and reforming the
architecture of global governance.
The G20 brings
together finance ministers and central bank governors from 19 countries:
Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia,
Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South
Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States of America plus the
European Union.
The
objectives of the G20 refer to:
1.
Policy coordination between its members in order to achieve global economic
stability, sustainable growth;
2. Promoting financial regulations that reduce risks and prevent future financial crises;
3. Modernizing international financial architecture.
2. Promoting financial regulations that reduce risks and prevent future financial crises;
3. Modernizing international financial architecture.
The BRIC
countries label refers to a select group of four large, developing countries (Brazil ,
Russia, India
and China ).
The four BRIC countries are distinguished from a host of other promising
emerging markets by their demographic and economic potential to rank among the
world’s largest and most influential economies in the 21st century (and by
having a reasonable chance of realizing that potential). Together, the
four original BRIC countries comprise more than 2.8 billion people or 40
percent of the world’s population, cover more than a quarter of the world’s
land area over three continents, and account for more than 25 percent of global
GDP.
Brief introduction to the Shanghai Cooperation
Organisation
Silence has long been confused with neutrality, and
has been presented as a necessary condition for humanitarian action. From its
beginning, MSF was created in opposition to this assumption. We are
not sure that words can always save lives, but we know that silence can
certainly kill.
The Shanghai
Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is a permanent intergovernmental international
organisation creation of which was proclaimed on 15 June 2001 in Shanghai
(China) by the Republic of Kazakhstan, the People’s Republic of China, the
Kyrgyz Republic, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Tajikistan and the
Republic of Uzbekistan. Its prototype is the Shanghai Five mechanism.
The main goals
of the SCO are strengthening mutual confidence and good-neighbourly relations
among the member countries; promoting effective cooperation in politics, trade
and economy, science and technology, culture as well as education, energy,
transportation, tourism, environmental protection and other fields; making
joint efforts to maintain and ensure peace, security and stability in the
region, moving towards the establishment of a new, democratic, just and
rational political and economic international order.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
The
Election Commission instruction for political parties and candidates
while using social media, in fact resonates an acknowledgement towards
the assuming significance of social web in reconfiguring democratic
engagements and deliberative politics. With the Commission instructions
over social media use, now the question on the regulation of social
media debate got a new vantage point, which already reverberated in
Parliamentary deliberation.
Internet connection penetrating among
over sixteen crore, more than eight crore people accessing social media
sites, and studies confirming Facebook
influence over 150 urban electoral constituencies in the forthcoming
general election in 2014, new form of class antagonism has resurfaced at
the trajectory of electoral politics and social media ecology in India.
Recognising this budding class relation
in the electoral arithmetic of India, Election Commission (EC) has
issued instructions to the chief electoral officers in States and Union
Territories and Presidents and General Secretaries of Political Parties
on 25 October 2013, regarding the use of social media sites in electoral
environment.
Broadly classifying social media in to
five categories, EC has taken a bold approach towards the
‘pre-certification’ (regulation?) for political advertisements in
Internet. The directive to seek pre-certification of advertisements over
Internet platforms makes the political class to be more cautious while
migrating to connective spaces. The instruction also requires furnishing
the expenditure for creating social media accounts, salaries paid to
staff that maintains and operates it and cost incurred to Internet
companies; all this falls under election expenses of a candidate.
However, the decision has kicked the
holy cow again: freedom of speech. Regulating social media, the debate
has been prevailing for sometimes now, ever since Government attempt to
ban selected Internet sites following social media powered hate speech
and consequent violence on Northeast people in south Indian States in
2012.
Discussion were in Parliament on August
2012 when morphed pictures used by tomfoolery makers in forms of
multi-media messages (MMS) and social networking sites to buff communal
tension targeting people from the northeast India in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune
and Mumbai. In addition, social media has become fertile ground for
breeding communal tensions, opines Akhilesh Yadav and confirmed its
scrupulous configuration in inflaming communal clashes in Muzaffarnagar,
which killed nearly 50, and displaced 40,000,in Uttar Pradesh. Role of
social media in glowing communal tension was one of the focal challenges
haunting India, confirmed a summary of the chief Ministers’ speeches,
at the National Integration Council meeting held on 23 September 2013.
The Practical issues
Certainly, the decision of the
Commission to bring social media based electoral advertisement in tandem
with political campaign in traditional media platforms such as TV and
print carries some practical difficulties. Connective spaces are
uncensored, and nebulous. Free space that goes unchecked and unmonitored
is often everywhere in Internet. Social web that we count for advocacy,
protest groups, social movements, social activists, subcultures and
sometimes fan activism, life style activists, Non Governmental
Organisations (NGO) and hobbyists have voluntarily understood as
mechanics of political engagements and democratic engagements and will
have enough conduits that somehow lead to electoral manipulations
otherwise. Surely, this, in part, cannot bring under the radar.
