--- layout: default title: "Centre for Internet and Society: Annual Report 2010–11" description: "A narrative account of the Centre for Internet and Society's annual report for the year 1 April 2010 to 31 March 2011, covering its research, advocacy, events, teaching, publications, and organisational details." permalink: /cis/annual-report-2010-11/ categories: [Centre for Internet and Society] created: 2026-05-05 --- The **Annual Report 2010–11** of the [Centre for Internet and Society](/cis/) (CIS) documents the organisation's work for the financial year from 1 April 2010 to 31 March 2011. It marked CIS's third full year of operation since its founding in July 2008, and the report reflects an organisation that had moved from establishing its foundations to running substantial research programmes, multi-country workshops, and international policy engagements across a wide range of thematic areas. The report is organised into nine thematic areas: Researchers at Work, Digital Natives, Pathways, Digital Learning and Pedagogy, Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom and Broadband. It also includes a section on miscellaneous projects, a record of media coverage, and a compliance section under the Credibility Alliance Norms, which provides organisational and financial data, including board composition, staff list, salary distribution, and international travel expenditure. ## Contents 1. [Highlights](#highlights) 2. [Researchers at Work](#researchers-at-work) 3. [Digital Natives](#digital-natives) 4. [Pathways](#pathways) 5. [Digital Learning and Pedagogy](#digital-learning-and-pedagogy) 6. [Accessibility](#accessibility) 7. [Access to Knowledge](#access-to-knowledge) 8. [Openness](#openness) 9. [Internet Governance](#internet-governance) 10. [Telecom and Broadband](#telecom-and-broadband) 11. [Miscellaneous](#miscellaneous) 12. [Media Coverage](#media-coverage) 13. [Organisation and Governance](#organisation-and-governance) 14. [Full Report](#full-report) ## Highlights The year saw the completion and peer review circulation of five major monographs under the Researchers at Work programme, alongside the expansion of the Digital Natives initiative into a multi-country research and engagement network. Workshops were conducted across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, culminating in a Thinkathon in The Hague. CIS co-published the *e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities* with the International Telecommunication Union and G3ict, and contributed to large-scale efforts to convert educational materials into accessible formats. The organisation also produced research outputs on open government data, online video environments, and access to knowledge, while continuing its engagement with policy processes relating to copyright reform, software patents, privacy, and identity systems. ## Researchers at Work The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme continued its multidisciplinary research initiative centred on the two-year theme "Histories of the Internet in India." During 2010–11, five monographs from the first cohort of researchers were sent out for peer review, alongside the continuation of ongoing research projects and the initiation of new monographs and research work. The five monographs distributed for peer review were: *Re: Wiring Bodies* by Asha Achuthan (Centre for Contemporary Studies, IISc, Bangalore), *Archive and Access* by Aparna Balachandran and Rochelle Pinto (University of Delhi), *Pornography and the Law* by Namita A. Malhotra (Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore), *The Leap of the Rhodes, or, How India Dealt with the Last Mile Problem* by Ashish Rajadhyaksha (CIDASIA, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore), and *Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities* by Pratyush Shankar (School of Architecture, CEPT, Ahmedabad). Asha Achuthan's *Re: Wiring Bodies* traced the pre-history of the internet through nationalist debates between Gandhi and Tagore and feminist epistemologies of science, using the body as a site for examining how internet technologies shape identities and politics. The monograph was sent for peer review in December 2010. Aparna Balachandran and Rochelle Pinto's *Archive and Access* examined the Tamil Nadu and Goa state archives alongside broader public archives to understand the materiality of archiving and the implications of digitisation for local and alternative histories. Three workshops were held in Bangalore, Mumbai, and Chennai, and the monograph went for peer review in November 2010. Zainab Bawa (Centre for the Study of Culture and Society) continued her monograph *Transparency and Politics*, documenting case studies of e-governance models in India and exploring how the rhetoric of "transparency" had reshaped the state–citizen relationship. Namita A. Malhotra's *Pornography and the Law* provided a comprehensive overview of debates in the West and in India on pornography, obscenity, and the law's inability to regulate digital interaction; a documentary film on the same theme, shot in the format of Chat Roulette and supported by the Open Net Initiative, was