Internet Governance: Third Path in Light of Gandhian Principle

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Abstract

Internet governance is one of the most contemporary issues in the present world there is the need of the hour when every country and every government is worried about as the government wants to keep the check and control over such world of the web as giving the control in the hands of the other can affect the security of the country, there can be many prospects which can raise the issues for the internal security. While on the other hand, it has to be seen that the whole origin of the Internet is for the free flow of the knowledge in each and every person’s hand.

So the civic group wants that the governance should be the in the hand of public and there should be no role of the government in its governance and all sites should be freely accessible. So when so many parties are involved it is quite obvious that the conflict of interest will arise. When the world of internet is ruled by the people who are mainly internet service provider or content developer etc. then it is known as multi-stakeholder while when it is ruled largely by the government of that states then it is termed as multi-literalism.

With the existence of these two paths, there is the third path also which says that the internet governance should be the one in which both the stakeholder’s should have say and the process should be more decentralised and this is something which is quite close to the Swarajya theory of Father of a nation that is Mahatma Gandhi. The author of the present paper has tried to analyse that if the third path is being followed in India for such governance then it should be followed on the principle of Mahatma Gandhi. Thus in this paper, the author have analysed the concept given by the Gandhiji in his book Hind Swarajya and has related it to the concept of the Internet governance.

Introduction

The Internet-Governance, the hyphen between the two words shows that how closely they are related. In simple words, we could say that the Internet governance is the set of rules and principles which govern the Internet world. And as society is run by some set of values or morals which are accepted by the public at the large same way the  rules of governance should be such that they are accepted and appreciated by the society or stakeholders at large. The stakeholders consist of Government of that particular state, civil society, business persons and internet service provider. So when so many parties are involved it is quite obvious that the conflict of interest will arise. When the world of internet is ruled by the people who are mainly internet service provider or content developer etc. then it is known as multi-stakeholder while when it is ruled largely by the government of that states then it is termed as multi-literalism.

So it is seldom seen that rights of either of the parties especially of the citizens or that of the users are kerbed or the differences between the two parties become very large. But when this problem comes to India a third path could be taken. But that too should be enlightened by the path shown by the Father of Nation Mahatma Gandhi in Hind Swaraj that is of self-rule or the concept of decentralisation of power. Before going to a model of governance let us first understand the limitation that why it can’t be ruled by another means and what is the nature of the Internet so that it could be ruled by the concept of swaraj. Before further investigating the problem let us understand the nature of Internet.

The Internet and Gandhian way of governance

The Internet is not an issue it cannot be termed to be defined by particular geographical boundary or treaty. Nor it does have cultural similarity or lingual similarity so that problems could be solved on that basis it needs deeper introspection. It is the space where people across the world cutting the barriers of caste, community, creed and country use for various purposes which vary from personal use to trade etc. So it becomes extremely important that a highly effective policy is developed and in that process, no one should be ignored. For the same reason development of policy cannot be given in the hand of one particular class and it is self-evident that thus only experts could not come up with the policy of internet governance. This heavy top to down approach could not be so useful for the minimal users. So it is the need of the hour that we require that various actors to come together in different groups from all stakeholders to form an organisation and formulate laws which are used to govern the whole world of Internet according to their requirement –

Good travels at a snail’s pace. Those who want to do good are not selfish, they are not in a hurry, they know that to impregnate people with good requires a long time. But evil has wings.[1]

So although the demerit of taking the route of decentralisation which Gandhiji often preached is time-consuming but is effective as it takes into consideration all the major problems which are faced in the governance. Now, coming on the status of the internet users in India. The Internet in India has only taken 3 years to grow from a subscribers’ base of 100 million to 200 million and it is likely to surpass the U.S. in near future making India the second largest country to have this much number of Internet users. As Gandhiji said that these machines could be the source of evil if not used judicially and it is well-known fact that his approach of inner conscience will guide the decentralisation process of the internet governance. Internet governance can be considered as the development and application of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programs that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.[2]

Main features of the third path (decentralised)

The Internet is a system that has thrived on the cooperation of a diversity of stakeholders including the industry, civil society, and the technical community. Therefore, an Internet governance policy has to be formed through an open, transparent and inclusive process.[3] In this regard putting forward the basic characteristics of the third path administration driven by the principle of swaraj ‘the self-rule’ and the moral principle guiding the aatman. Here aatman should be considered as the basic use of Internet, that it is free for all the persons in the world to access what they want at the right time, also in making the world global village. So the aatman, the main characteristic, should remain same of the internet but it should run according to a set of principles & Laws. The idle decentralised model should have following qualities

  • It should be formed by an adequate number of stakeholders and majorly all should have to say in the policy making, whoever is part of this world of Internet.
  • Policies should be free from all types of biases. It should not favour one party. Rather it should be inclusive, accountable and transparent. Sufficient time and resources should be provided to all persons so that they are not been hindered by the change in policy.
  • Since the internet is boundary-less, same should be the case with policies governing the issue they should be made as such that they are applicable globally. It should be ensured that a uniform system is established for the world to follow.
  • Also the principle of ‘Think Globally, Act Locally’ should be established. The policies should be such that it should not affect the basic necessity of that particular stakeholder and should also connect them to the world. In other words, if we want to say we could say that policies should be fulfilling the demands of particular stakeholder or region but by taking the cooperation of all.