Yet, the legal provision on campaigning
via traditional media has now extended to social media. The practical
issue raised pertains to the profiles and web pages created by “third
person” for candidates and political parties concerned. However, EC
reserves the matter for scrutiny under the table of Ministry of
Communication and Information Technology.
Of course, only a minuscule fraction of
the political tribe is online but their social media presence could
influence voters, for instance, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi chat on social network Google+
and reportedly received questions and comments with millions watching
across other media platforms. L.K. Advani shares political as well as
personal thoughts through blog and Twitter profiles but the focus remains on politics.
Facebook is a pet device for many
politicians to connect with their electorate and communicate with them,
from big players like Mamata Banerjee to the young and not much known
politicians like Jose K Mani from Kerala. Facebook has been more useful
in the sense that youth access it from mobile.
Few of political class have taken a step
further and created Twitter accounts. Talking about twitter, there is
no dearth of politicians on Twitter.Narendra Modi, Mamta Banerjee,
Sushma Swraj, etc., are few examples.From famous and well known
political bigwigs like Shashi Tharoor
who is illustrious for his tweets to Narendra Modi and from lesser
known politicians like captain Gopinath to Meera Sanyal, Twitter has
constituted a ‘twittersphere’ for the participatory engagements in
politics.
Yet, another class of Indian political
tribe who has taken a step further to connect with citizens online was
websites and blogs. Narendra Modi, Omar Abdullah , and Nitish Kumar and a
few more connect with internet users through expensive websites.
Political parties are not far behind in
using social media sites. Congress, Bhartiya Janata Party, Samajwadi
Party, Bahujan Samaj Party etc., each of these and the remaining ones
has their own websites, which not seen some years back. Several
political parties have their official presence on social media sites in a
bid to connect with the critical online youth population. If compared,
the two major parties, i.e. the Indian National Congress and Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP), the latter clearly emerges as a winner.
Campaigns from the streets have moved to
print, radios, TV and now onto the digital space and here it displays
the party profiles, ideologies, their mission and vision and what the
public can expect from them. At this point, they interact with the
electorate.
The deeper debates
Nevertheless, the decision will
highlight some deeper issues unnoticed. In fact, the real issue at stake
is not freedom of speech, but speech and medium itself. The pompous
side of digital democracy has spotted in by a host of incidence very
recently in social media platforms. Therefore, the question comes, does
our mouse click of any kind really facilitate political engagement and
deliberate politics.
Communal clashes in Muzaffarnagar and
violence on Northeast people reflected the vulnerability of social media
spaces. The connective spaces do have no precise boundary in our
cultural vocabularies and everyday life experiences regarding the
doable/undoable and hate/love speech online. The instruction of the EC
needs introspection in this background.
A spectacular reflection of connective
spaces often provides us the other side of the story of digital
democracy in India. In fact, Internet has done little to thicken
political dialogue in India. Disaster or collateral damage, Internet has
been in news for reasons that frowned people over the last few years.
New forms of control and domination
prevail in connective spaces. Proprietary ownership is reflective of its
capitalist character. A Google search with keywords ‘social media and
Election Commission’ finds us 93,900,000 results (0.45 seconds), but the
web link goes to big players, Economic Times, NDTV, Times of India,
DNA, Business
Standard, etc. Funneling web traffic to the platforms of big players by
search engines like Google and Yahoo connective spaces now show cases
the bourgeois character it has.
Links appear structured in Internet as
well as filtered about how citizens search for political content and how
leading search engines like Google and Yahoo funnel traffic to popular
outlets. The connective space is iniquitous and unjust.
A new kind of “searcharchy” prevails in
Internet and search engines are funneling traffics to the websites, news
portals, and other web platforms of big players that are already the
monopolies of our social space before the coming in of Internet, Google
and Facebook. It resound what US Political scientist, Mathew Hindman,
said in his book, The Myth of Digital democracy (2008).The public sphere
as a discursive space in Internet is often doubtful since the space is
already monopolised by corporate interest and search engines.
Discussions are always mediated for the interest of proprietary owners
and the Internet space is undergoing a new kind of structure and
domination in India as said by Lawrence Lessig (2001) in his book, The
future of ideas: the fate of the commons in a connected world.
