In the age of hashtags, tweets, videos, chats and gifs the two things which emerge in plain sight is the velocity with which data propagates alongwith the ability it has to influence, mould opinions, perspective as also the entire narrative. The process though robust lets of two very traditional tangibles off the hook i.e veracity and anonymosity. With info age on the crads and as crudely brought out in the latest critically acclaimed motion picture ‘the social dillema’ the business module algorithms smartly dismember the verification and identification process behind an information. Anything and everything is information (without verification of course) and it can be weaponised to mould a naïve mind or the entire narrative for the populace. Kashmir valley happenes to be the hub of global attenditon since its coming into beign for reasons ranging from border disputes, home grown/foreign terrorism, ethinic cleansing and howls of separatism. With advent of technology, multimedia litercay increasing by an engrossing 68% from the start of the millenium when seen on plane with the extant volatile issues makes it a perfect recepie for an information moulded catastrophe in the waiting until there is a narrative, word, statement which instead of disintegration has a binding effect. This is the next perceived plane of warfare in kashmir under the ambit of unconventional 4gw where there is a need to exactly do two things: counter and project i.e counter the false narratives and project the development accentuating, friendly administration face to the people’s.
The kashmir valley is an amalmagation of six districts boasting of a population of approximately seven million with 9.2 million mobile conncections as of dec 2020. So to understand the landscape we need to start from retrospect taking year 2000 as base year when the pupulatoin was approximately 5 million and with only 4800 registered cdma mobile users the information attribute which could be taken as influencing enough was miniscule. Tracing the chronology of events very interesting facts emerge. The cellphone boom knocked on the valley floor if we may take it by 2003 and commensurate with launch of orkut and gmail giving the first information inroad connecting the people,s to each other and also the world. Within five years by 2005 the cellphone users increased to approximately 6 lakhs and with 2.5 lakh okrut accounts. The boom was further exploited as gold mint by launch of facebook in 2006 and whatsapp in 2010 and by the next 10 years in 2015 the statistics churned gives an intersesting overaly i.e the number of cellphone users with facebook and whatsapp increased by a magnanimous 485% from 2010 with recorded 2.3 million fb accounts and 3.8 million whatsapp accounts. The year 2015 is taken as the base year owed to two main factors: creation of substantial information usage base aggregation and unrestricted launch of 3g/4g services for the first time in the valley. This enabled seamless flow of info, easy access to global platforms thereby leading to manifold increase in info sharing platform availability and capability. Since 2015 there emerges a striking resonance of statistics in line with stalin’s leaflet campaign launched in year 1941 during op barbarossa appealing to the serb, khalkins, crimeans and russians to unite against a common enemy i.e the nazis. So how the analogy manifests is that post 2015 the number of civilian casualties due to terrorist actions has reduced by 42 % as has the security forces (sf) cas by 18% but that is attributed to reduced adversary capability to push in foreign terrorists as also its thinned financial capacity running on an oxygen vent support from the red dragon. However, it is interesting to consider here two more important developments in the last five years. Firstly, the amount of radicalization being fermented into the yourth has reduced approximately by 22% and the number of madrassas going off the landscape is a direct testimony to the above statistic which stands to have been reduced by 12%. Secondly, on the lopside there has been a substantial increase in law and order issue of stone pelting with a record 2,745 recorded incidents with trend starting in 2015 till 2019 which is 225% incr from its pre 2015 figures. The above figures give us few clear indicators that firstly the youth wants to look past the radicalization gambit, walk on the path of progression away from getting hardlined and also there is a segment which has used the information flow ease for fermenting easy unrest, mandering/ moulding opinions for a negative cause and generating movement out of a nothing event to target the administration, sfs on the behest of security overreach. So how did these two sides of the coin manifest: one painting a rosy picture of mainstreaming as testified by increase of kashmiris in all walk of life, sectors outside the valley, into the india cricket team and as far into making their marks in the afresh us biden administration and the other of concoting a canvas of public unrest and projecting an anti human rights (hr) government on the world stage. Both the sides have been jump started by the information awareness so prevailing in the valley owed to above brought out factors. So how does the information moulding scenario work: who are perpetratrors of information crime using influential reach for criminalising freedon and who are the backstage heroes trying to bind the people’s into a meaningful leauge. What are the trends, who is fairing better and where do we go from here.
The bandwidth and social media boom collided with both anti national elements (anes) and sfs racing to have an information warfare (iw) edge in the given spectrum. The time could not have been more perfect as a viral photograph of 13 local terrorists with all smiles, fully motivated during rounds on fb showcausing the ‘youth voice & intent in valley’. The same photo coupled with government cyber expertee led to neutralization of each and every one on those anes including the famous poster boy ‘mr burhan wani’. The backlash against the sf so created resulted into multifarious protests, stone pelting and anti indian army media narrative in the valley. Coupled with maj gogai’s tying a civilian on the bonet of his vehicle to extricate his sub unit from within garb of an angry stone pelting mob was prime time news projecting army as a citizen torchrer. Events when analysed in the 50 months periods from jan 2015 the following imepertives are pertinent to enlist. The high bandwidth spectrum offered ease in info sharing. Proliferation of whatsapp, fb groups harbingered anti national and incomplete/ fake information flow in the context of human rights (hr) protection activity. Impact factor of an incident could not be localized with a military anti terrorist operation being desicrated and amplified for nuclear reaction type retaliatory acts in other localities, villages, towns and even districts. Increase in number of stone pelting and mobbing incident with average time in building up a mob and a road artery being thrown out of gear reduced by 80% to minutes from erstwhile several hours.the correct and meaningful perspective to prevent unrest being rolled out by government on social media platforms was an average 24 – 48 hours which was delayed enough for a catastrophic outbreak.
