After turmoil over Aadhar data breach possibilities, Facebook is under attack from the ruling NDA government which has warned its CEO Mark Zuckerberg of “strong action” if it attempted to interfere with elections in India. On his part, Zuckerberg has now apologised for the “mistake” and has said that Facebook has a “responsibility” to protect its users’ data and if it fails, “we don’t deserve to serve you”.

However, the controversy does not end here because the BJP has accused the opposition Congress of using the services of Cambridge Analytica in elections. It is known that social media, particularly Facebook, has been used extensively during polls.

It is also a fact that social media platforms worked better for the BJP before, during and after the 2014 Parliamentary elections. Significantly, the balance is tilting now with Congress hitting back in the same coin.

Once stolen, electronic data is very easy to transmit, manipulate, interpolate, or interpret for various needs. Did Facebook become an accessory for Cambridge Analytica (CA) to game US Presidential elections and the Brexit referendum? There are allegations that a Cambridge University researcher contracted by CA allegedly lured Facebook users to take a personality quiz app which worked in the background to collect personal data of quiz takers and their friends, including status updates and Facebook ‘likes’. CA allegedly created a database of 50-60 million people including everything known about their personal traits and political persuasions.

The Indians hooked to Facebook number over 20 crore. In fact, India comes at a second slot after USA to use Facebook. This is a scary case of privacy violation. Electioneering targeting specific voter groups and even individuals has existed for some time but it has rarely assumed such underhand and insidious proportions. While Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has called it a “breach of trust” given that mass data collection was restricted to academic use, the company cannot attempt to play victim. Rather, going by revelations from whistleblower Christopher Wylie, Facebook adopted a cavalier attitude.

It did not immediately stop such massive data flows out of company servers. Though Facebook claims to have done course correction, the damage has already been done. A larger investigation is needed and the global footprint of such practices need to be identified. The Union Information Technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has warned Zuckerberg about his powers to summon him to India. The controversy is a wake-up call.

The data of Facebook users can be used to come out with strategies such as ‘behavioural micro-targeting’ and ‘psychographic messaging’. Christopher Wylie, a former CA employee-turned-whistle-blower, set off a storm with revelations of how the company had deployed a ‘psychological warfare’ tool for alt-right media guru Steve Bannon to try to sway the election in Trump’s favour in America. CA chief executive Alexander Nix, who was suspended a few days ago following an undercover report by a British TV broadcaster, said the company has used other dubious methods in projects worldwide — including honey traps to discredit clients’ opponents. The combination of using personal data without consent and tailoring slander campaigns, fake news and propaganda to discover preferences of voters is a potent and corrosive cocktail.

The shocking revelation has brought to light several issues that need to be addressed. The companies have been collecting data and tailoring marketing campaigns using the data during elections accordingly.

Personal data cannot be allowed to be violated in any way. The CA issue is a wake-up call for India; the government is still dragging its feet on framing a comprehensive and robust data protection law. The IT and Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has made it clear that “we fully support freedom of press, speech and expression; we fully support free exchange of ideas on social media. But any attempt, covert or overt, by social media, including Facebook, of trying to influence India’s electoral process through undesirable means will neither be appreciated nor be tolerated. If need be, stringent action will be taken”.

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The Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) has recently come out with two landmark decisions regarding school education and institutes of higher learning/Universities.

The ministry intends to reduce the syllabus of National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) by half so that students can follow their pursuits and get time for activities other than academics.
On the higher education front, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has granted greater autonomy to 62 higher education institutes including five central and 21 state universities which have maintained high standards.

A comprehensive list of proposed educational institutes and universities shortlisted for more autonomy contains 52 Universities including five Central Universities such as Jawaharlal Nehru University, Aligarh Muslim University and Banaras Hindu University, 21 state and 24 deemed Universities and two private Universities. There are eight colleges on the list.

Under the revised status, all those included in the list would be allowed to launch new programmes, departments, centres, opening off-campus centres without approval from the UGC, though they will remain under the purview of UGC.

The Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said that the Universities with ratings over 3.6 from National Accreditation and Assessment Council (NAAC) will be granted autonomy. The minister in his tweet said that this is in line with the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi towards a more liberalised regime.

These Universities and Institutes will have the freedom to admit foreign students and hire faculty members from other counties. The new guidelines will also allow them to pay more than the Seventh Pay Commission recommendations, which would enable them to attract the best of academicians and subject experts. The autonomous universities would be free to forge academic collaborations with the world’s top universities.

