--- layout: default title: "Centre for Internet and Society: Annual Report 2013–14" description: "A narrative account of the Centre for Internet and Society's annual report for the year 1 April 2013 to 31 March 2014, covering its accessibility, access to knowledge, internet governance, telecom, digital natives, digital humanities, and organisational details." permalink: /cis/annual-report-2013-14/ categories: [Centre for Internet and Society] created: 2026-05-25 --- The **Annual Report 2013–14** of the [Centre for Internet and Society](/cis/) (CIS) documents the organisation's work for the financial year from 1 April 2013 to 31 March 2014. The year was marked by a broadening of CIS's programme portfolio across accessibility, intellectual property, openness, internet governance, telecom policy, digital cultures, and institutional partnerships, while also coinciding with the organisation's fifth anniversary celebrations. The report is organised around nine principal sections: Highlights, Accessibility and Inclusion, Access to Knowledge, Internet Governance, Knowledge Repository on Internet Access, Telecom, Digital Natives, Digital Humanities, and Credibility Alliance Norms Compliance. It combines programme updates, publications, submissions, events, media coverage, and organisational disclosures, and presents both thematic work and compliance information in a single annual narrative. ## Contents 1. [Highlights](#highlights) 2. [Accessibility and Inclusion](#accessibility-and-inclusion) 3. [Access to Knowledge](#access-to-knowledge) - [Openness](#openness) - [Wikipedia and CIS-A2K](#wikipedia-and-cis-a2k) 4. [Internet Governance](#internet-governance) - [Internet Governance Forum](#internet-governance-forum) 5. [Knowledge Repository on Internet Access](#knowledge-repository-on-internet-access) 6. [Telecom](#telecom) 7. [Digital Natives](#digital-natives) 8. [Digital Humanities](#digital-humanities) 9. [Organisation and Governance](#organisation-and-governance) - [Board and Society Members](#board-and-society-members) - [Staff and Salaries](#staff-and-salaries) - [Finances and Staff Distribution](#finances-and-staff-distribution) 10. [Full Report](#full-report) ## Highlights The year was framed in part by [CIS's celebration of five years](/cis/fifth-anniversary/) of organisational existence. To mark the occasion, it held a public exhibition in its Bangalore and Delhi offices from 20 to 24 May 2013, showcasing its work since 2008 and opening its account books and contracts to the public in order to show how it had spent the ₹13.13 crores it had received from donors. The report records a series of major developments across programmes. CIS and the Centre for Law and Policy Research (CLPR) published a report on making the 2014 General Elections in India participatory and accessible for voters with disabilities, and also published the first draft of the National Resource Kit on disability-related laws, policies, and programmes across 29 states and 6 union territories under a grant of ₹54,83,200 from the Hans Foundation. In accessibility technology, eight Indic languages were identified for inclusion and pronunciation work in the eSpeak text-to-speech synthesiser under the NVDA eSpeak project, supported by a Hans Foundation grant of ₹1,68,48,150. In access to knowledge, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) funded ₹2,40,80,516 for research on pervasive technologies and intellectual property, with an emphasis on supporting intellectual property norms that would encourage rather than inhibit technological development as a social good. The year also involved significant international engagement. CIS participated in the WIPO Diplomatic Conference in Marrakesh from 17 to 28 June 2013 and later in the 26th session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights from 16 to 20 December 2013, where it made statements on limitations and exceptions for libraries, archives, education, teaching, research institutions, and persons with disabilities. CIS expanded its institutional and collaborative work as well. It continued building the Wikimedia movement in India through the CIS-A2K programme, developed a work plan for July 2014 to June 2015 based on its previous 18 months of community engagement, and signed memoranda of understanding with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Christ University, KIIT University, and the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences. In internet governance and privacy, CIS worked with Privacy International on the SAFEGUARD project between 2013 and 2015, supported by a grant of ₹68,65,857, and drafted the Privacy (Protection) Bill, 2013, later revised in light of public consultations. It also participated in the expert committee and sub-committee process around the DNA Profiling Bill, collaborated with the Citizen Lab and IDRC on mapping cyber security