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IMC India

website, mailing list

who is active?

history of IMC India

communication difficulties

A recurring theme, at least from August 2001 to late 2003, is that internet access is expensive in India and the people who are real grassroots activists do not overlap much with those people with good internet access. This is why electronic communication is difficult.

First Generation

before August 2001

IMC India became part of the Indymedia network before the NewImc process existed. It was not very active (on the web site) and there was not much transparency about who did what and how. There were very few non-spam articles on the site.

Second Generation: Madurai collective

August 2001 to November 2001

There were efforts to contact the collective and revive the site. There were discussions about new-imc process, the fact the IMC India started before the process, and the preference that IMC India be run by people really living ni India rather than run by expatriates. Eventually the Madurai collective introduced themselves on the imc-india mailing list: and IMC India was restored to the cities list http://www.indymedia.org/cities.inc (see http://www.indymedia.org/contact/ for the contact database).

December 2001 to August 2003

The Madurai collective posted some many excellent, pro-human rights, pro-environment, anti-fascist central features. The site became more and more popular, and by January 2003, the newswire became the target of fascist articles (in the Indian context - see http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindutva or http://www.sabrang.com for info on fascism in India - or http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aindia.indymedia.org+hindutva or http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aindia.indymedia.org+BJP ...).

An alert was sent to the imc-india mailing list and to new-imc in Jan 2003: In August 2003, some new people came along, ganesh who lives in Kolkata (Calcutta) and a well-known progressive activist, Harsh Kapoor, who lives in Montpellier, France. They were extremely upset at the regular hate speech on the newswire resume and attempted to contact the collective.

Since the Madurai collective failed to communicate, and it was clear that someone was hiding some articles on the newswire, including at least some clearly valid articles, but failing to hide clearly hate-promoting articles, the new volunteers eventually proposed an emergency editorial policy: which was accepted without further comment nor opposition.

Third Generation: Emergency Collective and WSF

From September 2003 to December 2005

ganesh, harsh, vickram crishna worked together to reorganise an "emergency collective" so that some sort of open publishing service would remain functioning and that fasicst articles would be hidden, with the hope of eventually organising the local, grassroots side: However, after the WSF in January 2004, there was less activity on the mailing list: The new "emergency" collective clearly posted many excellent central column features and was clearly hiding fascist posts on the newswire.

However, like the previous collective, it did not seem to communicate much on the publicly archived mailing list imc-india, presumably using private email for a lot of the organising process. While it may seem like spamming to send routine organising email to the list, the experience of several IMCs is that this helps encourage others not only to see that the group is active and real, but also to be able to better integrate and feel part of the group, and to be able to offer comments, suggestions, etc etc.

Tech problems August-November 2004

There was a tech problem with using rsync to transfer from the publishing server (also called production server in Mir jargon, or dynamic server) and the normal static server used when people read or download articles. As of 23 Oct 2004, there were no articles on the newswire of the static server since 18 August 2004. However, you can check on prod.india.... if you're concerned that there may be such a tech problem. In general, it's probably better not to link to that site, since the aim is for the download bandwidth to be limited to the main http://india.indymedia.org static server.

The server problems continued upto November 2004.

Suspension January 2006

Due to the lack of active admins and too many non-hidden spam/hate posts, there was a consensus decision to suspend open publishing in January until a new collective can form:

reorganising summer 2006 ?

hints for new volunteers

It is strongly recommended that you read through the documents at NewImcHowTo, even though (happily) there is an existing collective. There is a lot to read, but it's the collective wisdom of many indymedia activists. It's like GNU/Linux - the better you read through the docs, the more chance you have of installing and profiting from the power of free software.

IMC Mumbai/Bombay

archives of old website, mailing list

history of IMC Mumbai/Bombay May 2002 - maybe April 2003

IMC Mumbai/Bombay (independent from IMC India) went through the new-imc process during May to August 2002 and were accepted by the network: The main people active in organising were sanjay and shekhra krishnan (PUKAR) and also Comet Media Foundation, e.g. The last email we have from any of the initial group is this one from sanjay in April 2003: During the WSF in Mumbai (Jan 2004), the main http://india.indymedia.org was used, not the mumbai site.

As of 23 Oct 2004 - the imc-mumbai mailing list had been closed.

WSF Mumbai 2004

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Topic revision: r12 - 28 Mar 2012, RudyDennis
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