📰 EWS patients also ‘overcharged’ at Fortis
Probe panel says Gurugram hospital showed follow-up poor patients as new cases
•The four-member committee appointed by the Haryana government to probe into the death of seven-year-old Adya Singh during dengue treatment at Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurugram, has also found faults with the treatment of patients from Economically Weaker Sections at the hospital.
•According to the panel, the hospital uses high-cost drugs for the EWS patients deterring them from opting for treatment, even as every follow-up patient is shown as a new case to increase their number.
•As per the conditions under which land has been given to Fortis for construction of hospital at confessional rates, “subsidised rates at 30% of the normal charges shall be charged for 20% of functional beds for the weaker section of the society”.
•The committee in its 40-page report has observed that FMRI has provided the medical records and bills of 15 patients, who had been extended 70% discount on their admission charges.
•“It has been observed that they (FMRI) are showing every follow-up patient as a new case so as to increase their number. Most of their patients are chronic renal failure cases and every time they come for dialysis, they are counted as new patients,” said the report.
Higher cost drugs
•The committee further said that even for EWS patients higher-cost drugs are used by FMRI despite same-composition medicines being available in their pharmacy at much lower prices.
•“This offsets any financial discount to the patients of EWS... When bills are prepared using high-cost drugs, estimates of cost to patients even after 70% discount is so high that they would not opt for treatment at FMRI,” the report said.
•The FMRI clarified to The Hindu: “We do not create any differentiation between EWS and paying patients, neither logistics wise, nor on usage of drugs and consumables.”
•“Each time a patient visits the hospital on a different day, a new episode is created and it is treated as a new number. This is the practice followed by all hospitals,” the hospital added.
📰 ‘Manuscript magazines’ a hit among statisticians
Government staff rediscovering their creative side through Malayalam calligraphy
•Even as publishing moves to a digital platform and digitisation is taking over different aspects of our lives, employees of the Economics and Statistics (E&S) Department in Kerala have launched manuscript magazines (Kaiyezhuthu Masika), with the aim of promoting Malayalam and giving a creative break to the staff from the drab world of statistics, surveys and computations.
•Manuscript magazines with elegant calligraphy were once a popular and low-cost means of communication and channelling creativity. But the format started losing popularity with the advance in printing technology. But it is seeing a revival after a handful of employees at the Economics and Statistics Department in Ernakulam district decided to launch their first manuscript magazine, titled Niravu. Soon, their colleagues in Kottayamand Wayanad came up with their own magazines Kaiyoppu (Signature) and Kathir (Paddy Ears) respectively.
•The popularity of these initiatives is now inspiring employees in other districts and departments to bring out their own magazines. The 90-page Niravu is into its second issue, three months after the first came out. “Many of our staff are talented in arts and literature. But after joining government service, they hardly get a platform to hone their creativity,” said Sincy Mol Antony, Deputy Director, Ernakulam.
•“With their emphasis on calligraphy, manuscript magazines give a boost to the written form. The versatility of calligraphy helps to retain the vibrancy of the language,” said one of the employees.
•Publishing a manuscript magazine is not easy. Contributions of the employees are rewritten by those with good handwriting skills. Pencil drawings and colour sketches are included in the magazine. “One cannot distinguish between a handwritten copy and DTP work,” said Anil James, one of the editors of Niravu.
•Despite their fascination for the written format, the editors are not indifferent to technology. They are using the digital platform to popularise the magazine by circulating it in PDF format.
📰 Goa sets up task force to fight drug menace
•Admitting the need to control rave parties, Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar on Monday said that his government had formed an Anti-Narcotics Task Force, comprising members of various law enforcement agencies, to draw a comprehensive action plan to combat trafficking of drugs.
•Replying to a calling attention motion in the Assembly Mr. Parrikar said the Goa Police has identified joints in the tourism-savvy regions where drugs are consumed, and promised more action against drug use.