actors in South and South East Asia, and launched research on restrictions placed on online freedom of expression in India through support from the MacArthur Foundation. The report also notes that CIS initiated the third Google Policy Fellowship programme, hosted two editions of the Institute on Internet and Society with support from the Ford Foundation, advanced a research project titled *Making Change*, and continued to build the RAW series in the field of Digital Humanities. The report records approximately 170 media mentions during the year. ## Accessibility and Inclusion Accessibility and Inclusion remained a major area of work, focused on accessible content, devices, interfaces, and policy frameworks for persons with disabilities. The report also emphasised that both copyright law and electronic accessibility policy shaped access in material ways. The report states that India had an estimated 70 million persons with disabilities unable to read printed materials because of physical, sensory, cognitive, or other disabilities, and situates CIS's work in relation to this context. During the year, CIS worked on two major accessibility projects. The first was the National Resource Kit project, which sought to compile state-wise laws, policies, and programmes relating to persons with disabilities in India. The first draft of the kit was published during the year and included chapters covering 29 states and 6 union territories, together with summaries of Supreme Court and High Court judgments on disability rights. The second major project was the NVDA and eSpeak initiative, undertaken in partnership with the Daisy Forum of India and supported by the Hans Foundation. This project aimed to develop enhancements to the open-source NVDA screen reader for Windows and eSpeak text-to-speech synthesiser in 15 Indian languages. The report notes that work during the year focused on issues relating to Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, and lists a number of bugs fixed in Word and Outlook, including suggested contacts announcements, checked-status changes in Outlook rules, protected-view access in Word, status bar detection and reading, sentence reading, and language detection. Work on text-to-speech synthesis also progressed during the year. According to the report, eSpeak synthesisers were under development, at different stages of completion, for Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Malayalam, Sindhi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Oriya, Assamese, and Manipuri. CIS's accessibility work also produced a number of publications and interventions. These included *Banking and Accessibility in India* by Nirmita Narasimhan and Vrinda Maheshwari; contributions to UNESCO's *Opening New Avenues for Empowerment: ICTs to Access Information and Knowledge for Persons with Disabilities*; *Inclusive Disaster and Emergency Management for Persons with Disabilities* by Deepti Samant Raja and Nirmita Narasimhan, submitted to the National Disaster Management Authority; and inputs into *The ICT Opportunity for a Disability-Inclusive Development Framework*. It also published *Accessibility of Political Parties Websites in India* and *Enabling Elections*, the latter jointly with CLPR, in advance of the 2014 elections. Institutionally, CIS became a sector member of ITU-D and was invited by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology to serve on the high-level advisory committee on the National Policy on Universal Electronic Accessibility. Its staff also participated in several events, including the E-Accessibility Workshop 2013 in Maharashtra, the National Consultation on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Development Process in New Delhi, and the Zero Project Conference in Vienna, where Pranesh Prakash spoke on affordable text-to-speech software and copyright exceptions for accessible formats. CIS also organised public events under this programme. These included Girls in ICT Day in Bangalore on 25 April 2013, where Dr. U.B. Pavanaja spoke on social media and the Kannada language for women with disabilities, and Global Accessibility Awareness Day in Bangalore on 9 May 2013. In addition, Dr. Nirmita Narasimhan received a felicitation at Girls in ICT Day 2013 in New Delhi on 7 May 2013 for her contribution and achievements in the field of information and communication technology. The report records associated media and blog outputs as well, including an interview with Vera Franz, coverage in *Business World* and *Spicy IP*, and blog posts on Bengali eSpeak, the draft electronic accessibility policy, and the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill, 2013. ## Access to Knowledge The Access to Knowledge programme continued to examine the harms caused by excessive copyright, patent, and other monopolistic rights over knowledge, while also engaging