Wednesday, July 27, 2005

10:47PM - An update on the wettest day in the history of the country

I have now reached home, after an adventurous journey.  Went to Andheri station from the office, which is located in MIDC area of Andheri (East) and took a train to Bandra.  The milling crowd on the Bandra platform was at least 20 persons thick and there was no possibility to get down at all.  The pressure of those who wanted to get in was almost inhuman as it was completely oblivious of a person who fell down in an attempt to get down as well as the lady and her child standing at the entrance.  Ultimately, we got out of the other side, by jumping on the tracks and clambering to the safety of the other platform.  Then footed it towards Mahim.  There was a large number of people rapidly gathering at the station and I cringed at the thought of the suffering of the elderly and the ladies.  Fortunately, there weren't too many children.  There were no announcements and the bandobust seemed pretty thin.

Having seen the statistics of the rains, that this was a record for the entire country for a single day's rainfall, in excess of 93 cm, one can partly understand the complete inadequacy of any arrangements to meet the disaster.  However, what is required for, say 40 cm of rain, also copes with 93 cm, if planned and executed well.  The reality is that even with ordinary rainfall, Mumbai's public transport grinds to a halt on one or two occasions every year and that's the problem which is required to be solved.  The tragedy which unfolded yesterday and today is a strategic failure, of lack of planning and vision.  A beginning could be made if employment shifts northwards and the north-south flow every day gets diluted due to shifting centre of gravity of employment.  The government could volunteer to move to Navi Mumbai and set the tone.

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1:10PM - Marooned in the office

The last 24 hours have been quite extraordinary for me.  Due to torrential rains in Mumbai, I am in the office since yesterday.  All roads leading to South Mumbai have got cut off.  No trains, either local or long distance, are operating.  The airport has closed down.  Fourtnately, the heavy downpours of yesterday gave way late last night to drizzles and dry spells lasting a few hours.  However, what is unexpected is that despite there being no major spell of rain for over 12 hours, the roads are still water-logged.  The Western and Eastern Express Highway are cut off at a few places.  The Home Minister of the state is reportedly stranded on the Pune-Mumbai highway.  There are vehicles, which have broken down, blocking the road.  Several low-lying areas in Kurla, Kalina and Vakola are under several feet of water and Navy has been called in to assist to drain out water from these areas.  As of now, it is not known if the rainfall which caused this emergency was out of ordinary or whether human factors have contributed to this state of affairs, where millions of people are flood-hit in a city, which has no rivers to talk of!

There were some interesting developments as the fury of monsoon lashed out at Mumbai yesterday afternoon.  My cellphone service provider, Orange, provided normal service, till quite late in the night, whereas my colleagues, who had BPL phones, could not use theirs for over three hours.  At about 11 pm, Orange signal went off and hasn't returned since.  Looks like their tower/towers in this area have fallen off or something.  The electic supply, by Reliance, went off at about 3 pm yesterday and was restored only at 6:30 am today morning.

A few random thoughts kept traversing through my mind, about what could be/could have been done to avoid this kind of complete surrender to the elements.

1. The drainage of collected rainwater (I refuse to call it flood waters, for want of a proper river in Mumbai!), is likely to have been affected by the tides.  I tried to scan the daily newspapers to know about the tide timings, but could not find these anywhere.  In such emergent situations, information about tides schedule would be very important and the daily newspapers are an ideal channel to carry this information.

2. The drainage may also have been affected by the encroachments on the drainage channels.  These encroachments are almost inevitable in this city, as such places are likely to be inaccessible and away from the vigilance by any person entrusted with the responsibility for preventing encroachments.  There was a talk of using remote sensing technology for this task, but nothing seems to have actually happened.  Implementation, as usual, is the difficult part.  One wonders if the expediency of allowing such unchecked encroachments is worth the loss of productivity due to stalled traffic and the widespread inconvenience, if not suffering, of a large section of the population.  It is downright unsafe and unfair for the people who live in such localities, as the swirling waters enter their houses, causing no end of suffering.

3. The traffic helpline (3040 3040) is continuously inaccessible since yesterday and the Mumbai Police Helpline (1090) could be accessed today for recorded messages on traffic situation.  That was a bit comforting.

4. The office internet is down, the morning newspapers have not arrived, cable signal in the locality is gone and there is no way of getting updates on the traffic situation or the weather.  How I wish I was carrying an FM/AM radio set!

5. South Mumbai, Mahim onwards, is probably quite 'normal.'  Suburbanites have this legitimate grievance that the decision-makers living in South Mumbai are oblivious of their problems, as most of the decision-makers operate through the prism of their personal experiences and opinions.

6. It would be a good idea to fix webcams at important junctions and road-sections in the city and make the feeds available on the net for information of people who can then make up their minds, about whether they should venture out or hold back.</font>

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Sunday, June 19, 2005

11:29AM - Life's Lessons, by Steve Jobs

Last week, I came across an extraordinary speech, made by Steve Jobs to Stanford students (http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505).  It is something, which is simple, with no theorising or the use of too many abstract concepts.  But it is powerful and moving in a way few other things I have read for a long time.

Jobs talks about how he reinvented himself after he was shown the door by Apple, the company he founded, and went on to achieve greater glory, setting up Pixar and NeXT.

"I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."

Then he talks of Death and put a whole new, beautiful meaning on to it.

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

I was so moved by the speech, that I sent it to all the mailing lists I am member to, and others.  Talk about spammers' motivations!

Current mood: Moved

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Thursday, June 9, 2005

10:57PM - Culture of Compliance

Yesterday, I returned from the NASSCOM Summit at Bangalore on ITES/BPO.  It was a great experience to listen to some of the sharpest minds on the scene, talking about the issues in the BPO industry.  In one panel discussion on the theme of security, one speaker said,"In this country, we do not have a culture of compliance."  So, while companies have security policies and procedures, they are not taken with the seriousness they deserve.

The words of the speaker, about the lack of a culture of compliance kept ringing in my mind as I read the headlines in the morning today.

Cops give Pataudi 3 days, raid Delhi bungalow

"The law seems to be closing in on former Indian cricket captain Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi.  A team of Haryana and Delhi police today searched his Vasant Vihar bungalow and seized the Gypsy from which the carcass of a black buck were recovered..."


Haldiram owner arrested in Kolkata

"Prabhu Shankar Agarwal, one of the owners of the famous Haldiram Bhujiawala, has been arrested in Kolkata.  He has been charged with hiring a criminal, Gopal Tiwari, to kill a tea stall owner, with whom he had some dispute..."