Internet is the cultural space of
winner-take-all symptom and the space has funneled by the interest of
the holy cows. Political class uses their cultural and money power to
redefine the codes in Internet and used a new kind of stenography to
attract the digital voters. Film stars use their star value to sell out
their products. Celebrities colonize the connective spaces to fortify
their undisputed marketability. Celebrities, political classes, film
stars, and traditional monopolies have configured a loose but unholy
alliance in connective spaces.
Tens of thousands of anonymous and
strange people do not get their alternate space here. No more solidarity
resounds here in this space. On this background, the decision of the EC
to put qualifications on the use of social websites during electoral
campaign is timely, wise and appreciative. However, the curb on social
media use during election time will not carry any restraint on freedom
of speech. The instructions are rather qualitative. Of course, the
decision will strengthen Indian democracy and it pinpoints the health of
our polity.
- See more at: http://www.merinews.com/article/social-media-under-fire-in-electoral-heat/15891480.shtml#sthash.5flfBbMp.dpuf
Now
connection works like a credo, but not a panacea and our unvarying,
thoughtless impulse to connect shapes a new way of being. Think of it as
'I share that you share that you share that I share that we share. '
Are the new technologies leading to new forms of social inclusion or
exclusion and creating new forms of togetherness or divide?
Few letters on Facebook
Wall has become sufficient reason for massive scale violence,
intimidation, death threat by miscreants. The consequence Shaheen Dhada
and Rinu Shrinivasan from Mumbai, had to face and that took them behind
bars proves, yes!
Advertisement
We have transformed our sentiments in to the text we make in the smart devices we have and in the nebulous radical media platforms, we have inhabited. Connecting alone structures that the lone attempt at protesting, collaborating, publishing and networking from the tiny devices have resulted in the making of ‘alone together’ in Indian Internet. From atoms to bits, liberally we have reproduced and echoed the otherwise not possible usual life style practices. Of course, large and expanding sections of Indians, moving on to social web, are a political choice, personal dissent, individual resistance, personalised political action.
Following Anna Hazare led anti-graft movement and Delhi gang rape; social media began to address a ‘critical mass’. The emerging online social spaces for story telling have reflected the growing sentiments of middle classes, academic, the intellectuals, advocacies, activists and journalists that look at the west.
Cell phone embedded second People Power Revolution in Philippines, anti-government movement online following death of Neda Agha Soltan in Iran, YouTube video showing self-immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi in Tunisia, Egypt’s 2011 unrest consequent to video tape showing the death of Khaled Said; all show the power of social media in effecting political changes across a broad spectrum of countries recently. The Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, The UK Uncut have co-opted digital media, for protest movements that raised convergence-divergence debate by focusing on how network structures at the international level affect policy outcomes, activist propaganda, advocacy and politics in native society.
Illusion or certainty, a growing sense of delegitimisation of protest paradigm has resurfaced when our life gets akin to petition sites, email lists, online fund raising, social networking sites, blogs and micro blogs, video sharing sites, photo uploading and content sharing sites in the native context.
The popularity of Web 2.0 lifestyle technologies such as what-to-buy- blogs, how-to-cook-it-healthy portals, how-to-wear-eco-friendly blogs, why-I-am-against-nuclear-energy communities, etc., all of which tell us how to fashion our life to fine-tune planet for sustainable living. The style guide and shopping apps available for smart phones, good book read applications on social profile, the habit website bookmarked, news updates subscribed to personal computer, etc., demonstrate millions of people want the life style technologies to express their personal political choices.
The hidden networks of groups, secretive circuits of solidarity, meeting points, all that reformulate profoundly the image of a new political actor; YOU, i.e., the life style activist at Net.Life style politics such as veganism, bicycle and pedestrian culture, ethnic food activism, government schooling, love for mother toungue, thoughts about alternative energy, lamenting ‘Bandh’ and ‘Hartal’, arguing for hand made ‘Khadi’ clothing, and so on, we practice every day have teleported to the social web.
The complex social structure of India being inhospitable to ‘low’ cultures historically had always co-opted the high cultures in the communicative spaces. Discursive practices in social web, in fact, destabilised India's social structure that in the past represented privileged few at the cost of a majority at the fringe margins.
In fact, Internet provides sexual minorities space for share, network, and collaborate with like-minded people, which otherwise not possible in the offline world. Internet is a safe refuge of marginalised sexual minorities to search for new relationships that are out of scrutiny by the draconian laws and hostile social structure.
From chatting to blogging to posting, to Facebook, to Twitter, the solo dissenters of Indian Internet from marital displeasure, disharmony with family, dissatisfied with social structure, has began to find a new ‘self’ cross across potentially inhospitable social structure, taboo ridden social order and patriarchal world.
