Press Clips-5 Index
119.
The feeding frenzy of kleptocracy– The Hindu
120. With Galaxy S4, will Samsung outsmart Apple? – The
Hindu
121. ‘Mischievous’ nerve that links the ear to the heart
122.
U.K. deal on press norms retains independence
123. Quality of U.S. news reportage goes down
124. Inculcate best practices of foreign universities: Pranab
125 Rusbridger: people’s dependency on scribes reduced
126. No country for newborn children
127. Change Internet laws: Schmidt
128. Alarm over charges against Twitterati
129. First colourful Holi for Vrindavan widows
130. Tankers and the economy of thirst
131. The past & present of Indian environmentalism
132
Nick D’Aloisio: 'It was a massive gamble but a good one’
March 16, 2013 15:53 IST
March 16, 2013 15:53 IST
The feeding frenzy of kleptocracy
Since 2005-06, taxes and duties for the corporate world and the rich have been written off at the rate of Rs.7 million a minute on average. Duties waived on gold and diamonds in the last 36 months equal the 2G scam amount
Forbes has just added an “errata” to Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram’s budget speech. The Minister had found a mere 42,800 people in the country with a taxable income in excess of Rs.1 crore a year. Or $184,000 a year. Forbes, the Oracle of Business Journalism, does not list taxable incomes. But it does put up a list each year of billionaires the world over. And in 2013, 55 Indians figure on that list, (up from 48 last year) with an average net worth of around Rs.190.8 billion. (See: http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/)Their total net worth is $ 193.6 billion. That’s…er, Rs.10.5 trillion. Chidambaram might want to compare notes with Steve Forbes. They could come up with a lot more names falling within his narrow super-rich spectrum.
The 55 wonder-wallets give India fifth rank in the world of billionaires on the Forbes List. Behind only the U.S., China, Russia and Germany. Our rank in the 2013 United Nations Human Development Index, though, is 136 out of 186 nations. With almost all of Latin America and the Caribbean, bar Haiti, ahead of us. (We have, though, elsewhere managed to tie with Equatorial Guinea.)
Class divide
Well, okay, the total worth of our megabucks mob comes to just over $193 billion. But a glance within reveals a grim class divide. At the bottom are the aam aadmi tycoons, barely scraping past the one billion-dollar mark. There are four of them, inches away from plutocrat penury, with only a mere billion to their names. There are 17 in all below the BPL (Billionaire Permanency Line), which seems to be $1.5 billion. Once you cross that threshold, you tend to be a permanent member of the club.
There’s another 12 in the magnate middle classes, between $1.5 and $2 billion. Next, the deluxe segment: 16 of them — above $2 billion, below $5.5 billion. And finally, the big boys — above $6 billion each. The top 10 are worth $102.2 billion. (A bit more than our fiscal deficit of $96 billion.) There is also a platinum tier. The top three account for a quarter of our total billionaire wealth, if Forbes is to be believed.
I’m not sure Forbes is to be believed. All these sound like grave underestimates. Meanwhile the Chinese and Russians have forged ahead of us on the List. (Steve, I demand a recount). Either the Chinese and Russians are up to no good, or Indian creative accounting is keeping our numbers down. This fiasco becomes particularly galling when we’ve all been investing so heavily in the growth of our super-rich and better-off. Some $97 billion in this year’s budget. You can express that as Rs.5.28 lakh crore (as our tables do). Or, as Rs.5.28 trillion. It’s just as obscene either way. (See:Statement of Revenue Foregone http://indiabudget.nic.in/ub2013-14/statrevfor/annex12.pdf). Heck, we deserve a better performance from our billionaires.
One of the biggest write-offs in this year’s budget is the customs duty on gold, diamonds and jewellery — Rs.61,035 crore. That’s more than what’s been written off on “crude oil & mineral oils.” Or even on “machinery.” The waiver on gold and diamonds in just the last 36 months is Rs.1.76 trillion. (Or what we lost in the 2G scam). I guess we shouldn’t be surprised, then, that three new Indian entrants to this year’s Forbes Billionaires List are in the field of jewellery.
It’s not as if we haven’t been generous with them in other sectors, though. The latest write-off in corporate income tax is even higher at Rs.68,006 crore. The total revenue foregone this year (Rs.5.28 trillion), as others have pointed out, is greater than the fiscal deficit. But just look at what the write-offs on corporate tax, excise and customs duties add up to since 2005-06, from when the data begins: Rs.31.11 trillion. (That’s well over half a trillion dollars). It also means we’re writing off taxes and duties for the corporate mob and rich at a rate of over Rs.7 million every single minute on average.
But the budget has almost nothing worthwhile for, say, health or education where there’s a decline compared to allocations last year (in proportion to GDP). Ditto for rural development. And a micro-rise for food that will quickly be taken care of by prices.
Gee. It seems there’s no need for the super-rich to commit half their fortunes to charity. They are the charity we all of us support. End the lavish waivers, pay your taxes and we’d be in glowing fiscal health. Every other economic survey and/or budget has noted the obscene write-offs as a source of worry and said so. Recall that the Prime Minister and Finance Minister have both in the past promised to end this corporate feeding frenzy at the public trough. But it only gets bigger.
What gets smaller is India’s tax to GDP ratio. In Mr. Chidambaram’s own words: “In 2011-12, the tax-GDP ratio was 5.5 per cent for direct taxes and 4.4 per cent for indirect taxes. These ratios are one of the lowest for any large developing country and will not garner adequate resources for inclusive and sustainable development.” (Emphasis added) But he does nothing to correct that by way of raising revenue. Only by curbing expenditures in the social sector. He’s nostalgic, though, for a time when “in 2007-08, the tax GDP ratio touched a peak of 11.9 per cent.” That was when the write-off trough was much smaller.
Food security
What also gets smaller is the idea of food security in a nation where the percentage of malnourished children is nearly double that of sub-Saharan Africa. How do they get past the porcine gridlock at the budget trough?
Also getting smaller is the average per capita net availability of foodgrain. And that’s despite showing an improved figure of 462.9 grams daily for 2011. (Caution: that’s a provisional number). Even then, the five-year average for 2007-11 comes to 444.6 grams. Still lower than the 2002-06 figure of 452.4 grams.
It’s scary: as we warned last year — average per capita net availability of foodgrain declined in every five-year period of the 'reforms' without exception. In the 20 years preceding the reforms — 1972-1991 — it rose every five-year period without exception (see: Table 3).
Ah, but they’re eating a lot of better stuff, hence the decline in cereals and pulses.
