20 crore families live below the poverty line in India. That's just one of the shocking figures in a new report that has left the government red in the face. This comes at a time when India faces its biggest internal threat from the growing Maoist movement... And it begs the question - is the government's denial of growing impoverishment and food scarcity actually feeding the Maoist movement.
Link to Video
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Posted By Cpi Maoist Naxalite to Naxalite Maoist India at 3/26/2011 12:56:00 PM
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
[Naxalite Maoist India] Government to amend Indian IT Act to muzzle Bloggers
The draft proposal to amend the Indian IT Act so as to impose restrictions on intermediaries has provoked a huge outcry in the country, especially among its vocal bloggers.
While the proposed rules seek to control the 'intermediaries' such as telecom networks, web-hosting sites and Internet service providers, search engines, online payment, cyber cafes and auction sites, it is the focus on blogs that has provoked an outburst.
'Vague' reasons
The overemphasis on blogs, indicating the government's anxiety to control them; the 'vagueness' of the reasons for which the government can block websites; and the utterly regressive move of introducing 'intermediary due-diligence,' a favourite tool of repressive regimes against bloggers, is upsetting, says Shivam Vij, journalist, Kafila.
"It is interesting that while 'Blogs' and 'Blogger' are defined, the words aren't used in the rules per se. In other words, they had blogs in mind while making the rules," he adds. Certain websites and blogs were blocked in 2006, while selective blocking was prevalent at times of wars and emergencies, say sources.
Besides curtailing the freedom of expression of individual bloggers, the draft holds them responsible for readers' comments and online discussions.
Experts also fear the restrictions now targeted at individual blogs will soon be applied to micro-blogging sites that facilitate online discussions, and the due diligence clause will result in higher power of censorship to the larger player.
For someone like K. Nageshwar, who maintains a blog and a website, indiacurrentaffairs.org that registers over 1 lakh visitors a month, moderating all comments is difficult. "Blogs often carry inflammatory content — some categorical, some critical and some full of hate. We understand as bloggers that we have the responsibility to ensure information is not used to spread the wrong message. Such regulations have to be exercised by bloggers themselves. Draconian measures would deepen discontent among the community."
The blogging community sees these rules as an outcome of the larger censorship of areas of scrutiny that do not really fit into the Indian cyber space. The issue of Internet freedom is really about the tension between national security and personal liberty, and national security will always prevail under the pretext of economic growth, social stability or military threats, say the bloggers.
"In my mind, it's inevitable that we will soon end up with 200 different slices of the Internet, each one circumscribed by the whims of the censors in the country," says Gaurva Mishra, a blogger and social media analyst.
"Instead of focusing on 'bad repressive regimes,' the debate on Internet freedom should focus on "bad practices in open democracies," including over-aggressive cyber crime, copyright, defamation laws to protect entrenched corporate interests, surveillance of Internet users in the name of national security, censorship of Internet content in the name of safeguarding intellectual property, isolating hate speech or preventing child pornography," he adds.
Mr. Mishra says that in the aftermath of the Wikileaks controversy, governments are likely to pass regressive cyber-security laws to limit online freedom of expression in both 'open democracies' and 'authoritarian regimes.'
Krish Ashok, a Chennai-based blogger, says such censorship shows a certain lack of understanding because it takes quite a bit of technical skill to actually censor the Internet. As one will realise from the recent revolutions in West Asia, it mostly does not work.
"The Internet community will always end up being smarter. India does not control the rest of the web, and people can write blog posts by sending just an email. The lesser fortunate ones will end up facing the ham-handed fist of these new guidelines," he says.
Scope for misuse
What is needed is more transparency in the system, and this clandestine, surreptitious way of blocking sites won't work, says Mr. Ashok, citing how websites blocked often show error pages. "Anybody can take a print out of a comment posted and complain against a blog to the authorities for it to be blocked. This draft leaves a lot of scope for it to be so misused," Mr. Vij says.