The Universities will be allowed to prepare their own syllabus, conduct their own examinations, declare their results and give certified degrees.

As schools are the preparatory grounds for the students who ultimately enter the Universities, there is a need to amend and correct the things at the bottom of the pyramid too. The government, in a welcome decision, has decided to reduce the workload of school students. The Union Minister has said that the syllabus of school students is more than that of B.A. and B.Com courses and needs to be reduced by half. This is expected to be introduced from April 2019.

There is no gainsaying that the students at school level undergo tremendous stress these days to balance class performance and extra coaching. The real aim of education, that is holistic development of a human beings, gets diluted under the weight of too many books and needless revisions of the course curriculum. The excessive academic pressure labels many students as slow learners and parents are found running from pillar to post to organise good councillors. Every child is not cut out to excel in academics and learn and reproduce complex mathematical and chemical equations in examinations to boast of high scores. Relevant modifications in the school curriculum are imperative.

Many topics being taught in science and mathematics to students in secondary classes have become redundant with changes in issues surrounding social and economic milieu. Good concepts that involve visuals, practical knowledge and interesting facts should be introduced in the syllabus to inculcate analytical and constructive thinking and no need for rote learning.

With rapid technological advancement and growing global integration of India with rest of the world, we need to mentor our students for the challenges and be able to match steps with their peers in rest of the world.

Sarit K Das, Director, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Ropar, perceives that the students in schools should be equipped with the skill of how to apply the knowledge and not on how to learn. Many students who enter IITs miss the rigour of using their knowledge because during their foundation years they go through intensive learning. Too much of syllabus leads to mugging up the contents. There is an emphasis on how to cover the syllabus but on the contrary it should be how to un-cover the syllabus. “The amount of mathematics we teach our grade 12 students is far more than what is taught in countries like United States, Germany and Canada. In the first year of engineering all basic concepts are taught to the students so if the topics which are not used in higher class are removed it will not affect the understanding of engineering courses. The syllabus of engineering entrance exams can also be modified on the lines of changes brought in the school syllabus”, he said.

Indian students lack an edge in research at international level because our education system conditions their minds only for learning and then writing the same. Our students are unable to stretch the power of imagination as the window of their mind that wishes to explore new ideas is tightly closed by parents and teachers to save their minds from distractions in learning only what others have said. Gradually, they lose the spirit to express their novel ideas and do not follow their hearts.

Though a little late, finally our policymakers have realised the need to infuse new dimensions in the subjects taught in schools and let every child be able to contribute his best to society.

Education is the most powerful tool to change the world, but when the world is changing, there is an overwhelming need to upgrade this tool. With global universities setting their foot in India and the new-age private Universities offering foreign collaborations and state-of-the-art infrastructure luring the talented pool of students, the higher education system also needs to shun its conventional approach.

The proposal of greater autonomy to the higher institutes and Universities, if implemented with certain checks and balances, would indeed help institutes to leap forward.

The relaxation and restriction on opening overseas campus is something that many Universities and institutes were eyeing at. Under more autonomy they plan to spread their wings outside India.

The top ranked management institute of India, Indian Institute of Management (IIM) — Ahmedabad, may be able to upgrade its two-year Post graduate diploma programme to a degree as the students who pursue higher studies abroad sometimes face difficulty with a PG diploma which is equivalent to a Masters programme.
The enrolment of foreign students would also be allowed now in IIM. Though, it may come at a cost but expansion of footprints of such prestigious institutes would help the country have skilled manpower.

According to Arun Grover, Vice-Chancellor of Panjab University, Chandigarh, the autonomy to public universities is a step in the right direction. Our Universities are competing with global universities without having the enabling environment for amendments in the existing eco-system.

The public universities have strengths which private ones do not have and vice-versa. So now we can collaborate with other universities (private, public and foreign) in India and abroad. We are also open to creating Public-Private-Partnerships. Private universities import experienced faculty from abroad, which they can source from public universities as a vast talent pool of faculty.

Lesser regulation means newer options can be looked at with an independent vision, says Grover.