•“(We have) identified joints where drugs are in use. We are now working on it. They will be blacklisted. Rave parties have to be brought under control. We will take it on a mission mode,” Mr. Parrikar said.
•“Without drugs you can’t dance until morning. With alcohol, you can dance at the most two to three hours,” Mr. Parrikar said.
•The Chief Minister also said, that some night parties and hotels, shacks, persons, lodgings are on the radar of anti-drug agencies.
•“Goa being a global tourist destination, lakhs of tourists, international as well as domestic, visit the state every year and are the major target of drug peddlers/dealers. It is also learnt that these days, the drug dealers/ peddlers are using foreign tourists who are addicts to sell drugs, since foreigners can easily approach another foreigner with drugs,” Mr. Parrikar said.
📰 ‘Farm reforms, job creation to be priority’
Post polls, ‘doubling farmer income, skills mission revamp high on agenda’
•Notwithstanding a comfortable victory in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh polls, the NDA government at the Centre — taking note of the BJP’s lacklustre performance in rural areas in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state as well as the development mandate in the hill state — will ‘prioritise and expedite agricultural reforms and employment generation’ initiatives from now on.
‘Reforms to continue’
•“This victory, in the backdrop of concerns over demonetisation and the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax regime, is a huge shot in the arm for the reform credentials, reform resolve and reform reinforcement of the [NDA] government. Therefore, the reforms will continue,” Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog, told The Hindu.
•He said, “Priority areas are likely to be the mission to ‘double the income of farmers by 2022’ as well as employment generation in sectors including housing and exports.”
•Mr. Kumar added that revamping of the National Skill Development Mission and an emphasis on the National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme (for “promoting apprenticeship training and incentivising employers keen on engaging apprentices”) were key with regard to job creation.
•In the farm sector, the plan is to ensure that farmers are not just producers but are part of the entire value chain, he said.
•The government is compiling a list of all successful farm experiments in the country that have resulted in a substantial jump in the income of farmers involved in those projects, so that they can, in turn, be replicated and scaled up through about ten pilot projects.
•In the exports sector, the government is studying supply-side constraints, especially the labour-intensive ones, with a view to increase employment. Meanwhile, another senior official, requesting anonymity, said “Unlike in the U.P. polls where the BJP scored a landslide victory, voters in Gujarat have given a complicated message. First it has to be analysed politically, and then only discussions will begin at a bureaucratic level for policy reform actions.”
•The official added, “But, we are in a state of perpetual readiness when it comes to reforms and on any policy including on Foreign Direct Investment.”
•Yet another official, also asking not to be quoted, said in the financial sector, the current priority concerns protection of the common man’s savings and the focus was hence on the Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance Bill, its controversial ‘bail-in’ clause and addressing concerns over depositors’ money in case of a lender failing, as well as a proposed law at the Central level to effectively regulate chit funds and to prevent fraud.
📰 Plea in SC seeks OBC status for farmers
Notice to Centre, Gujarat govt., NCBC
•The Supreme Court has decided to entertain a writ petition seeking ‘farmers’ who do not fall within the creamy layer to be recognised as Other Backward Classes (OBC) as an occupational group irrespective of their caste and religion.
•A three-judge Bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud on December 17 issued notice on the writ petition.
•The PIL argued that the inclusion would arm the ryots with constitutional rights to protect their livelihood. The court asked the Centre, the Gujarat government and the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) to respond to the petition.
•The petition, filed by Rajeshkumar Patel, questioned the validity of the office memorandum of the Gujarat government issued on September 13 which increased the slab of income to ₹8 lakh to raise the number of the OBC classes.
•The Centre’s memorandum was followed shortly in October by the State government’s order.
📰 ‘Link policies to Aadhaar by March 31’
•The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) has fixed March 31, 2018 as the deadline for insurance policy holders to link Aadhaar and PAN, or Form 60, to their policies.
•For new policies, the process has to be completed within six months.