Builder Raheja, wife arrested at airport

"Builder Suresh Raheja, chairman of the K Raheja Universal Group, and his wife Erina were arrested at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport for alleged duty evasion charges.  Acting on intelligence input, officials of the customs Air Intelligence Unit (AIU) arrested them yesterday when their Jet Airways flight 9W 117 from London landed at the airport at 10.15 am..."


The common thread running through these three different incidents is that the personalities involved are rich and famous and had no real need to get involved in the alleged misdeeds.  Indeed, they may well be wondering now why they ever got the idea to cross the line between the legal and the illegal. 

I find it a sad commentary on the culture of compliance we have in our society, which, incidentally, never tires of talking about our glorious heritage.  Persons who are otherwise success stories in their respective areas and who are, or could be, role models for the younger generation, feel that they are above law or that the risk of getting caught is negligible. 

The true test for the law enforcement agencies now would be to carry out good, professional investigation and ensure that justice is not only done, but also seen to have been done.

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Thursday, June 2, 2005

7:38AM - Success story in government which needs better recognition

Many of us government officers become cynics in our careers at an early age and remain so all through, thinking that nothing positive is possible in government.  Dataquest has carried an interview with Mr J Vinayan, Jt General Manager, IRCTC, who talks about the success story that IRCTC ( Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation) is.  I hope that the story serves as a reminder that information technology holds a huge promise for revolutionising citizen services, at a low cost and very high quality of service.

Some extracts: 

In December 2004 we were selling 1,26,899 tickets or 4100 per day, to record a monthly turnover of Rs 16.4 crore. We deliver these tickets to 132 cities including to foreign tourists visiting India. Our database of registered users is 1.3 million strong, with over a thousand users being added every day. Not bad for a government project run by career bureaucrats. Right?

Smaller teams work better
Led by just two officers, 10 regular employees, 20 retired persons and 20 outsourced customer support staff, this service has managed to satisfy over 2 million passengers. 

Customer interface to be sensitive, positive and friendly
IRCTC uses a judicious mix of mature experience and youthful enthusiasm in their customer support staff. Simple but clear instructions exist, "Do not put the phone down till the customer says thank you"; "Do not make the customer wait and get charged on his phone. Call him back" "Answer every mail without fail within six hours". These have gone a long way in making the Customers pleasantly surprised and satisfied. 

Salary?
The reader will note that I have not mentioned a need for high pay packets, perks or facilities to the staff as motivators for running such a successful enterprise. The reality is that the IRCTC staff gets the same pay and allowances as thousands of government servants other all over India. But the satisfaction, of achievement, of running or being allowed to run a project like this, is a perk in itself. 

We in the IPS need to show similar imagination and boldness in applying IT to our work and reap the results.

Kush Singh, a friend, comments on this story: Also such key officers and good teams must be felicitated/applauded and given incentives for further improvement by  the public spirited organisations /business associations/media and the department itself-- as a part of the best practices approach in management.  Japanese companies, GM, Walmart etc and other american companies now have a policy to ask for suggestions all the time and select the 100 or thousand best suggestions annually and give each person a different reward  -this is now part of the general management policy of continuous improvement and productivity keeps going up and up every year bcause the suggestions never stop though the savings keep increasing alongwith the reward money. Incremental improvement is the key to competitiveness.

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Friday, May 27, 2005

8:30AM - The Privacy Debate in India

Sucheta Dalal has written (http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=70871) about the need for oversight on the databases being created all around us and the emerging privacy and data security issues.  While on this subject, it would be worthwhile to refer to Simson Garfinkel, whose book on the topic of databases and privacy, viz. 'Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in 21st Century' is quoted often.  Chapter 3 deals with the issues of biometric identification.  This can be read online at http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/dbnationtp/chapter/ch03.html.

To quote the concluding part of the chapter:

"Biometrics are a powerful means to ascertain somebody's identity, but only for the person or the machine that actually does the measuring. Once a biometric is stored inside a computer, all of the security provided by biometric identification is lost. A stored biometric could easily have been copied from another computer, rather than being directly measured. This is a critical distinction to understand when using biometrics. It is a distinction that is so subtle that it frequently is overlooked by the people implementing and using biometrics-based systems.

Identifying Bodies, Not People

Absolute identification is a seductive idea. Unfortunately, it's an idea that is fundamentally flawed. All of the identification techniques discussed in this chapter share a common flaw: the techniques do not identify people, they identify bodies. In modern society, people are legal entities. People have names, Social Security numbers, and histories. People buy and sell property. People have obligations. Bodies, on the other hand, are the warm-blooded, two-legged animals that are walking around on our planet's surface. Bodies are born, and bodies die.

When a murder is committed in our society, one body has taken the life of another body. It is then the job of the police to determine the people involved--that is, identifying the victim and finding the perpetrator. Bodies are imprisoned, but people go to jail. Any identification databank, whether it's the passports issued by the U.S. State Department or the FBI's CODIS system, attempts to draw lines connecting legal people with the bodies that they inhabit. This is an imperfect exercise.

Today, it is remarkably easy for a criminal to adopt an assumed name and construct an alias, complete with a state-issued driver's license. Many underground and semi-underground tracts give precise directions on how to create a fraudulent identity: first, search public records and find somebody who was born at roughly the same time and died in early childhood. Next, request a duplicate birth certificate and Social Security card. Subscribe to magazines in the stolen name. Just start using it. At some point, take a driver's license test.

The United States does not operate a central computerized registry of every birth and death in the country. Instead, cities, counties, and states all operate their own record systems. Sometimes records get lost--hospitals burn down, computer files get destroyed. Sometimes there are duplicate records, sometimes there aren't. Many record-keeping systems are antiquated. This lack of centralization can be exploited by people who know how. Once the identity of a dead child is appropriated in this manner, it can be remarkably difficult to disprove. Just about the only way one of these constructed identities can unravel is if the individual was previously arrested or fingerprinted--and if that information has been stored in some biometrically indexed, computerized database, such as a police department's fingerprint files. The databanks don't prove that the new identity is false. All they prove is that the biometrically identified body once used some other person's name.

Crooks aren't the only ones who create new people for old bodies: the government does it as well. New identities are routinely created for undercover officers, spies, defectors, and participants in the Federal Witness Protection Program. These needs of the state assure that no ironclad biometric identification system will ever be adopted in the United States or anywhere else: there will always need to be a means to introduce erroneous information into any government-sponsored identification database, or to change correct information that is no longer politically appropriate.

Some biometric identification systems have another problem as well: they can be subverted by a person who is suitably motivated. In the 1930s, gangsters had their fingerprints surgically removed and replaced with skin grafts from other parts of their bodies. Today, a person's hand prints or retina prints could be similarly removed--with the person's permission, or without. The risk or danger of mutilation will only increase as society increases its reliance on biometrics.