And fulfilling these entire four criteria will itself fulfil the Gandhian ideology of decentralisation for better administration, self-rule, Vasudev kutumbkam and self-control.

The consumers and creators of information are expected to actively police the Internet and issue; takedown notices to the intermediaries to ensure that free expression on the Internet does not encroach on its opposing rights and duties.[4] Since the Internet is the communication system from which the things could easily travel from one part of the world to other it is very necessary to provide check and balances to such system. And at the same time it becomes very important to control for the purpose of National security but since a lot of business is also at stake we can’t let it go into the hand of government alone. Thus, the private sector is equally important when it comes to securing a nation’s cyberspace. But the developing countries like India can’t leave it alone to the hands of private industries its cyberspace.

There are two main reasons of that first that population of such countries are very high and secondly each and every private member do not have such resources to get fully skilled with the requirement of the world which is modernising at very fast pace. This is also because if any cyber attack takes place on cyberspace owned by a private company, the consequences of such an attack may have an adverse impact on the entire nation and not restricted to the company owning that internet space.[5] For example, if there is any type of attack on any of the national stock exchanges, it could possibly bring down the entire trade operations and that could lead to the crash of the whole economy, thus impacting the economy and creating a severe panic among investors. Thus, there is an urgent need for appropriate coordination and collaboration between the government and the private sector for securing our internet space.

Merits and Demerits of the Third Path

The private sector needs to be greatly involved in government’s cyber security initiatives through various mechanisms. So it will bring back to the dream of Mahatma Gandhi that all those who have a stake in the administration are free to raise their voice. Then when we are focusing on India the question which is natural to arise in everybody’s mind is that how this policy is good for India. Then the simple answer for this question is that as the Gandhi’s principle evolve in India are not only applicable in India but it is respected in the whole world likewise this policy is not only applicable to India but to the whole group of developing countries. As stated earlier we know already that this developing country lacks in resources. And the policies, aims and programs are not very clear and thus in this insecure condition no government of developing country will like to put in their money. While in this decentralized system of the Internet governance all will have equal say and their future will be at larger state in secure hands and they will like to allocate their resources in the process where it seems that they have a fair chance that their part is not curbed and there is fair chance for everyone to put in their voice unlike today when internet governance is mostly done by the developed countries like the USA.

Thus well-distributed internet governance who has bull’s eye aims and well-defined, well-structured purpose are set for the resolutions of these problems and developing countries will be more than happy by the process of such a setup. Thus this process is a very adaptive process that can be responsive to the dynamic nature of Internet growth and evolution in the area of assigned names, numbers and the system for mapping between them.[6] Thus we should ensure that the policy making or decision making in this process should discuss all the major points including the promotion of infrastructure growth of the internet, for example, the policy should ensure that there is the proper growth of the services like broadband to the major part of India that too at a cheaper rate. At the same time, these discussions should ensure that the policies which are formed are not the barrier to the growth of baseness which depends on the internet largely like Flipkart etc.

Despite the fact that some contend that it will be troublesome for creating nations governments and common society to take an interest in a more disseminated structure of Internet administration because of asset prerequisites to have the capacity to do as such viable, we subsequently trust the converse is valid. A scarcity of assets implies that creating nation agents from any partner gather regularly are hesitant to tie into existing procedures as it is not sufficiently clear to them how support will profit their own needs and work definitely on the grounds that current procedures tend to address a hotchpotch of issues.

A conveyed structure of Internet administration with all around characterised points and purposes will resolve this issue as it will make it considerably more clear to creating nation on-screen characters (and in addition others) which procedures are justified regardless of their time. In the event that the investment of building up nations’ administrations and common society in Internet administration is to be expanded, it will just happen by offering them streets of cooperation that have quick and clear esteem, with this worth exceeding any costs (it is outstanding that different performers that have been famously missing from Internet administration procedures, for example, agents from little and medium ventures, may profit similarly).

