📰 Odisha to install siren to caution elephant movement in forest
Officials have been deployed to assess its operability
•The Forest Department in Odisha is experimenting with a siren system, which would go off automatically sensing elephant herds crossing the National Highway to reduce human-elephant encounters.
•“We in association with a non-government organisation have started a pilot project on siren system to alert traffic to elephant movement. The system has been installed at two places at Ratasingha and Haldihabahal,” said Dhenkanal Divisional Forest officer Prakash Chand Gogineni.
•Mr. Gogineni said, “The Forest Department officials have been deployed at two places to assess its operability and how seamless it can work to prevent encounters with wild elephants.”
•“The siren system detects elephant herds approaching National Highway by its infrared sensor system. There is an in-built programme to identify jumbos from their sizes and other attributes. Once detected, the siren would go off alerting traffic from both sides,” he said.
•“We have found the system working when elephants were crossing NH. However, we will carry out overall assessment. We will evaluate how the system is responding to elephant herds and single elephant during crossing of roads,” said the Dhenknal DFO.
•As cropping season has begun, wild elephants would start coming out from forests. The Dhenkanal forest division has identified five crossing points for elephants. Invariably, elephant herds cross NH two to three times in week. There are chances of elephants getting collided with speeding vehicles. Sometimes, people riding two-wheelers bump into elephant herds.
•Similarly, the Khadi Village Industries Commission is implementing apiculture programme to keep elephants at bay in neighbouring Angul district. In cooperation with Athmallik Forest Division, about 100 bee boxes have been set up at border of Laxmipur village in Angul district. Marauding elephants stray into the village frequently damaging large crop areas. Sometimes, human-elephant encounters result in human casualties. Elephants are expected to be stung by bees if their boxes are hit. It would drive elephants back. CCTV cameras have been installed to capture reaction of elephants.
📰 Making sense of New Delhi’s Taliban rapprochement
As a ‘civilisational state’ and inspiring global power, India cannot behave as a transactional, opportunistic salesman
•The Pakistan-led coalition’s success and luck in toppling a United States-supported constitutional order in Afghanistan has brought to surface unexpected developments. While a growing number of the Taliban’s western and regional lobbyists are distancing themselves from their pyrrhic victory, India pulled a rabbit out of its diplomatic hat by sending a senior diplomatic delegation to the Taliban-occupied Kabul. The visit was the culmination of Delhi’s months of quiet diplomacy and signalling. Just hours after the Taliban’s takeover, in 2021, India was the first country to immediately ban all Afghans travelling to India, including students and patients with a valid Indian visa. In a significant but not widely-covered decision, India chose to abstain from the UN Security Council’s calling on the Taliban to open girl schools and continues to remain silent about a worsening situation in Afghanistan.
•India’s apparent reorientation can be described and understood as an example of realpolitik, supremacy of national interest and a superficiality of “values” and “sentiments” in the Hobbesian world of international politics. India’s neutral stance on Russia’s entanglement in Ukraine reveals the Indian version of “First India” foreign policy.
•However, Delhi’s flirtation with the Taliban raises a number of pertinent questions: What are India’s key strategic interests in Afghanistan? How can a potential India-Taliban rapprochement advance such interests? Does the Taliban have the intent and/or capacity to deliver on their promise and vice versa? How would India engage with the anti-Taliban constituencies? How will India’s aspiration to become a global power be served by aligning with an unacceptable regime such as the Taliban?
India as alliance’s target
•Afghanistan is a security-centric concern, in particular, the nexus of Islamic militancy, illicit drugs and proxy warfare. India is a primary target for this alliance. The Taliban’s victory realised two important ideological and strategic goals of militant Islamists and their Pakistani patron: establishing a “pure Islamic Government” in the Heart of Asia and securing Pakistan’s “Strategic Depth”. The two concepts are necessary pre-conditions for attaining another long-held vision of Islamists, Ghazwa-e-Hind.
•There are both historical precedents and existing infrastructure in support of the nexus of religious zealots, tribal warriors and imperial ambitions. Mahmud Ghaznavi was the first to recruit tribal warriors from today’s Afghanistan/Pakistan border region to attack and plunder India more than 1,000 years ago. The British applied a similar strategy in undermining and eventually toppling Afghanistan’s progressive King Amanullah Khan in the early 20th century. In its first war against India in 1948, Pakistan mobilised a tribal army to attack India.