questions of open government data, open access to scholarship and law, open content, open standards, and free/libre/open source software. During the year, the programme's work was anchored in part by IDRC support for research on pervasive technologies and intellectual property. One major strand of the programme involved engagement with the World Intellectual Property Organization. CIS participated in the Marrakesh Diplomatic Conference in June 2013, where the Marrakesh Treaty was adopted to facilitate access to published works for blind persons, persons with visual impairment, and other print-disabled persons through mandatory copyright exceptions and cross-border transfer of accessible format books. The report notes CIS interventions in earlier Geneva discussions, a closing statement at Marrakesh by Pranesh Prakash, and Nehaa Chaudhari's participation in the 26th session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights in December 2013, where CIS made statements on exceptions for libraries, archives, education, teaching, research institutions, and persons with disabilities. The programme also submitted comments and policy inputs. These included comments on the Draft Guidelines for Computer Related Inventions, submitted by Puneeth Nagraj to the office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks, and comments on the proposed WIPO treaty for the protection of broadcasting organisations, submitted by Nehaa Chaudhari to the Ministry of Human Resource Development. The report groups other work under thematic headings such as Free Trade Agreement, Parallel Imports, Pervasive Technologies, Openness, and Wikipedia. Under the India-EU Free Trade Agreement heading, it notes blog entries by Nehaa Chaudhari and Pranav Menon on copyright, data protection, and security issues. Under Parallel Imports, it lists a set of earlier Pranesh Prakash writings that remained relevant to the programme's agenda, including articles on importation of books, exports, rebuttals on the subject, and the doctrine of first sale in Indian copyright law. Under Pervasive Technologies, the report highlights Nehaa Chaudhari's paper on patent pools and Gavin Pereira's work on bilateral investment treaties and the challenges they might pose to compulsory licensing and patent pool formation. The programme's staff also participated in numerous events in India and abroad, including meetings in Bangkok, Washington DC, New Delhi, Cape Town, and IIT Bombay, on intellectual property, innovation, competition law, public interest, and technology transfer. The report records a substantial body of writing under this programme. It includes articles such as Pranesh Prakash's *Copyrights and Copywrongs: Why the Government Should Embrace the Public Domain* and blog posts on SLAPP suits, smartphone unlocking, consumer law, prior art, app stores, Creative Commons in India, ISP blocking, the Broadcast Treaty, and related issues. Media attention included coverage in *Livemint* and *Forbes India*. ### Openness The report treats Openness as a sub-area of the broader Access to Knowledge programme. CIS's work here critically examined alternatives to existing intellectual property regimes while also studying open government data, open access to scholarly literature and law, open content, open standards, and free/libre/open source software. Among the research outputs listed are two papers on the use of open access journals by Indian researchers by Subbiah Gunasekharan, Madhan Muthu, and Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam. The programme also submitted comments on the Draft ICAR Open Access Policy and published columns by Nishant Shah and Subbiah Arunachalam on big data, people's lives, and scientific open access. CIS organised events under this heading as well. These included the RHoK Global Event in Bangalore in June 2013, a Delhi talk on digital activism in Europe by Bernadette Längle, an Open Hardware Lab event and film screening in August 2013, a January 2014 discussion on South America and openness, and a February 2014 event on Bitcoin and open source with Aaron Koenig. Sunil Abraham also participated in an e-DIRAP Google+ Hangout on Open Government. ### Wikipedia and CIS-A2K A major part of the year's Access to Knowledge work was the CIS-A2K programme, which was funded by the Wikimedia Foundation to support the growth of the Wikimedia movement in India. The programme was explicitly focused on Indic language communities and projects, and the report states that it organised or co-organised about 50 events during 2013–14. The CIS-A2K team consisted of T. Vishnu Vardhan, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, and Subhashish Panigrahi in Bangalore, and Nitika Tandon in the Delhi office, while Noopur Raval and Syed Muzammiluddin left the organisation during the year. The team published its detailed work plan, made its revised