So drone on the Marie Antoinette School of Economics and assorted other clowns. Eating a lot better? Tell that to the nation’s children — for whom sub-Saharan standards would be an improvement. Tell that to the famished in a country ranking 65 in the 79 hungriest nations in the Global Hunger Index (GHI). (Eight slots below Rwanda.) India’s GHI score in 2012 was worse than it was 15 years earlier in 1996. Tell it to Forbes. Maybe they could do a list of the most insensitive elites in the world. You know who’d top that one.
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With Galaxy S4, will Samsung outsmart Apple?
APThe new Samsung Galaxy S4 is presented at Radio City Music Hall in New York on Thursday.
Samsung has taken the smartphone war to Apple’s doorstep with the Galaxy S4, unveiled in New York City on Thursday night.
The feature-rich S4 is the Korean giant’s latest attempt to topple the current king, Apple, from its throne.
“Once you spend time with the Galaxy S4, I’m very confident that you’ll find how its innovations make your life simpler and fuller,” J.K. Shin, president of Samsung Mobile Communications, told a packed New York audience.
Mr. Shin’s statement marks a sharp difference from the previous attributes Samsung has marketed its line-up with, namely strong hardware and soft price points, and instead looks to break into the late Steve Jobs’ domain – software, features and the ‘smartphone experience’.
The shiny new ‘smart scroll and smart pause’ feature, for instance, monitors the user’s eye movements and behaves accordingly. Tilting the S4, while staring at it, will scroll the web pages up or down accordingly. On the other hand, the ‘moving beyond touch’ option allows scrolling through web pages or photographs with a simple wave of the hand.
While India will be one of the earlier countries to receive the phone, according to a company spokesperson, Samsung is looking at shedding its copycat label — something it has often be criticised of in India and the U.S.
The high-profile song and dance launch in Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall proved one thing, however. The stakes in this war have never been higher.
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March 18, 2013
‘Mischievous’ nerve that links the ear to the heart
Trauma to the ear can cause dangerous fall in heart rate, BP
The death of a 37-year-old schoolteacher last week after she was reportedly slapped by her scientist-husband may have perplexed many. But, doctors say nerves inside the ear are connected to the heart and chances are that a person will collapse when hit on the ear.
This also probably explains why some people tend to get giddiness, nausea and headache when they get their ear cleaned by an ENT (ear, nose and throat) specialist.
Should be quick
ENT specialists have sometimes referred their patients to cardiologists. According to them, if diagnosis of ENT cases has to be done using an instrument, it must be completed within a few seconds.
For, some patients, especially those with congenital neuromuscular anomalies in the lung, heart and larynx, can suddenly develop bradycardia (a condition where the heart rate comes down) if the instrument lingers inside for more than a few seconds, says ENT specialist J.P. Bhattacharjee.
This, explains Dr. Bhattacharjee, is because of the stimulation of the ‘vagus nerve’. “It is also why some people start coughing when the ear is touched for removal of wax from it.”
A ‘vagabond’
Doctors describe the vagus nerve, which arises from the brain and runs from the throat to the abdomen, as the “vagabond” nerve, because it has the potential to cause mischief.
Bangalore-based ENT specialist Ravi Kaushik says that although death following a slap on the ear is rare, the slap can stimulate the vagus nerve that is connected to the heart, resulting in blockage.
Being fainthearted
C.N. Manjunath, Director of Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences in Bangalore, says stimulation of the vagus nerve can result in slowing of the heart rate and fall in blood pressure. “In extreme situations, the heartbeat can stop completely. People who are unable to tolerate extreme stress are at high risk.”
This nerve can also be stimulated when some people see blood flowing from a wound or encounter a snake or hear shocking news. That is why some people faint,” he adds.
The doctors say people should take care to avoid trauma on the ear, neck and cheek. People who cannot tolerate extreme stress should take extra care.
Dr. Manjunath adds: “If someone does faint for these reasons, water should be sprinkled on their face so that the heart rate goes up.”
AFSHAN YASMEEN
Trauma to the ear can cause dangerous fall in heart rate, blood pressure
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March 19, 2013 01:44 IST
March 19, 2013 01:44 IST
U.K. deal on press norms retains independence
APLord Justice Brian Leveson poses for photographers as he holds the Report from the Inquiry into the Culture, Practices and Ethics of the Press. A file photo.
After months of bitter wrangling that threatened to tear apart the ruling Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition, political parties on Monday reached a deal on implementing the Leveson proposals to regulate the press in the wake of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.
The deal came hours before a crucial vote in the Commons that might have resulted in a humiliating defeat for Prime Minister David Cameron. The Lib Dems and the opposition Labour party had joined hands to push for a law to ensure the independence of the proposed regulatory mechanism — a position fiercely opposed by Mr. Cameron and newspaper owners on grounds that it smacked of state intervention in press affairs. Finally, the three parties reportedly have agreed to the setting up of an independent regulator by a Royal Charter like the one that governs the BBC. Details were still fuzzy with the Labour party claiming that the charter would be “underpinned by statute” as recommended by Lord Justice Leveson in his voluminous report last November. The regulator would have enough “teeth” to punish erring newspapers, but “a free press has nothing to fear from what has been agreed”.
The Tories insisted there was no proposal for a statutory “underpinning” though a “safeguard” would be added to prevent politicians from “fiddling” with the arrangement in future.
“We’ve stopped Labour’s extreme version of the press laws… There is no statutory underpinning. What we’re talking about here is that there can be no change to the charter in future,” Culture Secretary Maria Miller told the BBC.
Mr. Cameron said: “What we wanted to avoid, and we have avoided, is a press law. Nowhere will it say what this body is, what it does, what it can’t do, what the press can and can’t do… So, no statutory underpinning but a safeguard that says politicians can’t in future fiddle with this arrangement.”
The Lib Dem Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, said he was “delighted” with the agreement but did not elaborate on details. “We’ve secured the cherished principle of freedom of the press, which is incredibly important in our democracy, but also given innocent people the reassurance that we won’t be unjustifiably bullied or intimidated by powerful interests in the press without having proper recourse when that happens,” he said.
The group Hacked Off, which represents victims of media excesses and wants the Leveson proposals implemented in full, welcomed the deal.
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March 19, 2013 02:47 IST
March 19, 2013 02:47 IST
Quality of U.S. news reportage goes down
In its annual ‘State of the Media’ report on American journalism, Pew Research Centre — an independent ‘fact tank’ — has highlighted a crisis in news reporting in the traditional media as a result of continued ‘erosion of reporting resources’. This is happening at a time when other ‘interest groups’ are ‘better equipped’, and have more ‘technological tools’ to push their messages.