The fascination for universities in the western world has been increasing as they provide more job oriented courses. Their students are more equipped with hands-on experience. Our students feel impoverished due to lack of practical exposure. New courses can now be designed to empower students with employable skills. Foreign universities provide integrated courses so that a student does not run to seek admissions for the post-graduate specialisation after the completion of graduation in medicines, management and engineering. We may also introduce similar courses in lesser regulated environment.

India’s strengths like ayurvedic medicines, yoga and spiritual development can be taught in the context of contemporary environment to attract foreign students.

Education is an area that concerns everybody but nothing substantial has been done in the last many years to improve the standards. Voices have been raised by the academicians to grant flexibility in the existing systems.

Reacting to the greater autonomy for the Universities and institutes, Satish Verma, a veteran Professor and former Dean, Economics and Business at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, said that UGC is a Central body that prepares programmes for the universities at all-India level. “India is a vast country with diverse needs. The universities in different parts of the country need to frame their programmes according to the local needs of industry, trade, agriculture and exiting cultural diversity. The autonomy would dilute the rigidity and control of UGC and would be conducive for the growth of higher education. This would also enable them to mobilise resources to meet their financial needs and streamline the operations. Some of the universities might misuse the freedom so a control mechanism with a broad framework of guidelines could be put up which does not obstruct but could help maintain the discipline in the use of freedom. Competition between the public and players is the need of the hour to set better quality standards. An optimum balance between own resource mobilisation and government funding is the way out when many public universities are facing a financial crunch,” he said.

Sukhpal Singh, a senior professor at IIM — Ahmadabad, said: “This initiative would help the top Indians to set higher benchmarks in education and fetch international recognition by foreign students and faculty. Foreign students staying in Indian campus and studying here as part of their programme and our students visiting foreign universities would bring in the best of faculty and exposure for the students.”

The modernisation of our education system has been overdue. The Government of India has been spending staggering amounts on campaigns like Skill India and Clean India. If we had an education system in place that is suitable to our needs, there would have been no lack of awareness on clean habits and lack of skilled manpower. The Union Minister has rightly indicated that the government is rolling out a liberalised regulatory regime but it needs to be implemented in letter and spirit with in a shortest time span to meet the current crisis in education and employment sector.

Changing job profiles due to technological interventions have given rise to new dimensions in employment and education. An estimated 12 million people join the workforce every year and this number is going to swell as about 30 per cent of the population of India is in the age group of 0-14 years. So an adequate thrust is required to have talented human resource that can lead the country into higher trajectory and solve multiple economic and social problems.

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A seminar on ‘Media Studies: Pedagogic and Methodological Engagements’ was recently organised by the Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Centre for Media Studies (CMS). Several young researches of the CMS came up with refreshing inputs to their research findings and ground realities based on their field work.

Researcher Mithilesh Priyadarshi’s work on the 2013 riots in western Uttar Pradesh carried several crucial aspects to reporting from the mofussil towns. In fact, he not just spoke of the role of the local correspondents and stringers but also highlighted the crucial ‘connect’ between the readers and newspapers during communal rioting and the aftermath. How I wish he publishes his stark findings in a national daily so that many would get to grasp the harsh realities prevailing in that entire stretch, not very far from the national capital New Delhi.

And whilst I was chairing a session on ‘notes from the field’, I was wondering why on earth we have stopped focusing on these very crucial aspects to journalism and journalists! Why is it that the general public thinks journalism to be one of those highly glamorous professions. No, it isn’t! Its tough and tougher it gets, especially if one is reporting from the so-called ‘conflict zones’, ‘disturbed areas’, ‘Naxal belts’. In fact, detailed accounts of two senior journalists — Smita Gupta and Sonia Sarkar — of their experiences whilst reporting from conflict zones and situations, were not just stark but absolutely honest portrayals of the challenges, together with the hurdles and difficulties that reporters face whilst trying to unearth an story and then detail the findings. They could die but that reportage has to be done!
Other speakers focused on varying interesting and offbeat dimensions to journalism. Dr Mohinder Singh focused on the beginnings of Punjabi journalism in the undivided Punjab. Senior journalist Ajit Kumar Jha spoke of the ground work required for setting up of new newspapers (after all, he is the founder editor of the Oman Tribune in Muscat and the Qatar Tribune in Doha). Author and head of INTACH’s Delhi chapter, Swapna Liddle, traced the history of pre 1857 Delhi through Urdu memoirs and writings.

