Arindam Chaudhuri, the founder of the Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) chain and author has brought out advertisements in national media calling for greater control over content available on the Internet.
Chaudhuri, who has been on the receiving end of a lot of scrutiny by bloggers over his institute’s claims, urged the viewers to oppose what he called ‘Internet Vandalism.’
He said the Internet has become a platform to attack the personal integrity of people “in the name of freedom of speech” and those who support such efforts (naming Google as an example) must be brought to books.
Chaudhuri lauded the current draft of the Indian IT Act put up on the department of IT website, calling it the right anti-dote to the Internet misdemeanor.
Chaudhuri is one of the earliest high profile victims of the activism of India’s blogging community. Bloggers had attacked his claims about his institutes claiming that the mainstream media did not bring out the facts due to him taking out regular big-bucks advertisements in them.
After Chaudhuri, others to fall prey to criticism from Internet users have included the famous journalist Barkha Dutt.