•The central pillar of the West’s anti-Soviet strategy in Afghanistan was to fund and support the Mujahideen via a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-led operation, named “Operation Cyclone”. Pakistan’s geo-strategic vision for Afghanistan is to create a “Greater Waziristan”, to be ruled by an isolated, ruthless and dogmatic Taliban’s reign, funded by United Nations/western humanitarian assistance. In return, Greater Waziristan” would become a major centre for producing, training and sheltering different brands of “tribal/Islamist warriors” for different markets. Afghanistan’s over 6,000 religious madrassas will be further incorporated into Pakistan’s plus 40,000 madrassas to create the world’s largest network of militancy-inspired educational institutions.
Wishful thinking
•New Delhi also seems hopeful of capitalising on the personal grudge some Taliban commanders have against Pakistan and hence its wishful thinking to create an India-friendly faction within the Taliban. Pakistan’s military-intelligence establishment has shown its ruthless and efficient way in dealing with dissident, “out-of-control” and “outdated” proxies. The fate of Pakistani politicians such as Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif, Imran Khan, or Pakistan’s Afghan proxies such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and former Taliban supreme leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour showed Pakistan’s zealous determination to maintain its monopoly on its proxies. India’s ruling party’s anti-Muslim inclinations have also provided additional ammunition to the advocates of “Ghazwa-e-Hind”.
•The facts on the ground are often cited to justify a realistic foreign policy; a justification by those who advocate engagement with the Taliban. There are also other facts that should be taken into account. The U.S.’s peace agreement with the Taliban ended the U.S.’s half-hearted and confused hostility with the Taliban. It did not however terminate other drivers of the Afghan conflict. The following social media trends among Afghan users reveal the full picture of the sorrow conflict: SanctionPakistan; LetAfghanGirlsLearn; StopHazaraGenocide; StopTajikGenocide; PartitionAfghanistan. The Taliban have excluded all non-Taliban Pashtuns from public space as is shown by the house detention of former President Hamid Karzai; there are also systematic violations of the human rights of the non-Pashtun communities which amount to crime against humanity, and ethnic cleansing which borders on genocide. For the first time, the partition of the country into Pashtun-dominated and Farsiwan-dominated polities has, sadly, become political discourse among the Farsiwan constituencies.
Fallacy of ‘India First’
•An “India First” policy seems to drive Delhi’s Taliban rapprochement. If so, it will destroy a central pillar of India’s foreign and security policy, the dismantling of the region’s “terrorist infrastructure”. The Taliban’s victory is the best product of this infrastructure. It would defy logic to be simultaneously critical of a production system while embracing its premium product. India as a “civilizational state” and an inspiring global power cannot behave as a bandwagoning, transactional, opportunistic salesman.
•Notwithstanding India’s strategic hesitancy and caution during the last two decades in Afghanistan, it attained two important benchmarks of becoming an ideational and trustworthy partner. Many Afghans looked at India as an example of a fellow developing nation that overcame the many challenges of building and sustaining a functioning democratic polity. More importantly, India was seen as a sincere friend of Afghanistan, unlike many double-faced actors. Even for an “interest”-based foreign policy, it is counterproductive to lose the trust and goodwill of Afghans toward India by embracing a policy that is doomed to failure on multiple grounds.
•Since August 15, 2021, Afghanistan has descended from a Pax Americana experiment to a “Pax Pakistana” ambition. The prospects for peace and stability in Afghanistan under a Pax Pakistana lordship are not feasible as Pakistan itself is overwhelmed by multiple internal and external challenges. Afghanistan needs a strong UN mandate, including a UN-led political transition process supported by a UN peace keeping/making force. India can lend its support to such endeavours which are worthy of its character, ambition and Afghanistan’s needs.
•Davood Moradian is Director of the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies (AISS). He has previously worked in the Office of President Hamid Karzai and Afghanistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs as Chief Policy Adviser. He has taught in the University of St. Andrews (Scotland) and the American University of Afghanistan
The proposed changes to history textbooks specifically target certain areas of India’s past, causing an ideological shift
•Recent investigative reports (The Indian Express, June 19-22, 2022) bring to light proposals for deletions and changes to school textbooks across the board. The aim, purportedly, is to reduce the load on school students who have suffered a loss of learning due to extended shutdowns during the novel coronavirus pandemic. However, the changes made in the history textbooks specifically target certain areas of India’s past and will result in an ideological shift in history teaching at the school level.