Greater the embedding of digital platforms in the political subjects in Internet, higher the illusion about cyber unreal. Even though, electronic device for political communication has exploited in electoral democracy, it amounts to brazen imitation of American electoral eco-system. India is facing the Americanisation of political communication largely fed up by social media platforms.
Here in India, too, discussion surfaces projecting social media as town square, India Against Corruption as Arab Spring and Jantar Mantar as Tahrir Square of India. Anna Hazare led anti-graft movement gave a new label to them. A significant component in the mounting hegemony in global homogenising culture is the dominance of the English language in computation, Internet and international electronic communication, American cultural products, etc., that provokes a flat public with digital media being a symbolic carrier.
In a time when politics becomes decidedly hierarchical and feudalistic, engaging with the citizen is almost an ancient ideal. Open Government is an indicator of democratisation of democracy and the incorporation of connective spaces for citizen engagement. The degree to which governments deal with social media is now part of how they deal with privacy, civil liberties, press freedom, and freedom of expression in general.
Elephant, Lotus and Bicycle, we know that political symbols of identity formations. The phantom advances in technology, in particular affect the social construction of identity. More often, identity enabled political sphere will take new dimensions since digitalisation of democracy and online political engagement in India.
Obviously, in the physical social world, sexual identities and deprived sexual minorities discriminated, silenced and marginalised, but Internet offers them, connective spaces to thicken intimate relations. We still live in a society where LGBTQI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex) people attacked in the street, unrepresented in the media, bullied in schools, and oppressed in many other ways.
Yet, the western notions of human nature reflected in the founding philosophy of social web mirrors its insufficiency to reconfigure, in Indian context, our cultural diversity. Our engagement with social media public sphere amalgamation has just an imitation and reproduction of Americanism.
A disturbing set of literature has grown up that both criticise and appreciate social media’s political potential. Yet, with gnawing gap and barbed continuity, social media and social change tie-up has not grown up of age in the womb of India’s digital mind but reproduced the ambush of good vs. bad binary debate prevailing all over the world.
Social media under fire in electoral heat
The
Election Commission instruction for political parties and candidates
while using social media, in fact resonates an acknowledgement towards
the assuming significance of social web in reconfiguring democratic
engagements and deliberative politics. With the Commission instructions
over social media use, now the question on the regulation of social
media debate got a new vantage point, which already reverberated in
Parliamentary deliberation.
Internet connection penetrating among
over sixteen crore, more than eight crore people accessing social media
sites, and studies confirming Facebook
influence over 150 urban electoral constituencies in the forthcoming
general election in 2014, new form of class antagonism has resurfaced at
the trajectory of electoral politics and social media ecology in India.
Recognising this budding class relation
in the electoral arithmetic of India, Election Commission (EC) has
issued instructions to the chief electoral officers in States and Union
Territories and Presidents and General Secretaries of Political Parties
on 25 October 2013, regarding the use of social media sites in electoral
environment.
Broadly classifying social media in to
five categories, EC has taken a bold approach towards the
‘pre-certification’ (regulation?) for political advertisements in
Internet. The directive to seek pre-certification of advertisements over
Internet platforms makes the political class to be more cautious while
migrating to connective spaces. The instruction also requires furnishing
the expenditure for creating social media accounts, salaries paid to
staff that maintains and operates it and cost incurred to Internet
companies; all this falls under election expenses of a candidate.
However, the decision has kicked the
holy cow again: freedom of speech. Regulating social media, the debate
has been prevailing for sometimes now, ever since Government attempt to
ban selected Internet sites following social media powered hate speech
and consequent violence on Northeast people in south Indian States in
2012.
Discussion were in Parliament on August
2012 when morphed pictures used by tomfoolery makers in forms of
multi-media messages (MMS) and social networking sites to buff communal
tension targeting people from the northeast India in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune
and Mumbai. In addition, social media has become fertile ground for
breeding communal tensions, opines Akhilesh Yadav and confirmed its
scrupulous configuration in inflaming communal clashes in Muzaffarnagar,
which killed nearly 50, and displaced 40,000,in Uttar Pradesh. Role of
social media in glowing communal tension was one of the focal challenges
haunting India, confirmed a summary of the chief Ministers’ speeches,
at the National Integration Council meeting held on 23 September 2013.
