Shopkeepers said that vital supplies like insulin and baby food, which they typically ordered online, were running out. Cash was scarce, as metal shutters covered the doors and windows of banks and A.T.M.s, which relied on the internet for every transaction. Doctors said they could not communicate with their patients.
While nobody expects a war in their city, it's yet another example of why none of us should rely on the internet as our sole means of doing anything.
Imagine a city where cashless transactions were the norm. Then imagine some political group (internal or external) decides to cut off the internet to that city.
Or imagine an island hit by a hurricane. The lack of sufficient physical cash on-island in Puerto Rico after Maria in our telecomms-free condition was paralyzing for a couple of weeks.
And that's the US, no weird third-world phone-only transactions, just no Visa network for a while.
While I understand where you’re coming from, I don’t agree with this sentiment.
Imagine saying this about electricity or gasoline. Modern cities would be completely shut down without these resources, and we should treat the Internet in the same way - as a vital resource that we simply accept as present except in the most egregious or catastrophic circumstances.
Am Kashmiri. Was born there. Have family there. My parents were born and raised there. This is scary even for a region marked by persistent curfews, border clashes between two nuclear powers, and an ongoing series of conflicts between insurgents and the Indian Army.
We have extended family from whom we haven’t heard any news since this went into effect. It’s all just anxious waiting.
What could possibly be the endgame from this unless you’re trying to actively foment rebellion? How can this have any widespread support?
Why didn’t PDP grant permanent residency to the Sikh and Hindu refugees in Jammu from Poonch, Rawalakot, etc? No one is saying they would have gratefully voted for them but BJP talking point would have gone. Did they think they would demand the assembly seats from Muzaffarabad, Bagh etc?
Shutting down the internet in an effort to "keep the peace" is really dystopian: how do Indian citizens stand for it?
Maybe they're used to it?
FTA: "While Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promoted the rapid adoption of the internet, particularly on smartphones, to modernize India and bring it out of poverty, the country is also the world leader in shutting down the internet.
The country has increasingly deployed communications and internet stoppages to suppress potential protests, prevent rumors from spreading on WhatsApp, conduct elections and even stop students from cheating on exams. Last year, India blocked the internet 134 times, compared with 12 shutdowns in Pakistan, the No. 2 country, according to Access Now, a global digital rights group, which said its data understates the number of occurrences."
Any country that has been paying attention in recent years knows that the internet allows the opposition to organize, coordinate, and recruit effectively.
The US and China deal with this by ensuring they have leverage over the platforms that people use to communicate. Other countries that do not have this leverage, have to resort to shutting down the internet in areas of unrest.
Indian citizens, at least the progressive thinking ones, do not stand for shutting down the Internet connectivity for any purpose, more so since the governments (central and state) have been doing it without transparency and without strong laws or enforcement to protect freedoms.
Internet Freedom Foundation [1][2] has been trying to make this a thing of the past, but it's very early days. As a tangential example, postal services are stopped in Kashmir now. Nobody is able to find the exact government order that made this possible. This is despite having RTI (Right to Information, the equivalent to the US FoIA). That's the sad level of governance going on for a long time in the country.
Majoritarian views — that prefer less freedom — on social media and broadcast media like TV don't help the situation much.
I don't think you are aware about Kashmir's situation prior to the abrogation of the article. Stone-pelting(sponsored by seperatists) and murder of civilians by terrorists were common. There is also significant amount of Pakistan-backed propaganda in the valley. Pakistanis have already flooded the internet with photos/videos from Syria, Palestine etc. and are claiming them to be from Kashmir. Considering this, what do you think would've happened if communication was fully open?
In my city Jaipur, there was internet shutdown for last 3 days in some areas because communal tensions flared up and situation had to be brought under control. I stand by it because putting myself in the administration's shoes, I know for a fact that you WILL have a lot of casualties if you don't do that. It's a sad reality.
Not just internet but mobile phones and even landlines. Only a handful out of 100s of newspapers are being published and that too with restricted pages. Mainstream pro-India political leaders have been arrested along with lawyers, professors, activists and general public.
Mesh networks please! Briar, Meshenger , heck maybe we need to make a cell phone app to provide internet connection sharing over WiFi and or Bluetooth ad hoc networks.
Can it replace full isps? Almost never. Can it enable light text based things like emails, ordering supplies or cashless trxns? Maybe...
The biggest problem is scale of course, having such a large geographic area would require most of the population to have this mesh app active at once plus several 'exit nodes' with access to actual isp traffic somewhere in other regions.
IDK this is a spitball reaction that I considered not posting as it doesn't seem very thought provoking like normal HN comments but if it Sparks discussion then it will have done its job.