Source:
http://www.hindu.com/2011/03/13/stories/2011031354750800.htm
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Posted By Cpi Maoist Naxalite to Naxalite Maoist India at 3/20/2011 08:37:00 AM
While the proposed rules seek to control the 'intermediaries' such as telecom networks, web-hosting sites and Internet service providers, search engines, online payment, cyber cafes and auction sites, it is the focus on blogs that has provoked an outburst.
'Vague' reasons
The overemphasis on blogs, indicating the government's anxiety to control them; the 'vagueness' of the reasons for which the government can block websites; and the utterly regressive move of introducing 'intermediary due-diligence,' a favourite tool of repressive regimes against bloggers, is upsetting, says Shivam Vij, journalist, Kafila.
"It is interesting that while 'Blogs' and 'Blogger' are defined, the words aren't used in the rules per se. In other words, they had blogs in mind while making the rules," he adds. Certain websites and blogs were blocked in 2006, while selective blocking was prevalent at times of wars and emergencies, say sources.
Besides curtailing the freedom of expression of individual bloggers, the draft holds them responsible for readers' comments and online discussions.
Experts also fear the restrictions now targeted at individual blogs will soon be applied to micro-blogging sites that facilitate online discussions, and the due diligence clause will result in higher power of censorship to the larger player.
For someone like K. Nageshwar, who maintains a blog and a website, indiacurrentaffairs.org that registers over 1 lakh visitors a month, moderating all comments is difficult. "Blogs often carry inflammatory content — some categorical, some critical and some full of hate. We understand as bloggers that we have the responsibility to ensure information is not used to spread the wrong message. Such regulations have to be exercised by bloggers themselves. Draconian measures would deepen discontent among the community."
The blogging community sees these rules as an outcome of the larger censorship of areas of scrutiny that do not really fit into the Indian cyber space. The issue of Internet freedom is really about the tension between national security and personal liberty, and national security will always prevail under the pretext of economic growth, social stability or military threats, say the bloggers.
"In my mind, it's inevitable that we will soon end up with 200 different slices of the Internet, each one circumscribed by the whims of the censors in the country," says Gaurva Mishra, a blogger and social media analyst.
"Instead of focusing on 'bad repressive regimes,' the debate on Internet freedom should focus on "bad practices in open democracies," including over-aggressive cyber crime, copyright, defamation laws to protect entrenched corporate interests, surveillance of Internet users in the name of national security, censorship of Internet content in the name of safeguarding intellectual property, isolating hate speech or preventing child pornography," he adds.
Mr. Mishra says that in the aftermath of the Wikileaks controversy, governments are likely to pass regressive cyber-security laws to limit online freedom of expression in both 'open democracies' and 'authoritarian regimes.'
Krish Ashok, a Chennai-based blogger, says such censorship shows a certain lack of understanding because it takes quite a bit of technical skill to actually censor the Internet. As one will realise from the recent revolutions in West Asia, it mostly does not work.
"The Internet community will always end up being smarter. India does not control the rest of the web, and people can write blog posts by sending just an email. The lesser fortunate ones will end up facing the ham-handed fist of these new guidelines," he says.
Scope for misuse
What is needed is more transparency in the system, and this clandestine, surreptitious way of blocking sites won't work, says Mr. Ashok, citing how websites blocked often show error pages. "Anybody can take a print out of a comment posted and complain against a blog to the authorities for it to be blocked. This draft leaves a lot of scope for it to be so misused," Mr. Vij says.
Source:
http://www.hindu.com/2011/03/13/stories/2011031354750800.htm
--
Posted By Cpi Maoist Naxalite to Naxalite Maoist India at 3/20/2011 08:37:00 AM
[Naxalite Maoist India] Gudsa Usendi on Maoist modes of Communication
The many lives of Gudsa Usendi
Phantom spokesman is emblematic of Chhattisgarh's secretive yet media-savvy Maoists
'Today I am Gudsa Usendi, tomorrow it could be someone else'
Maoists keenly aware of connection between surveillance and communication
Raipur: In the autumn of 2007, a suave, middle-aged man with a military bearing walked into Naresh Bazaar cloth store near the Bilaspur bus stand and bought a thousand metres of olive green tericot fabric for Rs. 101 a metre. According to a shop assistant, the man looked like an ex-serviceman, spoke in English, introduced himself as Sunil Choudhury, a private security contractor with contracts to secure factories across Chhattisgarh, and said he needed uniforms for his guards.