The report says that in newspapers, estimates for newsroom cuts in 2012 ‘put industry employment down 30 per cent since its peak in 2000’, with less than 40,000 full-time professionals for the first time since 1978. On local television, ‘audiences went down…news stories have shrunk in length…and coverage of government has been cut in half’.
On cable news, coverage of live events fell, while interview segments and commentary, which cost less, increased. Story packages on CNN were cut in half from 2007 to 2012.
Among news magazines, the end of Newsweek’s print edition coincided with staff cuts, while Time ‘announced cuts of roughly 5 per cent’ in early 2013.
“This adds up to a news industry that is more undermanned and unprepared to cover stories, dig deep into emerging ones, or to question information put into its hands,” said the research centre in a statement.
On the other hand, governments, campaign managers, business entities, public relations firms, have stepped up their offensive, with PR workers having out-numbered journalists on a ratio of 3.6 to 1 in 2008. “Distinguishing high-quality information of public value and agenda-driven news has become an increasingly complicated task.”
Alternate revenue
Traditional media outlets are finally veering towards a revenue model to leverage their online presence. In U.S., 450 out of 1380 dailies have started or announced plans for ‘paid content subscription or pay wall plan’.
The report says, “Digital subscriptions are seen as an increasingly vital component of any new business model for journalism.”
With its two-year old digital subscription scheme, The New York Times now has 640,000 online subscribers, and its circulation revenue has exceeded its advertising revenue. The trend of sponsored ads, which runs the risk of confusing the readers between news content and paid promotion, has increased.
But news organisations are struggling to tap into two new and growing areas of digital revenue — mobiles and local digital advertising. Six companies, none of which produce news, have garnered 72 per cent of the $2.6-billion mobile advertising revenue. Big players like Facebook and Google are diverting revenue away from local news.
TODAY'S PAPER » NATIONAL » NEW DELHI
NEW DELHI, March 20, 2013Inculcate best practices of foreign universities: Pranab
“Identify inspired teachers”:President Pranab Mukherjee at the 90th annual Convocation of Delhi University on Tuesday.
President Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday said it was “unacceptable” that no Indian university has featured among the top 200 universities globally in the recent international rankings and that the only way forward was for the country’s universities to study and inculcate the “best practices” of foreign universities.
Delivering the 90{+t}{+h}Convocation Address of Delhi University, Mr. Mukherjee said “we must promote inter-disciplinary research through inter-university and intra-university collaboration through an interdisciplinary platform”.
The President’s speech on what universities should be doing for improvement and progress was reflective of what DU has already done in the recent past.
“Learning beyond textbooks”-- an element of the four-year undergraduate course -- also figured strongly in the President’s speech. “Every university should identify a group of 10 to 20 “inspired teachers” who can ignite the minds of the students to learn beyond the text books. If such teachers interact with each other as well as with the students, the quality of teaching could be enhanced,” he said.
The President praised Delhi University for its “cluster innovation centre” and said that innovation and research was also something where Indian universities were lagging behind.
In his address, Mr. Mukherjee also carefully spelt out what was wrong with higher education and the steps that needed to be taken to improve it. Retaining talent was not something the Indian system was good at and thereby it lost out to organisations outside the country. “By an adequate system of incentives we should be able to discourage this outflow of intellectual capital and at the same time encourage scholars of Indian origin working abroad to return to the country for determined periods of time,” he said.
Since enrolment rates for higher education were poor, he suggested this could be sorted out by improving the reach and quality of distance education by using better technology where lectures by good professors could be transmitted through communication technology.
Mr. Mukherjee also said that an alumnus’ interest in the university helped in its improvement. “Topics such as water, environment, health, education and urbanisation require in-depth data collection, analysis and research,” he said, ending his address by quoting Mahatma Gandhi.
Vice-Chancellor Dinesh Singh, while introducing the President, who is also the Visitor of the university, said that his very presence was an expression of his faith and support of education. The V-C also said that he would like Delhi University to be like what the ancient universities of Nalanda and Jagaddala were in their prime.
Around 455 students, including an orthopaedic student, were conferred doctoral degrees at the Convocation. Prof. Singh declared the Convocation closed after he had delivered the traditional commandments to “follow your conscience and lead a life of rectitude with courage and honesty”.
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March 20, 2013 02:43 IST
March 20, 2013 02:43 IST
Rusbridger: people’s dependency on scribes reduced
The HinduAlan Rusbridger, Editor-in-Chief of The Guardian, at the Press Club in Mumbai on Tuesday. Photo: Vivek Bendre
“They are not the sole experts on issues”
The open platform that the Digital Age has provided to the people has turned thousands of those who use even a single mobile phone into a journalist, said Alan Rusbridger, Editor-in-Chief of the widely read British newspaper and websiteThe Guardian.
“The dependency of people, organisations, NGOs on journalists to tell their stories to others has been greatly reduced in this Digital Age. Every person who holds a Twitter account or even a mobile phone can go out telling a story, turning into a journalist. The future of print journalism lies in accepting the importance of Digital Age,” said Mr. Rusbridger. He was speaking at the special programme held by the Mumbai Press Club on “The Future of Journalism in a Digital Age.”
Sharing a number of experiences of reporters of The Guardian in the extensive use of the Internet to acquire information, understand issues and even to create sources, he said the notion that a journalist was the sole expert of any issue was rapidly becoming redundant.
“Claiming that out of 900 people who watch a particular drama, it is only a journalist who can write better than others is an overstatement. The transition from a mere publisher of a story to a platform giving better inputs by involving larger audience will also bring money with it.”
Explaining the present scenario of the print industry in western world, Mr. Rusbridger said that unlike in India, the industry was suffering a 10 per cent annual decline in revenues for the past 15 years. “In such a scenario, becoming brave, aggressive and smarter than others in the use of digital technology is the only way to survive,” he said.
“In India, however, the desperate situation which western print media is facing hasn’t yet arrived. But in the next two decades, a similar situation will surely hit India, when digital technology will be the only possible remedy,” he said.
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March 21, 2013 00:31 IST
March 21, 2013 00:31 IST
No country for newborn children
APCrawl space: Inexpensive lifesaving treatments remain inaccessible to a vast majority of children, especially those in the poorest groups.
India accounts for the largest number of deaths of infants primarily because it has failed to provide them and their mothers access to critical health care
India loses 4,200 children under the age of five every day. This figure is certainly unacceptable for any emerging country. The collective ache of losing so many newborns is worsened by the realisation that many of these deaths are preventable.