•“The date of submission of Aadhaar Number and Permanent Account Number or Form 60 by the clients to the reporting entity is 31st March, 2018 or six months from the date of commencement of account-based relationship,” the regulatory authority said on Monday.
📰 Rafale deal has better terms, cleared by CCS, says Nirmala
36 Aircraft being procured in fly-away condition, Defence Minister tells Rajya Sabha
•The Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) with France for 36 Rafales was arrived at to meet the critical requirement of the Air Force (IAF) and was cleared by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), Parliament was informed on Monday.
•“In the present procurement, 36 Rafale aircraft are being procured in direct fly-away condition under IGA between the government of India and French Republic. In the IGA, better terms have been achieved in terms of better pricing, better maintenance terms and better delivery schedule,” Nirmala Sitharaman said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha.
•In September 2016, India and France signed the €7.87-billion agreement for the aircraft, spares, weapons, 10 years of annual maintenance and associated equipment. The deal has a 50% offset clause to be executed by Dassault and its partners.
•In 2000, a proposal was mooted to procure 126 Mirage-2000 jets to replace the Mig-21s in service which was later converted to the Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) for which the Request For Proposal (RFP) was issued in 2007. Of the 126, 18 were direct fly-away aircraft and 108 were to be licence manufactured in India.
•On completion of field evaluation trials, only two of the six vendors were found to be fully compliant and the Dassault Aviation was declared the L1, Ms. Sitharaman said. “The contract negotiations had reached an impasse and the RFP was formally withdrawn on June 24, 2015. To meet the critical operational requirements of the IAF, 36 Rafale were procured through the IGA route,” she stated.
•Dassault has tied with up Reliance Defence to execute its share of the offset clause to which Ms. Sitharaman said the vendor was free to choose their partner.
•Recently, the Congress party had alleged a “huge scam” in the deal and accused the Modi government of “promoting the interests of Prime Minister’s crony capitalist friends”.
📰 Trump to unveil ‘America First’ national security strategy
The last such strategy document, prepared by then-President Barack Obama in 2015, declared climate change an “urgent and growing threat to our national security.”
•Prioritizing national sovereignty over alliances, President Donald Trump is poised to outline a new national security strategy that envisions nations in a perpetual state of competition, reverses Obama-era warnings on climate change, and de-emphasizes multinational agreements that have dominated the United States’ foreign policy since the Cold War.
•The Republican President, who ran on a platform of “America First,” will detail his plan on Monday, one that if fully implemented could sharply alter the United States’ relationships with the rest of the world. The plan, according to senior administration officials who offered a preview on Sunday, is to focus on four main themes- protecting the homeland and way of life; promoting American prosperity; demonstrating peace through strength; and advancing American influence in an ever-competitive world.
•Trump’s doctrine holds that nation states are in perpetual competition and that the U.S. must fight on all fronts to protect and defend its sovereignty from friend and foe alike. While the administration often says that “America First” does not mean “America Alone,” the national security strategy to be presented by Mr. Trump will make clear that the United States will stand up for itself even if that means acting unilaterally or alienating others on issues like trade, climate change and immigration, according to people familiar with the strategy.
•The last such strategy document, prepared by then-President Barack Obama in 2015, declared climate change an “urgent and growing threat to our national security.” A senior official said the Trump plan removes that determination following the administration’s threat to pull out of the Paris climate accord but will mention the importance of environmental stewardship.
•Despite the risk of potential isolation presented by Trump’s strategy, its fundamentals are not a surprise. The Associated Press last week reviewed excerpts of a late draft of the roughly 70-page document and spoke to two people familiar with it. The draft emphasizes that U.S. economic security is national security and that economic security must be ensured with military might. And they said it would stress the U.S. is interested only in relationships with other countries, including alliances like NATO, that are fair and reciprocal.
