The Information Technology Bill has finally been passed by Parliament thereby making it into an Act. However, there is little information on the hectic parleys that were held behind scenes before it was finally framed. According to our correspondent, every Government department wanted a share of the cyber cake but most were unable to furnish plausible arguments to buttress their demands. The only ones who may have succeeded are the police; the cops can now invade any cyber café and arrest the owner on suspicion of violating the law.
This list has been prepared by our correspondent of the other proposals that have not been accepted. Yet. He says that it's still possible that they may enter the statute books by way of amendments. On the other hand, our correspondent also has this habit of spending most of his time sleeping, so we're really not sure how much of this he actually dreamt up.
Anyway, here goes his version:
I. The Department of Posts: The volume of inland and overseas snail mail has suffered drastically due to the widespread use of email. The DoP wants to remedy this situation by ensuring that postage has t be paid for each email sent from within the country. However, the minor technical issue of actually gluing on the stamp on to an electronic document has to be sorted out before this measure can be implemented.
2. The Commerce Ministry: Wants all B2B and B2C transactions to come under its jurisdiction. Copies of all such transactions will have to be forwarded to the Ministry for clearance and can only be completed on receipt of approval. Is also interested in curbing software downloaded from foreign websites without prior permission because the mandarins believe this is akin to smuggling.
3. The Finance Ministry: Wants to enter virtual territory. Now aware of the valuations based on the promises of virtual gains, it wants to levy a virtual income tax and capital gains tax that will encompass virtually every Indian website. However, payments will have to be made in real money.
4. Municipal Corporations: Are greatly upset over the fact that netizens are building home of the web without paying their due to the authorities. They want to introduce property tax on each homepage computed on the basis of covered area. Owners will have to submit complete plans for approval and any deviation from the sanctioned plan will attract a penalty. There are also proposals for online credit card-based payment of bribes. After all, they've also moved on to the cyber age.
5. The Department of Sports: Is unhappy over the mushrooming of cricket sites on the web and wants owners to be forced to compulsorily include information and updates on other Indian sports of equal significance. Sports already identified for this purpose include kabaddi, kho kho and carrom.
6. The Health Ministry: Is upset over the possibility of an epidemic of diseases related to over-exposure to PCs, including carpal tunnel syndrome, various spinal and eye afflictions. As a result, it has proposed that every user log the number of hours spent on the computer and pay a tax on that basis. This sum will be utilised in augmenting the public health system (two ACs in the Medical Superintendents' room instead of one).
7. The Department of Culture: Is worried over the level of cultural pollution that is infiltrating Indian homes via their PCs. As a result, it wants to curtail access to all such sites that evidence signs of Western cultural imperialism or unIndianness. It has also suggested that the remaining four sites be monitored at greater length to ensure that their content does not violate the stipulated norms.
8. The Indian Railways: Wants to utilise its pan-India network to build and Internet backbone. However, this could also mean long waiting lists for accessing websites.
9. The External Affairs Ministry: Is unhappy over the unrestricted mobility of Indians in cyberspace, wandering recklessly into foreign websites. Wants to introduce a passport for all those wishing to access, say, a site in Botswana. These passports will only be issued after the usual six-month procedure including police verification of the antecedents of the surfer.
10. The Welfare Ministry: Is upset over the skewed demographics of the websites that have already been launched. ants to ensure that at least 67 per cent of all such sites are targeted at Other Backward castes (OBCs), 22.5 per cent at Scheduled Castes (SCs) and 2.5 per cent at Scheduled Tribes (STs). The remaining websites can be made available to the general category surfer.