By the end of this year, one in every 10 Indians will be an Internet user, making the country the third-largest Internet market in the world after Chinaand the United States.  At the end of December, 121 million Indians will be accessing the Internet at least once a week to check emails, chat or log on to a social network, a survey has found. India is adding Internet users at the...

In a remote Indian village in the Western state of Maharashtra, a fourth-grader named Suraj Balu Zore proudly told IPS that he can now effortlessly operate a laptop computer. Fallen by the wayside of urban India’s information technology (IT) superhighway, Khairat village – located just 80 kilometres from booming Mumbai – still has no access to the Internet.  But thanks to the recent efforts of ‘one laptop per child’ – a project...

“An attempt to give intermediaries the right to control content” “These rules give government the ability to gag free speech and block any website it deems fit” “Though there is no dispute on content monitoring, there are grey areas in the rules” Cyber activists, bloggers and legal experts are crying foul over the new rules and guidelines under the Information Technology Amendment Act 2008, that lay additional focus on content regulation and information...

Free speech advocates and Internet users are protesting new Indian regulations restricting Web content that, among other things, can be considered "disparaging," "harassing," "blasphemous" or "hateful." The new rules, quietly issued by the country's Department of Information Technology earlier this month and only now attracting attention, allow officials and private citizens to demand that Internet sites and service providers remove content they consider objectionable on the basis of a long list...

A seven-state survey that tracked rural internet awareness shows that about 84% were ignorant of the medium's existence. Of those who make use of the net, 85% access emails, 67% watch video and listen to music and 48% conduct educational research. Interestingly about 13% utilize the internet to know about latest farming techniques and 8% to find about fertilizers. Primary research also shows that as compared to 2008, there is...