Until recently, I had a strongly positive impression of India, as an outsider: rapidly modernizing, forward thinking and tolerant. Indians I meet in real life certainly tend to reinforce that position. However, I stumbled upon Indian Twitter during the election campaign, and I have been shocked by the vicious hatred and massive troll armies, that exceed anything I’ve noticed elsewhere. I imagine that WhatsApp is worse. The shocking behaviour has greatly diminished my opinion of the country, and it now strikes me as a powder-keg of hate.
The article mentions that the internet is being promoted as a way of advancing the country...if that’s advancement, it may be better for India to hit the brakes.
> I have been shocked by the vicious hatred and massive troll armies, that exceed anything I’ve noticed elsewhere
Mutual distrust and animosity was always there underneath the surface. The internet is just making it a lot more visible to outsiders.
Don't forget that India itself was born during violent and widespread Hindu-Muslim clashes that displaced some 10+ million people from their homelands and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of others. The past history of India has been quite violent if you think about it. We have had several insurgencies fueled by ethnic hatred and real or imagined grievances. The 80s and the 90s were very violent years. We had the Gujarat riots (or pogrom, depending on whom you ask) as late as 2002.
The freewheeling, anonymous nature of the internet just makes ideas fueling hatred to spread fast. Now it is easier for skilled rhetoricians to infect others. Everyone is getting radicalized - Hindus, Muslims, various caste and ethnic groups, you name it.
All this is not even counting any bots and propaganda armies on the internet working overtime to project a certain narrative. I fear that things might get worse, much worse, before they get better.
You judged a country of a billion people by two small subsets. No country has as diverse a people as India. It comes with its own set of problems. "don't use the internet" reeks of such privilege.
It would have been occupation if Kashmiris had lesser rights but that's not the case. People don't ask what rights did people of Kashmir didn't have that people of India had since 1947.
India is a country of diverse religions, and ethnic groups.
If a minority group demands separate nation should you give autonomy to it? If London becomes Muslim majority, and demands separation, should England give in to that demand?
If India gives away Kashmir, it means you can never trust minority of your country because they can ask for separate nation and the world will support that demand.
Do we really think that helps the cause of minorities in India or any other country in the world?
At what point is a region so distinct from the state in which it resides that the best course of action would be secession? When I read the news I see conflicts in integration every where: Hong Kong, Kashmir, Kurdish Syria / Turkey. My general feeling is that due to a number of factors (imperialism, war, etc.) that our current global map just doesn't reflect the reality of international relations, unfortunately border disputes are rarely resolved peacefully...
Balkanization has been tried, you know. Thousands of times. That doesn't work so well either. It sounds glib and naive, but at the end of the day the path to peace is just for people to stop fighting, forgive past sins and learn to live with each other.
And generally that happens only after they get wealthy. Which makes shutting down core civil infrastructure deeply counterproductive.
I think the reality is that while politicians draw borders, and governments like them not to move, people move, ideals change, cultures spread and any region eventually doesn't match its lines on a map.
Sometimes it's messy (Yugoslav Wars), sometimes it's more civil (Virginia/West Virginia). But change happens. It's how we react and manage that change that helps define us as a people.
Well India has 20-30 odd states that are each, as distinct as countries in Europe. So answers to your questions lie in understanding how they have stayed integrated inspite of all the differences.
I generally try to stay away from threads related to Kashmir across social media because they tend to be toxic with people having absolutely no regard for democracy and basic human decency towards others. I thought HN discussion would be better and while it was a little better, it turned out to be more or less the same. In retrospect, I shouldn't have expected otherwise.
Speak for people who are silenced. Don't let overwhelming propaganda demotivate you, the article stands for itself. Propaganda in here is actually transparent and future visitors will be able to discern it. Make their job easier.
Hindu Chauvinist party. Really? There are dozens of countries with Islamic constitutions. Do we call all their leaders Islamic nationalists? There is a serious effort to malign democratic norms in India unless it is only for Islam, which was the state of affairs for J&K. Hindus in Jammu and Ladakh which were part of the state of J&K were second class citizens. That has been removed. Property rights of females is also restored unlike the Kashmiri Sharia influenced constitution.
Kashmiri separatism is another in the line of Islamic jihadi separatism. It was co-opted by the Pakistanis because they only consider that Muslims can live ruled by Mullahs and Sharia and an Islamic constitution.
You will probably find 75% people in India or more in agreement with Modi's action. The whip of the largest opposition party quit his party because he agreed with BJP's actions. Remember that the resolutions passed parliament with 66% of votesin the Rajya Sabha and 84% in the Lok Sabha. That is greater than the numbers of the BJP so many other parties joined them in this.
