Desi Cyberwar

The hottest topic on blogosphere for quite sometime has undoubtedly been IIPM.

Brief History:
The furor started with the article by JAM, a youth magazine exposing IIPM. JAM and its editor Rashmi Bansal enjoy a strong following which troubled IIPM as their credibility was getting seriously tarnished with such an explosive article being read my thousands of people. They quickly got into action and gave Rashmi Bansal a legal notice and accused of her taking bribe, and claimed it was caught by a sting operation by AajTak. This accusation broke out a desi cyberwar, first of its kind with all the bloggers backing the JAM editor. Most desi bloggers supported her and wrote post in their blogs condeming IIPM and supporting Rashmi Bansal. One such blogger is Gaurav Sabnis, who was an IBM employee. IIPM decided to act against Sabnis and fired a legal notice to him. But this thing did not seem to bother Sabnis. But IIPM had another trick up its sleeve, they put pressure on Sabnis employers IBM - saying they would burn the IBM laptops they use on their campus in front of IBM Delhi Office. IBM last year sold 1,500 laptops to IIPM . Seeing that, IBM was unnecessarily being dragged into the controversy, Sabnis being a man of principles, decided to stand by his opinion about IIPM and thus quit his job at IBM.

Current Status:
Blogosphere is united, and totally against IIPM. This controversy has now become a national news. To put smile on bloggers who condemn IIPM, Outlook Magazine has issued a caution notice:

But sad news is that after Gaurav Sabnis, another blogger has become a victim of IIPM rage. Varna has recieved a legal notice and that too, a 175 crore lawsuit. This war is turning real ugly, innocent bloggers are getting targeted, which has angered the online community a lot. In response to this an Online Petition has been created to protest against IIPM.


This is turning out to be a fascinating story because this war is looked at as a fundamental breach of the right to free speech. But as they say every war is ugly and same is the true with this one. Bloggers are getting threatning legal notices, people are losing their jobs but the sad part is that future of IIPM students is getting damaged because of all the bad publicity their institute has gained in these last few weeks. Just for the record, Iam sympathizing with IIPM students, but not with IIPM. For years it's outrageous ads have been a menace and it was about time, things were put in right perspective.

To end this post, I have this great feeling to witness and be part of the first cyberwar of the country but at the same time, my sympathy to Rashmi, Gaurav and Varna. I hope they come victorious out of this mess!

Arpit.