officially released during the year. Ashish Rajadhyaksha's monograph argued that the "last mile" in India had functioned as a mode of techno-democracy since the radio era, and offered a new analytical prism to examine contemporary debates on the Unique Identity project. Pratyush Shankar's *Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities* drew on architecture, design, and cultural studies to examine how Indian city spaces were changing under digital globalisation, arguing that cities and cyberspaces exist in a dynamic set of negotiations rather than a simple infrastructure relationship. A comic strip offering a visual introduction to the project's central argument was also produced. The monograph was sent for peer review in February 2011. New monographs were initiated during the year. Anja Kovacs (Fellow, CIS) worked on *Inquilab 2.0? (Revolution 2.0?)*, mapping the actors, audiences, messages, and methods of online activism in India, and observing that middle-class actors addressing middle-class audiences appeared to dominate internet activism while social movements with larger offline reach remained conspicuously absent online. She presented on this research at the School of Development Studies and School of Human Ecology, Ambedkar University, New Delhi on 9 November 2010. Nithin Manayath (Mount Carmel College, Bangalore) and Nitya Vasudevan (Centre for the Study of Culture and Society) worked on *Queer Histories of the Internet*, treating the internet as a site of knowledge and practice involving physical spaces, categories of subject formation, and modes of identification, and tracing cultural specificities of queer identity and technology in the Indian context. Arun Menon (Research Consultant, CIS) produced the research paper *Gaming and Gold*, examining "attention" as a conduit for material and non-material transactions both within and outside game worlds, and exploring the intricacies of the attention economy in online gaming. ## Digital Natives The Digital Natives programme was one of CIS's most expansive activities in 2010–11. Building on the 2009 scouting study *Digital Natives with a Cause?*, CIS and its partners designed a series of regional workshops that used crowd-sourcing principles to engage young technology users from the Global South in a knowledge network. CIS, in collaboration with Hivos, the Frontier Foundation, and Academia Sinica, held a three-day workshop titled *Talking Back* at Academia Sinica in Taipei from 16 to 18 August 2010. Twenty-two participants from ten countries — Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, China, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Moldova, and Thailand — discussed how digital natives had circumvented authorities to make themselves heard, the nature of political engagement in the information age, and the relationship between being digital and having a social cause. Nishant Shah and Hasina Hasan participated on behalf of CIS. A second workshop, *My Bubble, My Space, My Voice*, was held in collaboration with Hivos and the African Commons Project at the LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, from 6 to 9 November 2010. A third workshop, *From Face to the Interface*, was held in collaboration with Hivos and Rising Voices at the Library of Santiago, Chile, from 7 to 10 February 2011, with twenty-two participants from fourteen countries across Latin America and the Caribbean. Nishant Shah and Samuel Tettner participated in this workshop. CIS and Hivos jointly organised the *Digital Natives with a Cause? Thinkathon* at the Hague Museum for Communication from 6 to 8 December 2010. Sunil Abraham and Nishant Shah participated. The Thinkathon examined three guiding questions: the role of digital natives in social transformation processes; the role of more traditional actors in changing environments; and how avenues of collaboration between digital natives and "analogue activists" could be supported. Position Papers from the conference were published online. The knowledge gathered from all three regional workshops and the Thinkathon is to be consolidated into a book and an information kit, due for release in 2011 at the Internet Governance Forum. The Digital Natives programme also included a dedicated internship: Maesy Angelina, a programme officer at Hivos, Jakarta, spent a month at CIS working on her dissertation on the Blank Noise Project under the Digital Natives with a Cause? framework and produced ten blog posts on her research. A bi-monthly newsletter, *Links in the Chain*, was launched to sustain community dialogue across the three workshops, with multiple issues produced between December 2010 and March 2011. Nishant Shah authored a fortnightly column on digital natives in the *Sunday Eye*, the national edition of *Indian Express*, from 19 September 2010 onwards. The column was also carried in *Daily News & Analysis* and *Divya Bhaskar*. Twelve columns were published during the year, covering topics ranging from the digital native's political identity to Watson, Wikipedia, and 3G. CIS also participated in events on Digital Natives at the Republica conference in Berlin (15 April 2010), the