India's 1.3 billion people will have no problem fighting another war with Pakistan if again attacked over Kashmir.
The international media might as well get used to it.
Exactly how many people does she think are going to vote in panchayat elections in Baramulla, Anantnag, Sopore, Shopian, etc? Has she checked the turnout last time?
In a historical sense, when a government shut off communications out of some place somewhere, has there been a time they were just doing good things? In a Bayesian sense, I feel like any time someone is saying "Nobody from inside here can tell anyone outside anything", that someone isn't really doing good things.
I wonder if it's worthwhile to install some sort of LibertyWeb that forms a meshnet+satellite internet that allows text through, just in case governments turn authoritarian.
The shutdown is because 10% of the population of Indian Kashmir is hardcore wahabi sunni and holding the rest of it to ransom. People forget the 45% non muslim population suffering and the rest muslim population who dont turn up to these stone pelting protests.
If J&K Police has some cell in Srinagar writing form letters to Twitter in San Francisco every time someone posts something they don't like God help them when the Internet comes back on.
Wow. Matters always get heated up when J&K comes up. Folks, chill out. This is HN, not one of the toxic comment cesspools around the internet.
IMO, the removal of article 370 was a good move because:
- Article 370 was originally meant to be temporary. Central governments before the current one did not have the will, numbers and political spine to get it done.
- Kashmir, as it was, would have been fine if it was a progressive and developing state. Yes, it has developed compared what the situation was before, but give the amount of money that is poured in there per capita, compared to the rest of the country, is a lot! And it does not reach the people.
- The traditional Federal and State government model works decently well but it does not work with Kashmir and the local government could pick and choose only the new rules and amendments they liked. Anecdote: Kashmir government has a tenure of 6 years, the rest of India: 5 years. India had made that provision for a short time and was rolled back. Since it was more convenient for Kashmiri politicians, it was adopted and kept.
- Indian Supreme Court rulings did not always apply to Kashmir.
- The new Union Territory of Ladakh wanted to be so for a long time.
- Local politicians loved article 370. It gave them the autonomy to get more money and leverage to keep themselves in power. They often walked a diplomatic line so as to keep the money lines open from India and keep Pakistan engaged and enticed.
- Regional and religious Separatists thrives in J&K, often getting financed by Pakistan and inciting the people and youth in J&K. These money sources are being cut off since months now, slowing reducing the illicit finances to these activities.
- From what I have seen from interviews of locals, people are happy to angry about the change, while some are just unhappy with the ‘change’ as they had adapted to the conditions.
Now, about the way it was done:
- the central government did the necessary groundwork to identify threats and risks.
- recalled all tourists, pilgrims and out of state students from the area.
- Sent in army platoons to maintain law and order situation.
- clamped down on local leadership
- took down the internet services
- increases alertness along the Pakistan border.
Though I would personally hate to be in this situation, I think I understand and appreciate why it was done.
Absence of even some of the above measures would have resulted in the spread of massive misinformation or even propaganda and resulted in violent incidents on scale. Local politicians and separatists would be the ones to provoke this as removal of article 370 had a direct impact on their power and influence. The situation could have been dire and the same opposition parties would have been singing a different tune as to ‘why were adequate measures not taken’?
The restrictions are already being phased out and I hope the life for general population normalizes soon.
All this is done, but what next?
The removal of article 370 has had multiple challenges in the Supreme Court, so it has yet to be seen how it plays out. Also, there is a lot of work that needs to be done there in the coming years to win over the trust of the local populace. Security threats may increase - as it can be easily seen how unhappy Pakistan is with the removal of article 370. Those have to be tackled.
How this move actually works out depends on how the government tackles the upcoming hurdles, and J&K being a UT would certainly help them.
This is my opinion about the situation and the way it was tacked. Hope I am not downvoted into oblivion for this. Oh, well. :shrug:
Would your opinion lead you to believe that India should act quickly and remedy the unacceptable state of affairs in which the residents find themselves?
[+] [-] reaperducer|6 years ago|reply
While nobody expects a war in their city, it's yet another example of why none of us should rely on the internet as our sole means of doing anything.
Imagine a city where cashless transactions were the norm. Then imagine some political group (internal or external) decides to cut off the internet to that city.
[+] [-] Vivtek|6 years ago|reply
And that's the US, no weird third-world phone-only transactions, just no Visa network for a while.
[+] [-] selimthegrim|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SoylentOrange|6 years ago|reply
Imagine saying this about electricity or gasoline. Modern cities would be completely shut down without these resources, and we should treat the Internet in the same way - as a vital resource that we simply accept as present except in the most egregious or catastrophic circumstances.