Instead of relying on technology to solve the social problem of bodily identification, we might want to consider social solutions. One possibility would be to use relatively weak identification systems and have very strong penalties for people who engage in identity fraud. Next, we should create statutory damages not just for the bank or business that was defrauded, but also for the person who had their identity appropriated.

Biometrics are sure to be an omnipresent part of tomorrow. But because of their recognized limitations, and because of the legitimate civil liberties concerns that these systems create, our civilization will probably not experience the full realization of a totally biometrically tracked future. Instead of tracking people, our civilization will increasingly turn to the much simpler project of tracking things, as the next chapter explores."

With this background, IMHO, following points are germane.

1. The growth of databases and use of biometrics to uniquely identify individuals is something which will grow relentlessly, with or without government promotion, as a database is an aggregation of usable information in any system, which accumulates due to the Network Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect).

2. Government itself needs large databases, such as a list of all the citizen, voters, tax payers, vehicle owners, drivers, property owners and so on.  This can only done through the use of IT.

3. Since information infrastructure is increasingly being controlled by private players, without a legal framework, profit  maximisation would remain the primary purpose resulting in exploitation and resale of the databases.  A legal framework would therefore be required to lay down the rules, within which legitimate data aggregation can be practised.

4. Self regulation can be the beginning, which can then evolve into a culture, which is sensitive to the concerns of the individual.

5. More people should take the trouble of educating themselves about these important issues and contribute to an informed debate on the theme.

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Saturday, April 23, 2005

8:44AM - Is it too late or can we still do something?

The recent incident (http://in.news.yahoo.com/050421/48/2kw4w.html) of a drunk constable of Mumbai Police raping a minor college girl in a police chowki, on the busy Marine Drive in Mumbai has caused a sense of shock and outrage among all sections of the society. No words will be too harsh to condemn this person, who abused his authority to give effect to the machinations of his warped mind. In one stroke, he has nullified the effect of the contribution made by his fellow policemen, who, day in and day out, perform more than their fair share of extremely drudgerous hard work and who brave harsh working conditions, to ensure law and order in the society.

This is the kind of incident which would have seemed beyond the realm of possiblity two days ago, but now that it has happened, we as leaders of our policemen, need to understand as to why this incident happened and how similar incidents can be prevented in future. It is tempting to write off this kind of a happenstance as a freak occurence, but it may amount to ostrich-like behaviour. According to the news report, the constable "was recently served a memo by Senior Inspector Isak Bagwan for drinking on duty" and "always got away with rude behaviour and drinking on duty because his brother-in-law, a police inspector in the Crime Branch, shielded him."

Also shocking is the inaction of the friends of the victim girl, who were accompanying her, during the time the constable was doing his despicable act. They must have had an inkling of what was happening and still did not have the courage to call for help, which would have prevented the unfortunate event. Our citizens shirk all contact with police, being unaware of their own rights and the limits of power the law enforcers wield. We need a massive outreach programme to educate the citizens to know more about police, their work, their constraints and seek their involvement in police reforms. We need to understand the principles of social marketing and use them in planning and executing this education drive.

The issue of moral policing also has been thrown up again. The ostensible excuse the constable could have exploited in this case, would be that it is "not OK" for a boy and a girl to be seen together in a public place. We need to remove this misconception among our officers and men that it is our primary duty to maintain moral order in the society and that we have the legal authority to do so. There should be a more structured and involved debate on these issues of display of certain behaviour in public places and the role of police in regulating it.

The various commercial entities in the entertainment world are purveying and promoting a culture of complete permissiveness and are, in fact, dishing out sleaze. 'Give in to your temptations' is the message. Sexuality is being exploited to peddle all kinds of products - take the recent campaign of Walls ice creams. The television serials are gleefully showing lack of fidelity in relationships and pronouncing it as the new norm. That the society consists of people of different ages, backgrounds and sensibilities is being conveniently forgotten and there is a monotonous uniformity in the overexposure of sexually-loaded advertising. Consensus should be evolved among the stakeholders and opinion-makers such as social scientists, media professionals, policy makers, educationists and political leadership through structured interactions and the recommendations given effect.

In such instances, the police authorities have a dual role. The first is that of law enforcers: investigation of the rape case must be done with speed and competence and the case sent to the trial court in a matter of days. The second role is that of an employer, who wants to demonstrate that such employees have no place in the organisation. Swift dismissal of the delinquent constable will send a strong signal about the organisation's commitment to the ideals pronounced from time to time.

We also need to reach out to our constabulary and help them cope with the rapidly changing times. They live in crowded and unhygienic conditions, especially in the cities. Due to long working hours, they are living virtually on the streets and are denied basic facilities, where they can rest or eat their meals. More empathy is required to understand their thought process and behaviour. This can be done through an intra-organisational communication mechanism and also an culture conducive to ventilating of grievances, suggestions and ideas.
Alcoholism has always been a problem in the lower ranks and we should involve professionals for deaddiction and recuperation measures. NGOs should be encouraged to work with policemen's families to resolve marital disputes and to encourage policemen's children in getting better education. We need to tap the goodwill which exists in the society for all these efforts, before it gets evaporated due to such mindless incidents of misbehaviour, which are likely to occur with greater frequency if we, as IPS officers, fail to take corrective measures. Is it too late or can we still do something?

Current mood: distressed

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Sunday, April 3, 2005

6:31AM - What can motivate our policemen?

Last week, I read an article on the working environments provided for the employees by the IT and BPO companies in India. It was good to read about the HR practices of India's booming IT sector. I feel that this thinking has significant applications to the working of police organisations in India. Typically, a police station in most parts of the country is housed in a ramshackle building, short on space, cleanliness and having few facilities for either the policemen themselves or the visiting public.
As senior leaders of police forces in the country, we, the IPS officers have to think about how to envisage and present dreams of a better tomorrow. As those who have been privileged by the system to lead a very loyal and hard-working force with the highest duty – of establishing and maintaining the Rule of Law – we carry great authority within the organisation. (And to quote from Harry Potter, with great power, comes great responsibility!) This authority is not sufficient by itself to motivate the men and women we lead. We have to promise them and deliver a better future, where they can carry out the job given to them to the best of their abilities and which will give them job satisfaction, which is what every human being strives for. Providing a good working environment, is a part of the dream.
So, an article such as the one mentioned above, exhilarates and excites leaders like us and spins off several new ideas, in how such measures can be adapted and replicated by us, wherever we are and whatever the resource crunch. We have basically two constituencies (to use a political term) or market segments (to use a management term). The common citizens and our own employees. To serve the first constituency, we must ensure that our second constituency is well looked after in terms of human conveniences and comforts and then the energy and involvement generated by the them will serve the greater cause of providing the citizens their due: Rule of Law, the ultimate dream in democracy.
The new young generation of India which is not encumbered by the baggage of past, outdated traditions and which is more materialistic (in a positive sense) and therefore more rational, have shown us the way, by making India a potential economic superpower through hard work and an entrepreneurial spirit. Let us follow their practices, including a good working environment, and take the police forces in India on the path of modernisation so that they serve the people of the country better. It is going to be an exciting venture.

