Gyanendra Kumar Kashyap
Your fascination to be connected on social media and your penchant for posts, share, tweets and retweets could land you in problem. Be careful! lest you post and are damned...
In a nation of a billion-plus population, faced with myriad
challenges ranging from mass poverty, developmental issues to corruption, few
of us would have ever known about people such as Ambikesh Mohapatra, Aseem
Trivedi, Ravi Srinivasan, Shaheen Dhada and Renu Srinivasan or for that matter
Henna Bakshi. Thanks to our nation’s somewhat schizophrenic relationship with
freedom of speech and the arbitrariness of the amended Section 66A of the
Information Technology (IT) Act; the reach of social and mainstream media has
given them minutes/hours/days of (in)fame. While Ravi’s followers on Twitter
increased manifold, Aseem landed in Big Boss’s house and Prof Mohapatra in
jail. At one point it seemed that the entire debate on revoking (or may be even
restricting the scope) the so called ‘draconian’ law was put on the back
burner, yet the arrest of Shaheen Dhada and Renu Srinivasan for ‘posting’ and
‘liking’ (respectively) a question on the appropriateness of a bandh in view of
Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray’s death, has once again put the debate back on
track. Given the series of arrests, invoking Section 66A of the IT Act, it is
apparent that the government and its machinery have more often than not used
Section 66A of the IT Act to enforce suppression of dissenting voices. For a
change (and for the wrong reasons) the action of police in each of the case has
been swift and harsh. This brings us back to the discussion – what does the Act
state and what makes the legal hawks and civil societies challenge the
constitutional validity of Section 66A of the IT Act?
The Section states that any person who sends, by means of a
computer resource or communication device, any information that is grossly
offensive or has a menacing character could be punished with imprisonment for a
maximum term of three years, besides imposing appropriate fine.
For a layman, the wordings of the Act mat not suggest that
the Act is against the freedom of speech guaranteed under the Constitution. Consider the tweet, “got reports that
karthick chidambaram has amassed more wealth than vadra” [Karthick Chidambaram
is the son of Union finance minister P Chidambaram and Vadra refers to Sonia
Gandhi’s son in-law Robert Vadra] and the repercussion Ravi had to face
thereafter. In the early hours, 5 am, on October 30 he was woken up and pulled
out of his house and told that he was under arrest because of his tweets. Similar
was the case with Prof Mahapatra who shared a satirical cartoon criticizing Mamta
Banerjee, the CM of West Bengal. The recent post by Shaheen and ‘like’ by Renu
and their arrest on flimsy grounds expose the potential for mischief embedded
in the law.
In all sanity,
neither of the tweets, posts or the cartoon was ‘grossly offensive’ or had a
‘menacing character’ to invoke the Act and subsequent imprisonment. This is why lawyers and civil society members
feel that there is an incongruity as far as the section of the Act is
concerned. They argue that the phrases such as ‘grossly offensive’ and
‘menacing character’ – both of which are subjective, need to be well defined,
which is presently not the case. It is perhaps this vagueness that allows the
police (and politicians with authoritative backing) to use the law as per their
whims and fancies and suppress dissenting voices. A general argument put forward is that as long
as the section remains so loosely worded and sweeping, it will continue to
remain a draconian weapon of oppression of anyone viewed as a dissident by the
‘powers that be’. Cyber law experts such as Pavan Duggal believe that Section
66A has the potential of becoming a dangerous tool that can be used to gag
legitimate free speech online.
But is the right to free speech an absolute right? The
answer is a big NO. As per the first amendment to the Indian Constitution (May
10, 1951), “reasonable restrictions” was placed on the right to free speech. However
players across the political spectrum have often abused the opacity that
surrounds the expression “reasonable restrictions”. And this was exactly what
junior Chidambaram cited in his defence. He had tweeted, “Free speech is
subject to reasonable restrictions. I have a right to seek constitutional/legal
remedies over defamatory/scurrilous tweets.”
Interestingly, the expression “reasonable restrictions”
become wholly unreasonable if we were to see politicians hurling abuse at one
another, parliamentary or otherwise, in parliament (assembly) or outside. It is no wonder that Section 66A of the IT Act
has never been used against the political class. This raises a question as to
whether there are two distinct standards of freedom of expression – one for the
privileged political elite, and the other for the common citizen aka aam aadmi.
Are there exceptions where to the 2008 amended Section 66A
of the IT Act (it was passed without any discussion in the Lok Sabha) has been
used for good –protect citizens against online harassment. We do, thanks to the
celebrity status of the complainant. It
was when Chinmayi Sripada, a Tamil Singer and entrepreneur, filed a police case
about a series of vulgar comments aimed at her on Twitter that the Chennai
Police registered a case under Section 66A of the IT Act and others including
the Prevention of Women Harassment Act and used the law in fairness to the end
of justice. But such cases which highlight the merits of the laws, to move
against incidents of harassment or defamation online, are far and few.
Will Section 66A of the IT Act get cleaned up? Will the ministry
of ICT seek legal advice and recommend a modification? Will the honorable
Supreme Court take suo motu cognizance of the act and step in to protect
freedom of speech guaranteed under the Constitution? Till then ‘Be careful! Lest
you post and are damned.’