budget and utilisation public in the interest of transparency, and entered into a series of institutional partnerships. These partnerships included memoranda of understanding with TISS, Goa University, Christ University, KIIT University, and the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences. The Goa partnership focused on digitising the *Konkani Vishwakosh* under a Creative Commons licence and building digital knowledge partnerships in Konkani. The Christ University agreement focused on Wikipedia in Indian classrooms. The KIIT and KISS agreements were intended to further Odia Wikipedia. The year included a large number of workshops, training sessions, anniversary events, outreach activities, and related community programmes across multiple languages and regions. These included Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam in Hyderabad, Kannada Wikipedia workshops in Udupi, Bengaluru, Hubli, Sagara, Mysore, Ujire, Moodabidre, and Tumkur, Indian Language Wikipedia workshops at TISS, introductory workshops in Goa and Christ University, Train-the-Trainer events, Konkani Vishwakosh digitisation sessions, Odia Wikipedia workshops and anniversaries, Urdu and Telugu events, Cinemathon sessions in Bangalore and Mumbai, and Odisha Day 2014 in Bhubaneswar. CIS-A2K staff also participated in other events, including Indian Languages Mela at TISS, the Wikimedia Diversity Conference in Berlin, talks at Jadavpur University, workshops on e-content development, and events on digital humanities and collaborative knowledge production. The report also lists a large body of articles, blog posts, and media coverage documenting the programme's activities, language communities, digitisation projects, training approaches, and Wikipedia's role in higher education and public culture. The 5-year CIS exhibition also featured this work as part of its wider effort to make the organisation's achievements and finances visible to the public. According to the report, the exhibition combined project displays, talks, screenings, artistic presentations, and public-facing discussions on topics ranging from rural connectivity to surveillance and privacy. ## Internet Governance Internet Governance remained a central policy area for CIS in 2013–14. The report describes the organisation's work here as focusing on freedom of expression, the Information Technology Act, intermediary liability for unlawful speech, and the safeguarding of privacy. This work was carried forward through two principal projects: the SAFEGUARD project, supported by Privacy International and IDRC, and a newer MacArthur Foundation-supported project on restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government. A major output of the year was the Privacy Protection Bill, 2013, which the report describes as a citizens' version of privacy legislation for India. Since April 2013, CIS had been holding privacy round-tables in collaboration with FICCI and DSCI to gather public feedback on the bill and other possible privacy frameworks. Following round-tables in Delhi, Bangalore, and Chennai, the bill was amended, and a revised version drafted by Bhairav Acharya was later put up for public comment. The report also describes work on a book on privacy, undertaken in partnership with Privacy International, UK, and the Society in Action Group, Gurgaon. Draft chapters included topics such as freedom of expression and privacy, health and privacy, e-governance, identity and privacy, telecommunications and internet privacy, consumer privacy, and law enforcement, national security, and privacy. Other outputs included clause-by-clause comments on the Human DNA Profiling Bill, 2012, submitted by Bhairav Acharya, and the creation of the India Privacy Monitor Map. The map, developed by Maria Xynou with assistance from Srinivas Atreya, compiled information on UID, NPR, CCTNS, CCTV installations, and the use of drones across the country. The programme organised an extensive set of events during the year. These included seven SAFEGUARD privacy round-tables held in New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, and again in New Delhi between April and October 2013. Other events included cryptoparties in Bangalore, Delhi, Dharamsala, and Chennai; talks by Bernadette Längle, Maria Xynou, Marialaura Ghidini, Abhayraj Naik, and Michael Oghia; discussions on cyber security, public law, cloud computing, biometrics, and surveillance; and jointly organised events with institutions including NLSIU, the Federal Trade Commission, tactical media and civic technology groups, and other partners. The report also records a large number of participation events in India and abroad. Staff and fellows took part in conferences, consultations, round-tables, and workshops in Istanbul, Oxford, Toronto, Hamburg, Hyderabad, Delhi, Brussels, San Francisco, Singapore, Cambridge, and elsewhere. These