The Practical issues
Certainly, the decision of the
Commission to bring social media based electoral advertisement in tandem
with political campaign in traditional media platforms such as TV and
print carries some practical difficulties. Connective spaces are
uncensored, and nebulous. Free space that goes unchecked and unmonitored
is often everywhere in Internet. Social web that we count for advocacy,
protest groups, social movements, social activists, subcultures and
sometimes fan activism, life style activists, Non Governmental
Organisations (NGO) and hobbyists have voluntarily understood as
mechanics of political engagements and democratic engagements and will
have enough conduits that somehow lead to electoral manipulations
otherwise. Surely, this, in part, cannot bring under the radar.
Yet, the legal provision on campaigning
via traditional media has now extended to social media. The practical
issue raised pertains to the profiles and web pages created by “third
person” for candidates and political parties concerned. However, EC
reserves the matter for scrutiny under the table of Ministry of
Communication and Information Technology.
Of course, only a minuscule fraction of
the political tribe is online but their social media presence could
influence voters, for instance, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi chat on social network Google+
and reportedly received questions and comments with millions watching
across other media platforms. L.K. Advani shares political as well as
personal thoughts through blog and Twitter profiles but the focus remains on politics.
Facebook is a pet device for many
politicians to connect with their electorate and communicate with them,
from big players like Mamata Banerjee to the young and not much known
politicians like Jose K Mani from Kerala. Facebook has been more useful
in the sense that youth access it from mobile.
Few of political class have taken a step
further and created Twitter accounts. Talking about twitter, there is
no dearth of politicians on Twitter.Narendra Modi, Mamta Banerjee,
Sushma Swraj, etc., are few examples.From famous and well known
political bigwigs like Shashi Tharoor
who is illustrious for his tweets to Narendra Modi and from lesser
known politicians like captain Gopinath to Meera Sanyal, Twitter has
constituted a ‘twittersphere’ for the participatory engagements in
politics.
Yet, another class of Indian political
tribe who has taken a step further to connect with citizens online was
websites and blogs. Narendra Modi, Omar Abdullah , and Nitish Kumar and a
few more connect with internet users through expensive websites.
Political parties are not far behind in
using social media sites. Congress, Bhartiya Janata Party, Samajwadi
Party, Bahujan Samaj Party etc., each of these and the remaining ones
has their own websites, which not seen some years back. Several
political parties have their official presence on social media sites in a
bid to connect with the critical online youth population. If compared,
the two major parties, i.e. the Indian National Congress and Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP), the latter clearly emerges as a winner.
Campaigns from the streets have moved to
print, radios, TV and now onto the digital space and here it displays
the party profiles, ideologies, their mission and vision and what the
public can expect from them. At this point, they interact with the
electorate.
The deeper debates
Nevertheless, the decision will
highlight some deeper issues unnoticed. In fact, the real issue at stake
is not freedom of speech, but speech and medium itself. The pompous
side of digital democracy has spotted in by a host of incidence very
recently in social media platforms. Therefore, the question comes, does
our mouse click of any kind really facilitate political engagement and
deliberate politics.
Communal clashes in Muzaffarnagar and
violence on Northeast people reflected the vulnerability of social media
spaces. The connective spaces do have no precise boundary in our
cultural vocabularies and everyday life experiences regarding the
doable/undoable and hate/love speech online. The instruction of the EC
needs introspection in this background.
A spectacular reflection of connective
spaces often provides us the other side of the story of digital
democracy in India. In fact, Internet has done little to thicken
political dialogue in India. Disaster or collateral damage, Internet has
been in news for reasons that frowned people over the last few years.
New forms of control and domination
prevail in connective spaces. Proprietary ownership is reflective of its
capitalist character. A Google search with keywords ‘social media and
Election Commission’ finds us 93,900,000 results (0.45 seconds), but the
web link goes to big players, Economic Times, NDTV, Times of India,
DNA, Business
Standard, etc. Funneling web traffic to the platforms of big players by
search engines like Google and Yahoo connective spaces now show cases
the bourgeois character it has.
Links appear structured in Internet as
well as filtered about how citizens search for political content and how
leading search engines like Google and Yahoo funnel traffic to popular
outlets. The connective space is iniquitous and unjust.
A new kind of “searcharchy” prevails in
Internet and search engines are funneling traffics to the websites, news
portals, and other web platforms of big players that are already the
monopolies of our social space before the coming in of Internet, Google
and Facebook. It resound what US Political scientist, Mathew Hindman,
said in his book, The Myth of Digital democracy (2008).The public sphere
as a discursive space in Internet is often doubtful since the space is
already monopolised by corporate interest and search engines.
Discussions are always mediated for the interest of proprietary owners
and the Internet space is undergoing a new kind of structure and
domination in India as said by Lawrence Lessig (2001) in his book, The
future of ideas: the fate of the commons in a connected world.
