The Internet in Mission and Ecumenism ... - Reformiert online

i. Net as Alternative Media
Net can also play a role of alternative media and so an alternative mission. It is an alternative
because some of the news or information through other media can be censored or blocked by the
government or powerful people whereas in the net it is not possible. At times the incidents in
Tiananmen Square were informed to the outside world first through the net. Then photos were sent
to the media via emails and websites. It is essential to expose at times certain events and incidents
which otherwise do go unreported. Particularly persecution of Christians in Pakistan 35 , of Muslims
in Gujarat and of democratic forces in Burma are a few examples which cannot be reported
through a main stream media. Internet is the best source to report these problems to the world. At
times it is also essential to expose certain practices such as double cup (discrimination of Dalits,
Backward castes and others) in teashops of South India, hunger deaths of Adhivasis in Orissa and
secret deaths of Tribal community members in North East India. Only by networking people,
churches and NGOs we can inform such incident to the outside world authentically. Exposing
poverty itself is part of mission as Indian government claims to become self-reliant in food
production where as people do not get one time food grains from public distribution system (PDS).
Such activities are to be seen as part of mission.
j. Net for Development
Using the internet, we need to explore the possible ways of serving the many sidelined
communities: refugees, prisoners, oppressed communities, HIV/AIDs infected farmers, fishermen,
labourers and people below poverty line (BPL). The area of Internet and Development is another
paper which I have already submitted at major conferences in India and elsewhere. I wish to point
to a few models that I proposed in that paper: Web-cafe model 36 , Web radio model 37 and
Multicasting model 38 . These models have been studied by the local governments in India to
35 John Roxborogh Persecution: Interpreting the information on the Internet, Evangelical Review of Theology,
24:1, 31-40, 2000. - The advent of email, the internet and then the development of the World Wide Web
have enabled minority groups to tell their stories to a global audience. He raises question about quality in
what is reported and exercise discretion in making information public, judgement in analysis and wisdom in
determining strategies to ameliorate suffering.
Main stream media protect their own interests this becomes an alternative. Diversity of information on the
web is confusing. Human rights and persecution of Christians
36 Web-cafes are popular in urban areas of India. Such web-cafes could be made available in rural areas.
One of the major constraints is that servers are in city areas and so the phone lines often happen to work
through STDs. But most of the village areas are brought under local network and so such problems in many
places do not exist any more. Some computer literate person can help people to have access to those pages
that would be useful to them such as market prices for their vegetables or for any other goods, train or bus
ticket booking, weather information for fishermen and online medical advices. For all these people can pay a
small amount for their use of computers and thereby maintain the system.
37 Internet Radio stations could be made available from anywhere in the world except in India. By buying
space in the Web and by providing the content from India, NGOs will be able to operate such stations from
rural India. To do this one or two room broadcasting centres could be developed in villages from where they
can communicate to different parts of the world. Only by networking and popularising such radio stations will
the project be successful. Such type of webcasting should consider entertainment, educational, informative
and development oriented programmes. This could operate like some of the community radio centres that
are already doing some narrowcasting in India. Here the investment and operational costs are comparatively
cheap. There is no clear-cut policy by the Indian Government about webcasting. Development oriented
information can be made available to the public through such internet radio casting.
38 In rural villages local Panchayat buildings have loud speakers and display notice boards. Local village
radio stations are given a licence by the government if they are used for educational and developmental
purposes. These means could be networked with the Internet and Computer system in such a way that the
selected useful message could reach people, who in turn can also respond to certain messages among
themselves. If the people can meet together at the computer centre, they can also communicate to other
villages through the net. I identified this as a multicasting model because ICT and other media could be used
together with a different use of ICT in different areas. This would be cheaper than other broadcasting or
narrowcasting practices. This would be participatory event and could be modified to suit the needs of the
people.
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