[+] [-] jkoudys|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 420codebro|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] adpirz|6 years ago|reply
What could possibly be the endgame from this unless you’re trying to actively foment rebellion? How can this have any widespread support?
[+] [-] selimthegrim|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tlb|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saagarjha|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reaperducer|6 years ago|reply
Maybe they're used to it?
FTA: "While Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promoted the rapid adoption of the internet, particularly on smartphones, to modernize India and bring it out of poverty, the country is also the world leader in shutting down the internet.
The country has increasingly deployed communications and internet stoppages to suppress potential protests, prevent rumors from spreading on WhatsApp, conduct elections and even stop students from cheating on exams. Last year, India blocked the internet 134 times, compared with 12 shutdowns in Pakistan, the No. 2 country, according to Access Now, a global digital rights group, which said its data understates the number of occurrences."
[+] [-] RcouF1uZ4gsC|6 years ago|reply
The US and China deal with this by ensuring they have leverage over the platforms that people use to communicate. Other countries that do not have this leverage, have to resort to shutting down the internet in areas of unrest.
[+] [-] wtmt|6 years ago|reply
Internet Freedom Foundation [1][2] has been trying to make this a thing of the past, but it's very early days. As a tangential example, postal services are stopped in Kashmir now. Nobody is able to find the exact government order that made this possible. This is despite having RTI (Right to Information, the equivalent to the US FoIA). That's the sad level of governance going on for a long time in the country.
Majoritarian views — that prefer less freedom — on social media and broadcast media like TV don't help the situation much.
[1]: https://internetfreedom.in
[2]: https://twitter.com/internetfreedom
[+] [-] sbmthakur|6 years ago|reply
Is the communication blockade bad? Yes.
Is it necessary to keep the peace? Yes.
[+] [-] eklavya|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldtea|6 years ago|reply
Complain on Twitter? Oops, you can't.
Take it to the streets? So?
[+] [-] owaislone|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NikolaeVarius|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Multicomp|6 years ago|reply
Can it replace full isps? Almost never. Can it enable light text based things like emails, ordering supplies or cashless trxns? Maybe...
The biggest problem is scale of course, having such a large geographic area would require most of the population to have this mesh app active at once plus several 'exit nodes' with access to actual isp traffic somewhere in other regions.
IDK this is a spitball reaction that I considered not posting as it doesn't seem very thought provoking like normal HN comments but if it Sparks discussion then it will have done its job.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] throwaway99033|6 years ago|reply
The article mentions that the internet is being promoted as a way of advancing the country...if that’s advancement, it may be better for India to hit the brakes.
[+] [-] Arun2009|6 years ago|reply
Mutual distrust and animosity was always there underneath the surface. The internet is just making it a lot more visible to outsiders.
Don't forget that India itself was born during violent and widespread Hindu-Muslim clashes that displaced some 10+ million people from their homelands and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of others. The past history of India has been quite violent if you think about it. We have had several insurgencies fueled by ethnic hatred and real or imagined grievances. The 80s and the 90s were very violent years. We had the Gujarat riots (or pogrom, depending on whom you ask) as late as 2002.
The freewheeling, anonymous nature of the internet just makes ideas fueling hatred to spread fast. Now it is easier for skilled rhetoricians to infect others. Everyone is getting radicalized - Hindus, Muslims, various caste and ethnic groups, you name it.
All this is not even counting any bots and propaganda armies on the internet working overtime to project a certain narrative. I fear that things might get worse, much worse, before they get better.
[+] [-] mav3rick|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hemansan|6 years ago|reply
It would have been occupation if Kashmiris had lesser rights but that's not the case. People don't ask what rights did people of Kashmir didn't have that people of India had since 1947.
India is a country of diverse religions, and ethnic groups. If a minority group demands separate nation should you give autonomy to it? If London becomes Muslim majority, and demands separation, should England give in to that demand?
If India gives away Kashmir, it means you can never trust minority of your country because they can ask for separate nation and the world will support that demand.
Do we really think that helps the cause of minorities in India or any other country in the world?
[+] [-] 40acres|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajross|6 years ago|reply
And generally that happens only after they get wealthy. Which makes shutting down core civil infrastructure deeply counterproductive.
[+] [-] reaperducer|6 years ago|reply
Sometimes it's messy (Yugoslav Wars), sometimes it's more civil (Virginia/West Virginia). But change happens. It's how we react and manage that change that helps define us as a people.