engagements covered internet governance, privacy, surveillance, identity, cryptography, digital economy policy, intermediary liability, global internet governance, broadband regulation, and cyberlaw. ### Internet Governance Forum CIS also had a prominent presence at the Internet Governance Forum held in Bali in October 2013. Sunil Abraham, Pranesh Prakash, and Chinmayi Arun participated, and the report states that CIS spoke in seven panels. These sessions covered internet rights and principles, cross-border online spaces, barriers to connectivity, free and open source software for developing countries, privacy and global regulatory connections, human rights and freedom of expression online, and internet surveillance. To support further research, CIS also made available downloadable CSV files of tweets from the Bali IGF. The report also lists a wide range of columns and articles under this programme, including writings by Nishant Shah, Pranesh Prakash, Chinmayi Arun, Snehashish Ghosh, and Bhairav Acharya in outlets such as *Indian Express*, *Economic Times*, *New York Times*, *Frontline*, *The Hoot*, and *Down to Earth*. ## Knowledge Repository on Internet Access In partnership with the Ford Foundation, CIS executed a project to create a knowledge repository on internet and society. This work was connected to the Institute on Internet and Society, which CIS and the Ford Foundation jointly organised twice during the year. The first Institute on Internet and Society was held at Golden Palms Resort, Bangalore, from 8 to 14 June 2013. The second took place at Yashada, Pune, from 11 to 17 February 2014. According to the report, a draft repository was created during this process, aimed primarily at civil society actors and intended to support more informed participation in the Indian internet and ICT policy space. The report states that this repository was presented at the Pune institute and made available at www.internet-institute.in, though it was still under review and update at the time of reporting. It also lists the speakers at both institutes, reflecting the interdisciplinary and policy-oriented character of the initiative, with participants including scholars, policy practitioners, technologists, and CIS staff and fellows. ## Telecom CIS's telecom work during the year focused on telecom policy, spectrum, accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities, and contributions to consultations before the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). The report states that CIS prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and on the accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities, and that it also worked with the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) on including projects for persons with disabilities within its mandate. The principal submission listed under this programme was the response to the TRAI Consultation Paper on Spectrum by Shyam Ponappa and A.B. Beliappa, submitted in August 2013. The report also records a series of newspaper columns by Shyam Ponappa in *Business Standard* and mirrored blogs, addressing communications, regulation, infrastructure, growth, domestic manufacturing, and extractive charging on spectrum and petroleum. Two blog entries are also listed: one by Sharath Chandra Ram on citizen radio networks and the .RADIO gTLD, and another by Beli on spectrum sharing. Nirmita Narasimhan and Snehashish Ghosh also attended a broadband policy course organised by LIRNEasia in Bangalore in April 2013. ## Digital Natives Under the Digital Natives heading, the report presents work concerned with social change and political participation by young people in emerging information societies. It describes *Digital Natives with a Cause?* as a project that consolidated knowledge from Asia, Africa, and Latin America and built a global network of knowledge partners critically engaging with discourse on youth, technology, and social change, and looking at alternative practices and ideas in the Global South. The main project highlighted under this section in 2013–14 is *Making Change*. CIS describes this research as an effort to explore new ways of defining, locating, and understanding change in network societies. The report identifies Nishant Shah's white paper *Whose Change is it Anyway?