Freedom House, a US based organization monitoring democratic changes, human rights and freedom of speech, has released its latest report in state of Internet. In this report, it has given ranks to 37 countries that were assessed on the basis of free and unrestricted access to the web. According to this report, India is ranked 14th among 37 countries in terms of Internet freedom. It ranked 2nd , next to South Korea, when compared to all Asian countries. India scored 36 on a scale of 100, while South Korea ranked 32. All over the world, Estonia stood 1st in the list.
According to the report,the Internet is only “partly free” in India. In spite of having no substantial political censorship, few bloggers and online users were arrested in the period of 2009-2011.
And the report said that, the Blogsphere in India is quite active, and except for few instances bloggers are rarely forced by the government to take down their writings.
Following 26/11 attacks in Mumbai and with an expanding Maoist insurgency, the need and ability of the Indian government to control the communications sector has grown. Indian government has also pressurized some of the private intermediaries to remove certain content. Most of the requests were made to remove targeted comments which were potential enough to evoke communal disputes, but others were unnecessary.
Globally, in democratic countries like India, South Korea, Indonesia, Brazil, Turkey and UK, Internet freedom is increasingly undermined by legal harassment, expanding surveillance, or opaque censorship procedures.
The report said that the new Internet restrictions around the globe are partially, because of aggressive usage of advanced applications like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, as normal users can post their own comments, share information and connect with large audiences. Even though they act as a form of entertainment, over the last two years these tools have also played a major role in political and social activism.
The report has also stated that there is a large difference in Internet penetration among the rural and urban online users. Rural user base is just 6.46 million in India, among which only 4.18 million are active users. It is reported that there are approximately 10 times more urban Internet users than rural Internet users in India.