Global Voices Online Summit in Santiago (6–8 May 2010), Hivos' Knowledge Programme Summit in The Hague (29 September–1 October 2010), and a conference on children's digital safety at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society (4–5 October 2010). ## Pathways The Pathways Project for Learning in Higher Education was a joint venture of CIS and the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), funded by the Ford Foundation. Nine undergraduate colleges across Maharashtra, Kerala, and Karnataka, including SIES College of Arts, Science and Commerce (Mumbai), St. Xavier's College (Mumbai), Ahmednagar College, UC College (Aluva), Newman College (Thodupuzha), Farook College (Kozhikode), Vidhyavardhaka College (Mysore), Dr. A. V. Baliga College (Kumta), and St. Aloysius College (Mangalore) were identified to provide special skills in livelihood, knowledge, and technology to underprivileged students. Two-day workshops on new technologies and social media were designed and conducted across the participating colleges, with approximately 20 to 25 students per college selected on the basis of state-defined criteria of underprivilege and exclusion. The workshops operated on the principle of open spaces, encouraging peer learning, production, and collaboration. A faculty training workshop to sensitise educators on questions of social justice and new technology-mediated pedagogic structures was also organised in Bangalore. Sunil Abraham facilitated the first two workshops. A further faculty training workshop titled *Thinking Digital: How to Translate Online Learnings into Offline Classrooms* was conducted by Nishant Shah at CSCS, Bangalore on 28 February–1 March 2011. The Networked Higher Education Initiative (NHEI), running in parallel, aimed to build a consortium of educational institutions to promote the establishment of open access institutional repositories hosting peer-reviewed and openly published academic material, to inform new curricula and pedagogic practices. ## Digital Learning and Pedagogy CIS conducted teaching engagements at several institutions during 2010–11. Nishant Shah taught a six-hour seminar module on "Locating Technology in a Globalisation Complex" at the School of International Communication, University of Amsterdam on 27 September 2010. He taught a thirty-hour contact course on "Bodies of the Internet" to postgraduate students at the Centre for Media, Communications and Culture, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, from 26 to 30 December 2010. From 1 to 5 January 2011, he taught an introductory ten-hour module on "The Space of Internet" at CEPT University, Ahmedabad, and from 18 to 22 February 2011, he taught "Internet Technologies and the Public Sphere" at the Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad. For the second consecutive year, CIS was invited to teach at the Art Think South Asia (ATSA) summer school organised by the Goethe Institute and Khoj Studios, Delhi, on 9 March 2011. The six-hour module covered the politics of archiving and the positioning of contemporary art and knowledge practices within a globalisation complex. Nishant Shah and Hans Verghese Matthews also taught a module titled "Space: The Final Frontier" at Srishti School of Art Design, Bangalore, in March 2011, to graduate students from DAI Amsterdam, Srishti School of Art Design, Karnataka Chitrakala Parishad, and Shantiniketan Art School. ### Events Organised CIS organised and participated in a range of public lectures and workshops under this theme: - *A Conversation on Maps for Making Change*, CIS Bangalore, 28 April 2010. - *The Internet, Culture, and Society*, a talk by Prof. Ramesh Srinivasan, CIS Bangalore, 9 July 2010. - *Locating Gender Politics in the New Techno-Industrial Complex*, a lecture by Dr. Lisa McLaughlin (Miami University, Ohio), CIS Bangalore, 23 July 2010. - *Digital Activism and Online Advocacy: Experiences from the Tibetan Freedom Movement*, a talk by Shibayan Raha, CIS Bangalore, 7 August 2010. - *Technology for Blended and Distributed Education*, Christ University, Bangalore, 18–20 August 2010. - *Identity, Identification and Media Representation in Video Game Play*, CIS Bangalore, 27 November 2010. - *Electronication: Ragas and the Future*, Jaaga, Bangalore, 6 March 2011, where Charanjit Singh, Samrat B., and Imaad Shah performed improvised versions of *Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat*. CIS also participated in PICNIC '10 in Amsterdam (23 September 2010), where Nishant Shah lectured on "Citizens in the Time of Database Democracies" and appeared on a special panel on the Future of Journalism. He also presented at the inaugural seminar of the Godrej India Cultural Lab, Mumbai (15 January 2011), and at a Tata Institute of Social Sciences event in Mumbai (28 January 2011). The Critical Point of View Wikipedia research initiative, co-founded by CIS and the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, organised a third conference in 2010 — this time in German, in collaboration with the Central University Leipzig on 15–16 September 2010 — discussing the forking of the German Wikipedia community, the