Gyanendra,
ReplyDeleteAs a matter of fact we're all living in a society suffering from "Perils of obedience". All these cases are the indication of Conformity.
Stanley Milgram conducted a nice experiment in Yale University in 1963.
The experiment:
The volunteer subject was given the role of teacher, and the confederate, the role of learner. The participants drew slips of paper to determine their roles, but unknown to the subject, both slips said "teacher", and the actor claimed to have the slip that read "learner", thus guaranteeing that the participant would always be the "teacher". At this point, the "teacher" and "learner" were separated into different rooms where they could communicate but not see each other. In one version of the experiment, the confederate was sure to mention to the participant that he had a heart condition.
The "teacher" was given an electric shock from the electro-shock generator as a sample of the shock that the "learner" would supposedly receive during the experiment. The "teacher" was then given a list of word pairs which he was to teach the learner. The teacher began by reading the list of word pairs to the learner. The teacher would then read the first word of each pair and read four possible answers. The learner would press a button to indicate his response. If the answer was incorrect, the teacher would administer a shock to the learner, with the voltage increasing in 15-volt increments for each wrong answer. If correct, the teacher would read the next word pair.[1]
The subjects believed that for each wrong answer, the learner was receiving actual shocks. In reality, there were no shocks. After the confederate was separated from the subject, the confederate set up a tape recorder integrated with the electro-shock generator, which played pre-recorded sounds for each shock level. After a number of voltage level increases, the actor started to bang on the wall that separated him from the subject. After several times banging on the wall and complaining about his heart condition, all responses by the learner would cease.[1]
At this point, many people indicated their desire to stop the experiment and check on the learner. Some test subjects paused at 135 volts and began to question the purpose of the experiment. Most continued after being assured that they would not be held responsible. A few subjects began to laugh nervously or exhibit other signs of extreme stress once they heard the screams of pain coming from the learner.[1]
If at any time the subject indicated his desire to halt the experiment, he was given a succession of verbal prods by the experimenter, in this order:[1]
Please continue.
The experiment requires that you continue.
It is absolutely essential that you continue.
You have no other choice, you must go on.
If the subject still wished to stop after all four successive verbal prods, the experiment was halted. Otherwise, it was halted after the subject had given the maximum 450-volt shock three times in succession.
The experimenter also gave special prods if the teacher made specific comments. If the teacher asked whether the learner might suffer permanent physical harm, the experimenter replied, "Although the shocks may be painful, there is no permanent tissue damage, so please go on". If the teacher said that the learner clearly wants to stop, the experimenter replied, "Whether the learner likes it or not, you must go on until he has learned all the word pairs correctly, so please go on".
P K Basu
The result 1
ReplyDeleteBefore conducting the experiment, Milgram polled fourteen Yale University senior-year psychology majors to predict the behavior of 100 hypothetical teachers. All of the poll respondents believed that only a very small fraction of teachers (the range was from zero to 3 out of 100, with an average of 1.2) would be prepared to inflict the maximum voltage. Milgram also informally polled his colleagues and found that they, too, believed very few subjects would progress beyond a very strong shock.[1] Milgram also polled forty psychiatrists from a medical school and they believed that by the tenth shock, when the victim demands to be free, most subjects would stop the experiment. They predicted that by the 300 volt shock, when the victim refuses to answer, only 3.73 percent of the subjects would still continue and they believed that "only a little over one-tenth of one per cent of the subjects would administer the highest shock on the board."
In Milgram's first set of experiments, 65 percent (26 of 40)[1] of experiment participants administered the experiment's final massive 450-volt shock, though many were very uncomfortable doing so; at some point, every participant paused and questioned the experiment; some said they would refund the money they were paid for participating in the experiment. Throughout the experiment, subjects displayed varying degrees of tension and stress. Subjects were sweating, trembling, stuttering, biting their lips, groaning, digging their fingernails into their skin, and some were even having nervous laughing fits or seizures.[1]
P K Basu
Result 2
ReplyDeleteMilgram summarized the experiment in his 1974 article, "The Perils of Obedience", writing:
The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.
Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.
The original Simulated Shock Generator and Event Recorder, or shock box, is located in the Archives of the History of American Psychology.
Later, Prof. Milgram and other psychologists performed variations of the experiment throughout the world, with similar results. Milgram later investigated the effect of the experiment's locale on obedience levels by holding an experiment in an unregistered, backstreet office in a bustling city, as opposed to at Yale, a respectable university. The level of obedience, "although somewhat reduced, was not significantly lower." What made more of a difference was the proximity of the "learner" and the experimenter. There were also variations tested involving groups.
Dr. Thomas Blass of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County performed a meta-analysis on the results of repeated performances of the experiment. He found that the percentage of participants who are prepared to inflict fatal voltages remains remarkably constant, 61–66 percent, regardless of time or place.[8][9]
There is a little-known coda to the Milgram Experiment, reported by Philip Zimbardo: none of the participants who refused to administer the final shocks insisted that the experiment itself be terminated, nor left the room to check the health of the victim without requesting permission to leave, as per Milgram's notes and recollections, when Zimbardo asked him about that point.
Milgram created a documentary film titled Obedience showing the experiment and its results. He also produced a series of five social psychology films, some of which dealt with his experiments.
P K Basu