The country accounts for nearly a fifth of the world’s child deaths. In terms of numbers, it is the highest in the world — nearly 16 lakh every year. Of these, more than half die in the first month of life. Officials believe that the reason for this is the absence of steps to propagate basic healthy practices relating to breast feeding and immunisation. Also the large reproductive population of 2.6 crore remains bereft of care during the critical phases of pregnancy and post-delivery.
Added to this is the prevalence of child marriages, anaemia among young women and a lack of focus on adolescent sanitation, all of which impact child death rates.
Millennium goals
While India in recent years has made appreciable achievements in bringing down deaths per 1,000 live births (infant mortality), deaths within 28 days of birth (neonatal) and under-five mortality are the areas which can certainly do with some more attention.
In recent years, the Under Five Mortality Rate (U5MR) has declined sharply. In fact in the last two decades, it has fallen faster than the global average. While the global decline in child mortality was 35 per cent, India registered a healthier fall of 48.7 per cent between 1990 and 2010. In terms of numbers, 2010 saw U5MR decline by nearly half to 59 per 1,000 live births.
Worryingly, more than half, 33, were neonatal deaths or infants who died within 28 days of birth. In other words, the neonatal mortality rate has remained stagnant and has begun constituting an even larger proportion of the total number of child deaths. Part of the reason is that in the last two decades, efforts to tackle the problem were not as well funded as HIV and AIDS prevention. Now with the health-care sector’s and diminishing donor enthusiasm for HIV and AIDS prevention, mother and child care is coming back into prominence. The urgency to show results is also necessitated because India needs to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 which still appear a long distance away.
This should be welcome news for those battling infant deaths in the country. But given the vastness of the country, achievements in reducing child mortality are not uniform. While some States have done extremely well, there are others that have fallen behind.
State variations
While Kerala is the leader in reducing infant mortality by a wide margin, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have bucked the national average decline of 7.25 per cent between 2008 and 2010. Haryana and Bihar, with a decline rate of just over seven per cent, manage to just about touch the national average.
Among the larger States that fare badly are Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh (M.P.), with Assam for company. West Bengal, Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh (U.P.), Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh are just below the national average.
Just as there are variations among States in reducing child deaths, there are wide disparities within States as well. For example in Assam, the U5MR in Kokrajhar is double that of Dhemaji district. In Chhattisgarh, U5MR in Durg is half that of the tribal dominated Surguja. It’s the same story in Patna and Sitamarhi in Bihar. While 53 children per 1,000 live births die in Patna, the figure is 106 for Sitamarhi. These disparities are even starker in Rajasthan and Jharkhand. Then there are stand-alone districts in many States where child deaths are rampant such as Kandhamal (145) in Odisha, Shrawasti (142) in U.P. and Panna (140) in M.P.
These figures are important in the discourse on approaches to reducing child deaths. Both the Centre and the States will have to address these disparities — regional, State and inter-State — if they are committed to achieving the 12th Plan goal of U5MR of 33. This target in itself requires a tremendous effort because India has aimed higher than the MDGs of 38 deaths per 1,000 live births. If the current rate of decline continues, Odisha is probably the only State that will not achieve the 12th Plan target (2017).
Targeting adolescents
To sustain this high rate of annual decline, it cannot be business as usual, as an officer of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare put it. Each State will have to identify a specific goal to meet the target. These could be enhanced coverage of health and nutrition, water, sanitation and hygiene which can prevent pneumonia and diarrhoea.
It is also equally important to forge interlinkages and package different interventions at various levels like linking child survival to reproductive health, family planning, and maternal health.
According to national surveys, adolescents (15-19 years) contribute about a sixth of total fertility in the country. With the substantial unmet need of contraception — nearly a quarter of married adolescents (15–19 years) — and low condom use by them in general, girls in this age band are at a high risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections, HIV and unintended and unplanned pregnancies. All these impact the child mortality rate.
In addition to focusing attention to addressing disparities within States and among regions, there is an urgent need to bring health and child services under universal health coverage with a focus on special requirements of vulnerable and marginalised groups.
Inexpensive lifesaving treatments remain inaccessible to a vast majority of Indian children, and especially those in the poorest groups within the country. All these challenges can only be met by State intervention.
Therefore, universalisation of maternal health and child services, which includes special newborn care, skilled delivery, immunisation and management of diarrhoea, seems to be the only answer if India is to achieve the high goals of reducing child deaths it has set for itself.
aarti.dhar@thehindu.co.in
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March 21, 2013 01:03 IST
March 21, 2013 01:03 IST
Change Internet laws: Schmidt
PTIEric Schmidt, Chairman of Google, speaks during the launch of an initiative on Tech Start-ups in India, in New Delhi on Wednesday.
India needs to change some of its “insufficiently precise” laws on Internet usage to encourage greater private sector participation in the creation of Internet infrastructure and Internet-based services, said Eric Schmidt, Chairman of search giant Google.
On his first visit to India, Mr. Schmidt, who described Google’s relations with the government as “good”, made a strong pitch for the government creating an enabling environment and then “get out of the way” if it wants to capitalise on the opportunities provided by truly widespread Internet access.
At an interaction with media editors, Mr. Schmidt argued, “You cannot run a modern country without a modern Internet.” He led Google’s transformation as its CEO for a decade since 2001 and is now engaging more with governments and lawmakers on policy issues as Google’s Chairman.
Admitting that from a “political perspective”, governments everywhere would like to “shape criticism”, he felt there would be a transformation in the public space — and discourse — once access became widespread.
“Right now, you have under 10 per cent of the population using the Internet. Imagine what would happen if 80 per cent of the people can get on to the Internet,” he said.
For India to fully tap the potential of the Internet — from web-based education to delivery of services — it would have to create the right environment, he argued. That includes changing laws governing the use of the Internet. He cited the example of India’s Intermediate Liability Act, which holds companies like Google responsible for the content put up by users.
His solution is to lift the restrictions. “The solution to bad speech is more speech – good speech,” he argued.
Insisting that China was the “exception” because it actively censored content on the Web, he said Google’s policy was to remove any content violative of either local laws or against its terms of service. India lodged the second highest number of requests to take out “offensive” content last year, second only to the United States.
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Alarm over charges against Twitterati
Experts blame ‘wide and vague provisions’ of Section 66 (A) of the IT Act
A Delhi metropolitan magistrate directed the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) to register an FIR against ‘unknown persons’ on Monday, in response to a complaint by Zee TV journalist Sudhir Chaudhary that he was being harassed on the social networking site, Twitter.