politics and hierarchies of Wikipedia, and its relevance to new knowledges. A critical reader drawing from all three conferences was being assembled for publication in June 2011. ## Accessibility CIS's accessibility work in 2010–11 was marked by two significant outputs: the publication of the *e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities* and the receipt of a national award by a CIS staff member. ### e-Accessibility Policy Handbook CIS published the *e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities* in collaboration with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the Global Initiative for Inclusive Information and Communication Technology (G3ict), and with support from the Hans Foundation. Nirmita Narasimhan compiled and edited the handbook, which contains contributions from over sixty global experts in accessibility, ICT, and telecommunications. The preface was written by Dr. Hamadoun I. Touré, Secretary-General of the ITU; the introduction and foreword by Dr. Sami Al-Basheer (Director, ITU-D) and Axel Leblois (Executive Director, G3ict). The handbook covers basic principles of accessibility across electronics, websites, broadcasting, and telecommunications; explains digital obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; and provides country-level case studies of accessibility policy. It was sent to ministries of information technology and telecom regulatory authorities in all ITU member countries. A Daisy version of the content was included on an accompanying compact disc. Smt. Vibha Puri Das, Secretary, Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development, released the handbook at the *Enabling Access to Education through ICT (EdICT 2010)* conference, organised by CIS in collaboration with G3ict, UNESCO, ITU, WIPO, and others, with support from the Hans Foundation and the Department of Information Technology, held in New Delhi from 27 to 29 October 2010. Twenty-nine experts made presentations at the three-day conference, which was attended by seventy-seven participants. ### Other Featured Research CIS prepared a report for UNESCO analysing ICT-enabled education initiatives for persons with disabilities in the Asia Pacific region, covering thirty documented cases of good practice across levels of education and types of institutions. CIS was also commissioned by the ITU to prepare a report on best practices in mobile accessibility for persons with disabilities, reviewing initiatives across regulators in various countries and concluding with specific recommendations for India's Department of Telecommunications, TRAI, and the Universal Service Obligation Fund. A separate concept note and call for proposals was prepared for the Universal Service Obligation Fund, recommending pilot projects for telecommunications access for persons with disabilities in rural India. ### NMEICT Book Conversion Project CIS was one of three organisations overseeing the conversion of approximately 200 higher-education books into Daisy formats across multiple Indian languages, as part of the National Mission on Education through ICT (NMEICT) under the Ministry of Human Resources Development. CIS was responsible for Tamil and Marathi books (twenty-five each), while IIT Kharagpur and the Daisy Forum of India handled other languages. The total budget for the pilot project was approximately ₹53 lakhs. ### National Award Nirmita Narasimhan was awarded the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities by the Government of India on 3 December 2010, on the occasion of World Disability Day. The award was presented by the President of India, Smt. Pratibha Patil, under the Role Model category, at a ceremony at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi, telecast live on Doordarshan. ### Inclusive Planet CIS continued as a strategic partner of Inclusive Planet, the community portal for visually impaired persons, powering its content database. By this point, the platform had over 4,200 members across seventy-five countries and hosted approximately 14,300 books. Sachin Malhan and Ujjvala Ballal worked from the CIS office as part of this collaboration. ### Events Participated Nirmita Narasimhan represented CIS at the *Right to Read* event in the European Parliament in Brussels (13 May 2010), speaking on a panel titled "How the Blind Read: Problems and Solutions." She also participated in the G3ict Solutions Salon in Abu Dhabi (5–6 December 2010) and the G3ict–George Washington University Global Policy Forum in Washington, D.C. (15–16 November 2010), where she spoke on successful treaty implementation for accessibility. She attended the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) 21st session in Geneva (8–12 November 2010), representing CIS. ## Access to Knowledge CIS's Access to Knowledge (A2K) work in 2010–11 covered copyright reform, free trade agreement analysis, software patent opposition, and advocacy for an open approach to knowledge creation and the public domain. ### Copyright CIS campaigned to protect the right of parallel importation in India — the ability of consumers, libraries, and disability rights organisations to purchase books and