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When one thinks of vote bank politics, the IT community is the last community
that comes to mind. Apart from being a minuscule community, it is also
considered to be a group that does not go out and vote. It is therefore
remarkable that the political manifestos of two major political partiesthe
Bharatiya Janata Party and the Communist Party of India (Marxist)directly
address not just IT but a small sub-section of it called the free and open
source software (FOSS) community.
Worldwide, countries like China, Brazil, South Africa and even government
departments in developed countries have made FOSS a central part of their
national IT strategies. FOSS is a software that is collaboratively developed
over the Internet by communities of developers and made available to all under
liberal licenses. Linux is one of the most famous examples of FOSS.
The Political Manifestos
The BJPs IT Vision document, released by their prime ministerial candidate,
LK Advani promises that if the BJP comes to power, the Government of India will
standardize on open standard and open source software. The BJP also promises
to give out 1 crore laptop computers powered by open source software to students
at a price of Rs 10,000, if they come to power. In keeping with its
anti-monopoly stance, the CPI(M) in the Science and Technology section of its
manifesto says that it will be promoting free software and other such new
technologies, which are free from monopoly ownership through copyrights or
patents. In addition, many e-governance projects have been undertaken on open
source platforms by the current Congress government.
It may be recalled that the CPI(M) led government in Kerala was one of the
first states to make FOSS a part of their state IT policy. The CPI(M) has also
been a staunch supporter of the open source community and helped the community
repeal the effort to introduce software patents through the Patent Amendment Act
2005 and efforts to impose proprietary data standards in India. While the BJP
had not made a policy commitment to open source in the past, it has made
extensive use of open source technologies over the last eighteen months to
computerize its own operations and emerge as one of the most IT savvy political
parties in India.
The Grand Old Party, the Indian National Congress, does talk about IT for
schools and panchayats and also of providing broadband to all villages in the
next three years. However, it is nowhere as detailed as the BJP document or as
sharp and pointed as the CPI(M) manifesto. This is a pity because there are many
politicians within the Congress who have a sophisticated understanding of IT and
FOSS. At the same time, it must be pointed out that the UPA Government, led by
the Congress has implemented many projects under the National e-Governance
Action Plan on FOSS and the Department of IT has taken the initiative to
formulate a policy on open standards for e-governance that currently awaits
finalization.
Ultimately, the importance of the collaborative model of FOSS goes far beyond
software and into issues that are at the very heart of our emerging digital
society. With 1.4 bn people connected, the Internet is the greatest
collaborative network that mankind has experienced. One of the consequences of
the growth of this network is a shift in the way knowledge is being created and
distributed. As we move to an interconnected world, the balance of power is
shifting from old, proprietary models of knowledge creation to the FOSS model
that emphasizes collaboration and sharing. In other words, the notion of
intellectual property that has dominated the global discourse is being
replaced by the rapidly growing knowledge commons that is free from
restrictive IPR regimes.
It is about time that India, which has a rich history of open knowledge
traditions in disciplines like yoga, ayurveda, mathematics and the sciences,
embraces the FOSS model for social and economic development. After all, the
Collaborative Innovation model of FOSS reinforces age old Indian wisdom that
knowledge grows through sharing and diminishes when hoarded!
Venkatesh Hariharan
The author is corporate affairs director, Red Hat
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