In this sense, we can say that this decentralised policy making has an upper hand because these businessmen are also part of one group and they are the part of the decision-making process of these policies. So, if we are able to ensure that there is the proper growth of the business we could aptly say that this decentralised process will help in the growth of the economy. At the same time, the participation of civil society in this type of decision-making process ensure in stimulating innovation and creativity.[7] Thus we could say it will promote the thought of freedom of speech, thoughts and ideas. The freedom of speech, thoughts and ideas has always been the dream of the Gandhian school of thoughts and is always given priority. And we should ensure that free or open source learning is encouraged in this system as a public or civil society will be large in number thus it will benefit them especially in the developing country and it will ensure that Gandhian principle of free and compulsory education by own is met. In recent years, Internet standard setting bodies have become more inclined to explicitly consider social values, opening up their floor for consideration of values and making their processes more actively inclusive of lawyers, academics, regulators and advocates.[8]

So we can say that the decentralised system of internet governance is the necessity of the modern world where each and every individual has its own ambitions which they want to achieve in every possible way. The core benefit of the decentralised system is that it makes possible that we move towards the collective benefit of the whole society. As stated by the Mahatma Gandhi that no individual can move towards its goal without the collaboration from the society ant this system exactly helps us to do so. A decentralised Internet governance ecosystem ensures the suitable allocation of resources and expertise to solve an issue. Further evolution of this ecosystem will address current and emerging issues in Internet Governance.[9] So it is the time when everyone has to come out of the stigma that making rules for governance is the work of government only. When there are so many benefits of the decentralised policy, the civic networks will need to collaborate to monitor all of these centres of governance, open the doors to participation in those venues that are now closed shops and make sure that it becomes a meaningful process.[10]

 Now we come to the more important question that how this decentralised system will be followed, how it will govern the world of internet. Following the principle Panchayati raj of Mahatma Gandhi where he said that local self-government is very important because they know their problems at best and solutions could come from the origin of problem only. So we should first try to make a body called as Internet governance forum for each of the stakeholder group locally. They should try to recognise the problem which affects them and as well as is related to the government of that particular region and its security. They should come up with the solution. Later core member from each forum of the stakeholder should form a forum at the national level. The idea of maha panchayat or the 2nd level of government in 3 tier system.

Conclusion and Suggestions

We believe that this type of system is very necessary at that particular level so that it could provide a better place where the ongoing and future process and problems could be discussed intensively and a larger number of the audience could discuss them and this fruitful discussion could lead to better policy making. Participatory governance theory, offers a more fitting civic-minded conception of communications policymaking. It recommends public involvement in policymaking in varying degrees depending on the subject matter.[11]  On this stage, this must be ensured that Local matters are classified from the Global problems and global problems should be left for next level while local one should be solved at that level only. At the same time at that particular level, it should be ensured that through discussions and another process the core forum of each country develops its thinking process which is later on reflected at the higher level.

This will save the time at a higher level. As at that level, we have not to spend the resource and time to solve the local problem rather would be more focused on the globally important issues which really need the greater intensive discussion. Following the model of Gandhian principle of governance, the higher government should focus on some critical issues with more power to local governance. Now we suggest that at global level a forum is required to discuss and solve these problems which should have representation from all countries and all stakeholders. For this initiative should be taken by the United Nation Organization where the different agencies should collaborate from the different problem of Internet relating to them respectively. There should be at least one meeting of the forum once in a year where problems should be discussed and a bill should be proposed and followed intensively.

Thus by developing the global internet governance system based on Gandhian principle we could move towards attaining the model for conflict resolution. Where the developing country, developed country and poor country are at same footing and resolutions could be made in a free environment. We should make sure that we should take forward the work done on these issues and more complex matter are solved judiciously This Method ensure that each problem is solved with the time it required and the time is needed by the particular problem is met. And one major problem is not overlooked by another major problem as in the system of decentralisation various groups can work parallel on different problems. Thus in this system various group possess different quality and could come handy in solving the problem quickly. So, at last, we could say that Gandhian Principle could guide well the Internet Governance and could pave way for the resolution of the various problems. So the future of the internet governance is decentralised.

By: Rishabh Srivastava and Angad Ahuja

References

[1] M.K.Gandhi, Hind Swaraj ,25(23rd ed., 1910).

[2] Multistakeholder Meeting On The Future Of Internet Governance P2 ,  NET Mundial-Global,  Sao Paulo, Brazil, 23-24 April (2014).                

[3] Ibid, at 3.

[4] Rishabh Dara, Intermediary Liability In India:Chilling Effects On Free Expression On The Internet, 4 (2011).

[5] N.Desai, India’s Cyber Security Challenge, 40 (1st ed., 2012).

[6] Ayesha Hassan, Internet Governance: Strengths And Weaknesses From A Business Perspectiy, 4 (2005).

[7] Ibid, at 5.

[8] Nick Doty & Deirdre K. Mulligan, Internet Multi Stake Holder Process And Techno- Policy Standard, 140 (2010).

[9] Report of towards a Collaborative, Decentralized Internet Governance Ecosystem, the Panel on Global Internet Cooperation and Governance Mechanisms, (2014), 8, available at http://internetgovernancepanel.org , last seen on 10/6/2014 at 10.48 AM.

[10] Ronald J. Deibert, Bounding Cyber Power: Escalation And Restraint In Global Cyberspace, 16 (2013).

[11] Olivier A. Sylvain, Internet Governance and Democratic Legitimacy, 6 (2010).

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