Curricular changes
•The Government is currently undertaking a series of curricular changes. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports recently tabled its Report on the Reforms in Content and Design of School Text books ( November 30, 2021). The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) is already in the process of formulating the new National Curricular Framework, which will direct the syllabi of central and State educational boards. At the heart of this process is the rewriting of school textbooks. The Report of the Parliamentary Committee notes right at the beginning that, ‘School Textbooks, in our educational system, remain the easiest way of sharing a single narrative across millions of students through the multitude of diversity that defines our country’.
•In the tabled report, the discussions in the NCERT and the public statements by members of the ruling establishment, there is an overwhelming emphasis on the need to rewrite history textbooks, to remove ‘un-historical facts and distortions about national heroes’. This is not surprising in itself, since history is at the heart of the political discourse today. The majoritarian political rhetoric rides on the vilification of the Muslims of India as ‘outsiders’ and ‘invaders’. The real story of India, it argues, lies in the ancient period, which is imagined as the glorious Hindu past. Violence — through invasions, battles and bloodshed — is seen as the prime medium of change. The victorious, masculine hero is celebrated, and defeat is seen as an ignominious emasculation. This history focuses on heroes and kings, rulers and armies, even though the craft of history writing has long moved beyond this kind of understanding. However, the suggested changes look to enshrine this as the dominant perspective in history textbooks.
Points of concern
•This raises two points of concern:
•One, this is a limited and unimaginative approach to school education in general and history education in particular. The discussions, especially in the tabled report suggest that the use of audio-visual resources and digital content through QR codes would make school textbooks interesting for students. Such changes are welcome. But these are pedagogic techniques, carriers of content. It is when the students are challenged in the realm of ideas that education becomes more engaging and a meaningful vehicle of change.
•Two, this narrative makes a demand upon students to suspend critical thinking about the world around them and reduces the past to statist and static in their imagination. For example, there is a proposal to delete the description of some of the practices of Akbar’s court. These include the translation of Sanskrit texts such as the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Rajatarangini into Persian, Akbar’s engagement with diverse social and religious practices in the empire, and a section on the emergence of composite architectural traditions.
An example
•Akbar’s armies built a grand empire, stretching from Kashmir to the Deccan, from Kabul to Bengal. His court saw an assemblage of administrators, military commanders, the learned and the gifted from regions across India, and from central and west Asia. The administrative culture of the empire and its language of politics emerged out of the engagements and dissensions in the courtly space.
•The traditions of the Mughal court influenced the political culture of kingdoms across the subcontinent. If you have ever wondered about the mélange that is our modern Indian languages, or about the cusped arches on houses and temples in villages and small towns, the answer is not that the Mughal armies marched through these areas. Different traditions, courtly and popular, interacted to produce new political, social and cultural forms. These populate our everyday practices, rituals and traditions, languages and food, artistic sensibilities and so on. However, this sense of history — as fluid, fractious and dynamic — is lost when Akbar is presented only as an emperor who won battles.
•Akbar is just one example. The proposed changes in textbooks censor out the diversity in our past, and reduce the space for exploring other histories, like that of inequality — whether of caste or gender, or stories of challenges to hegemonic orders. By posing the history of India as a glory tale, it curtails the possibilities of asking questions of it.
The larger narrative
•The proposed changes to the history textbooks fit within the larger narrative of this government. In a recent speech at the Delhi University, the Home Minister declared that since 2014, a ‘New India’ is being crafted. This New India needs a new history. However, this new history makes villains of some communities and privileges a fragmented historical narrative which is subject to the demands of community sentiments.
•In 1947, when India was emerging from the shadows of colonialism, Indian historians were faced with the question of their role in this nation in the making. In his Presidential address to the Indian History Congress in December 1947, four months after Independence and in midst of the events of Partition, Mohammad Habib asked the historians of the newly independent India to write histories which would create a ‘national community’, one which rose above all differences of community and caste, where citizens were to be subject to national laws. His address was both poignant and prophetic.
•Habib’s words ring out strongly today, when as citizens we see the very idea of the Indian nation being redefined, its Constitution challenged. They ring out even more strongly as history becomes the main battleground where this new idea of the nation is being manufactured, literally by the sword and the bulldozer, through blood and tears.
•The stories of India’s past are complex and diverse. It is unjust to fit it into simple accounts of golden and dark ages, of great and bad men, of remembered and imagined hurts. The proposed rewriting of the history textbook seeks to raise future generations of Indians on ahistorical ideas and a unity premised on falsehoods.