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Thursday, March 10, 2005

11:46AM - Rule of Law on the Street

It has been a favourite theory of mine that the traffic discipline seen in a city indicates the efficacy of the Rule of Law there. If people on the street are law-abiding, when it comes to using the common public goods such as the transport infrastructure, it is a safe bet that they will be law-abiding when it comes to following the other legal and moral imperatives.

So far, so good. But my theory goes beyond this. I would like to propound that if people can be made better road-users, through engineering, education and enforcement, they will comply with other laws as well - a kind of reversal of the cause and effect relationship. It is the force of training. Good behaviour can be made a habit, taking the (maybe painful!) thinking out of the routine action. This is why municipal authorities should spend extra funds on keeping the roads in good condition, with adequate road markings, such as lane stripes, zebra crossings, stop lines and well-designed road signs about directions, parking areas, pedestrian crossings and vehicle-type restrictions. The presence of the regulator and the law keeper should be easily noticeable.

Then comes the enforcement of traffic laws. Selective and targeted enforcement drives, say against use of noisy horns nears schools and hospitals - then can help pick out the defaulters. A constant educational campaign needs to be run in the background all the time, emphasising the correct behaviour. One good idea would be to rope in celebrities to endorse such civic initiatives, through electronic and print media.  After all, everyone wants to contribute to betterment of the place one lives and works in.

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Monday, February 28, 2005

5:41AM - Kurukshetra at NCPA

Yesterday, we went to the National Centre of Performing Arts, to attend to 'Kurukshetra', a programme organised by the management students of Jai Hind college. The theme was an unusual one, especially for a business school: how to make the civic infrastructure in Mumbai better. There was a lot of enthusiasm on display, several good ideas and impeccable organisation of the function.

It is important that the young in the city get involved in thinking about how to go about improving the city and contribute their ideas and, more importantly, their energy. Not every idea will succeed, but eventually, good things are bound to happen.

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Friday, February 11, 2005

12:55PM - The Power of Dreams

I am reading a report titled "Toward A New Golden Age In American Education How the Internet, the Law and Today's Students Are Revolutionizing Expectations", published by the US Department of Education. It contains information about the progress made by US schools as a result of enactment of 'No Child Left Behind Act of 2001'. I was struck by the very unusual name of the Act. Normally Acts are a very serious things and are named accordingly. Take our own Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA). While regulatory acts, both civil and criminal, are bound to reflect the solemn purpose for which they are enacted, laws which are brought into existence for allocating resources for socially beneficial schemes can and probably should have cheerful and optimistic names, such as the one US act mentioned above.
The Report also quotes President Bush, about the purpose behind the Act.

“We cannot assume that our schools will naturally drift toward using technology effectively. We must commit ourselves to staying the course and making the changes necessary to reach our goals of educating every child. These are ambitious goals, but they are goals worthy of a great nation such as ours. Together, we can use technology to ensure that no child is left behind.”

I am sure every country on the face of Earth considers itself great and such lofty goals draw on that feeling of being a great nation to gain the impetus required to succeed. Our country also faces formidable challenges in the areas of education, poverty removal and social justice and we need to have such ambitious schemes (as No Child Left Behind), communicated to the nation as great dreams followed by solid execution. We need dreamers and doers and we need them in large numbers.

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Tuesday, February 1, 2005

10:40AM - Unheard voices

Times of India carries an article, "City women want lights, female cops" about urban planning.

Almost everyone who is someone has had their say on Vision Mumbai. Some point in the direction of Singapore, others look to Shanghai, or even Nanchang. Many agonise over the aesthetics of design for the modern city, bemoaning Mumbai's hawkers and slums. Others demand more flyovers, ring roads, GPS-navigable taxi services, enhanced nightlife and entertainment complexes.

Like many city planners and decision-makers across the world, these experts assume that the 'citizen' is an undifferentiated and neutral individual with homogenous needs. This approach systematically erases the presence of the more vulnerable—children, the poor, the disabled, the aged, and the homeless—those with a less tangible claim to the city's resources. And across all of these groups, women are more disenfranchised than men.

For the last year and a half, urban research group PUKAR's Gender and Space project has been asking Mumbai's women what they want. The project seeks to explore the ways in which women experience public spaces such as street corners, bus stops, toilets and parks.

This article is relevant to police officers in many ways. We, as police officers, are in the 'business' of providing security to the citizens. Many times, our image of a citizen is quite stereotypical and our channels of collecting feedback about what our 'customers' want are limited to those whom we know. These include primarily our colleagues, other government officials, politicians and journalists. These feedback channels are hardly representative of the complex society we serve. Thus, there is a need to consciously seek out additional channels which present original points of view and use the inputs in deciding on strategies of law enforcement, more so of community policing. This article provides one such unusual perspective, though the title of the article is a bit misleading!

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Saturday, January 22, 2005

10:23AM - Losing on both counts

Shekhar Gupta writes in today's Indian Express about the rise of the Generation Next. He rightly points out that India, being a country of the youth [40% of India's population is below 15 years' of age], needs to acknowledge their energy, confidence and drive and make room for them on the national stage. He further warns that the Indian bureaucracy, [which traditionally operates on the 'seniority taking precedence over everything else' priciple] must also fall in line. "...But if Dr Manmohan Singh’s idea of administrative reforms does not take this into account, the gap between an ageing establishment and an increasingly younger society and economy will become a dangerous liability."

Having spent the youthful years of my life in the government, I can identify with the impatience of the youth, when they feel that the older generation should not come in their way, in the job of changing the world. Here in government, people who are senior by even one year, get precedence over what (and when) you say. Having joined the elite all-India services, one is in the fast track of career, but the track is jammed with others who are ahead of you and always will be. If and when administrative reforms provide for recognition of merit and achievement (and the inevitable retirement of those who do not clear the raised bar of effectiveness), one can hope to look forward to contributing to the national progress in the real sense, rather than being in the maintenance mode.

I hope this happens soon enough, when our generation has still some creative energy left in us. As I tell my friends in a lighter vein, our generation has lost out at both ends: when we were young, the parents were the masters of the house and we were ordered about. Now that we are parents ourselves, it is the age of the younger generation and it is our kids who order us about!