other copyrighted materials from outside India without requiring the permission of the copyright holder. CIS reached out to consumer rights organisations, libraries, second-hand bookstores, publishers, and publisher associations to build awareness of the issue. CIS analysed the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010, from a public interest perspective, identifying both positive provisions and areas of concern, and submitted a civil society analysis to the Rajya Sabha Standing Committee on HRD on 31 May 2010, on behalf of a collective of twenty-two civil society organisations. Lawrence Liang published related articles in *Tehelka* (Vol. 7, Issue 45, 13 November 2010) and the *Law and Development Review* (Vol. 3, No. 2, Article 7). CIS contributed written comments to the Ministry of Human Resources Development on the WIPO Broadcast Treaty on 16 April 2010, continuing to argue for a signal-based approach and urging India to oppose the creation of new rights for webcasters. Nirmita Narasimhan attended the twenty-first session of the SCCR in Geneva and represented CIS. Pranesh Prakash prepared the *Special 301 Report*, examining the numerous flaws in the US Trade Representative's Special 301 Report from an Indian perspective. He attended the National Law School IPR Conference in Bangalore (July 2010), a WIPO Asia Pacific Regional Seminar on Copyright and the Digital Environment (15–16 July 2010), and the National Geospatial Data Infrastructure Aspiration Document meeting in New Delhi (23–24 December 2010). He spoke at the Indo-German IPR Conference in New Delhi (11 March 2011), organised by FICCI, and attended the Third National Convention on Right to Information in Shillong (12–13 March 2011), where CIS was part of the working group on new information regimes. ### Free Trade Agreement CIS published *A Guide to Key IPR Provisions of the Proposed India–European Union Free Trade Agreement*, offering a resource for policymakers and others to assess the implications of the agreement's intellectual property provisions. ### Software Patent Opposition CIS, as part of its commitment to open access and access to knowledge, worked on filing oppositions to software patents filed for or granted in India. A confidential strategy document on *Software Patent Opposition in India* was prepared, studying patentability laws and tests under the Indian Patents Act and the procedure for filing pre-grant opposition. CIS commissioned Intepat Patent Services for a prior art search report. A pre-grant patent opposition incorporating inputs from the Software Freedom Law Centre, Bob Joliffe, and Knowledge Commons was prepared for filing. CIS, along with the Software Freedom Law Centre and the Society for Knowledge Commons, organised a seminar titled *Software Patents and the Commons* at the India International Centre, New Delhi on 1 September 2010, sponsored by Red Hat. Speakers included Eben Moglen (Professor, Columbia University), Prabir Purkayastha, Dr. Abhijit Sen (Member, Planning Commission), Venkatesh Hariharan, and Mishi Choudhary, among others. CIS filed RTI applications across all Indian patent offices in August 2010, seeking information on the functioning of patent offices specifically from the perspective of software patents. CIS also formed, in association with the Society for Knowledge Commons, Red Hat, and the Software Freedom Law Centre, a working group for software patent opposition to pool resources and avoid duplication of effort. An Access to Knowledge seminar was co-organised with Consumers International, Kuala Lumpur, and the Consumers Association of India, in association with the Madras Library Association, at Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Auditorium, Guindy, Chennai on 31 July 2010. Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, Nirmita Narasimhan, and Pranesh Prakash made presentations. ## Openness CIS's work on openness in 2010–11 covered open government data, free access to law, online video, open access to scientific literature, open standards, and Wikipedia. ### Open Government Data The Transparency and Accountability Initiative (TAI) granted ₹8,96,000 to CIS to produce a study on Open Government Data (OGD) in India. The report was written by Glover Wright, Pranesh Prakash, Sunil Abraham, and Nishant Shah. It examined the landscape relevant to OGD in India — covering the current state of government, civil society, and media; policies under the Right to Information Act; standards-related and e-governance policies; and several case studies from government, civil society, and public-private partnerships. The report concluded that OGD in India must be understood differently from models in the United Kingdom and the United States. The findings were presented by Glover Wright at the InnovateActivate conference in New York City on 24–25 September 2010, and by Sunil Abraham at the TAI donors' conclave in San Francisco. ### Online Video With funding from iCommons and the Open Video Alliance and with support from the Ford Foundation, CIS initiated a research project on the online video environment in India. CIS commissioned video artist and researcher Siddharth