Later that year, Choudhury appeared at Dayaram Sahu's workshop in Raipur's Purani Basti and asked the struggling tailor to stitch him trousers of waist sizes 28, 30 and 36 inches with corresponding shirts. "He said he employed more than 50 security guards and each watchman needed three sets of uniform," said Sahu. "He asked for 35 uniforms, and promised another 100 sets if he liked my work."
It appears that Choudhury liked Sahu's work; when the Raipur police raided the workshop in early 2008, they claim to have found 634 metres of military green cloth, 200 trousers and 107 full-sleeved shirts.
Sunil Choudhury, the police said, was not a security contactor but was Katta Ramchandra Reddy alias Vijay alias Gudsa Usendi, a high ranking member and spokesperson of the Dandakaranya Special Zonal (DKZ) Committee of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist). The uniforms were meant for Maoist guerrillas rather than private security guards.
According to police charge sheets and court documents, Gudsa Usendi is the shadowy figure who sent compact discs of Maoist propaganda to Raipur politicians in 2006 and was the source of a consignment of 91 country-made shotguns recovered from a busy intersection in Raipur in 2008. The police claim he was in frequent contact with jailed human rights activist and award-winning paediatrician Binayak Sen and independent filmmaker Ajay T.G., an association denied by both Dr. Sen and Ajay. Gudsa's supposed wife, K.S. Malti, is currently in Raipur Central Jail; another alleged associate of his was arrested in Durg as recently as September last year. But who is Gudsa Usendi? "Gudsa Usendi is just a name," said a smooth voice over the telephone in August last year, "Today I am Gudsa Usendi, tomorrow it could be someone else. Gudsa Usendi is the title taken over by the spokesperson for the DKZ."
Maoist spokespersons have long had a fascination for aliases. Before he was slain in a police encounter last year, Maoist central committee spokesperson Cherukuri Rajkumar was known to the outside world as Azad (translated as Free), but within the party he went by several names including Madhu, Gangadhar, Uday and Dinesh. His successor goes by the name of Abhay (translated as Fearless); the spokesperson who handled the abduction of Malkangiri District Collector R.V. Krishna in February went by the name of 'Prasad,' but Dandakaranya's Gudsa Usendi is different, because Gudsa Usendi was once a 'real' person.
"It was at about three in the morning in Potenar village in Abujmarh. It was June 25 2000, it was raining heavily. There were six comrades in a hut when they were surrounded by the police," said a young Maoist fighter who called herself Rehmati. "Five comrades were killed, one of them was Gudsa Usendi. He was 17."
When he joined the Maoists, Gudsa Usendi dropped his given name and took on the moniker of 'Ramesh.' He was of the Maria tribe from Chhattisgarh's Abujmarh region, according to the Maoists. A year after his death, the Maoist spokesperson of Dandakaranya (broadly corresponding with South Chhattisgarh) took on his name to keep his memory alive and the practice has continued ever since.
The Maoists are wary of sharing organisational details with reporters, but anecdotal evidence suggests that Gudsa Usendi functions at the centre of a cloud of cell phones, laptops and individuals. A message from Gudsa Usendi could appear as a note under your door, a letter postmarked by a small town on the Chhattisgarh-Andhra Pradesh border, an email from an IP address that traces back to a neighbouring State, or a micro-SD card stuck to a sheet of paper.