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Monday, January 17, 2005

8:07PM - Mumbai Marathon

The Mumbai Marathon 2005 was organised on Sunday, 16 January. This was the second year of the event, which galvanised the city of Mumbai like few other non-religious events do. The route was extended up to Bandra this year, compared to Worli Sea Face last year. I took my kids to see the runners and enjoy the atmosphere. Worli Sea Face, which was a part of the route this year also, is quite near my house and it was just a matter of walking down the hill. There were spectators of every description, lining up the street. Volunteers and policemen kept the order. The runners kept coming thick and fast, mostly young and mostly Indias, but also many foreigners and quite a few elderly ones too. We sat on the roadside steps of the promenade and kept watching the will and the effort of the determined runners, who had already traversed over 15 kilometres.

As we were about to return, the front runners, all of them Africans, Kenyan and Ethiopeans - swift and lean and having almost clean-shaven heads - zipped past, on the return leg of the race, from Bandra to CST. It was quite a sight - the lead runner striding with the grace of an antelope, closely followed by others who matched him stride for stride.

After the head pack had disappeared round the bend, another similar-looking Kenyan streamed in sight from the Bandra side, prompting my son to exclaim: "Papa, the same fellow again!"

That was the moment of the morning for me!

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Sunday, January 9, 2005

12:33PM - Needed: More sensitivity towards children

My kids were watching the children's film, 'Makdee,' on Zee Cinema today morning. Idly looking at the TV screen, I was startled to see a condom ad being screened during a commercial break in the programme. Whoever thought that selling condoms to the viewers of a children's film needs to have his head examined. Commercial TV and cinema are taking away the innocence out of our children's life. There is no awareness of the different phases of growth of a child and the different emotional and intellectual needs at the different stages. As it is there are few films exclusively made for the children and what few are made are contaminated by such senseless ads.

Current mood: angry

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Friday, December 24, 2004

12:04AM - DPS-Baazee case and the definition of child pornography

In the recent DPS-Baazee case, some observers have used the term 'child pornography' to refer to the 2.37 minute video clip. "When he[Avnish Baja] sought bail before the Delhi High Court, the police made much of the 38-hour delay on the part of Baazee.com in removing the CD from the site even after it had been informed that the CD displayed child pornography." writes Manoj Mitta in his Indian express article . This brings us to the issue of what is child pornography under Indian laws and whether the DPS clip can be called
child pornography.

According to a study, "The legal definition of a "child" varies among nations. The UNCRC [United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child] defines a child as a person under 18 years of age. This definition, however, is far from being universally adopted. For example, in all Australian States and Territories, child pornography legislation defines "child" as a person under 16 years of age. In Canada (Penal Code Sec. 163), a minor, for purposes of child pornography, is a person under 18 years of age. In various jurisdictions of the United States (U.S.), minors as young as 15 may legally consent to sexual activity with an adult. However, that same adult could not create, distribute, or possess a visual record of that activity because federal child pornography statutes (18 U.S.C. 2252,
2256) define a minor as any person under that age of 18 years." In Scandinavia, the age of consent is 13 years and in the Netherlands it is 16 years.

Another article on the Rediff site has this to discuss:

"In a recent survey on sexual health awareness among school children in India, a leading news magazine, Outlook, came up with revealing statistics. Asked if they have had any sexual experience, 39 per cent boys and girls in Delhi, nine per cent in Chennai, 24 per cent in Kolkata and 18 per cent in Mumbai replied in the affirmative.
....
Sociologists peg the revelation on a cocktail of factors, ranging from double-income parents chasing career and money while sparing little time for their children to Delhi rapidly transforming itself into a city of fixers and wheeler-dealers where more money is made than can be spent sensibly; from aggressive social-climbing by the nouveau riche to an overwhelmingly couldn't-give-a-damn attitude towards the colour of money.

Everybody agrees that the media has played a significant role in promoting a lifestyle that draws no distinction between adolescence and adulthood. Consumerism-driven advertising has contributed its own share by not so subtly promoting hedonism as the right choice and equating licentiousness with liberalism."

As far as I know, there is no statute in India to cover child pornography, as distinguished from other pornography. Maybe this is the time to think about enacting one. With increasing commercialisation of everything, exploitation of children is bound to show an increase. A legislative response would form the foundation of a cogent strategy to protect children and minors.

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Tuesday, December 21, 2004

1:13PM - Some thoughts on the Baazee-DPS MMS saga

The recent arrest of Avnish Bajaj the CEO of Baazee.com has raised a storm of indignant anger from many netizens.

Sucheta Dalal in her weekly column writes thus:

"Consider this. A Delhi school kid films a sexual act on a mobile phone. The clip is put into circulation and some perverted soul cuts compact disks and turns it into a business opportunity. Television channels buy the clips and broadcast it in the form of weird squiggles and pixels — but nobody objects to this sad attempt at titillation. Then a misguided genius at IIT Kharagpur hopes to rake in some bucks by auctioning the tape on baazee.com. What does the Delhi police do? It arrests the chairman of India’s top auction site baazee.com, as though producing and hawking pornography was Bazee’s main business activity. Contrast this with another situation. For decades now, hawkers squatting on pavements all around the Municipal Corporation have openly sold pornography. By the same standards as the Bazee action, the police ought to arrest the Mumbai Municipal Commissioner, because he is ultimately responsible for Mumbai’s pavements and what is sold on them. But that is inconceivable, isn’t it? Nobody is condoning the failure of checks at Baazee.com that allowed pornography to be auctioned. But arresting the chairman of an auction site surely makes us look very foolish to the world. Especially at a time when our IT skills are been making the world look at us with awe and respect. It will also kill the very concept of auction sites."


There has been some confusion about whether an online contract, which is generally not attached with a physical signature, can be considered legal. Questions have also been raised whether only digitally signed documents can be considered valid. I think we need to dissociate digital signatures from electronic documents. Valid electronic documents can exist without digital signature being applied to them. So, even a webpage with a 'I agree' button can be construed to mean a legally-binding agreement and there is no need to apply digital signature if it can be otherwise proved to be signed by a legal person.

The Second Schedule of the IT Act amends the Indian Evidence Act to make electronic documents admissible as evidence. To quote:

"Special provisions as to evidence relating to electronic record.

9 After section 65 the following sections shall be inserted, namely -

65A. The contents of electronic records may be proved in. accordance with the provisions of section 65B

65B. (1) Notwithstanding anything contained in this Act, any information contained in an electronic record which is printed on a paper, stored, recorded or copied in optical or magnetic media produced by a computer (hereinafter referred to as the computer output) shall be deemed to be also a document, if the conditions mentioned in this section are satisfied in relation to the information and computer in question and shall be admissible in any proceedings, without further proof or production of the original as evidence of any contents of the original or of any fact ' stated therein of which direct evidence would be admissible.