📰 How Hanoi and New Delhi are fortifying defence ties
The maritime domain has taken centre stage in talks
•The furtherance of India’s Act East Policy, maritime multilateralism, maritime security outreach and the building of stronger networks across the Indo-Pacific are some of the key elements which have made New Delhi and Hanoi natural partners. The two countries recently deepened bilateral cooperation with the singing of the Joint Vision Statement on India-Vietnam Defence Partnership towards 2030 during the recent visit of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to Vietnam. The Joint Vision Statement is aimed at boosting the scope and scale of the existing defence cooperation between the two nations. Both sides undertook extensive deliberations to expand avenues of effective and practicable collaboration in bilateral defence engagements pertaining to regional and global issues.
•In the meeting with his counterpart, Vietnam’s Minister of National Defence General Phan Van Giang, the early finalisation of the $500 million Defence Line of Credit extended by India to the latter along with the implementation of existing projects which would complement India’s ‘Make in India, Make for the world’ and Hanoi’s defence capabilities were also discussed. The two sides also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Mutual Logistics Support. This is the first agreement of its kind that Hanoi has entered into with any other country and elevates the standing of Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP) which Hanoi shares with New Delhi since 2016 (along with only Russia and China).
•Because of the volume of maritime trade that passes through sea lanes of communication in the Indo-Pacific and potential as well as estimated energy reserves in these waters, maritime cooperation between countries in the region have expanded exponentially. Undoubtedly, for India and Vietnam too, the maritime domain in particular has occupied a central focus. Both countries find convergence in their approaches towards the maintenance of stability and security of the Indo-Pacific which has translated into diplomatic and political support in the context of developments within the region.
•The enhanced geostrategic prominence and attendant uncertainties vis-à-vis China’s expanding and often abrasive footprints in the Indo-Pacific have resulted in an overall increase in emphasis on cooperative mechanisms and frameworks across the region. Hanoi and New Delhi have not been strangers to these developments and have stepped up bilateral exchanges. Defence partnership between the two countries has been growing steadily following the singing of the Defence Protocol in 2000 and today covers extensive navy-to-navy cooperation spanning the exchange of intelligence, production and logistical support for Vietnam’s defence requirements, development of naval facilities such as Nha Trang, defence dialogues, high-level visits and the supply of warships and cruise missiles.
•Vietnam has and continues to be one of the most vocal countries with respect to China’s periodic transgressions in the South China Sea. In India, Vietnam has found an equally uncompromising partner when it comes to the question of violations of freedom of navigation and threats to sovereign maritime territorial rights as enshrined under international maritime law. Indeed, it is believed that Hanoi used the term Indo-Pacific for the first time in 2018 in its Joint statement with India. New Delhi has supported Vietnam’s position in the South China Sea with respect to Beijing’s destabilising actions and coercive tactics backing the verdict of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the case brought by Manila in 2016 and reiterating the irrefutability of the UNCLOS. India has also not backed down from continuing ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL)’s oil exploration project in Block 128 (which is within Hanoi’s EEZ) despite China’s protests. In 2020 China’s incursion into Ladakh was quickly followed by the deployment of warships by India to the South China Sea in an instance of asymmetrical warfare and a signalling that India will not stand down. These instances together with the deepening of India’s operational outreach in the Indo-Pacific have successfully indicated and cemented its role as a capable, willing and reliable partner.
•Despite the fact that the China factor has provided impetus to the solidification of ties, it is also important to consider that mutual cooperation is not driven solely by it. Both countries have expanded areas of collaboration and are supportive of each other’s individual and multilateral involvements within the rubric of the Indo-Pacific.
📰 Bringing MSMEs into global value chains
These businesses are the ones that have faced the harshest of environments over the last few years
•Though the growth and achievements of large businesses in India have received much attention, micro-, small and medium enterprises (MSME) actually account for over 99% of businesses. MSMEs are the largest employer in India outside of agriculture, employing over 11.1 crore people, or 45% of all workers. It is no exaggeration to call MSMEs – privately owned enterprise with less than ₹50 crore in investments in plant and machinery and turnover below ₹250 crore – the backbone of the Indian economy.
•Every year on June 27, World MSME Day provides us with the opportunity to appreciate their valuable contribution to job creation and sustainable development across the world. Yet, these businesses are the ones that have faced the harshest of environments over the last few years.
•The disruption of the pandemic severely impacted MSMEs, especially those in the services sector. Their small size and lack of access to resources meant that many were only beginning to mount a fragile recovery just when renewed war, supply shocks and soaring fuel, food and fertilizer prices presented a host of new threats. And all of this comes against the backdrop of the ongoing climate crisis, the greatest disruption multiplier of all.
