Topic 1 : Measuring internet freedom in India in the last 10 years
Context
For five straight years, India has topped the global list of countries imposing internet bans, with about 60% of all blackouts recorded in the world, between 2016 and 2022 having been in India.
Internet shutdowns
- The Indian government imposed a total of 780 shutdowns between January 1, 2014, and December 31, 2023, according to data collected by the Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC).
- Shutdowns flared up during the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2019, the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019, and the introduction of Farm Bills in 2020.
- Internet disruptions in India accounted for more than 70% of the total loss to the global economy in 2020. Data shows India shut down the internet for over 7,000 hours in 2023.
- Regionally, Jammu and Kashmir saw the highest number of shutdowns — at 433 — in the last 12 years.
Imposing an internet shutdown
- Indian States and Union Territories can impose an internet shutdown only in case of a “public emergency” or in the interest of “public safety”, according to the Indian Telegraph Act.
- However, the law does not define what qualifies as an emergency or safety issue.
- The Supreme Court, in the landmark Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India case, reiterated that internet shutdowns violate fundamental rights to freedom of expression and shutdowns lasting indefinitely are unconstitutional.
- Moreover, Courts have asked governments to make shutdown orders public, a provision poorly complied with.
International laws and Obligations
- Under international law, to block any access to content or invoke coercive measures that violate people’s fundamental rights, countries should check if the action is provided for by law; pursues a legitimate aim; and follows standards of necessity and proportionality.
- The majority of internet outages in the last decade were localised to specific districts, cities and villages.
- The biggest share of content censored was done under section 69A of the IT Act, by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
- URLs were blocked due to links to organisations banned under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
- Global Internet freedom has declined for the 13th consecutive year, and the environment for human rights online has deteriorated in 29 countries, according to the latest Freedom House report.
- India’s ranking has hovered around the same benchmark in the last three years. This is a dip from 2016 and 2017, when India scored 59 points, to 50 points in 2023.
Way forward
- The government should strengthen the legal and regulatory framework that governs internet shutdowns, and ensure that they are only used as a last resort, in accordance with international human rights standards.
- Also it should amend the Telegraph Act and its rules, which are outdated and vague, and do not comply with the constitutional and human rights standards.
Topic 2 : Understanding India’s coal imports
Introduction
The spectre of electricity shortages rises again as hot weather descends across the country. In recent years, increasingly unpredictable weather patterns and a fast-growing economy have led to big increases in electricity demand, the meeting of which in a reliable way becomes a challenge. But some of the discourse in this context deserves greater scrutiny.
More about logistics
- First, a shortage of domestic thermal coal, the kind used in electricity generation, is primarily blamed for the electricity shortage.
- Electricity shortage in August was about 840 million units due to a poor monsoon, in turn leading to increased demand and reduced supply from some sources.
- Moreover, 0.6 million tonnes of domestic coal would have addressed this shortage even as over 30 million tonnes of coal were available in coal mines in August and September.
- This illustrates that the challenge is not really about the availability of domestic thermal coal per se, but of insufficient logistics to move the coal to power plants.
- Since coal is currently India’s best bet to meet shortages, the obvious answer to mitigate the current situation is using alternative sources of coal.
- This leads to the second conflation — that the only alternative source is imports.
- Coal India Ltd. sells about 10% of its production, or 70 million tonnes-80 million tonnes each year through spot auctions.
- While the price of such coal is higher than the coal that many plants get, it is much lower than the price of imported coal.
- Though some plants may not have logistics constraints to get coal from the auction sites, even such plants do not consider auctions as an alternative.
The issue of imports
- Some thermal coal imports to blend with domestic coal may be required even if auctions are used.
- The Ministry of Power issued a recent advisory to power generators to continue monitoring their coal stocks until June 2024 and import coal as required (up to 6% by weight).
- It is convenient, as some might say, for such advisories to be interpreted as mandates by many coal-based generators since the increased costs arising out of coal imports can be ‘passed through’ to electricity consumers via distribution utilities.
- Therefore, it is up to electricity regulators, responsible for ensuring prudence of electricity costs, to not interpret such advisories as mandates.
Generation and location
- Not all power plants are the same. Typically, the plants that generate the most (the so-called pit-head plants) are situated close to mines, far away from ports and do not face coal shortage.
- Shortages in periods of high demand are more likely in plants far away from mines which typically do not generate as much.
- Thus, there is no justification to interpret the advisory as a mandate to import 6% coal by weight for all plants in the country.
- Clearly, the discourse around coal shortages in the country needs course correction. It cannot be assumed that coal imports are the default way to address shortages.
Way forward
- The fundamental challenge is to overcome the logistics bottlenecks that are preventing coal reaching the locations where required.
- In the interim, regulatory commissions and distribution utilities must ensure that all coal-based plants are alert to the possibility of coal shortages and identify the cheapest alternative sources — which may not be imports — to bridge the gap.