•Mr. Trump, according to the senior officials, is also expected to discuss threats he’ll deem as “rogue regimes,” like North Korea, and “revisionist powers,” like Russia and China, who aim to change the status quo, such as Moscow and its actions with Ukraine and Georgia, and Beijing in the South China Sea. Trump is also planning to renew his call for the member states in the United Nations and NATO to spend more on defense, saying that the United States will insist on its alliances being fair and reciprocal.
•The senior officials said the document refers to China as a “strategic competitor,” rather than the stronger accusation of “economic aggression” previewed last week by National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster.
•Despite international challenges, the document cites emerging opportunities to advance American interests in the Middle East. “Some of our partners are working together to reject radical ideologies and key leaders are calling for a rejection of Islamist extremism and violence,” it says. “Encouraging political stability and sustainable prosperity would contribute to dampening the conditions that fuel sectarian grievances.”
•The strategy document asserts that “for generations the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has been understood as the prime irritant preventing peace and prosperity in the region. Today, the threats from radical jihadist terrorist organizations and the threat from Iran are creating the realization that Israel is not the cause of the region’s problems. States have increasingly found common interests with Israel in confronting common threats.”
•The criticism of Russia will come as a break from recent warm words between Mr. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The leaders have spoken twice in four days, with Mr. Trump calling Mr. Putin to thank him for kind words about the U.S. stock market and Mr. Putin reaching out to Mr. Trump to thank the CIA for help in stopping a terror plot in St. Petersburg.
•The strategy document will not make explicit reference to Russian attempts to meddle in the U.S. political system, but an official said it would highlight the importance of ensuring the resilience of U.S. democratic institutions.
•The early draft of the strategy reviewed by the AP lamented that America had put itself at a disadvantage by entering into multinational agreements, such as those aimed at combating climate change, and introducing domestic policies to implement them.
📰 Focus on income mobility
We must look at the number of people moving up and down the economic ladder and ways to help people up
•The World Inequality Report 2018 released by the World Inequality Lab last week says that income inequality in India has increased since economic liberalisation. This, it notes, is in contrast to the earlier decades when inequality dropped under socialist policies. As expected, the finding has been used by many to argue that the rich should be taxed more to help the poor. The logic is that the rich get richer at the expense of the poor, so taxes that redistribute wealth are only a rational response to inequality.
Less icentive to produce
• It is true that the rich and the middle class control a major share of the world’s resources, which consequently is not available to the poor. They enjoy higher incomes from better jobs and investments, which allows them to outbid the poor to purchase various goods. What is not true, however, is that the poor will get to enjoy many luxuries if only the rich were taxed more and the money was used to write welfare cheques to the poor, thus boosting their purchasing power. Instead, when taxes are high, people who help produce the goods that the rich and the middle class enjoy today will have less of an incentive to do their jobs as before. Workers, for instance, may no longer be attracted towards high-skill jobs when their income from such jobs is taxed at high rates. Investors too will have lesser reason to put in their money in crucial projects when their profits are taxed at high rates. In fact, India before economic liberalisation faced this problem when it tried to tax its way to prosperity.
Enabling mobility
•Income inequality will always exist in a market economy where people are allowed to engage in free exchange and earn incomes according to their personal capabilities. Doctors, for instance, earn many more times than plumbers and carpenters because they offer rare services. At the same time, however, the higher incomes of the rich and the middle class do not last forever in a marketplace that is free of legal entry barriers. More people will be attracted towards professions and businesses that offer higher returns, which in turn will drive up the incomes of the new entrants while driving down the returns of incumbents. This is why we must look at income mobility, which reflects the number of people moving up and down the economic ladder, and ways to foster it rather than inequality. In fact, income inequality might even widen during times when there is a lot of economic mobility. To enable mobility, however, the government needs to look beyond taxes and handouts, and ensure social goods — education and healthcare — for all in order to level the playing field.