(2) The conditions referred to in sub-section ( 1) in respect of a computer output shall be the following, namely
(a) the computer output containing the information was produced to the computer during the period over which the computer was used regularly to store or process information for the purposes of any activities regularly carried on over that period by the person having lawful control over the use of the computer;
(b) during the said period, information of the kind contained in the electronic reform or of the kind from which the information so contained is derived was regularly fed into the computer in the ordinary course of the said activities;
(c) throughout the material part of the said period, the computer was operating properly or, if not, then in any respect of any period in which it was not .operating properly of was out of operation during that part of the period, was not such as to affect the electronic record or the accuracy of its contents; and
(d) the information contained in the electronic record reproduces or is derived from such information fed into the computer in the ordinary course of the said activities."

In addition to the important point of liability of a service provider towards the content which is covered by section 79 of the IT Act, another important point is the need and justification of arrest. Arrest of a person accused of an offence is essential only if there is an apprehension that the person is uncooperative with investigation and may tamper with the evidence till it is secured by the investigation agency, or that he is likely to flee the country, or has some information in his possession which he may reveal during the custodial interrogation. Whether any of these factors were operating in the current case will require to be examined. Baazee had apparently furnished the required evidence; the possiblity of a person fleeing a country can be curbed by seizing his passport and if custodial interrogation is required, the investigating agency asks for his police remand, which was not done in this case.

One of the reasons why the CBI enjoys a higher reputation among the investigating agencies, is that according to the established procedures in CBI, arrests are made only if completely unavoidable. No arrest is done as a matter of routine and each arrest proposal is prepared with a great deal of scrutiny and supervisory check, including taking legal opinion if required. The possibility that a person was innocent and that he/she would have undergone unjustified incarceration, if evidence collected subsequent to the arrest doesnot justify bringing charges or, despite filing chargesheet, gets
discharged/acquitted later, has always to be kept in mind.

The problem which has been thrown up has dual dimensions.

1. Fautly wording of the law: A re-look is required at the so-called 'safe harbour' section 79, which states

"... no person providing any service as a Network Service Provider shall be liable under this Act, ...if he proves that the offence or contravention was committed without his knowledge or that he had exercised all due diligence to prevent the commission of such offence or contravention."

It puts the onus on the network service provider, against the established principle of jurisprudence that the prosecution has to
prove its side of the case first. Contrast this with section 20 of the Prevention of Corruption Act where, in any trial of bribery, once it is proved that an accused person has accepted any gratification (other than legal remuneration), it shall be presumed,that he accepted that gratification as a bribe.

In effect, the wording of the section takes away the 'safe harbour' quality of intended protection.

2. Implementation issues: Awareness of existence of IT and its potential for transforming the work processes is very low in government. Only a person who has hands-on experience of working on computers can realise the danger of unauthorised accessibility of data and its easy mutability. Only someone who has surfed the internet feels familiar with the concept of websites, online agreements and electronic commerce. In essence, there is a digital divide, which needs to be taken into account while looking at the actions of the officials dealing with law enforcement. I am saying this not to justify any individual's action, but to provide a perspective, which will be useful in evolving policies which help proper implementation of the law.

So, some of the measures that can be suggested for improving things long term are:

a. Establish specialised police units dealing with cyber crime, at each metro and at each state HQ.
b. Introduce IT on a large scale in day to day working of police departments, prosecutors and courts. (Of course, there are stronger reasons for this other than raising awareness about IT.)
c. Establish special courts to try cyber crimes. especially in the metros and state capitals.
d. Involve schools/colleges in educational activities about cyber crimes and cyber ethics. (I doubt if the present textbooks cover cyber ethics even marginally.)
e. Make framing of laws, rules and regulations more broad-based to include experts from many different areas (technology, public policy, academics, NGOs, law enforcement and the different parts of India)

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Wednesday, December 15, 2004

5:42PM - Video voyeurism and the Indian law

Recently, I came across a report of the new proposed law in the US to criminalise video voyeurism. This act makes it a crime to surreptitiously capture images of people in situations in which they have an expectation of privacy. Under the new law, video voyeurism committed on federal lands would be punishable by a fine of not more than $100,000 or imprisonment for up to one year, or both. Thirty-five US states currently have laws that in some way criminalize video voyeurism. The Video Voyeurism Prevention Act will serve as a model for states without such a law, and will also give law enforcement the ability to punish offenders who commit this crime on federal land.

Coming to the Indian scenario, there was a case of a hidden webcam at a swimming pool (in September last year) at Pune, where initially sections 294 and 509 of the IPC were applied and then section 67 of the Information Technology Act was applied at a later stage.

http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=63066
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/182014.cms
http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=63441
Since a webcam had been used to record the objectionable pictures, the IT Act was indeed applicable, but it would be interesting to see if the same interpretation is allowed for material gathered thorugh camera-phones.

Further, IMHO, section 67 of the IT Act seems directed towards consumers of the material. To quote:

"67. Whoever publishes or transmits or causes to be published in the electronic form, any material which is lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest or if its effect is such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it, shall be punished on first conviction with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to five years and with fine which may extend to one lakh rupees and in the event of a second or subsequent conviction with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years and also with fine which may extend to two lakh rupees."

This section does not take into account the victim's perspective. The appeal of voyeuristic material to its consumers is probably the blissful ignorance of the person being filmed. This constitutes a separate class from usual pornographic material, where the participants are aware of the filming. Hence the need for a separate legal instrument. Recently, there was a report on a blog, of a nude video of a south Indian actress, which according to the blog, seemed to have been shot through a one-way mirror in a hotel room.

All these happenings seem to call for a comprehensive legislation on privacy in India, to supplement the existing laws on dissemination of pornography, which has become an accelerated activity due to the force-multiplier effect of electronic technologies.

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Tuesday, December 14, 2004

2:06PM - The Delhi Public School episode and some points to mull over

The recent incident of circulation of a pornographic video clip of two students of the Delhi Public School has shocked the parent community. According to a report on the Sify site, "Reportedly, the incident occured about a month ago when a girl and a boy, both students of Class 11, got together and filmed themselves in a compromising position. Their subsequent claim to fame is all of 2.37 mins. The film was then circulated among fellow batchmates in the school through MMS for fun. Fellow students claim the girl wanted to be 'cool' and gain some instant popularity. Unfortunately for them, the film reached the Principal who expelled the two... It is being said that on being questioned by the Principal, both students did not appear to be ashamed of what they had done. In fact, the girl even reportedly retorted, "Who doesn't do it? Haven't you done it?" The boy is equally nonchalant about what he had done, according to his peers. ...Use of cell phones, which was allowed in the school was banned with immediate effect after the incident came to light. If anyone is spotted carrying a cell phone, a fine of Rs 2,000 would be charged and, needless to say, the cell phone confiscated. About 85 per cent of all Class XI and XII students of the school used to carry cellphones to class earlier."

