THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 24 December 2019 (It’s high time we gave our right to internet access legal sanctity (Mint))

It’s high time we gave our right to internet access legal sanctity (Mint)

Mains Paper 2: Polity
Prelims level: Right to internet concept
Mains level: Consequences behind the Right to internet concept

Context:

• The international intellectual spectrum began to claim that the “right to internet" is a fundamental human right.

Right to internet concept:

• Finland went a step further by famously legislating a right to broadband, although what it meant, in practice, was a more reasonable universal service obligation requiring all telecommunication companies to provide all residents with a line of at least 1Mbps.
• A number of countries and city governments around the world then started jumping on the “right to internet" bandwagon and began to offer taxpayer-funded Wi-Fi connections.
• In 2017, the Kerala government announced that internet access was a basic right and, this year, announced that it will spend ₹1,548 crore to build a fibre optic network to provide internet access to every household in the state.
• Last week New Delhi became the latest city government to offer “free" Wi-Fi to its residents.
• In these cases, the “right to internet" is being used as an intellectual wrapping to provide subsidized internet connections.
• Since the rights-based discourse is both fashionable and popular, it doesn’t hurt its proponents to declare internet access a fundamental right, especially if it means providing publicly financed freebies to the electorate.

Limitations about the concept:

• They violate contracts and represent unjustified government intervention in competitive markets.
• That these free Wi-Fi services unfairly undercut commercial Wi-Fi and 4G mobile services is conveniently ignored.
• In the series of blows that private telecom operators have received at the hands of the Indian government, this is perhaps one of the smaller ones.

Not count as a fundamental right:

• Free internet access cannot be a fundamental right, any more than food or education.
• These are no doubt basic human needs and a civilized society must ensure that everyone has them. But they are not fundamental rights.
• Fundamental rights are negative rights enforced against the state—the government cannot take away my fundamental right to free speech.
• It costs you nothing. But if internet access were to be a fundamental right, the government would have to pay for my internet connection, and that would come from the taxes you pay.
• Since there is no end to human needs and wants, with sufficiently passionate arguments, you can make a case for just about anything to be a fundamental right.
• The casualty of this flawed conceptualization of the “right to internet" is the idea that free citizens should be protected from arbitrary disconnections by the state.
• Given that internet penetration, dependence on electronic transactions and frequency of shutdowns have all grown since then, we are looking at economic costs that are in the vicinity of a percentage point of gross domestic product.

Matter of individual liberty:

• High as the economic costs are, the most important issue is of individual liberty.
• While no one denies the state its authority to maintain public order, instruments that abridge civil liberties must be used sparingly, limited in time and space and, most importantly, in exceptional circumstances.
• Unfortunately, political leaders and law enforcement authorities frequently use prohibitory orders as instruments of first resort.
• The imposition of prohibitory orders under Section 144 in the physical world, shutting down telephone and internet connections is frequently the first step the administration takes.
• This is an abuse of statutory provisions and an unconscionable abridgement of fundamental rights.
• In Kashmir, it has been 139 days without the internet. Even in sheer utilitarian terms, the collateral damage from cutting off telephone and internet connections even for a few hours almost always outweighs the benefits.

Conclusion:

• It is abundantly clear that the current process by which internet shutdowns are imposed not only has low thresholds and inadequate safeguards, it is insufficiently protective of the fundamental rights of citizens.
• In a more rigorous redefinition of the right to internet access, in 2016, the United Nations amended the definition of freedom of expression in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights to include the freedom to “impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers".

  Online Coaching for UPSC PRE Exam

  General Studies Pre. Cum Mains Study Materials

Prelims Questions:

Q.1) With reference to the Delhi Dialogue, consider the following statements:
1. The theme for this year’s Delhi Dialogue is "Advancing Partnership in Indo-Pacific”.
2. Delhi Dialogue is a premier annual track 1.5 event to discuss politico-security, economic and socio-cultural engagement between India and G20.

Which of the statements given above are correct?
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 only
(c) Both 1 and 2
(d) None of the above

Ans: C
Mains Questions:
Q.1) What do you mean by the Right to Internet concept? Do Indians need a new right to the internet? Critically comment.