📰 Environmentalists allege winter forest fires in Charmadi range are ‘engineered’
This, they say, is done to encroach upon vast extents of reserve forests in the Western Ghats
•Forest fires in the otherwise completely green landscape of the Western Ghats during the winter at Somanakadu valley of Barimale in the Charmadi range has set off alarm bells among the greens in the locality.
•Ironically, such incidents are happening frequently in the district/border area represented by Minister for Forests, Environment and Ecology, B. Ramanath Rai.
•Environmentalists allege that these are not “natural” but attempts by estate owners in the region to extend their boundaries illegally into reserve forest areas.
•Dinesh Holla from Sahyadri Sanchaya said he witnessed the fire on Saturday and Sunday during a trek with a group. The region had seen forest fires this February too, destroying a vast extent of forest land, including Shola forests and grassland. Despite repeated complaints, the Forest Department did little to prevent the forest fires and bring to book the culprits, he said.
•Barimale region is the birthplace of Aniyur, Sunala, and Neriya rivulets — tributaries of the Netravathi. Recurring forest fires and consequent encroachment of forest land will have a cascading effect on the flow of the Netravathi, which has already been drying up between Belthangady and Bantwal in the district, Mr. Holla told The Hindu.
•Mr. Holla said Ramanagudda in the Charmadi range used to be covered with green grass at least till February.
•However, deficient rainfall this monsoon dried up all the water sources making the grass dry. Mruthyunjaya rivulet, a tributary of the Netravathi, has its origin in the region, he said.
•General secretary of National Environment Care Foundation, Mangaluru, Shashidhar Shetty, said many people have developed estates growing rambutan, rubber, coffee, among other produce at the foothills of the Western Ghats and have regularly been encroaching reserve forest lands.
•Mr. Holla alleged that the modus operandi of estate owners is to set fire to the forest first year, spray chemicals next year to completely denude the region of any green cover, and extend the boundary the following year. “Through this, hundreds of acres of forest land have already been encroached upon,” he alleged.
•Responding to this complaint raised by environmentalists, Mr. Rai said that the department has been taking action against those setting forests on fire and encroaching lands. But the department cannot procure helicopters as suggested by them since the country is “not that advanced”, he said.
•He said that the department recently recruited over 4,000 field personnel to guard the forest wealth.
Hunting goes on too
•It is not just forest encroachment that goes on unabated in the Charmadi range of Western Ghats, but also hunting of wildlife in broad daylight, allege environmentalists.
•Sahyadri Sanchaya’s Dinesh Holla encountered a group of about 35 people armed with guns and sharp weapons at Baluru Gudda near Kottigehara in Chikkamagaluru district during a recent trek. His attempts to dissuade the group from hunting were futile and instead he and his companions were “advised” to mend their way, he said. Mr. Holla’s complaints to the Forest Department did not get any response, but he got calls from the hunting gang warning him to keep away from informing the department, he alleged.
📰 Hidden figures of Indian science
It’s strange how India ignores some of its best intellectuals
•Many of the greatest scientists that independent India has produced are little known, like hidden figures in their own homeland. Amal Kumar Raychaudhuri in cosmology, G.N. Ramachandran in protein crystal structures, and C.K. Majumdar and Dipan Ghosh who extended the quantum Heisenberg spin model. These are household names in the international scientific field, but are little promoted by the Indian scientific establishment, even neglected in graduate teaching.
Why the oversight?
•This oversight reflects a serious problem for the sciences in India. India has numerous well-funded institutions designed to produce high-quality scientific research, but the resulting research is mostly mediocre. What is worse is that many Indian scientists agree that the relatively small amount of world-class research they produce emerges despite the national scientific establishment, and not because of it.