Mr. Chaudhary was recently implicated in a sting by Jindal Steel and Power Limited that allegedly showed him asking for money to drop a story,
The order, however, sparked off concerns. Experts blamed the ‘wide and vague provisions’ of Section 66 (A) of the IT Act for the court issuing the directive without proper justification. The case also witnessed the unusual situation of the government arguing against pursuing a case that was based on online content and a private citizen pushing for it.
Mr. Chaudhary had claimed he was being ‘followed by new people’ on Twitter, who posted ‘nasty tweets’. Fake profiles, he complained, had been created to ‘defame’ him. A ‘hostile atmosphere was created… in personal and professional life’. His grievances, he said, were not addressed by the Crime Branch or the EOW.
The EOW, in response, said that the complaint had been lodged in order to ‘create new defences’ in the older case. The contents of the tweets were already in ‘public knowledge’ and were not ‘false or grossly offensive or menacing in character,’ which are grounds for legal action under Section 66 (A).
The court said it was satisfied that the complainant ‘disclosed commission of cognisable offences and does not have the means to collect the evidence.’
Pranesh Prakash, policy director of the Centre for Internet and Society, called it a ‘bizarre’ order. “It never justifies the commission of cognisable offenses. It does not provide adequate reasons for overturning the decision of the police. The level of evidence required and presented by the court to initiate proceedings is very weak and sets a bad precedent.”
While agreeing that the absence of a mention of a specific ‘offensive tweet’ was ‘peculiar,’ Apar Gupta, a lawyer who works on cyber issues, saw the order as a standard practice. “The breadth of the order is limited to directing the police to register an FIR. This is a fairly standard legal practice, and there is no material infirmity with the order.”
Pavan Duggal, a cyber law expert, felt that the case reflected the larger problem with Section 66 (A), which ‘automatically comes into force’ in such cases. “This is a defective law which undermines the constitutional right to free speech by making annoyance and inconvenience grounds for restriction. But till it is struck down, repealed or amended, the lower courts will exercise discretion and apply it.” The Supreme Court is currently considering the constitutional validity of the provision.
Even as the government’s use of 66 (A) brought the law into prominence, there was now, according to Mr. Duggal, an increasing trend of private citizens using it. “The law has provided the instrumentality for fixing or targeting anyone on flimsy grounds.”
Shivam Vij, who is with the popular political group blog, kafila.org, agrees. “It cannot be the government’s case that politicians alone can use draconian Internet laws. Private individuals will also use them, even in their disputes with politicians. The government will reap what it has sown with its Internet vigilantism.”
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March 25, 2013 06:16 IST
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Today's Paper » NATIONAL
March 25, 2013 06:16 ISTFirst colourful Holi for Vrindavan widows
This Holi came with a difference for the widows and abandoned women living in Vrindavan, near Mathura.
Unlike earlier years, when these women — addressed respectfully as ‘ mayyas’ or ‘matas’ — played Holi only with ‘Thakurji’ (Lord Krishna), this time it was a riot of colours, flowers and lots of people to celebrate with.
In a departure from tradition, hundreds of widows gathered to play Holi with one other with flower petals and gulal(coloured powder).
The spirit of Holi was palpable across the five government-run shelter homes where Sulabh International has been giving stipend, arranging for food and providing healthcare facilities to the women.
Around 800 women participated in the festivities on Sunday that marked the first day of the four-day celebrations. The celebrations were held at the 100-year-old Meera Sahbhagini ashram.
To add more colour, dozens of former conservancy workers were brought to the ashram. “Life has changed so much for us ever since we gave up conservancy work,” says Sheela Athwale. She started doing the work from the age of 7, but gave it up in 2006 when Sulabh imparted skills to them and sent their children to school. Many like her were imparted training for cutting and tailoring, and other crafts.
“You will not believe it, I have been to New York and Paris with Sulabh,” Ms. Athwale said with a glitter in her eyes. There were 115 families involved in conservancy work in her town in Alwar while the adjoining Tonk district had over 200. None exists now.
“In an effort to bring widows to the mainstream and help in their social assimilation, we have organised several events to encourage them to participate in Holi celebrations at Vrindavan,” founder of Sulabh Bindeshwar Pathak said.
As part of the celebrations, traditional “Raas-Leela” dance and other programmes have been organised at the ashrams. “I used to play Holi earlier also but not with so many people,” said an old and frail Rajdhwoni, her white outfit totally pink at the end of the celebrations.
Sulabh is working for the empowerment of these widows. In August 2012, the Supreme Court directed the U.P. government to ensure at least proper cremation and last rites for the widows in Vrindavan.
The court suggested that Sulabh can be contacted for help. Since then, the NGO is taking care of these widows by providing them healthcare and a monthly allowance of Rs. 2,000. They are now learning English and earning by way of jobs such as making agarbathis and garlands.
Among the widows are many who lost their husbands at 16 or 17 and have since lived an obscure life, abandoned by their families. “I want to ensure that no widow is found begging on the streets,” said O.P. Yadav, district probation officer of Mathura, who participated in the function.
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March 27, 2013 16:04
March 27, 2013 16:04
Tankers and the economy of thirst
The water markets of Marathwada are booming. In the town of Jalna alone, tanker owners transact between Rs.6 million and Rs.7.5 million in water sales each day
Thirst is Marathwada’s greatest crop this season. Forget sugarcane. Thirst, human and industrial, eclipses anything else. Those harvesting it reap tens of millions of rupees each day across the region. The van loads of dried-out cane you see on the roads could end up at cattle camps as fodder. The countless “tankers” you see on the same roads are making it to the towns, villages and industries for profit. Water markets are the biggest things around. Tankers are their symbol.
Thousands of them criss-cross Marathwada daily, collecting, transporting and selling water. Those contracted by the government are a minority and some of them exist only on paper. It’s the privately-operated ones that are crucial to rapidly expanding water markets.
MLAs and Corporators-turned-contractors and contractors-turned-Corporators and MLAs are vital to the tanker economy. Bureaucrats, too. Many own tankers directly or benami.
Water commerce
So what is a tanker? Really, just sheets of mild steel plate rolled into big drums. A 10,000-litre water tanker consists of three sheets of 5 ft x 18 ft, each weighing 198 kilograms. The rolled drums are welded together. These can be carried by trucks, lorries and other large vehicles, mounted on them in different ways. Smaller carriers transport cylinders of lower capacity. A 5,000 litre container can go onto the trailer of a big van. It comes all the way down to 1,000 and 500-litre drums that move on mini-tractors, opened-up auto rickshaws and bullock carts.
