[Reader-list] On Connectivity in J&K

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

In a recent newspreport, on the Star News Television Channel, New Delhi 
Television showed how  the experience of accessing the Internet in the part 
of Kashmir under Indian control is a very different experience from elsewhere 
in India.

Unlike the rest of India, VSNL (Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited) the state run 
ISP is the sole provider of Internet services in the state of Jammu and 
Kashmir. The connections are frustratingly slow, and close watch is kept on 
internet usage by military authorities, in order to prevent usage of the 
Internet by militant groups and their sympathisers. 

Bandwidth and connection speed are apparently deliberately kept low, so as to 
make browsing the net as difficult as possible. As a result of this, a large 
number of trained IT professionals are having to either leave Jammu and 
Kashmir, or stay without jobs, because the IT infrastructure and connectivity 
in the state is so abysmal that there are no prospects for any work in the IT 
sector. The Software Technology Park in Srinagar is an empty shell of a 
building.

Apart from this, the consequences are as follows : 

If you are a person who wants to get online, and happen to live in Srinagar, 
Anantnag or Baramulla, the time and effort you spend in a cybercafe is likely 
to be much more than what you would spend to do the same things in say, 
Delhi, Mumbai, or Trichy or Kanpur, Benaras or Burdwan.

You are likely to find several sites blocked (without explanation) and also 
your surfing behaviour, as well as your personal emails are likely to be 
looked into, by gentlemen in uniform, in the national interest of the 
Republic of India, with an unhealthy intensity of interest.

Given that equality before the law is one of the fundamental principles of a 
democratic system, clearly, there are two sets of principles operating here. 
Equality before the law for people living ourside J&K (at least 
theoretically) and a different set of rules, regulations and priorities, 
inside J7K, all sanctioned of course by the IT legislations.What could be 
happening in J7K vis a vis the Internet, could be happening next in any other 
part of the territory of the Republic of India. But at the moment this is not 
the case, though perhaps we need to know what exactly is going on in terms of 
free access to the internet in the north eastern states before making any 
categorical assertion.

Nyway, broadly speaking, the relationship to the Internet, between people who 
live inside and outside Jammu and Kashmir, within the territorial ambit of 
the Republic of India, are grossly different. 

People who live outside J&K have the priviledge of net access and 
connectivity in a way that people who live inside J&K clearly dont. Also, 
apparently it is impossible to connect telephonically form the J&K to certain 
international locations. 

This leads me to psoe three questions which I hope will be responded to by 
this list:

1. Is this denial of basic rights to communication and information resources 
to the people who live in the part of Jammu and Kashmir that is administered 
by India nothing short of an instance of a colonizing mentality at work?

2. Why do Indian telecom authorities in a part of the country they claim as 
their own behave as if they are an occupying power?

3. And what, if any, thoughts do those who believe that Information should be 
free have on this matter?

Curiously.

Shuddha