Internet is the cultural space of
winner-take-all symptom and the space has funneled by the interest of
the holy cows. Political class uses their cultural and money power to
redefine the codes in Internet and used a new kind of stenography to
attract the digital voters. Film stars use their star value to sell out
their products. Celebrities colonize the connective spaces to fortify
their undisputed marketability. Celebrities, political classes, film
stars, and traditional monopolies have configured a loose but unholy
alliance in connective spaces.
Tens of thousands of anonymous and
strange people do not get their alternate space here. No more solidarity
resounds here in this space. On this background, the decision of the EC
to put qualifications on the use of social websites during electoral
campaign is timely, wise and appreciative. However, the curb on social
media use during election time will not carry any restraint on freedom
of speech. The instructions are rather qualitative. Of course, the
decision will strengthen Indian democracy and it pinpoints the health of
our polity.
- See more at: http://www.merinews.com/article/social-media-under-fire-in-electoral-heat/15891480.shtml#sthash.5flfBbMp.dpufSocial media under fire in electoral heat
Social media under fire in electoral heat
Biju P R, Article Posted on Merinews, Social media under fire in electoral heat
Biju P R, Article Posted on Merinews, Social media under fire in electoral heat
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Population growth in India, Lecture Notes
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Biju
P R
Author,
Teacher, Blogger
Assistant
Professor of Political Science
Government
Brennen College
Thalassery
Kerala,
India
My Books
1. Political Internet: State and Politics in the Age of Social Media,
(Routledge 2017), Amazon https://www.amazon.in/
2. Intimate Speakers: Why Introverted and Socially Ostracized Citizens Use Social Media, (Fingerprint! 2017)
Amazon: http://www.amazon.in/dp/
1. Political Internet: State and Politics in the Age of Social Media,
(Routledge 2017), Amazon https://www.amazon.in/
2. Intimate Speakers: Why Introverted and Socially Ostracized Citizens Use Social Media, (Fingerprint! 2017)
Amazon: http://www.amazon.in/dp/
According
to 2011 census Population of India was 121,01,93422.Current
Population of India 2013 will be 1,239.26 Millions . India’s population growth caught a faster pace in the third decade of
19th century. Until 1920, India’s population growth was steady due to heavy
loss of human life due to wars, famines and epidemics. The population level
arouse since 1921 due to advancement of technology and control forms to combat
famine and epidemics making such high losses of mankind.
For the first time since the
setup of systematic census in 1881, Indi’s population enhanced by more than 10%
in a decade with census,1931 enumeration a population of 279 million. When
India attained independence with a population of 345 million it faced a series
of challenges in every aspect of statecraft. Due to much controversial
partition 8 million refugees had come into the country from what was now
Pakistan, which was population surplus. At the time of independence, India was
termed as an agricultural country because of the vast majority of masses
residing in rural areas while few percent of the population dwelled in urban
towns and as agriculture was the chief source of income-India being a fertile
land.
Since independence, the
population of India has more than tripled itself. Since 1950, India’s total fertility rate accounted to 6(children/woman) approx. Since
1952, India has been continuously trying to control its population growth which
was increasing at an uncontrolled rate. In 1983, Country took up a national health policy to have a decreased value of total fertility
rate of 2.1 by the year 2000 which concluded to be a hypothetical assumption.
During late 1980s, an aim to have two children/couple by 2000 was declared but
results as being too ambitious. In 2000 India’s population crossed the billion
mark. All figures with respect to population are large in India: 2.7 million
annual births; 8.7 million annual deaths and 1.5 million infant deaths.
Growing population of India
attracted concern since 1947 followed by innumerous policies none of them which
qualified to attain expected results. Above all there has been huge growth in
the population over the decades. As of 2007, United Nations human development
index ranked India 126th, which takes into account social educational and other
human living aspects with Population growth bearing a direct impact on
socio-economic level.
India's total population
stands at 1.21 billion, which is 17.7 per cent more than the last decade, and
population growth of females was higher than that of males. The density of
population in the country has also increased from 325 in 2001 to 382 in 2011 in
per sq km. Among the major states, Bihar occupies the first position with a
density of 1106, surpassing West Bengal which occupied the first position
during 2001. Delhi (11,320) turns out to be the most densely inhabited followed
by Chandigarh (9,258), among all states and UTs, both in 2001 and 2011 Census.
The minimum population density works out in Arunachal Pradesh (17) for both
2001 and 2011 Census.
REASONS FOR INCREASE IN POPULATION:
BIRTH RATE
Poverty
According to ABC News, India currently faces approximately “… 33 births a minute, 2,000 an hour, 48,000 a day, which calculates to nearly 12 million a year”.
