Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Code-For-India: Bringing transparency and efficiency in Government functioning
My guest post on Code-For-India on lawandotherthings blog.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Can UTV Bindass be sued for "Emotional Atyachar"?
On flipping channel I recently found a show called "Emotional Atyachar" on UTV Bindass. The main objective of the show is to test if your partner is loyal to you or not. The show reminded me of the "Cheaters" thats aired on CW Plus. In Cheaters, a person can ask the show people to see if their partner is cheating or not. The crew would then follow the "suspected cheater" like a detective armed with cameras and video recorders. On finding that a partner is cheating, the crew allows the couple to confront each other. The whole episode is then shown on the television.
However, "Emotional Atyachar" is significantly different than "Cheaters". While Cheaters passively monitored the suspect, "Emotional Atyachar" will inject real people to allure the suspect to cheat. So "Emotional Atyachar" is not looking if a person is cheating but whether the person can possibly cheat.
The question I want to address is whether "UTV Bindass is liable for damages to an individual personal life or be criminally prosecuted". On searching through the Internet I found that there is a speculation that the whole serial is staged and no "real" life is getting affected. If that is the case then it is not a reality tv and there is no issue of suing as no one is getting hurt. If we do not believe in the speculation then the question is very serious. UTV can be sued for damages or the head of UTV Bindass may go to jail depending on how the laws are applied.
Apart from the ethical issue, there are two main legal issues involved:
1. Is UTV violating Indian broadcasting laws by airing obscene material or by denigrating women? - This is a much broader question which I am not interested to analyze.
2. Is UTV Bindass cheating the suspect by alluring him or her with pre-meditated objective?
The defintion of cheating is in Section 415 in The Indian Penal Code. It reads as:
Cheating.-- Whoever, by deceiving any person, fraudulently or dishonestly induces the person so deceived to ....(snipped).... intentionally induces the person so deceived to do or omit to do anything which he would not do or omit if he were not so deceived, and which act or omission causes or is likely to cause damage or harm to that person in body, mind, reputation or property, is said to" cheat".
And the punishment of cheating is in Section 417 in The Indian Penal Code:
Punishment for cheating.- Whoever cheats shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine, or with both.
While sting operation to expose truth in public interest is protected under freedom of speech and expression (Sri Bharadwaaj Media Pvt. Ltd. vs State on 27 November, 2007), the sting operation may not get a blanket protection.
So the final question for "Emotional Atyachar" is whether the person would have acted in that fashion if the allurement was not given.
I have heard that "emotional atyachar" gets permission from the suspect before releasing the video. However, if the person refuses to sign the agreement, he or she can take UTV Bindass to court and test the law.
However, "Emotional Atyachar" is significantly different than "Cheaters". While Cheaters passively monitored the suspect, "Emotional Atyachar" will inject real people to allure the suspect to cheat. So "Emotional Atyachar" is not looking if a person is cheating but whether the person can possibly cheat.
The question I want to address is whether "UTV Bindass is liable for damages to an individual personal life or be criminally prosecuted". On searching through the Internet I found that there is a speculation that the whole serial is staged and no "real" life is getting affected. If that is the case then it is not a reality tv and there is no issue of suing as no one is getting hurt. If we do not believe in the speculation then the question is very serious. UTV can be sued for damages or the head of UTV Bindass may go to jail depending on how the laws are applied.
Apart from the ethical issue, there are two main legal issues involved:
1. Is UTV violating Indian broadcasting laws by airing obscene material or by denigrating women? - This is a much broader question which I am not interested to analyze.
2. Is UTV Bindass cheating the suspect by alluring him or her with pre-meditated objective?
The defintion of cheating is in Section 415 in The Indian Penal Code. It reads as:
Cheating.-- Whoever, by deceiving any person, fraudulently or dishonestly induces the person so deceived to ....(snipped).... intentionally induces the person so deceived to do or omit to do anything which he would not do or omit if he were not so deceived, and which act or omission causes or is likely to cause damage or harm to that person in body, mind, reputation or property, is said to" cheat".
And the punishment of cheating is in Section 417 in The Indian Penal Code:
Punishment for cheating.- Whoever cheats shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine, or with both.
While sting operation to expose truth in public interest is protected under freedom of speech and expression (Sri Bharadwaaj Media Pvt. Ltd. vs State on 27 November, 2007), the sting operation may not get a blanket protection.
So the final question for "Emotional Atyachar" is whether the person would have acted in that fashion if the allurement was not given.
I have heard that "emotional atyachar" gets permission from the suspect before releasing the video. However, if the person refuses to sign the agreement, he or she can take UTV Bindass to court and test the law.
Monday, January 25, 2010
3 Idiots - Philosophically Advancing or Populist?
I was finally able to watch 3-idiots a couple of weeks back. The movie is pretty hilarious, music is amazing and everyone has done a very good job. I think you can find much detailed review of the movie elsewhere and I am going to focus only on the philosophical thinking advanced in the movie.