Following points emerge from the incident and the subsequent developments.

• Attitudes towards sex have undergone a huge change among the younger generation. This affects the 'accepted' norms of morality in the society.
• Students of Class XI, though technically minor, are in fact young adults. It is well-known that the age of reaching puberty has gone down due to better nutritional standards.
• Technology is used in unforeseen ways by the users, generating unforeseen moral and legal problems. (Since the video was also sought to be auctioned on Baazee.com site, a criminal case has been registered by the Delhi Police and investigations are on.)
• The DPS authorities have banned use of cellphones by the students. While cellphones with cameras could have been banned, a blanket ban on cellphones may not be justified. Today, in a metro city, a cellphone is almost an essential accessory for any active and mobile person.
• School children need to be educated, at appropriate age levels, on the various aspects of sexuality, including the anatomical, physiological, social and romantic. The depiction of sexuality in contemporary media seems devoid of the romantic aspect, which could be its most alluring and mysterious quality.

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Sunday, December 12, 2004

11:00PM - Some historical heroes

Today, I was helping my daughter in her school project on Alexander the Great, in finding information resources on the Internet. There is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to material on the Greek hero. In fact, I read more about him in the last couple of days, than ever before. Livius.org is a tremendous resource on historical topics, which extend much beyond Alexander's life. There are maps, photographs of archeological ruins, coins, carvings and statues. There are stories and legends and quotations from contemporary books and biographies. This site is just one example. There are more such sites and several books.

I got thinking about similar resources on Shivaji, the hero of Maharashtra. A Google search threw up some very lean sites, having bare minimum of details. It was pretty depressing to know that though Shivaji lived barely 350 years ago - as compared to Alexander the Great, whose life story is almost two and a half thousand years - there is virtually nothing on him in the cyberspace. A similar feeling had gripped me when I had visited Shivaji's capital, Raigad, a few years ago. The fort is full of stones, with little more than small plaques at a few places, to tell about the rich history of the place. No museum, no audio visual material, no book shop, no restaurant and no toilets. It is time someone in authority sat up and projected the great life story of the great hero in the cyberspace and at a few places where tourists visit with hope of getting a glimpse into one of the glorious chapters in the history of Maharashtra.

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Monday, November 29, 2004

12:38PM - Law on Pre-natal Sex Determination Tests and Some Enforcement Issues

The Times of India of 27 November has carried a news item on the use of Pre-Natal Diagnostics Test (PNDT) to know the sex of the unborn foetus.

AHMEDABAD: "Jai Ambe" may sound an innocuous greeting in Gujarat. But, it may well be sounding the death knell for many a yet-to-be-born girl. For, as pressure mounts against sex determination tests in a state with a skewed sex ratio, many are using code words — religious greetings using names of gods and goddesses being the most popular — to inform expectant parents about sex of the foetus.

Rising protests and vigilance have put erring doctors and radiologists on their guard, who are now devising codes to carry on with the practise without being legally implicated.

Revealing the sex of a foetus is illegal as per the Pre-Natal Diagnostics Test (PNDT) Act that says that no person conducting a pre-natal diagnostic procedure shall communicate to the pregnant woman or her relatives the sex of the foetus in any manner — either by words, sign or any other method.

"With lot of pressure being exerted from all quarters to stop sex determination, the use of codes is becoming rampant," says Ila Vakharia of Child Health Education Training and Nutrition Awareness (Chetna), working on the declining girl child in Gujarat.

Sources say use of codes has gained popularity in Mehsana, Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad, Rajkot and Anand from where reports of female foeticide is high.

The pre-natal diagnostic tests have other legitimate uses. So, while it is important to declare the use of pre-natal tests for sex-determination with a view to cause female foeticide, as illegal, the enforcement difficulties of the legislation have to kept in mind. Typically, in such 'social' legislations, where the alleged criminal act has other interpretations, it is very difficult for the police to act suo motu. Obviously, in cases under the PNDT Act, there is likely to be no willing complainant or informant. The only person affected by the act i.e. the unborn child, can hardly speak. In such a scenario, where there is a law, but no enforcement, holding the concerned administration accountable for continued existence of the pernicious practice, for curbing of which the law has been enacted, becomes very difficult.

This situation, where the entire society is the victim and there is no one adversely-affected person, who can act as a complainant, also holds good in the case of the Prevention of Corruption Act, where both the parties in a bribe deal, are willing and keen to carry out a bribe transaction, in exchange for some undue and illegal favour. It is where there is a clash of interest and a serious disagreement over the terms of the transaction (e.g. the bribe amount) that a person comes forward to lodge a complaint and get the official asking for bribe caught.

In certain types of socially desirable legislations, e.g. The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956, the enforcement strategy adopted by the Police involves sending a decoy customer and collecting evidence about an organised prostitution racket. The 'decoys' are expected to be 'public spirited citizens' who are willing to devote their time for this sensitive, at times risky (and risque!) work. In our country, no citizen wants to be bothered with such a thankless job and it is only on rare occasions that people come forward to act as witnesses on their own. It is apparent that the number of women who would volunteer for acting as witnesses in police cases would be microscopic. So, in the event of a sting operation being decided to be launched against illegal sex determination tests, the non-availability of a 'decoy' who could visit such a laboratory, would make the project still-born (if I may use such a metaphor).

Declining female-male sex ratio is a cause for alarm for the entire society and needs serious attention. Of late, I have seen some television ads on the topic, seeking to raise awareness and they are much welcome. The medical profession needs to sensitize itself to the problem and make its members aware of the ethical and legal issues. The voluntary agencies can play an important role in awareness raising and keeping the government departments on their toes.

The moral of the discussion is that legislation is always crucial, but plays a small part in tackling those problems, where a large section of the society willingly patronises the illegal activities. Practices like dowry, gambling, liquor consumption and prostitution fall in this zone. These require multi-pronged strategies and are not amenable to single-track approaches.

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Saturday, November 13, 2004

8:26AM - Old wine in a new bottle

Yesterday, I took my kids to see Mughal-e-Azam, the classic Hindi movie, which has now been released in a colour version. I had seen the film in its original black and white version, in 1980, when I was studying at Aurangabad. (Aurangabad is a place, which has a strong bond with history and the Mughals particularly; the last of the great Mughals, Aurangzeb, having spent his last few years there.) While the colour version looks flawless, it lacks the mystery and promise of a b&w film. After all, flawlessness does not equate with beauty.