The collective government machinery sponsored information campaign surfaced late on to the scene with indian army shifting gears by late 2015 with iw being invested upon after drawing up to the information driven anti sf pattern emerging in the valley. The start was slow in the defence forces with information warfare (iw) being localized to the command level and so a rebuttal or a goodwill measure being reflected on a social media platform as late as 72 hrs as of 2016, thereby fighting for relevance when it came up for public consumption. As is said: a good start is a job half done and starting with modest in house army web portal, displaying people’s support posters outside garrison to graduating to facebook, twitter, blogs, youtube and whatsapp. From 2015 to 2019 there was an increase of 55% in number of pro government social media links which though were far outnumbered by an increased anti government forums which increased by a whooping 180% in the corresponding timeline. Thread bearing the postings and chatters the anti government postings outnumbered pro government development activity postings by 120% with number of followers for pro government agenda being outnumbered by 214%. The overall iw canvas post 2015 was panning out as under. The number of anti government communities increased far rapidly than pro government.anti government narratives were driven by sentiments and exploited traditional heart burns, whereas the government handles were controlled at top levels with restricted counter propaganda freedom.the social media wave came almost 12-14 months later into the administration stream.the government iw modus operandi was at best reactionary in nature limited to rebuttals and quashing false narratives that too in a belated time frame. For the starters the valley came to its peak of saturation with sf in form of pmf units before the landmark step of abrogating the controversial article 370. The realisation owed to numerous ill fated mass movement incidents fuelled by social media armagedon led to government drawing out a well drawn information flow strategy intitiating it with termination of mobile based internet services and bsnl being the underpinning organisation of the next phase of the campaign i.e increasing presence on the socal medial platforms. Rampant decentralisation was undertaken for handling of pro government official handles with simple terms of reference easily assimilable and implementable.
Decentralisation led to creation of more number of ids and pro government user accounts. The authority to post on legitimate social media platforms was given down till battalion, company level.the shut down period was well utilised to increase social media presence with number of pro government mouth pieces increasing by 520% from aug 2019 to aug 2020.the numbers of pro government postings increased to approx 5.8 million in a span of 12 months with an incrase of 400%. The battle was taken to the last soldier, with multimedia phone being converted into a weapon of choice.thematic study was undertaken to optimally utilise the social medial platforms leading to drawing out of following modus operandi.twitter accounts for positive postings and instant countering of false narrative down to the man on the post level.digitisng support to the people,s by posting on twitter, facebook and youtube.forming of local civil-military self help social media groups for grevience readressal, community upliftment and information sharing.blogs came up to glorify individual and community people’s achievements to spread it far and wide.the public support was widely showcased and mileaged on all legitimate social medial platforms. Reaction gave way to pro activeness with a peak of 7,400 pro government postings in sep 2020 owed to ‘each soldier being an info warrior concept’. The number of rebuttals and counter propaganda postings to offset a false narrative rose by 248% and average reaction time to a fake posting reduced to 5-7 minutes. Article writing and blogging has emerged as a ‘go to’ tool to connect with the intellect in kashmir, as also cultivating the electronic media. The strategy definitely prospered both owed to the well laid out decentralised roll out and restricted access for the common public further compounded by 2g relegation of bandwidth post abrogation of artice 370. With the valley limping back to normal and embracing the communication age once again there are three main pillars trending at the moment. Firstly, the number of pro government information warrior counts is rising by the day at an average of 5-8% on a monthly basis. Secondly, the military civil administration social media liaison is paying rich dividends, with successful conduct and coverage of recently conducted ddc elections being an apt testimony. Thirdly, the reduced reaction time and counter propaganda postings have outnumbered anti government postings by atleast 20-30% and rising by every passing moment. Lastly, impact is well measured by the number of stone pelting incidents reducing to virtually nil by smartly following the anti government & sf handles to cultivate an anti propaganda campaign in time and nipping it in the bud, as also there has been an overall 22% reduction i.e more than 1200 anti government social media accounts in year 2020 itself.
Information warfare (iw) has been ‘go to’ tool since pre historic compaigns of maharastra, ullesys to the most recent azerbiajan – armenia conflict of 2020. So in simple terms iw is here to stay and it is of utmost importance that we utilise our most outright tool to the optimum and that is numbers. Each government worker, military and pmf personnel with a phone, desktop, laptop is to be cultivated as an info warrior handing out words of peace, support to people’s and countering fake narratives on authorized social media platforms. We seem to be treading the right path and in times to come it is on the immaculate usage of information that the future of prevailing tranquility of the valley will be decided.