•At the same time, the potential of India’s small businesses is truly immense. India faces a unique moment in history, a potential demographic dividend of tremendous proportions. To leverage this opportunity, India needs to create many jobs, especially for the one million young people entering the labour market every month.
Meeting standards
•While some MSMEs operate at the highest industry standards, most do not meet today’s standards on productivity, environmental sustainability, and health and safety of workers. This is further exacerbated by the high degree of informality in the sector, with many enterprises unregistered, and both employers and workers are lacking awareness of and commitment to comply with labour and environmental laws. As a result, informal enterprises cannot access formal MSME support and financing nor participate in global value chains that require full compliance with all applicable regulations.
•The Government of India has rightly identified the development of the country’s MSME ecosystem as a top priority for achieving Atma Nirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India). India’s ambitious “Make in India” campaign aims to catapult the country up the manufacturing value chain to position itself as a global manufacturing hub. Initiatives such as the production linked incentives (PLI) schemes and the recently launched zero effect zero defect (ZED) certification are helping to promote and boost the sector.
•To help accelerate this process, the UN system in India is supporting these and other MSME development initiatives at the local, State and national levels. Agencies such as the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), International Labour Organization (ILO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UN Women, IFAD and others are working with MSMEs as they navigate a rapidly changing post-pandemic economic landscape shaped by large-scale transitions, chiefly digitalisation, greening and the reorganisation of value chains.
•Firstly, digitalisation concerns the integration of digital technologies, such as big data, artificial intelligence and virtual reality, in business processes, also known as Industry 4.0. With few exceptions, digitalisation into smart manufacturing operations is still in its infancy. Therefore, there is a need for replicable digital solutions adapted for MSMEs, including digital enhancements for machinery and equipment currently in use. Government initiatives such as the Digital Saksham and the interlinking of the Udyam, e-Shram, National Career Service (NCS), and Atmanirbhar Skilled Employee-Employer Mapping (ASEEM) portals show the promise of targeted digitalisation schemes.
Environmental impact
•Secondly, “greening” reduces the environmental impact of MSME operations and fosters cleantech innovation and entrepreneurship to accelerate the transition to a circular and low carbon economy. Energy efficiency provides a case in point as business and climate benefits go hand in hand. For example, together with the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), UNIDO provided energy efficiency advisory services to 695 MSMEs in 23 clusters covering brass, ceramic, dairy, foundry and hand tool sectors. As a result, these MSMEs invested themselves during the cash-strapped COVID period ₹157 crore to save 13,105 tonnes of oil equivalent and ₹81 crore in annual operating costs and preventing 83,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.
•Thirdly, to increase the resilience of supply in response to recent shocks, production locations for global value chains are increasingly shifting and diversifying across countries and regions.
•To further leverage this opportunity, UNIDO is spearheading the notion of manufacturing excellence. This means fostering a culture of continuous improvement and innovation that reduces waste and increases productivity, safety and quality. In one partnership with the Automotive Components Manufacturers Association (ACMA), the participating SME component manufacturers have achieved average reductions of in-house and client rejections of 82% and 73% respectively, eliminated hazardous work conditions, and achieved cumulative annual savings of over ₹4.2 crore.
Job creation
•The Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP) is also creating opportunities for self-employment and micro enterprises, with over 7 lakh micro enteprises assisted in becoming economically viable. Similarly, ILO, together with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) and corporates, is supporting MSMEs in creating and retaining jobs, with over 150 MSMEs having improved productivity, aligned to international standards and integrated into global supply chains, and the Start and Improve Your Business programme helping over a lakh young people across five States launch enterprises.
•A forward-looking mindset centres on policy makers and society at large fully recognising and supporting the central socio-economic role that MSMEs play in India, as across the world. In turn, to fully unlock emerging opportunities in the rapidly changing global value chain ecosystem and maximise the demographic dividend, MSME owners need to further commit to formalising their businesses, investing in improved productivity, compliance and most of all, decent work and jobs for India’s aspiring youth. As UN Secretary-General Guterres has urged, “Let us renew our commitment to leverage the full potential of MSMEs, rescue the Sustainable Development Goals and build a more prosperous and just world for all.”
📰 Implications of India’s new VPN rules
Will virtual servers be able to bypass the new CERT-in rules on virtual private networks?
•On April 28, India’s cybersecurity agency passed a rule mandating Virtual Private Network (VPN) providers to record and keep their customers’ logs for 180 days. It also asked these firms to collect and store customer data for up to five years. It further mandated that any cybercrime recorded must be reported to the CERT-In within six hours of the crime.