In a recent meeting, a member of their communications team explained that every Maoist division (equivalent to a zilla in the panchayati sytem) has access to a laptop, memory cards, a portable inkjet printer and a cell phone. The netbook examined by this correspondent ran an open source Linux-based operating system with open source text, image and video editing software. Gudsa Usendi usually prepares a press note and hands it over to one of his assistants. Major press releases (like the announcement for Martyrs Week) are designed using crack versions of software like Adobe Pagemaker and converted into PDF format, before being sent to printing presses installed in secret locations.
"We prefer PDF format, because it removes the problem of fonts when issuing press releases in English and Hindi," explained an assistant, referring to a document format created by Adobe. The files are emailed from the top of a tall tree on a mountaintop where a GPRS enabled phone can log onto a stray network
All the devices are charged by truck batteries connected to solar panels. "Batteries provide direct current (DC); laptops and phones need alternating current (AC)," explained the assistant patiently, "So we add a DCAC inverter to the circuit and use solar power to charge our devices."
The Maoists are keenly aware of the connection between surveillance and communication. In the forests, only certain senior cadres are allowed to carry cell phones and use their devices sparingly. "We have to secure an area and post sentries before making a phone call," said a Maoist commander who carries a Nokia phone. However, the poor density of cellular towers in Maoist territories makes it hard to pinpoint the location of a particular phone.
On a windy day in Konta in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district for instance, it is possible to pick up reception from a tower in Andhra Pradesh's Khammam district; by moving 50 km northwards from the same spot in Konta, a user can start ranging towers in Orissa's Malkangiri district, moving further towards Chintrakonda in Malkangiri, the Andhra network comes back into range. Somewhere in that broad stretch of land, a man climbs up a tree, pulls out a cell phone from the folds of his clothes and makes a phone call. "Hello? I have a statement from Gudsa Usendi," he says.
http://www.hindu.com/2011/03/13/stories/2011031355331200.htm
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Posted By Cpi Maoist Naxalite to Naxalite Maoist India at 3/20/2011 08:24:00 AM
Phantom spokesman is emblematic of Chhattisgarh's secretive yet media-savvy Maoists
'Today I am Gudsa Usendi, tomorrow it could be someone else'
Maoists keenly aware of connection between surveillance and communication
Raipur: In the autumn of 2007, a suave, middle-aged man with a military bearing walked into Naresh Bazaar cloth store near the Bilaspur bus stand and bought a thousand metres of olive green tericot fabric for Rs. 101 a metre. According to a shop assistant, the man looked like an ex-serviceman, spoke in English, introduced himself as Sunil Choudhury, a private security contractor with contracts to secure factories across Chhattisgarh, and said he needed uniforms for his guards.
Later that year, Choudhury appeared at Dayaram Sahu's workshop in Raipur's Purani Basti and asked the struggling tailor to stitch him trousers of waist sizes 28, 30 and 36 inches with corresponding shirts. "He said he employed more than 50 security guards and each watchman needed three sets of uniform," said Sahu. "He asked for 35 uniforms, and promised another 100 sets if he liked my work."
It appears that Choudhury liked Sahu's work; when the Raipur police raided the workshop in early 2008, they claim to have found 634 metres of military green cloth, 200 trousers and 107 full-sleeved shirts.
Sunil Choudhury, the police said, was not a security contactor but was Katta Ramchandra Reddy alias Vijay alias Gudsa Usendi, a high ranking member and spokesperson of the Dandakaranya Special Zonal (DKZ) Committee of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist). The uniforms were meant for Maoist guerrillas rather than private security guards.
According to police charge sheets and court documents, Gudsa Usendi is the shadowy figure who sent compact discs of Maoist propaganda to Raipur politicians in 2006 and was the source of a consignment of 91 country-made shotguns recovered from a busy intersection in Raipur in 2008. The police claim he was in frequent contact with jailed human rights activist and award-winning paediatrician Binayak Sen and independent filmmaker Ajay T.G., an association denied by both Dr. Sen and Ajay. Gudsa's supposed wife, K.S. Malti, is currently in Raipur Central Jail; another alleged associate of his was arrested in Durg as recently as September last year. But who is Gudsa Usendi? "Gudsa Usendi is just a name," said a smooth voice over the telephone in August last year, "Today I am Gudsa Usendi, tomorrow it could be someone else. Gudsa Usendi is the title taken over by the spokesperson for the DKZ."
