India tangled in a web of confusion

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Over the past week, photos on the Internet that painted an exaggerated picture about the recent communal violence in Assam and spread communal tension to other parts of the country, forced the government to call for stringent action on the Web, social networking websites in particular.

This decision meant that our government held talks with websites such as Google and Facebook to help track the source and IP addresses of users who started spreading photoshopped images and wrong information that aggravated the communal tension. And also brought down over 300 websites that had communal violence-related content. All that was fine, until until the government took it one step further and decided to ban certain twitter accounts of people who it felt were adding fuel to the communal violence fire by account of their posts and opinions. These people included the likes of journalists, celebrities and right-wing groups. According to reports, so far 20 accounts have been blocked.
Incidentally, this happens to be the first known instance of the government making a wide-scale intervention by censoring websites and individual accounts for the purpose of national security. These are, by all means, baby steps for government in an evolving world, from where the Internet is turning out to be a deciding factor — one that could make or break. The Internet has so far provided to be one of the most important tool in a democratic country, especially one the size of India, to convey news, reactions and opinions, all at one go. But the current turn of events raises a question of till what extent the same medium that has been used to unite people, can be used in causing a divide.
So has the Internet become the perfect new-age example for the old phrase 'double-edged sword'? One can only hope that India does not follow the example of Iran, who in the past weeks, have been terming the global Internet "untrustworthy" and announced plans to disconnect key government ministries from the worldwide web by September, fearing the West wants to take over Iran, but through the Internet. Iran's Ministry of Communications and Technology has announced the launch of a domestic and fully-monitored intranet — a closed loop that would leave Iranians without online access to the rest of the world.