As the water crisis deepens, hundreds of these are fabricated across the State each day. In Jalna town of Jalna district, there are about 1,200 tankers, trucks, tractors, auto rickshaws flitting about with containers of different sizes. They shuttle between their water sources and desperate sections of the public. The drivers bargain with clients on cell phones. However, the largest amount of water goes to industries that buy in bulk. “The tanker owners transact between Rs.6 million to Rs.7.5 million in sales each day,” says Laxman Raut of the Marathi daily Loksatta. “That’s what this single sector of the water market is worth — in this single town.” Raut and his fellow reporters have tracked this region’s commerce in water for years.
Tanker technology
Container sizes vary. But in this town “their average capacity works out to around 5,000 litres. Each of these 1,200 does at least three trips a day. So they carry in all some 18 million litres of water in 24 hours. At the going rate of Rs.350 per thousand litres, that works out to over Rs.6 million a day. The costs can go up depending on whether the use is domestic, or for livestock, or industry.”
Scarcity drives the tanker economy. Tankers are being made, repaired, rented, sold and bought. One busy spot we hiten route to Jalna is Rahuri in neighbouring Ahmednagar district. It costs roughly Rs.30,000 to make a 10,000-litre tanker body here. It sells for twice that sum. In Rahuri Factory, a small industries area, we get a crash course in tanker tech. “Each 5 ft x 18 ft sheet of MS Plate is 3.5 mm thick (called Gauge 10),” explains Shrikant Melawane who owns a fabricating unit. He shows us the “rolling machine” on which each plate has to be manually rolled.
“The 10,000-litre one weighs close to 800 kg,” he says. The three sheets of mild steel it requires cost roughly Rs.27,000 (at Rs.35 a kg). Labour charges, electricity and other expenses total a further Rs.3,000. “It takes a whole day to make one 10,000-litre tanker,” he says. “This season has been busy. We’ve made 150 (of differing sizes) in three months.” There are four units like his within a radius of one kilometre, churning them out at the same pace. And 15 within a three-kilometre radius of Ahmednagar town, on the same job.
“The biggest ones — 20,000-litre tankers, go to cattle camps and industrial units,” says Melawane. “The 10,000-litre ones go to the cities and big towns. The smallest ones I’ve made carry just 1,000 litres.” The little ones “are bought by small horticulturists. Mostly tiny pomegranate growers who cannot afford drip irrigation. They take these drums on bullock carts and I’ve seen them do the watering manually.”
From wells, tanks, reservoirs
So where’s the water coming from? From rampant groundwater exploitation. From private borewells — some newly drilled just to exploit the scarcity. These could run out as the groundwater crisis worsens. Speculators have purchased existing dug wells that do have water in order to cash in. Some bottled water plants in Jalna town bring it all the way from Buldhana (in Vidarbha) — itself a high water-stress district. So the scarcity should spread to other regions fairly soon. Some are looting water from public sources, tanks and reservoirs.
The tanker owner buys 10,000 litres for between Rs.1,000 and Rs.1,500. He sells that quantity at Rs.3,500 — pulling in up to Rs.2,500 on the deal. If he has a captive source like a working borewell or a dug well with water, then his costs are even less. And close to nil if he is looting public water sources.
“More than 50,000 (medium and big) tankers have been made across the State this year,” says former Member of Parliament (and ex-MLA) Prasad Tanpure. “And don’t forget the existing thousands from previous years. So it’s anyone’s guess how many are in action now.” Tanpure, a political veteran here, knows the water scene well. Other estimates place the new tanker numbers at one lakh.
Even 50,000 new tankers would mean that fabricators in the State have done close to Rs.2 billion worth of business over the past few months. Of course, some have taken a hit on other fronts as “construction work stands suspended. No grills, beams, nothing else,” says Melawane. But there are also those jumping into this lucrative market. Back in Jalna, Suresh Pawar, a tanker-maker himself, says: “There are over 100 fabricators around this town. That includes 90 who had never done this work before but are doing it now.”
In Shelgaon village of Jalna district, farmer (and local politician) Deepak Ambore is spending around Rs.2,000 a day. “I get five tanker-loads of water daily to my 18 acres, including my five-acre mosambi orchard. I have to borrow from asahucar.” Why spend so much when the crop seems doomed? “Right now, just to keep my orchard alive.” Moneylending rates here can be 24 per cent a year or higher.
Things are awful but not at their worst. Not yet. Many in Jalna have lived off tankers for years now. Only the dimensions of the crisis and the numbers of tankers have exploded. The worst is a long way off yet and it isn’t just about rainfall. Except for some. As one political leader puts it cynically: “If I owned ten tankers, I’d have to pray for drought this year, too.”
psainath@mtnl.net.in
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March 27, 2013
March 27, 2013
The past & present of Indian environmentalism
Polluted skies, dead rivers, disappearing forests and displacement of peasants and tribals are what we see around us 40 years after the Chipko movement started
On the 27th of March 1973 — exactly 40 years ago — a group of peasants in a remote Himalayan village stopped a group of loggers from felling a patch of trees. Thus was born the Chipko movement, and through it the modern Indian environmental movement itself.
The first thing to remember about Chipko is that it was not unique. It was representative of a wide spectrum of natural resource conflicts in the 1970s and 1980s — conflicts over forests, fish, and pasture; conflicts about the siting of large dams; conflicts about the social and environmental impacts of unregulated mining. In all these cases, the pressures of urban and industrial development had deprived local communities of access to the resources necessary to their own livelihood. Peasants saw their forests being diverted by the state for commercial exploitation; pastorialists saw their grazing grounds taken over by factories and engineering colleges; artisanal fisherfolk saw themselves being squeezed out by large trawlers.
Social justice and sustainability
In the West, the environmental movement had arisen chiefly out of a desire to protect endangered animal species and natural habitats. In India, however, it arose out of the imperative of human survival. This was an environmentalism of the poor, which married the concern of social justice on the one hand with sustainability on the other. It argued that present patterns of resource use disadvantaged local communities and devastated the natural environment.
Back in the 1970s, when the state occupied the commanding heights of the economy, and India was close to the Soviet Union, the activists of Chipko and other such movements were dismissed by their critics as agents of Western imperialism. They had, it was alleged, been funded and promoted by foreigners who hoped to keep India backward. Slowly, however, the sheer persistence of these protests forced the state into making some concessions. When Indira Gandhi returned to power, in 1980, a Department of Environment was established at the Centre, becoming a full-fledged Ministry a few years later. New laws to control pollution and to protect natural forests were enacted. There was even talk of restoring community systems of water and forest management.
