Political Mudslinging Over Facebook Bias Will Only Let the Social Media Giant Off the Hook

The Wall Street Journal’s expose of Facebook India’s internal communications indicating its apparently special relationship with the ruling party should have resulted in a serious, bipartisan policy discussion in parliament on the need to find ways to regulate weaponised information and hate speech on social media. This discussion would have been particularly important, given technology’s power to…

Fighting Hate Speech, Balancing Freedoms: A Regulatory Challenge

This research essay on ways to combat/ regulate hate speech and maintain the right to Free speech appeared in Volume 9 of the Journal of Indian Law and Society, that was released on May 20, 2020 by the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata. Abstract: The right to free expression is the heart of a…

On Chabahar, India Must Recover Lost Ground With Iran Quickly

Ripples in the India-Iran bilateral relationship have risen to the surface once again, forcing the question of whether India's policy and commitment towards the development of the Chabahar Port project is unraveling. Three days after Iran's announcement that it was starting work - finally, alone - on a crucial rail link between Zahedan and Chabahar…

On Misinformation and Hate Speech (notes from a talk)

In August 2019, police in Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh decided to open an investigation into a local journalist- Pawan Jaiswal all because he had exposed a government school for feeding its children salt and a chapati as a mid-day meal. This meal was well below the government’s minimum nutrition standards. But the state didn’t care about the…

After Balakot, time for a diplomatic offensive

War is politics by other means, said Karl Von Clausewitz, the Prussian military strategist in the eighteenth century. As societies change, and politics changes, so does the nature of war, and the battlefields wars are fought on. The two weeks since the Pulwama attack has shown us that the battlefield is now also on television…

Indus Treaty: Why India Cannot Afford to Fight Fire With Water

Water is meant to douse fires, yet it is the one natural resource that has, time and again, either been a cause for global conflict or been weaponised by enemy states to score victory. In the case of decades of volatile India-Pakistan relations, the Indus Waters Treaty – brokered by the World Bank and signed…

UNHCR, OCHCR Urge India not to Deport Rohingya

New Delhi. October 3, 2018 Officials from UN High Commissioner for Refugees based in India have said that seven Rohingya men being deported from the Silchar central jail in Assam to their home village in  Central Rakhine in Myanmar should be given a chance to make an “informed decision”  about their return in the current…

More Counter Speech needed to combat Hate on Facebook in India

Efforts at Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) online have become an important focus for social networks. CVE targets extremist ideologies, tackling them through alternate narratives that focus on peace-building. It is an invaluable tool to supplement counterterrorism strategies worldwide. To identify effective counter-speech on Facebook, ORF conducted a study analysing posts and comments on prominent public…

For New Delhi, the relationship with Tel Aviv is an exercise in balance

The still-damaged corner wall of the blue-and-white building and a police van permanently parked outside the Chabad House that was attacked during the worst terror strike in Indian history in Mumbai on 26.11.2008 (where the now 11-year old 'baby' Moshe lost his parents), is both a testament to a strengthening relationship between India and Israel,…

Breaking the Silence: 5 Years after Nirbhaya

Watch here: Five years ago a country wept when a young Delhi girl battled for and lost her life after being brutally gang raped in the heart of the city. The Nirbhaya Act strengthening punishment for sexual predators and expanding the definition of abuse was the outcome of that anger and grief. Today, women -…