•The physicist Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, until recently director of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, is critical about the flaws that he sees: “Our research institutes, despite having far greater resources, were full of clever people who were risk-averse and eased into safe, albeit good, research, but not the ground-breaking work of the earlier, colonial times. Local rewards not subject to global competition were low-hanging fruit — [these were] temptations too hard to ignore.” An Indian citizen who achieved his reputation in the U.S., Professor Bhattacharya was recruited to run TIFR because, as C.N.R. Rao, who until recently was head of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, said at the time, “There is really a crisis of leadership in the country… There is a need to get in some fresh blood.” However, the resistance to a U.S.-returned scientist who was from outside the corridors of power ensured that the system remained largely unchanged.
•The system is run by scientists-turned-bureaucrats, who have absorbed the culture of government. Independent India’s project of building a national science establishment led to internal standards of judgment: the scientists in power certify each other’s work. Dependent on political patronage for continued funding, these leaders groom loyalists and yes-men rather than cutting-edge researchers (and women are scarce). In a culture where people tend to get perceived as “smart” or not, labels can stick for life: hard work yields no rewards unless one is already defined as smart. This has led to an insider culture, reproducing privileges rather than promoting excellence. It is the little-recognised lone rangers who usually produce the best work in such a system, and not the research groups that get the major share of resources.
•In the Hollywood film Hidden Figures, we learn the true story of some mathematicians who made crucial contributions to NASA’s space satellite programme, but were ignored because they were female and black. That was in 1960s America, far more patriarchal and racially biased than today. On the other hand, the Indian scientists in question were usually upper-caste Hindu men who experienced no discrimination on account of their identity. But they were not insiders close to political power.
•India’s scientific institutions have been a blind spot in the state’s modernisation project. They symbolise reason and are immune to criticism. Owing to a conscious decision at the time of independence, research institutions, which house a tiny elite, get most of the funding but universities get very little, says Shobhit Mahajan, a Delhi University physicist. Research and teaching are segregated, the result being that both suffer.
Roadblocks to innovation
•For Indian scientists, success has meant becoming a bureaucrat, rather than advancing research. Somendra Bhattacharjee, a senior physicist at Bhubaneswar’s Institute of Physics, lists some of the consequences of this system. First, all the significant work produced in India is theoretical work. “At least in the theoretical sciences, money is not that much of a requirement,” he says. “If you have some contacts and can do things at the international level, nobody is going to go after you. That’s how many isolated works are getting done.”
•Second, experimental science “is very poor in India”. To succeed, experiments require at least two conditions: guarantees of long-term funding and scientists’ collaboration with each other. Funding varies with the political climate: there will be money to buy equipment but no certainty that resources will flow for all the years needed to ensure significant results. And collaboration is a social process, not an intellectual one. It involves, among other things, physical labour together with others. But, Mr. Bhattacharjee says, “Working with hands is not encouraged among scientists. The words used in Indian labs are: one needs hands to do experiments, not brains.” Lab assistants are the hands, while scientists avoid what they regard as mere manual labour.
•Third, far from creating a positive influence on society, Indian scientific institutions reflect the existing social make-up and even reinforce it. Bureaucrats no longer active in cutting-edge research regard themselves as capable of judging working scientists, dispensing with principles of peer review. And instead of creating a scientific esprit de corps and contributing to social debates, Indian scientists tend to shun public commentary, unless it is to serve as government spokespersons.
•Thus claims recycling popular myths can be made by the Prime Minister or by participants at the Indian Science Congress — while leaders of the scientific establishment keep mum. Not long ago, a news release announced a high-level scientific panel headed by the Science and Technology Minister to study the therapeutic benefits of cow urine and cow dung, which ancient Indian science has long venerated. The members of the panel include a former director-general of the Council on Scientific and Industrial Research, R.A. Mashelkar, and an IIT-New Delhi director, V. Ramgopal Rao.