Maoist spokespersons have long had a fascination for aliases. Before he was slain in a police encounter last year, Maoist central committee spokesperson Cherukuri Rajkumar was known to the outside world as Azad (translated as Free), but within the party he went by several names including Madhu, Gangadhar, Uday and Dinesh. His successor goes by the name of Abhay (translated as Fearless); the spokesperson who handled the abduction of Malkangiri District Collector R.V. Krishna in February went by the name of 'Prasad,' but Dandakaranya's Gudsa Usendi is different, because Gudsa Usendi was once a 'real' person.
"It was at about three in the morning in Potenar village in Abujmarh. It was June 25 2000, it was raining heavily. There were six comrades in a hut when they were surrounded by the police," said a young Maoist fighter who called herself Rehmati. "Five comrades were killed, one of them was Gudsa Usendi. He was 17."
When he joined the Maoists, Gudsa Usendi dropped his given name and took on the moniker of 'Ramesh.' He was of the Maria tribe from Chhattisgarh's Abujmarh region, according to the Maoists. A year after his death, the Maoist spokesperson of Dandakaranya (broadly corresponding with South Chhattisgarh) took on his name to keep his memory alive and the practice has continued ever since.
The Maoists are wary of sharing organisational details with reporters, but anecdotal evidence suggests that Gudsa Usendi functions at the centre of a cloud of cell phones, laptops and individuals. A message from Gudsa Usendi could appear as a note under your door, a letter postmarked by a small town on the Chhattisgarh-Andhra Pradesh border, an email from an IP address that traces back to a neighbouring State, or a micro-SD card stuck to a sheet of paper.
In a recent meeting, a member of their communications team explained that every Maoist division (equivalent to a zilla in the panchayati sytem) has access to a laptop, memory cards, a portable inkjet printer and a cell phone. The netbook examined by this correspondent ran an open source Linux-based operating system with open source text, image and video editing software. Gudsa Usendi usually prepares a press note and hands it over to one of his assistants. Major press releases (like the announcement for Martyrs Week) are designed using crack versions of software like Adobe Pagemaker and converted into PDF format, before being sent to printing presses installed in secret locations.
"We prefer PDF format, because it removes the problem of fonts when issuing press releases in English and Hindi," explained an assistant, referring to a document format created by Adobe. The files are emailed from the top of a tall tree on a mountaintop where a GPRS enabled phone can log onto a stray network
All the devices are charged by truck batteries connected to solar panels. "Batteries provide direct current (DC); laptops and phones need alternating current (AC)," explained the assistant patiently, "So we add a DCAC inverter to the circuit and use solar power to charge our devices."
The Maoists are keenly aware of the connection between surveillance and communication. In the forests, only certain senior cadres are allowed to carry cell phones and use their devices sparingly. "We have to secure an area and post sentries before making a phone call," said a Maoist commander who carries a Nokia phone. However, the poor density of cellular towers in Maoist territories makes it hard to pinpoint the location of a particular phone.
On a windy day in Konta in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district for instance, it is possible to pick up reception from a tower in Andhra Pradesh's Khammam district; by moving 50 km northwards from the same spot in Konta, a user can start ranging towers in Orissa's Malkangiri district, moving further towards Chintrakonda in Malkangiri, the Andhra network comes back into range. Somewhere in that broad stretch of land, a man climbs up a tree, pulls out a cell phone from the folds of his clothes and makes a phone call. "Hello? I have a statement from Gudsa Usendi," he says.
Source:
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Posted By Cpi Maoist Naxalite to Naxalite Maoist India at 3/20/2011 08:24:00 AM
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