blog@Yantrajaal

Once upon a time, in a banking scenario far removed from where we are today, one had to visit the specific branch of a bank for any banking transactions. To deposit and withdraw cash or to deposit and encash cheques there was no option but to travel to the branch where one had opened one’s account. Then came Core Banking Systems and the world was not the same anymore. Since all the branches were connected to a centrally located Core Banking Systems, all information about a customer was always available at any branch and the concept of Any Branch Banking become the norm. This was followed by ATM and finally Internet Banking. When it comes to voting we are still in the old, old era. Why can the Election Commission not move along the same trajectory that the banks have travelled in the past twenty years ? Let us consider the feasibility and possibility of Any Booth Voting. The Election Commission has a process in place to issue Voter ID Cards and while there could be loopholes in the va...

The Higher Education sector in India has been the subject of much attention, heartburn and soul searching in the public and private media. We know that India with her vast pool of young citizens is ready to reap the economic benefits of the demographic dividend because both the West -- Europe and North America -- and China is plagued with an ageing population. But somehow or other have not yet found a sustainable and scalable way to train our youth and enable them to acquire the skills that are badly needed for economic success. Currently the debate and attention is focussed on two areas. First (a) how should the government set up new schools and colleges, for example new IITs, new IISERs and second (b) In what way should the private sector be engaged in a manner that regulates the balance between the entrepreneurship of private providers vis-a-vis the rapacious exploitation of innocent students. In this two pronged debate, let us introduce a third perspective namely, how can the exis...

Freedom of Information Freedom of information has two aspects, namely, the freedom to express one’s thoughts and ideas and the freedom to access the thoughts and ideas of others. Both these aspects admit to multiple perspectives on what is right and what is wrong and in all cases there is no unambiguous way to decide on which is the correct perspective -- and in many cases there may not be a perspective that is universally correct. But before we explore these two aspects, it must be understood that, like privacy, the issues and ethical questions raised here are neither exclusive to nor a consequence of the usage of IT products and services. Freedom of information is enshrined in the constitution and governance structures of most modern and liberal nations but the scope and impact of this freedom or the lack thereof is greatly expanded by the use of modern tools of information dissemination, namely, the Internet and tools like websites, blogs, social media platforms, email, chat...

The Question of Privacy On 10th January 2010, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook -- the world’s largest gossip and chit-chat facilitation platform with nearly a billion active members, in a six minute interview on stage with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington told a live audience that if he were to create Facebook again today user information would by default be public not private as it was for years. This statement highlights an issue that has been debated in IT forums for a very long time. To put things in perspective, let us first identify the three types of channels through which personal data is revealed : Deliberate disclosure : when someone deliberately reveals information about oneself while applying for services like bank loans and employment, during medical investigations and under statutory requirements like tax returns. Deliberate investigation : when someone, for example market research professionals, investigative journalists or the police, delibera...

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The Tragedy of Intellectual Property Property is something that we not only understand very well but it is also something that we have a healthy respect for. If one has a house, another would not dare to occupy it. If one has a book, another would -- in general --  never think of stealing it even though he likes it very much. But would he hesitate to have it photocopied ? Possibly not, because he would rationalise that the original owner is not losing the book -- and hence his property rights are not being violated. But what about the author of the book ? And the 10% royalty that he was expecting from a sale of the copy ? For a standard text book costing Rs 250, each time someone makes a photocopy he or she is literally stealing Rs 25 from the author’s pocket ! It is the same when someone rips a music CD, creates mp3 files and uploads it for “free” download on the internet. The real tragedy of the theft of intellectual property is not merely the financial loss suffered by th...

Ethics is something that is universal to the human condition but this is not where we try to explain its origin or justify its ubiquity. Instead we take these as given and explore how it impacts people and businesses who are involved with information technology. Wendell Berry, farmer and philosopher, had famously said that “If you eat, you’re involved in agriculture” and for us in the age of Google, it is but a little stretch to conclude that “If you use a computer or a smart phone, you’re involved with information technology”. So the issues of ethics in information technology are as universal as ethics in general. However in this section we will first look at issues confronting information technology professionals and then look at some broader and more fundamental issues that concern the population at large. Information Technology Professionals In its early days, India as a nation with a burgeoning population and cheap labour was a hesitant user of what was viewed as labour-sa...