Before I start I want to make a few points clear. Firstly, many people believe that they are practical and they do not believe in any orthodox philosophy. In such a thinking, the role of philosophy is only for preaching others. I have argued earlier that philosphy is an abstraction to deal with the complexity of the world and so everyone has it. Secondly, philosophy is an abstraction of the world that people use for making principles and simplifies/catalysis/accelerates achievement of one's objectives. So keeping track of one's goals/objectives is also very important. This trade-off of objective vs principles has been talked a lot by Amartya Sen in his work in welfare economics and philosophy. In his recent work on the "Idea of justice", he talks about the trade-off between "Niti" (dharma/principles) and "Nyaya" (actual realization of justice). He has also argued against the take away point from Gita that "dharma is the only important thing" (citation slipped from my mind).
The 3 idiots is a broad criticism of the traditional thinking of Indian parents and teachers. It tries to highlight a more pragmatic and effective philosophical approach to current world. The 3-idiots reflect three different ideologies in form of three different characters:
1. Worrying about the fruits of a labor without thinking about the labor: The character is only interested in the job after study and not interested in the study itself. While clearly an illogical principle, focussing only on study is also not tenable. If I am going to study thermodynamic principles, should I completely shut off my mind on how it is used or can be used in future. If one's objective is to make money, thinking about its application is also pretty important.
2. Doing something other than what one is good at: This is talking about the trade-off between specialization and diversity. Clearly there is not much harmonization in the two extremes of the wild life and the engineering. However, this difference will get significantly blurred if it was a science subject like physics and an engineering subject like metallurgy. In one gets more specialized by focussing on more narrow issues, probably that is also pretty bad. Actually much of the interesting stuff is discovered through cross-discipline thinking.
3. Do what you love: Well clearly love is held at such high esteem that this principle is almost unassailable. The vague description of love makes it even more so. But let's ask if love is the most primate element or is it a developed feature. Well the ardent believer of "love is god" will argue the former point and considering the vague-ness of "god" and "love", this is almost unarguable. I believe that love for work is a developed feature that is mostly obtained through critical thinking and implementation of the ideas.
While all the three viewpoints advanced in the movie reject some obvious extremes of existing thinking, the proposed one does not sound much philosophically advancing. Actually I am more worried about supplanting one philosophy with another without talking about the goals/objectives. The critical thinking which is far more important that debating about philosophy is completely left out. So the movie does a pretty bad job of bringing out a good philosophical discourse and highlighting the importance of critical thinking.
Clearly the movie does an excellent job of rejecting different approaches advanced by parents and teachers. And in that sense I feel that movie was really aimed to satiate the populist and rebellious nature of the youngsters.
Overall I liked the movie but I certainly believe that the movie could have done a better job of bringing out a better discourse among the youngsters (not that I feel old myself :))
Before I start I want to make a few points clear. Firstly, many people believe that they are practical and they do not believe in any orthodox philosophy. In such a thinking, the role of philosophy is only for preaching others. I have argued earlier that philosphy is an abstraction to deal with the complexity of the world and so everyone has it. Secondly, philosophy is an abstraction of the world that people use for making principles and simplifies/catalysis/accelerates achievement of one's objectives. So keeping track of one's goals/objectives is also very important. This trade-off of objective vs principles has been talked a lot by Amartya Sen in his work in welfare economics and philosophy. In his recent work on the "Idea of justice", he talks about the trade-off between "Niti" (dharma/principles) and "Nyaya" (actual realization of justice). He has also argued against the take away point from Gita that "dharma is the only important thing" (citation slipped from my mind).
The 3 idiots is a broad criticism of the traditional thinking of Indian parents and teachers. It tries to highlight a more pragmatic and effective philosophical approach to current world. The 3-idiots reflect three different ideologies in form of three different characters:
1. Worrying about the fruits of a labor without thinking about the labor: The character is only interested in the job after study and not interested in the study itself. While clearly an illogical principle, focussing only on study is also not tenable. If I am going to study thermodynamic principles, should I completely shut off my mind on how it is used or can be used in future. If one's objective is to make money, thinking about its application is also pretty important.
2. Doing something other than what one is good at: This is talking about the trade-off between specialization and diversity. Clearly there is not much harmonization in the two extremes of the wild life and the engineering. However, this difference will get significantly blurred if it was a science subject like physics and an engineering subject like metallurgy. In one gets more specialized by focussing on more narrow issues, probably that is also pretty bad. Actually much of the interesting stuff is discovered through cross-discipline thinking.
3. Do what you love: Well clearly love is held at such high esteem that this principle is almost unassailable. The vague description of love makes it even more so. But let's ask if love is the most primate element or is it a developed feature. Well the ardent believer of "love is god" will argue the former point and considering the vague-ness of "god" and "love", this is almost unarguable. I believe that love for work is a developed feature that is mostly obtained through critical thinking and implementation of the ideas.
While all the three viewpoints advanced in the movie reject some obvious extremes of existing thinking, the proposed one does not sound much philosophically advancing. Actually I am more worried about supplanting one philosophy with another without talking about the goals/objectives. The critical thinking which is far more important that debating about philosophy is completely left out. So the movie does a pretty bad job of bringing out a good philosophical discourse and highlighting the importance of critical thinking.
Clearly the movie does an excellent job of rejecting different approaches advanced by parents and teachers. And in that sense I feel that movie was really aimed to satiate the populist and rebellious nature of the youngsters.
Overall I liked the movie but I certainly believe that the movie could have done a better job of bringing out a better discourse among the youngsters (not that I feel old myself :))
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