Kerala promises to deliver a new optic fibre network, Wi-Fi transmission centres and free Internet facility to two million poor families.
Kerala’s finance minister, thus, affirmed access to Internet as a right for every citizen.
With this, the southern state joined a clutch of countries like Finland, Estonia, France, Spain, Greece and Costa Rica that have declared the Internet a basic human right.
Why it should not be a basic human right?
But can access to Internet in general be defined as a basic human right? Vinton G. Cerf, a “father of the Internet” (sharing this title with Bob Kahn) doesn’t think so.
In an article, Cerf argued, that the move to declare the Internet as a human right may be well intentioned but misses the point that “technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself”.
Cerf says that by allowing for the Internet to be defined as a civil right which is “conferred upon us by law” as opposed to a human right which is “intrinsic to us as human beings.”
This brings us to another distinction, i.e., one between positive rights and negative rights,which is more important to developing countries like India.
Negative Rights: They are intrinsic to us as human beings and the Constitution merely guarantees the protection of such rights.
The Constitution usually curtails the power of government or other entities in performing certain actions which violate the negative rights of the individual.
The right to equality or the right to freedom of expression enshrined in the Constitution of India are examples of such rights.
Positive Right: It enables the holder of the right to claim a good or a service against the state or someone else.
These rights/entitlements—require fiscal allocations and hence are subject to budgetary constraints. (Ex. MGNREGA, RTE etc.,)
Cerf’s idea of right to the Internet as a civil right also comes under the banner of positive rights.
Positive rights, thus become justiciable and enable the citizens to demand better services from their governments.
Moreover, declaration as rights enables centralization of power.
A right to education, for instance, mandates a kind of standardization for every corner of the country without taking into account the granular differences on the ground.
The usefulness of the Internet cannot be overstated and the government should do everything possible to bridge the digital divide among its constituents.
But declaring access to the Internet as a citizen’s right is not a defensible proposition.