Chadha to produce the report, which charts the terrain of video online in India, questions received notions of openness beyond technological and legal aspects, and provides policy recommendations. The report was presented at the Open Video Conference in New York on 12 October 2010. ### Free Access to Law CIS continued its partnership with the South African Legal Information Institute and LexUM, Montreal, on the sustainability of open access legal publishing in Asia, funded by the Open Society Institute and the International Development Research Centre. A report was prepared examining trends, risks, and opportunities for the sustainability of free access to law initiatives across India, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. ### Open Access CIS co-organised a seminar on Open Access for Scientific Information with UNESCO in New Delhi on 16 March 2011, bringing together experts from across India and the international scientific publishing community. Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam continued his advocacy for open access within India's scientific establishment. As a result of ongoing advocacy, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) proceeded with a system-wide plan for open access repositories. CIS also co-wrote a letter with fifteen other open access advocates to the management of CGIAR, requesting a mandate for open access to all research publications from its fifteen centres. ### Open Standards In November 2010, CIS submitted comments on the Draft 0.6 of the Technical Standards for the Interoperability Framework for e-Governance Phase I, released by the Central Government. ### Civic Hacking CIS, with the UK Government's Foreign Office and Cabinet Office Team for Digital Engagement, and Google India, organised a workshop on open data and civic hacking. The workshop brought together participants from civic technology organisations including Akshara Foundation, Mapunity, Janaagraha, IndianKanoon.com, Mahiti, and SmartVote.in, as well as participants from Britain including David McCandless (*Information Is Beautiful*) and Rohan Silva, Special Adviser to the UK Prime Minister. ### Wikipedia Monthly Wikipedia Bangalore meet-ups were hosted at CIS from April 2010 to March 2011, with meetings in April, May, June, July, August, September (two sessions), October, November, December, January, February (two sessions), and March 2011. Notable attendees included Bishakha Datta (newly appointed Wikimedia Foundation Board Member) in April 2010 and Barry Newstead (Chief Global Development Officer, Wikimedia Foundation) in September 2010. A Wikipedia meet-up was also held at TERI in December 2010. ## Internet Governance CIS's internet governance work in 2010–11 expanded significantly, with a particular focus on freedom of expression, privacy, the Unique Identification project, and multi-stakeholder governance processes. CIS, in partnership with Privacy India and the Society in Action Group, organised two workshops titled *Privacy Matters*: at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata on 23 January 2011, and at the TERI Southern Regional Centre, Bangalore on 5 February 2011. The workshops addressed the legal and social dimensions of privacy in India. CIS participated in the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) held in Vilnius, Lithuania. Pranesh Prakash attended and represented CIS at various sessions. CIS organised and participated in several events relating to the Unique Identification (UID) project, with coverage of these debates appearing in major national publications including *The Hindu*, *Deccan Herald*, *Deccan Chronicle*, *Livemint*, and *DNA*. CIS's positions on privacy, civil liberties, and the legal basis for UID were regularly cited in public discourse. Sunil Abraham attended a Freedom of Expression Conference organised by Google and participated in events on open government data, transparency, and democratic innovation across Ottawa, Chiang Mai, London, San Francisco, Doha, Paris, Budapest, and Manila. Anja Kovacs attended an Expert Meeting on Internet and Human Rights in Stockholm (on two occasions, representing different engagements), and participated in the IGF Freedom of Expression Conference organised by Google in Budapest. Pranesh Prakash attended the Aspen Institute event, the Consumers International meeting in Kuala Lumpur, the IGF Conference in Lithuania, and a conference on e-Diligence in Johannesburg. He was also interviewed by *Mint* for its Playcast podcast, speaking on ICANN's decision to allow internationalised domain names. Nishant Shah participated in the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summit in Korea and an Asia Scholarship Foundation (ASF) Summit in Bangkok. He also participated in the INCS Meeting in China. ## Telecom and Broadband Shyam Ponappa, a Distinguished Fellow at CIS, wrote the India Open Spectrum Report for the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) as part of APC's project on Spectrum for Development. The report documented India's spectrum management landscape, covering the roles of the WPC, the DoT, the Ministry of Communications and IT, and TRAI, and