I could go on and on as the sessions were laced with fresh and hitting findings. In fact, Head of the Journalism Department of the Islamic University of Science and Technology (IUST) situated in Kashmir’s Awantipora)), Dr Ruheela Hassan, did not mince words whilst focusing on the daily round of struggles faced by journalists in the Valley. Peaking as never before in these recent years. To quote her — “The struggle of media in Kashmir throughout its evolution is witness that the media in Kashmir has never enjoyed real freedom. Be it the Dogra Rule in 1924, nationalist government (1947-1953), Sheikh Abdullah (1948-1953), Ghulam Mohamad Bakshi (1953-1963), Ghulam Mohamad Sadiq (1964-1971), National Conference (1975-1982/1986-1990), media in Kashmir has never breathed free air. At one time, the state was resistant to granting permission and when the permission was granted their freedom was curbed, strict laws and regulation like Jammu and Kashmir Press and Publication Act of 1932 were introduced and implemented to ban publications, seize printing presses, or demand heavy securities from the journalists.

“After India gained independence, it guaranteed freedom of speech and expression to all its citizens including the citizens of the State of Jammu and Kashmir, but nothing changed for the press. Older laws were amended and new laws were implemented to muzzle the press. …The inordinate circumstances in Kashmir from 1990s further worsened the scenario. Not only the freedom of expression was endangered, but there were now increased threats to the life of journalists. Their freedom of movement and right to assess information was also snatched. Several journalists lost their lives and many were put behind bars. Journalists also fought several battles with the state. Some struggles they won, such as withdrawing of Press Bill by state, and some they lost.”

Dr Ruheela Hassan also focused on several of these hard hitting realities—

• 21 % of the Valley’s journalists have been booked or summoned by the state or national authorities (mostly booked under draconian laws like OSA, PSA, security of the state)
• 20 journalists killed
• Several kidnapped and illegally detained
• More than 25 injured
• 80% of the Valley’s journalists believe that no freedom of expression is enjoyed by them as guaranteed.

And just when I thought, enough stark realities to the varying dimensions to the media have come to the fore, came in Ravish Kumar’s latest book — The Free Voice (Speaking Tiger) where this brave journalist writes ever so strongly about the times we are living in. He highlights the fear factor hitting and gripping us on a daily basis; scared that we are of the very system and of those who are manning it. Yes, the scare of the aftermath of criticizing the fascist rulers holds sway.

Ravish Kumar does not shy away from detailing his own fears as a journalist. To quote him from the opening essay ‘Speaking Out’ in his book — “ ‘Now, whatever will be, will be.’ This closing sentence of the NDTV India Prime Time Show of November 23, 2017, was for my viewers and also for myself .I had found release from the fear that had held me in its suffocating grip for two days. Through the duration of the show, I’d felt that every single word was holding me back, as if to warn me: ‘Enough, don’t go any further. You cannot put yourself in danger just to overcome your fear. Fear does not end after you’ve spoken out. Even after you’ve spoken, fear lies in wait for you with its nets and snares.’ But I had spoken and I was free.”

And I simply loved these un- complicated lines. Perhaps, they are of significance not just for the media personnel but for the masses trying to fight the injustices heaped on the disadvantaged. To quote him — “Ask yourself one question: Are you afraid of speaking out, of criticizing authority? Why are you afraid? Do you choose a system only to inflict fear on yourself? Are you scared of being killed or being isolated, of being alone? If you are not fearful of being killed, then also banish the fear that you will fall alone among your friends. You can risk at least this much. If you have friends whose devotion is to something you think to be wrong, tell them that. If you cannot speak up before friends, how will you ever stand before the government to criticize it? You will have to start practising speaking up somewhere. Things aren’t so bad yet that no one can speak out.”

Yes, it’s time to speak out, loud and clear. Otherwise, unsaid thoughts and unleashed emotions have the tendency to throttle and kill the very spirit, if not the form. But whilst speaking out, one ought to be laced with precise and thorough and exact facts. Young and daring researchers and journalists focusing on the media should put forth their stark findings at various forums and platforms so that ground realities are projected. Seminars and talks and meets and discussions on the ground realities are actually a must in the times we are surviving in. Several realities I heard at JNU’s Centre for Media Studies, were refreshing and offbeat and for that one must thank the entire faculty of the CMS, particularly Dr Rakesh Batabyal.

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