•Surfshark VPN stated that taking such radical action that highly impacts the privacy of millions of people in India will most likely be counterproductive and strongly damage the IT sector’s growth in the country.
•The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said that the rules are applicable to “any entity whatsoever”, regardless of whether they have a physical presence in India or not, as long as they deliver services to Indian users.
•The story so far: On April 28, India’s cybersecurity agency passed a rule mandating Virtual Private Network (VPN) providers to record and keep their customers’ logs for 180 days. It also asked these firms to collect and store customer data for up to five years. It further mandated that any cybercrime recorded must be reported to the CERT-In (Computer Emergency Response Team) within six hours of the crime. The new directives, if passed, will be effective from June 28. In response to the CERT-In rules, Nord VPN, one of the world’s largest VPN providers, has said it is moving its servers out of the country. Two other firms, Express VPN and Surfshark, said they will shut down their physical servers in India and cater to users in India through virtual servers located in Singapore and the U.K.
Who all will be affected by the new rules?
•CERT-In directions are applicable to data centres, virtual private server (VPS) providers, cloud service providers, virtual asset service providers, virtual asset exchange providers, custodian wallet providers and government organisations. Firms that provide Internet proxy-like services through VPN technologies also come under the ambit of the new rule. Corporate entities are not under the scanner.
What is a virtual server, and what are its uses?
•A virtual server is a simulated server environment built on an actual physical server. It recreates the functionality of a dedicated physical server. The virtual twin functions like a physical server that runs software and uses resources of the physical server. Multiple virtual servers can run on a single physical server.
•Virtualising servers helps reallocate resources for changing workloads. Converting one physical server into multiple virtual servers allows organisations to use processing power and resources more efficiently by running multiple operating systems and applications on one partitioned server. Running multiple operating systems and applications on a single physical machine reduces cost as it consumes less space and hardware. Virtualisation also reduces cost as maintaining a virtual server infrastructure is low compared to physical server infrastructure. Virtual servers are also said to offer higher security than a physical server infrastructure as the operating system and applications are enclosed in a virtual machine. This helps contain security attacks and malicious behaviour inside the virtual machine.
•Virtual servers are also useful in testing and debugging applications in different operating systems and versions without having to manually install and run them in several physical machines. Software developers can create, run, and test new software applications on a virtual server without taking processing power away from other users.
Can server relocation and virtualisation help VPN providers circumvent the new rules?
•The FAQs published by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeiTY) regarding the cybersecurity directions offers some clarity on relocation and virtualisation. It says the rules are applicable to “any entity whatsoever” in the matter of cyber incidents and cyber security incidents, regardless of whether they have a physical presence in India or not, as long as they deliver services to Indian users. The service providers who do not have a physical presence in India but offer services to the users in the country, have to designate a point of contact to liaise with CERT-In. Also, logs may be stored outside India as long as the obligation to produce logs to CERT-In is adhered to by the entities in a reasonable time.
•VPN companies, like Surfshark, on the other hand believe that by removing their physical servers to countries outside India they will comply with the laws applicable to their activities, the company said to The Hindu.
How will the law impact India’s IT sector?
•In response to The Hindu’s queries on the impact of removal of physical servers from the country on jobs, SurfsharkVPN said “It would be difficult to estimate the exact number of individuals impacted in terms of employment because we were renting servers from Indian providers.”
•VPN suppliers leaving India is not good for its burgeoning IT sector. Taking such radical action that highly impacts the privacy of millions of people in India will most likely be counterproductive and strongly damage the IT sector’s growth in the country, the company said in a release last week.
•It estimated that 254.9 million Indians have had their accounts breached since 2004 and raised its concern that collecting excessive amounts of data within Indian jurisdiction without robust protection mechanisms could lead to even more breaches.
•The Netherlands-based company further said that they have never received a similar directive on storing customer logs from any other governments in the world.
Does China have similiar rules regarding VPN usage?
•Though not all VPNs are officially banned in China, only government-approved VPNs are officially permitted to function, Syed Ali Akhtar, Fellow at the National Law University, Delhi told The Hindu.
•Visitors and Chinese citizens use VPNs to circumvent China’s Great Firewall, which has blocked access to many websites, keywords and even IP addresses.
•Government-approved VPNs have to register with the Chinese government and have to comply with data requests during investigations. However, cases of tourists being penalised for using non- government approved VPNs have not been reported, Akhtar said.