•The existence of well-funded institutions that foster group-think, marginalise talent and generate little real innovation might not be news. But with globalisation, it is easier to notice the growing contrast between the fame diaspora scientists achieve in the West, and the challenges their counterparts face in their own countries. India’s problem is hardly unique. Durable institutions and cultures of innovation are not widespread in the Global South. But India is the most successful of all the nations in the Global South, with a more affluent diaspora than virtually any other country. Bringing to light the “hidden figures” in Indian science — without the help of a major motion picture this time — should lead to a wider discussion about the strange career of Indian science. Acknowledging internationally celebrated scientific accomplishments, and asking why they were ignored for so long, can start a useful discussion.
📰 For a safe cyberspace
Cybersecurity needs to be integrated in every aspect of policy and planning
•India is one of the key players in the digital and knowledge-based economy, holding more than a 50% share of the world’s outsourcing market. Pioneering and technology-inspired programmes such as Aadhaar, MyGov, Government e-Market, DigiLocker, Bharat Net, Startup India, Skill India and Smart Cities are propelling India towards technological competence and transformation. India is already the third largest hub for technology-driven startups in the world and its Information and Communications Technology sector is estimated to reach the $225 billion landmark by 2020.
•However, these achievements come with a problem: innovation in technology, enhanced connectivity, and increasing integration in commerce and governance also make India the fifth most vulnerable country in the world in terms of cybersecurity breaches, according to the Internal Security Threat Report of 2017 by Symantec. Till June 2017, 27,482 cybersecurity threats had been reported in the country, according to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team’s report. As this is a 23% increase from 2014 figures, it coincides with rapid growth and innovation in the ICT sector.
•The good news, though, is that India recognises this. The second Global Cybersecurity Index, released by the International Telecommunication Union in July, which measured the commitment of nations to cybersecurity, found that India ranked 23 out of 165 nations.
Types of attacks
•Of the cybersecurity attacks, Ransomware attacks have been the most common in the last few years (Ransomware is a type of software that threatens to publish a person’s data or block it unless a ransom is paid). Apart from WannaCry and Petya, other Ransomware attacks that made news globally were Locky, Cerber, Bucbi, SharkRaaS, CryptXXX and SamSam. The success of each of these inspired new attacks. The ransom demands also increased — the average mean ransom demand rose from $294 in 2015 to $1077 in 2016, according to Symantec.
•In India, in May 2017, a data breach at the food delivery App, Zomato, led to personal information of about 17 million users being stolen and put for sale on the Darknet. The company had to negotiate with the hacker in order to get it taken down. Similarly, hackers stole data from 57 million Uber riders and drivers. Uber paid the hackers $100,000 to keep the data breach a secret.
•While Windows operating systems were the most vulnerable to cyberattacks, a number of Android threats have been reported in the last couple of years, including potent crypto-ransomware attacks on Android devices. The attacks aren’t limited to mobile phones and e-Pads. All devices, including televisions that use Android, are also potentially vulnerable. In 2016, the first known Ransomware, named KeRanger, targeting Mac users was also reported. The Mirai botnet malware affected 2.5 million home router users and other Internet of Things devices. A number of viruses, malware and cryptoworms are also being developed in the JavaScript, which gives the attackers cross-platform options.
Taking action
•Given the huge number of online users and continued efforts on affordable access, cybersecurity needs to be integrated in every aspect of policy and planning. At the 15th Asia Pacific Computer Emergency Response Team conference in Delhi, Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad highlighted the need for robust cybersecurity policies and frameworks. The government is keen to fund cybersecurity research. It announced that it will award a grant worth ₹5 crore to startups working on innovations in the field of cybersecurity.
•India needs to quickly frame an appropriate and updated cybersecurity policy, create adequate infrastructure, and foster closer collaboration between all those involved to ensure a safe cyberspace. Minister of Communications Manoj Sinha said at the Global Conference on Cyberspace 2017 that there must be enhanced cooperation among nations and reaffirmed a global call to action for all United Nations member nations to not attack the core of the Internet even when in a state of war. This also clearly emphasises the fact that more than ever before, there is a need for a Geneva-like Convention to agree on some high-level recommendations among nations to keep the Internet safe, open, universal and interoperable.
