Rules to monitor Social Media – Where is the Democracy ???

Kapil Sibal, India’s acting telecommunications minister has reported to ask, on behave of Indian government, social media sites like Facebook to prescreen user content from India and to remove disparaging, inflammatory or defamatory content before it goes online. (source - http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/05/india-asks-google-facebook-others-to-screen-user-content/).

The main issue was said to be a Facebook page speaking against the Congress Party’s president, Sonia Gandhi. He told the Internet Marketing companies representatives to screen the content manually and not by using technology. Let me remind you the person who is highlighting manual use over the technology is representing a nation like India in Telecommunication industry.

This is not the first time when a country wants to screen the user generated content. US with their copyright holders issue and China with its objective to avoid pornography in their respective country has previously made similar requests with the Internet Companies. But these countries are doing this with a clear-cut purpose in their mind. The purpose that promises growth, not of an individual, but of a whole community. But the reason provided be Mr. Kapil Sibal was merely focusing on a political party. And above all how can one forget that India is said to be a biggest Democratic nation.

The Google transparency report shows that India has already raised 68 removal requests for disputed contents.

This clearly shows that “The Right of Expression” comes with an asterisk symbol (*) - *Condition Apply. Unless and until what you are expressing is being liked by the political party in Rule you are not supposed to do that.