[+] [-] hos234|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] RcouF1uZ4gsC|6 years ago|reply
There is also a portion of the area that is claimed by China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jammu_and_Kashmir#/media/File:...
[+] [-] owaislone|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iamshs|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] selimthegrim|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kappi|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amalag|6 years ago|reply
Kashmiri separatism is another in the line of Islamic jihadi separatism. It was co-opted by the Pakistanis because they only consider that Muslims can live ruled by Mullahs and Sharia and an Islamic constitution.
You will probably find 75% people in India or more in agreement with Modi's action. The whip of the largest opposition party quit his party because he agreed with BJP's actions. Remember that the resolutions passed parliament with 66% of votesin the Rajya Sabha and 84% in the Lok Sabha. That is greater than the numbers of the BJP so many other parties joined them in this.
India's 1.3 billion people will have no problem fighting another war with Pakistan if again attacked over Kashmir.
The international media might as well get used to it.
[+] [-] selimthegrim|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chopete|6 years ago|reply
Can those companies fund a few days' worth of live streaming of key areas? It gives everybody an option to see the reality/facts instead of opinions.
Nobody knows whom to trust in these crisis times and everything appears as an opinion of an individual or a small group.
[+] [-] sumedh|6 years ago|reply
I assume these companies dont want any trouble from the Indian Govt if they have business in India.
[+] [-] scarejunba|6 years ago|reply
I wonder if it's worthwhile to install some sort of LibertyWeb that forms a meshnet+satellite internet that allows text through, just in case governments turn authoritarian.
[+] [-] sniperjzp|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rounce|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amriksohata|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] selimthegrim|6 years ago|reply
If J&K Police has some cell in Srinagar writing form letters to Twitter in San Francisco every time someone posts something they don't like God help them when the Internet comes back on.
[+] [-] surds|6 years ago|reply
IMO, the removal of article 370 was a good move because:
- Article 370 was originally meant to be temporary. Central governments before the current one did not have the will, numbers and political spine to get it done.
- Kashmir, as it was, would have been fine if it was a progressive and developing state. Yes, it has developed compared what the situation was before, but give the amount of money that is poured in there per capita, compared to the rest of the country, is a lot! And it does not reach the people.
- The traditional Federal and State government model works decently well but it does not work with Kashmir and the local government could pick and choose only the new rules and amendments they liked. Anecdote: Kashmir government has a tenure of 6 years, the rest of India: 5 years. India had made that provision for a short time and was rolled back. Since it was more convenient for Kashmiri politicians, it was adopted and kept.
- Indian Supreme Court rulings did not always apply to Kashmir.
- The new Union Territory of Ladakh wanted to be so for a long time.
- Local politicians loved article 370. It gave them the autonomy to get more money and leverage to keep themselves in power. They often walked a diplomatic line so as to keep the money lines open from India and keep Pakistan engaged and enticed.
- Regional and religious Separatists thrives in J&K, often getting financed by Pakistan and inciting the people and youth in J&K. These money sources are being cut off since months now, slowing reducing the illicit finances to these activities.
- From what I have seen from interviews of locals, people are happy to angry about the change, while some are just unhappy with the ‘change’ as they had adapted to the conditions.
Now, about the way it was done: - the central government did the necessary groundwork to identify threats and risks. - recalled all tourists, pilgrims and out of state students from the area. - Sent in army platoons to maintain law and order situation. - clamped down on local leadership - took down the internet services - increases alertness along the Pakistan border.
Though I would personally hate to be in this situation, I think I understand and appreciate why it was done.
Absence of even some of the above measures would have resulted in the spread of massive misinformation or even propaganda and resulted in violent incidents on scale. Local politicians and separatists would be the ones to provoke this as removal of article 370 had a direct impact on their power and influence. The situation could have been dire and the same opposition parties would have been singing a different tune as to ‘why were adequate measures not taken’?
The restrictions are already being phased out and I hope the life for general population normalizes soon.
All this is done, but what next?
The removal of article 370 has had multiple challenges in the Supreme Court, so it has yet to be seen how it plays out. Also, there is a lot of work that needs to be done there in the coming years to win over the trust of the local populace. Security threats may increase - as it can be easily seen how unhappy Pakistan is with the removal of article 370. Those have to be tackled.
How this move actually works out depends on how the government tackles the upcoming hurdles, and J&K being a UT would certainly help them.
This is my opinion about the situation and the way it was tacked. Hope I am not downvoted into oblivion for this. Oh, well. :shrug:
[+] [-] agilecharacter|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pipingdog|6 years ago|reply
It would seem that India has the more practically demonstrable claim.
[+] [-] eschulz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] salqadri|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eqtn|6 years ago|reply