examined the frequency allocation and assignment decisions of SACFA. The report was published on APC's website. Nishant Shah published an article on 3G in the *Indian Express* on 14 November 2010, discussing how high-speed mobile internet would transform computing and communication in India. ## Miscellaneous The *Maps for Making Change* project, co-organised by CIS and Tactical Tech, continued into its third workshop. The project provided activists working on progressive social change in India with skills and tools in digital mapping across causes including tracing the mobility trajectories of migrant workers constructing Bangalore's metro rail, mobilising slum dwellers to engage with Mumbai's new development plan, monitoring human rights violations in Chhattisgarh, and mapping services for sex workers in Delhi. The third and final workshop was held at Visthaar, Bangalore, from 26 to 28 April 2010. ## Media Coverage CIS and its researchers received extensive media coverage during 2010–11. Coverage appeared across national publications including *The Hindu*, *Times of India*, *Livemint*, *Deccan Herald*, *Deccan Chronicle*, *DNA*, *Outlook*, *Down to Earth*, *Indian Express*, *Hindustan Times*, *Business Standard*, *Bangalore Mirror*, *Mail Today*, *Sunday Guardian*, and *Forbes India*, as well as international outlets including the *Wall Street Journal*, *Global Post*, *Independent* (UK), *Socialter*, and Italian newspaper *Il Sole 24 ORE*. Key themes in coverage included the UID project and privacy, the Copyright Amendment Bill, digital natives, civic hacking, internet freedom and intermediary liability, open access, and accessibility rights. ## Organisation and Governance ### Board The members of CIS as on 31 March 2011 were:
Name Position Occupation Area of Competency Monthly Remuneration (₹)
Subbiah Arunachalam Chairman Scientist (Retired) Open Access and ICT4D 40,000
Vibodh Parthasarathi Member Associate Professor Media Nil
Atul Ramachandra Member Social Worker ICT4D Nil
Lawrence Liang Member Lawyer IPR Reform 40,000
Sunil Abraham President Executive Director IPR Reform 1,40,000
Nishant Shah Treasurer Director, Research Cybercultures 96,000
Achal Prabhala Member Researcher IPR Reform Nil
M. K. Narasimha Rao Member Finance Consultant Finance 30,000
### Staff The full-time staff as on 31 March 2011 were: - [Sunil Abraham](/sunil/), Executive Director - Nishant Shah, Director–Research - Nirmita Narasimhan, Programme Manager - Pranesh Prakash, Programme Manager - Prasad Krishna, Publications Manager - Ajoy Kumar C., Administrator - Radha Rao, Executive Assistant - Usha Nandini, Accounts Officer - Velankanni Royson, Office Assistant - Abul Hasim, System Administrator - Anisha Pucadyil, Research Assistant - Hasina Hasan, Digital Natives Coordinator - Chandhussain, Housekeeper - Geeta, Housekeeper Consultants included Prashant Iyengar (Researcher) and Samuel Tettner (Digital Natives Coordinator). Distinguished Fellows included Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, Lawrence Liang, and Shyam Ponappa. Fellows included Dr. Anja Kovacs, Selvam Velmurugan, and Malavika Jayaram. Interns during the year included Elonnai Hickock (University of Toronto), Maesy Angelina (International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University of Rotterdam), Vishal Makhija (University of Bangalore), Rebecca Schild (University of Toronto), Siddharth Chadha (Delhi Law Faculty), Glover Wright (California University), Anuj Puri (National Law School of India University), Vikram Hegde (National Law School of India University), Neha Jain (Delhi Law Faculty), and Deepti Bharthur (University of Hyderabad). ### Finances The total income recorded for the year was ₹3,32,10,433.40, comprising grants received (₹3,30,63,111.00), interest on fixed deposits (₹45,090.00), and other items. Total expenditure was ₹2,52,25,963.16, with major heads including salaries (₹59,04,130.00), lectures, meetings, and workshops (₹94,45,544.50), consultancy charges (₹64,74,745.00), and office rent (₹10,55,698.15). The excess of income over expenditure for the year was ₹59,81,380.24. The three highest monthly remunerations paid to staff were ₹1,40,000, ₹98,650, and ₹57,600, and the lowest was ₹4,500. Total staff as on 31 March 2011 numbered fourteen, comprising eight male and six female employees (though the gender distribution for full-time staff alone was listed as eight male and two female). The organisation's primary donor was the Kusuma Trust. Other funders acknowledged in the travel records include Hivos, the Open Society Institute, the International Development Research Centre (LexUM/IDRC), the ITU, the Ford Foundation, the Hans Foundation, the Commonwealth Foundation, the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), and the Transparency and Accountability Initiative. The registered office at the time of the report was No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur 2nd Stage, Bangalore 560071. The organisation's bankers were the State Bank of India, Race Course Road Branch, Bangalore, and its auditors were Nath Associates. ## Full Report

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