According to ABC News, India currently faces approximately “… 33 births a minute, 2,000 an hour, 48,000 a day, which calculates to nearly 12 million a year”.
India currently faces a vicious cycle of population explosion
and poverty. One of the most important reasons for this population increase in
India is poverty. According to Geography.com, “More than 300 million Indians
earn less than US $1 everyday and about 130 million people are jobless
Religious beliefs, Traditions and Cultural Norms
India’s culture runs very deep and far back in history. Due to
the increased population, the educational facilities are very scarce. As a
result, most people still strictly follow ancient beliefs. According to ABC
News, the famous Indian author, Shobha De said, “God said ‘Go forth and
produce’ and we just went ahead and did exactly that.”
DEATH RATE:
Although poverty has increased and the development of the
country continues to be hampered, the improvements in medical facilities have
been tremendous. This improvement might be considered positive, but as far as
population increase is considered, it has only been positive in terms of
increasing the population further. The crude death rate in India in 1981 was
approximately 12.5, and that decreased to approximately 8.7 in 1999. Also, the
infant mortality rate in India decreased from 129 in 1981 to approximately 72
in 1999 (Mapsindia.com, Internet).
MIGRATION:
In countries like the United States (U.S.), immigration plays an
important role in the population increase. However, in countries like India,
immigration plays a very small role in the population change. Although people
from neighboring countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal, migrate to
India; at the same time Indians migrate to other countries like the U.S.,
Australia, and the U.K. During the 1971 war between India and Pakistan over
Bangladesh, the immigration rate increased tremendously. However, currently the
migration in India is –0.08 migrants per 1000 population (AskJeeves.com, Internet),
and is decreasing further. This is definitely good for India. This way, the
population might eventually come close to being under control and more people
may get better job opportunities and further education. For example, the
students in my university from India, like myself, have better chances for job
opportunities and better education outside India than we would have had in
India.
Anxieties of population growth
In India today, the problem
has assumed serious proportions. There has been phenomenal increase of
population within the last few decades, reaching upto one hundred crore at the
turn of the century. The density per square mile is about 350. In USA, it is
about 41 per square mile, while in Britain it largely approximates to the
figure in Kerala and West Bengal. In Britain, there is less than one acre of
cultivable land for each individual. Necessarily if the density of population
be large, the pressure on the means of subsistence will also be unduly heavy.
There will not be enough food to go round, and high prices of foodgrains will
keep the lowest income groups on the verge of starvation. The other risk is
that of limited living space. In the past, the plundering nations solved this
by grabbing lands from weaker people, living in under-developed or undeveloped
countries. That is how the Dutch and the English grabbed South African lands,
forced out her peoples or reduced them to slavery. But colonial expansion is
now no longer possible. Hence, the alternative today is to fix attention to the
reclamation and resettlement of waste lands.
EFFECTS OF POPULATION EXPLOSION:
The current rate of population growth in India is 1.58%
and the total fertility rate is 3.11 (AskJeeves.com, Internet).Although the
total fertility rate has decreased, due to the increase in the total number of
women between the ages of 15 and 44 (reproductive ages), the total number of
births has increased. This has lead to the current enormous population size of
approximately 1 billion. This has greatly hampered the development of the
Indian economy. The amount of resources that could have been available to one
person a few years ago now need to be shared between two people, which is not
sufficient for either of them. The population increase has lead to air and
water pollution, unemployment, poverty, lack of educational resources, and even
malnourished women and children.
Air Pollution:
The technological development of India has lead not only
to medical advancements, but also to an increase in the number of factories. That
has lead to air and water pollution. More energy needs to be produced to power
these factories. When fossil fuels - the world's major source of energy - are
burnt, gases are added to the atmosphere. Many cities in India have crossed the
limits of suspended particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, and other pollutants
due to vehicular and industrial emissions.
As the population grows, more and more forests are cleared. The
two most common reasons for deforestation are to make houses for increased
number of people to live in, and to use wood as a fuel in the industries. Some
of the diseases caused by air pollution are “respiratory diseases, asthma,
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cardiovascular disease and cancer of the
lung” (World Health Organization, Internet). Due to the tropical climate of
India, air pollution also causes smog which may result in headaches, dizziness,
breathing difficulties, or even mass illness due to carbon monoxide. This slow
murder goes unnoticed because people die of diseases like cancer, asthma, and
heart problems after long exposures to deadly air pollutants.