Meanwhile, journalists and scholars had begun more systematically studying the impact of environmental degradation on social life across India. The pioneering reportage of Anil Agarwal, Darryl D’ Monte, Kalpana Sharma, Usha Rai, Nagesh Hegde and others played a critical role in making the citizenry more aware of these problems. Scientists such as Madhav Gadgil and A.K.N. Reddy began working out sustainable patterns of forest and energy use.
Through these varied efforts, the environmentalism of the poor began to enter school and college pedagogy. Textbooks now mentioned the Chipko and Narmada movements. University departments ran courses on environmental sociology and environmental history. Specialist journals devoted to these subjects were now printed and read. Elements of an environmental consciousness had, finally, begun to permeate the middle class.
Changing perception
In 1991 the Indian economy started to liberalise. The dismantling of state controls was in part welcome, for the licence-permit-quota-Raj had stifled innovation and entrepreneurship. Unfortunately, the votaries of liberalisation mounted an even more savage attack on environmentalists than did the proponents of state socialism. Under their influence the media, once so sensitive to environmental matters, now began to demonise people like Medha Patkar, leader of the Narmada movement. Influential columnists charged that she, and her comrades, were relics from a bygone era, old-fashioned leftists who wished to keep India backward. In a single generation, environmentalists had gone from being seen as capitalist cronies to being damned as socialist stooges.
Environmentalists were attacked because, with the dismantling of state controls, only they asked the hard questions. When a new factory, highway, or mining project was proposed, only they asked where the water or land would come from, or what the consequences would be for the quality of the air, the state of the forests, and the livelihood of the people. Was development under liberalisation only going to further intensify the disparities between city and countryside? Before approving the rash of mining leases in central India, or the large hydel projects being built in the high (and seismically fragile) Himalayas, had anyone systematically assessed their social and environmental costs and benefits? Was a system in which the Environmental Impact Assessment was written by the promoter himself something a democracy should tolerate? These, and other questions like them, were brushed off even as they were being asked.
Steady deterioration
Meanwhile, the environment continued to deteriorate. The levels of air pollution were now shockingly high in all Indian cities. The rivers along which these cities were sited were effectively dead. Groundwater aquifers dipped alarmingly in India’s food bowl, the Punjab. Districts in Karnataka were devastated by open-cast mining. Across India, the untreated waste of cities was dumped on villages. Forests continued to decline, and sometimes disappear. Even the fate of our national animal, the tiger, now hung in the balance.
A major contributory factor to this continuing process of degradation has been the apathy and corruption of our political class. A birdwatcher herself, friendly with progressive conservationists such as Salim Ali, Indira Gandhi may have been the Prime Minister most sensitive (or at least least insensitive) to matters of environmental sustainability. On the other hand, of all Prime Ministers past and present Dr. Manmohan Singh has been the most actively hostile. This is partly a question of academic background; economists are trained to think that markets can conquer all forms of scarcity. It is partly a matter of ideological belief; both as Finance Minister, and now as Prime Minister, Dr. Singh has argued that economic growth must always take precedence over questions of environmental sustainability.
An environmentally literate Prime Minister would certainly help. That said, it is State-level politicians who are most deeply involved in promoting mining and infrastructure projects that eschew environmental safeguards even as they disregard the communities they displace. In my own State, Karnataka, mining barons are directly part of the political establishment. In other States they act through leaders of the Congress, the BJP, and regional parties.
In 1928, 45 years before the birth of the Chipko movement, Mahatma Gandhi had said: “God forbid that India should ever take to industrialisation after the manner of the West. The economic imperialism of a single tiny island kingdom (England) is today keeping the world in chains. If an entire nation of 300 million took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts.”
The key phrase in this quotation is ‘after the manner of the West.’ Gandhi knew that the Indian masses had to be lifted out of poverty; that they needed decent education, dignified employment, safe and secure housing, freedom from want and from disease. Likewise, the best Indian environmentalists — such as the founder of the Chipko movement, Chandi Prasad Bhatt — have been hard-headed realists. What they ask for is not a return to the past, but for the nurturing of a society, and economy, that meets the demands of the present without imperilling the needs of the future.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the finest minds in the environmental movement sought to marry science with sustainability. They sought to design, and implement, forest, energy, water and transport policies that would augment economic productivity and human welfare without causing environmental stress. They acted in the knowledge that, unlike the West, India did not have colonies whose resources it could draw upon in its own industrial revolution.
In the mid-1980s, as I was beginning my academic career, the Government of Karnataka began producing an excellent annual state of the environment report, curated by a top-ranking biologist, Cecil Saldanha, and with contributions from leading economists, ecologists, energy scientists, and urban planners. These scientific articles sought to direct the government’s policies towards more sustainable channels. Such an effort is inconceivable now, and not just in Karnataka. For the prime victim of economic liberalisation has been environmental sustainability.
Corporate interests
A wise, and caring, government would have deepened the precocious, far-seeing efforts of our environmental scientists. Instead, rational, fact-based scientific research is now treated with contempt by the political class. The Union Environment Ministry set up by Indira Gandhi has, as the Economic and Political Weekly recently remarked, ‘buckled completely’ to corporate and industrial interests. The situation in the States is even worse.
India today is an environmental basket-case; marked by polluted skies, dead rivers, falling water-tables, ever-increasing amounts of untreated wastes, disappearing forests. Meanwhile, tribal and peasant communities continue to be pushed off their lands through destructive and carelessly conceived projects. A new Chipko movement is waiting to be born.
(Ramachandra Guha’s books include How Much Should a Person Consume? He can be reached at ramachandraguha@yahoo.in)
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Nick D’Aloisio: 'It was a massive gamble but a good one’
The 17-year-old has just netted £20 million for his app, Summly. It’s a big relief to his parents, who allowed him to quit school
10:40PM GMT 26 Mar 2013
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He’s the 17-year-old boy genius who this week sold Summly, the smartphone app he created from his bedroom while revising for his GCSEs, to Yahoo! for a rumoured £20 million. He is friends with Stephen Fry, has hung out at Ashton Kutcher’s house, worked with Yoko Ono, and even done a deal with Rupert Murdoch. But there’s only one question I want to ask Nick D’Aloisio: has he got a new shoulder bag yet? During a recent radio interview, the bag topped the list of things he wanted to buy with his new fortune.