*, published by Hivos on 18 June 2013, as the conceptual point of entry for this work. The report also lists two blog posts by Denisse Albornoz under this heading, one on methods of conceiving and condensing social change and another on Tactical Technology. The publications and blog posts under this programme focused on questions of social change, networked participation, and digitally mediated political and cultural processes. ## Digital Humanities The report's discussion of Digital Humanities is comparatively brief, but it places the programme within a longer-term RAW series running from 2012 to 2015. According to the Highlights section, this series was intended to build research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities and to generate knowledge networks and new knowledge around questions of body, governance, and cultural production in digital times. The main Digital Humanities section describes the programme as an effort to build research clusters in the field, using the digital as a way of unpacking debates in the humanities and social sciences and examining the new frameworks, concepts, and ideas that emerge through engagement with the digital. It also notes a collaborative exercise on Mapping Digital Humanities in India undertaken with CSCS, Bangalore, together with blog posts and a workshop produced through that process. The report also lists events and participation related to Digital Humanities, including *Digital Humanities for Indian Higher Education*, a talk by Sara Morais at CIS Bangalore, and a workshop on Digital Humanities titled *Mapping Changes at the Intersection of Youth, Technology and Higher Education*. In this sense, the report places Digital Humanities within a wider ecosystem of research, pedagogy, archives, and public knowledge production. ## Organisation and Governance ### Board and Society Members The report's Credibility Alliance Norms Compliance section describes CIS as a non-profit research organisation working on freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, openness, digital natives, and digital humanities. It records the organisation's registration number as SOR/BLU/DR/57/08-09 dated 04-07-09. The registered office as on 31 March 2014 was Centre for Internet and Society, #106, Vineyard Jasmine Apartments, Bank Avenue, 1st Main Road, Babusapalya, Banaswadi, Bangalore – 560043. The organisation's bankers were State Bank of India, Race Course Road Branch, 294, Race Course Road, Trade Centre, Bangalore – 560001, and its auditors were Nath Associates. The governance table in the report lists the following board and society positions as on 31 March 2014:
Board Members Board Position Members of Society Society Position Occupation / Designation
Lawrence Liang Chairman Lawrence Liang Member Lawyer
Subbiah Arunachalam Member Subbiah Arunachalam Member Scientist (retired)
Vibodh Parthasarathi Member Vibodh Parthasarathi Member Associate Professor
Jayna Kothari Member Jayna Kothari Member Advocate
Kavitha Philip Member Kavitha Philip Member Associate Professor
Sunil Abraham President Executive Director
Nishant Shah Treasurer Director, Research
### Staff and Salaries The report lists staff members and monthly salaries in rupees as on 31 March 2014. These included Sunil Abraham (Executive Director, ₹1,88,000), Nishant Shah (Director-Research, ₹1,16,685), Nirmita Narasimhan and Pranesh Prakash (Policy Directors, ₹77,000 each), T. Vishnu Vardhan (Programme Director, A2K, ₹2,00,000), Nitika Tandon (Programme Manager, ₹1,17,000), U.B. Pavanaja (Programme Officer, ₹1,44,000), and Syed Muzammiluddin (Programme Officer, ₹58,800). Other staff named in the salary table include Subhashish Panigrahi, Noopur Rawal, Nehaa Chaudhari, P.P. Sneha, Prasad Krishna, Jyoti Panday, Geeta Hariharan, Snehashish Ghosh, Ajoy Kumar C., Usha Nandini, Velankanni Royson, Mithilesh, and Chandhussain. The report notes that Noopur Rawal, Syed Muzammiluddin, and Snehashish Ghosh resigned and left the organisation during 2013–14. The compliance section also lists consultants, distinguished fellows, fellows, and interns. Distinguished Fellows were Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, Lawrence Liang, Shyam Ponappa, and Tejaswini Niranjana. Fellows were Chinmayi Arun and Chanuka Wattegama. Interns included Elonnai Hickok, Rebecca Schild, Jadine Lannon, Maria Xynou, Ujwala Uppaluri, Yogesh Kumar, Vikram Hegde, Denisse Albornoz, Samantha Cassar, Kovey Coles, Krishna Kant Kumar, Rameshwar Nagar, Sameer Boray, Puneeth Nagaraj, Praveen Menon, Bernadette Längle, Divij Joshi, Srinivas Atreya, and Karthik Chawla. ### Finances and Staff Distribution The salary distribution table in the report records 23 staff members distributed across salary bands, with 14 male and 9 female staff in total in that table. The separate gender distribution table records 20 staff as on 31 March 2014, comprising 12 male and 8 female staff members. The monthly remuneration of the three highest-paid employees and the lowest-paid employee is listed as ₹2,00,000, ₹1,88,000, ₹1,16,685, and ₹7,700 respectively. The report closes with an appeal for support, acknowledgements to collaborators and donors, and lists of event organisers, sponsors, and institutional partners including the Kusuma Trust, Hivos, IDRC, Hans Foundation, Privacy International, Wikimedia Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. ## Full Report

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