Besides the untimely deaths of several thousands of people every
year due to air pollution, the pollutants also have a deadly impact on our
national heritage – the historical monuments that have made India proud for
centuries. A classic example of the air pollution effect is the Taj Mahal in
India. The sulfur dioxide in the air because of the pollution caused by the
neighboring industries mixes with atmospheric moisture and settles as sulfuric
acid on the surface of the tomb, making the smooth white marble yellow and
flaky, and forming a subtle fungus that experts have named “marble cancer”
(Central Pollution Control Board, Internet). Trying to save the monument might
mean closing down several industries in the neighborhood. However, this means
that several thousands of people would lose their jobs, resulting in eventual
poverty. This again brings us to the same problem that is the root of all the
problems – population increase.
One of the major issues that have lately been bothering
environmentalists all over the world is global warming. Like glass in a
greenhouse, gases like carbon monoxide admit the sun's light but tend to
reflect back downward the heat that is radiated from the ground below, trapping
heat in the earth's atmosphere. This is called the greenhouse effect.
Water Pollution:
Air pollution is not the only environmental damage being done by
the increasing population. Nowadays water pollution is also one of the increasing
problems due to the population explosion. Water is considered the essence of
life. There is no life without water. One might think that 70% of the earth is
covered with water, so, why worry about the water problem? In fact, 3 sides of
the Indian subcontinent is surrounded by water.
Some of the major types of pollutants are:
Petroleum products required for automobiles, cooking, and other
such human activities.Pesticides and herbicides used for agriculture by the
Indian farmers.Heavy metals from industries, automobiles’ exhausts and mines.
Hazardous wastes.Excessive organic matter like fertilizers and other organic
matter used by farmers.Sediments caused by soil erosion produced by strip
mines, agriculture and roads.Thermal pollution caused by deforestation.
One of the classic examples of water pollution in India is the
river Ganga. As we can observe, the increased population
size is leading to increased pollution, which in turn is leading to a more
hostile environment for human beings themselves.
Unemployment and Illiteracy:
Resources of all types are limited, even employment, especially
in India. India, being a developing country, has a limited number of jobs
available. Due to the increasing number of people, the competition for the most
menial jobs is also tremendous. According to EconomyWatch.com, in 1972-73,
unemployment rates in rural areas were 1.2 for males and 0.5 for females, and
in urban areas, it was 4.8 for males and 6.0 for females. This unemployment
rate rose to 2.3 for males and 1.5 for females in rural areas and 4.9 for males
and 8.2 for females in urban areas in 1998-99. With the increasing population,
unemployment rates are bound to rise even further. Several highly educated
people with Bachelors and Master’s degrees in India sit at home, because they
cannot find jobs. Unemployment, or underemployment,
further leads to poverty. This again starts the vicious cycle of poverty and
population explosion discussed above. Poverty leads to an increase in the population,
because poverty leads people to produce more children to increase the earning
members of the family. This increases the population size of India, which
further increases the unemployment rate and lack of educational facilities
leading to poverty that started this whole cycle.
Food Resources
Resources are always limited. And in a developing and highly
populous country like India, resources are even scarcer. Population explosion
results in the shortage of even the most basic resources like food. According
to an article by World Bank Group, “…more than half of all children under the
age of four are malnourished, 30 percent of newborns are significantly
underweight, and 60 percent of women are anemic.” Resources are limited
everywhere. Thus, unless we can develop a technology that would enable us to
live on just one grain of wheat, the population increase remains a serious
problem in India. India spends approximately $10 billion each year on
malnutrition (World Bank Group), and even then the government of India cannot
provide the everyday nutritional requirements to everybody in India. If you
walk on the street of Calcutta or Delhi, you would notice several children
fighting with each other for a small piece of bread that they found in a
dumpster. While this might be shocking to most people, this is a daily routine
and the only way to survive for many people in India. Survival of the fittest
finds its true meaning on the streets of the urban cities of India. Just
writing this, brings tears in my eyes remembering the scenes I have seen all my
life on the streets of India. Something like food that most of us consider as a
basic necessity, is a privilege for most of the children of India who are
homeless because their parents cannot give them the basic necessities of life.
I was raised in a well-to-do family, so I never had to think about food. As
long as I was living in India, it was normal for me to see poor people fighting
for food. But recently when I went back to India, and noticed the difference
between the streets in the U.S. and India, one major difference struck me. That
difference was not the pollution on the streets, but the kids who were only
begging for food and nothing else, and the ones who were fighting next to the
garbage cans for food. If the population continues to increase at the rate it
is currently increasing, then the future of India is what we see today on the
street of the country. Is this what we want for our children?
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