He laughs. “The whole of Twitter is talking about my bag. I couldn’t believe it. Mine is broken; it’s old and the strap’s not working. Someone asked me what I was going to buy now that I have all this money and I said, 'Well, I really need a new shoulder bag.’ It wasn’t like, 'What shall I get myself to celebrate? Oooh, I know, a man bag!’ ”
The young tech millionaire also wants to buy a shiny pair of Nike trainers. Like any London teenager, looking good is a priority for D’Aloisio. Unlike his peers, however, so are computer coding, investor portfolios and the multimillion-pound deal he has just brokered with one of the world’s biggest technology companies.
Tousle-haired D’Aloisio, dressed in magenta trousers and a white T-shirt emblazoned with a question mark, turns up to our meeting an hour late. It’s not his fault – he’s been up since 5am, politely sitting his way through back-to-back interviews, radio slots and international TV appearances. Halfway through our chat, he dashes out to speak to an Australian television company, all the while slugging a lurid orange energy drink from a can to help him stay awake.
When the Telegraph Saturday Magazine first interviewed D’Aloisio, over a month ago, the Yahoo! deal was just a rumour – and his free‑to‑download app was still in its infancy. Has he changed, now that he’s a multimillionaire? “No way,” he blurts, between gulps. “I don’t feel like a different person. My motivation has always been to do technology apps and companies, not making money. Just because the money’s come, nothing’s changed.”
D’Aloisio (full name Nicholas D’Aloisio-Montilla, although he drops the double-barrelled part because D’Aloisio is just, well, cooler) was born in London to expat Australian parents – Lou, a commodities trader, and Diana, a lawyer – in 1996. The family moved back to Melbourne shortly after Nick was born. When he turned seven (and his brother, Matthew, was three), the D’Aloisios relocated to Wimbledon, south-west London, where they have been ever since.
It was here, at the desk in his bedroom, aged 15, that D’Aloisio came up with the idea for Summly, a news summarisation application that shortens longer web articles into three concise paragraphs, making them easier to read on the screen of a smartphone. The app, which has been downloaded a million times and summarised 90 million articles since its launch in 2011, claims to save users enough reading time every day to take a long, hot bath.
The idea came to D’Aloisio when he was revising for his mock history GCSE. Frustrated by the number of irrelevant articles that kept coming up in web searches, he began experimenting with ways to filter information. “I’m impatient,” he explains, “like a lot of my generation. If this or that isn’t interesting to me, I’ll stop reading. I don’t have the tolerance. I want to know what content is appropriate to me – and I want to know quickly. That’s what Summly does.”
It’s easy to forget you’re talking to a 17-year-old when D’Aloisio gets going. Constantly shifting, almost bouncing, in his chair, he’s endearingly passionate about technology – and what the future holds for start-ups like his. Intelligent without being geeky, he throws phrases like “3D rendering” and “product road maps” into conversation, stopping to explain with great patience when my eyes glaze over in confusion.
He’s interested in more than just computers, too. At school (he’s on sabbatical from King’s College School in Wimbledon, having stopped full-time classes last year to concentrate on Summly), he’s studying for A-levels in maths, physics and philosophy. He’s learning Russian and Mandarin, and one day hopes to read PPE at Oxford. His Yahoo! deal involves a full-time job at the company’s London office, with schoolwork confined to the evenings. Too much for a teenager to handle?
“Education is something that naturally interests me, so I’ll be OK,” he insists. “If it doesn’t work out with school, I can go back when I’m 20 – or whenever.” And your parents didn’t mind you giving up classes? “I talked about it with them and my headmaster and we decided it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and it would be silly not to run with it. Now, looking back, I can say it was a massive gamble. But it was a good gamble.”
D’Aloisio’s interest in technology started young. “I’ve always liked small details; weird, esoteric things,” he reveals. “I’m quite obsessive so I really go into depth. Computers became one of those passions.” Aged five, he became mesmerised by galaxies and the solar system, memorising entire constellations by heart. At nine, he got his first computer – and aged 10, he was trying out cutting-edge movie software, in a bid to emulate the programmes he watched on TV. He taught himself coding at the age of 12.
Before Summly, he came up with other smartphone apps, including SongStumblr, a music discovery program, and Facemood, which predicted the mood of a user through Facebook status updates. Summly, first called Trimit, appeared in Apple’s App Store in November 2011. It was downloaded 30,000 times and quickly came to the attention of Hong Kong investor Li Ka-shing, the world’s eighth richest man, who offered D’Aloisio $300,000 for a share. When the money came through on his 16th birthday, D’Aloisio became the youngest person ever to receive venture capital investment.
“Li Ka-shing was the dream investor,” says D’Aloisio. “It’s a credit to him that he took a gamble on a kid and it worked out OK.”
Wealthy backers including Kutcher, Fry and Ono came on board within months. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation was one of 250 online publishers to sign up. A year down the line, he still giggles at the mention of his celebrity backers. “It is a bit weird. Meeting Rupert Murdoch was definitely scary.” He falters. “I don’t say they’re my friends – I don’t know if they’d call me a friend. They’ve all been great.”
Famous friends aside, D’Aloisio’s life is normal – ish. He hangs out with schoolfriends at weekends, plays rugby and cricket (“I was on the A-team when I was 14, but I’m not so good now”) and has time for a girlfriend, whom he’s been seeing for 10 months. His mother accompanies him on business trips to Hong Kong, Korea and New York. None of this stops comparisons to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, or hides the fact that he has been named one of Forbes magazine’s “30 Under 30” entrepreneurs to watch. Does he feel pressure to succeed?
“I’ve never thought, 'Oh God, I’m a failure if I don’t sell my company’,” he says. “When I was 15, I was naive. There is a story that when Li Ka‑shing phoned up, I asked when we should meet – before or after school. People ask me if my age has helped me do well, but Summly has been subjected to so many due diligence tests. The technology works.”
D’Aloisio’s hopes for the future are as ambitious as you’d expect. He wants to invest the bulk of his money; he likes the idea of “angel investing” – that is, giving financial backing and expertise to another tech start-up. He plans to raise awareness of the importance of computer coding – a subject he hopes will one day be taught in schools. He’d like to expand Summly (which has now closed down, before being integrated into Yahoo!’s software) beyond news – “We’ve looked at summarising Wikipedia, books, blog posts; you name it,” he reveals.
These are all long-term goals, however. Like most of his generation, D’Aloisio is enjoying right now. When he and I part, he’ll tear off to catch a flight to New York, for yet another packed day of press appearances and publicity. What’s next, after that, for the whizz kid from Wimbledon? “I’m really looking forward to starting at Yahoo!. It’s exciting. Ten years from now, I might still be there. I might be at university. I might be in a totally different industry.”
He looks down at the question mark on his T‑shirt and grins. “In other words, I have absolutely no idea.”