The story of Saleem-Anarkali is a favourite one with Hindi cinema and I remember seeing 'Anarkali', another movie on the same theme, again at Aurangabad. (Those days, did we have time to kill!)

I enjoyed yesterday's experience, the grumbles notwithstanding. I could understand and appreciate the Urdu-laden dialogues, thanks to my picking up the language during my posting in Kashmir 16 years ago, which was am improvement on the first viewing in Aurangabad. There was some nostalgia too.

One moment in the movie, stands out. When Akbar puts the crown on the head of Anarkali as her last wish before being executed, she draws herself up and pronounces that she is forgiving him of her murder, in return of his good act. The expression on Madhubala's face and the authority in her voice make the moment magical.

Such grand movies make one feel liberated from the grind and grime of the daily routine and elevate the mind to contemplate more important questions of life.

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Sunday, October 31, 2004

7:50AM - The evolution of Internet

Wired magazine has published an article, titled 'Sex is out, Consuming is in', about how the focus has shifted from sex as the most favourite topic of interest on the Internet, to e-commerce.

Internet users are doing far fewer searches for sex and pornography and more for e-commerce and business than they were seven years ago, University of Pittsburgh and Penn State researchers say in a new book.

"Twenty percent of all searching was sex-related back in 1997; now it's about 5 percent," said Amanda Spink, the University of Pittsburgh professor who co-authored Web Search: Public Searching of the Web with Penn State professor Bernard J. Jansen.

"It's a little bit more in Europe, 8 to 10 percent, but in comparison to everything else, it's a very small percent," Spink said. "People are using (the web) more as an everyday tool rather than as just an entertainment medium."

This is an important finding. It used to be said that pornography is the only profitable business on the Internet. Now that the focus has shifted to the day to day activities of ordinary folks, it is time for the leaders (which includes, but is not limited to, political leaders) to devote more attention to information security, in the same way one does to security of life and property in real life.

Current mood: contemplative

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Saturday, October 30, 2004

4:36PM - Time for some humour!

Rajiv, a friend of mine, who is active in popularising the use of Information Technology in e-governance and other fields, travelled to another city a month ago, to meet the top brass of a government department. He wanted to explore the possibility of organising an awareness programme about information security. He was asked to meet a middle-level officer, who was put in charge of the 'project'.

Rajiv met the harried-looking gentleman and explained the need for the awareness campaign and how he planned to go about it. At the end of the sermon, the official promised to do his best. Rajiv asked him for his e-mail ID for further follow-up, to which the official replied,"I don't have one right now. I will get one over the next few days and let you know."

Rajiv came back to Mumbai and heard no more on the subject, till he went back last week. He met the same officer and had a chat with him. They decided to push the agenda further in a time-bound way. While leaving, Rajiv again made the request for the e-mail address. Promptly, the officer rang the bell and asked his personal assistant to be called over. When she made an appearance, he told her,"Please write down my e-mail address and password on a piece of paper and give it to Mr Rajiv."

Five minutes later, Rajiv was on his way back to Mumbai, with the paper slip in his pocket and a prayer on his lips, asking the Almighty to be merciful and enlighten the Indian government officers to the ways and pitfalls of Information Technology!

Current mood: amused

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Wednesday, October 27, 2004

6:13PM - Nice to hear some positive words about India's infrastructure!

Prof Yasheng Huang of Sloan School of Management, MIT gave a talk on 'India-China comparison on Economic Development" at the SJM School of Management, IIT Bombay on Monday. His theme was that though China's economic progress has been spectacular, in the long run, India may overtake China due to its 'soft infrastructure'. He was basically expanding on the logic propounded in his paper (co-authored with Prof Tarun Khanna), 'Can India Overtake China?', published in Foreign Policy of July-August 2003. The logic makes interesting reading and, since we have been used to hearing only criticism of the Indian system (for good reason), provides a welcome change.

Here are some of the interesting points made in the talk.

Hard infrastructure is visible and therefore more appreciated.

Statistics can be misleading. Macroeconomic data and microeconomic data give different conclusions. It is also difficult to get latter kind of data.

Returns in Indian stock market are better than Chinese markets.

In 1990, Indian FDI competitiveness was on par with the Chinese. At present, FDI by non-resident chinese is 50%.

FDI in China was linked to contract working.

FDI will come if growth happens irrespective of other conditions. There is a herd mentality when it comes to FDI.

Indian legal system is geared better to protect private assets. Non Performing Assets of banks (NPAs) in India are lower at 15% v. 45% in China.

No tropical country has become an economic superpower. Same with a socially diverse country. (This I find intriguing!)

Within China, provinces which promoted local entrepreneurs have done better in long term growth and exports and also have lower NPAs.

China's rulers did succeed in educating rural women.

Proficiency in English is not a deciding factor. Similarly, China has many more engineers, but no entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurial strength of Infosys and Wipro cannot be discounted.
China is taking steps to improve the soft infrastructure and will be a formidable power once it gets its act together.

Though one would not agree with everything he said, it was a good perspective, different from the usual gloomy ones.

Current mood: cheerful

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Saturday, October 23, 2004

12:58PM - A Sound of Thunder and The Butterfly Effect

One of the pleasures of traversing the immeasurable lanes and bylanes of the Internet is to stumble upon something familiar - and I am not talking of the feeling of deja vu here - every now and then. Today, I was looking up the concept of 'Complexity Theory' and while browsing the Wikipedia site, came across the phrase the Butterfly Effect. I was reminded of my favourite Ray Bradbury story, which I had first read when I was doing M. Tech. at IIT Bombay, way back in 1982-84. (And sure enough, when I looked further for the origin of the phrase (the Butterfly Effect), it led me to the good old Bradbury story.) Those days, I used to frequent the footpaths of Fort area in South Mumbai, looking for bargains on second hand paperback books, the only affordable book-buying activity those days! I was partial to science fiction and wanted to explore everything by the ABC of sci-fi, viz. Asimov, Bradbury and Clarke. I did manage to build up a collection of a few Bradburys, several Asimovs and many anthologies. These books managed to create a very friendly and optimistic world of sci-fi fantasy for me, which has shaped my outlook towards technology as a whole. This was later enriched by the Star Trek serial episodes, which I used to watch with religious fervour.

Today, the winding trail of my time travel led me to the original Bradbury story (the choice of words in this sentence has a context in the story!) on the Net and here is the link, for those who would like to behold and marvel at a gem of a story, which is less about science and more about human nature, as all enduring literature is.

Please visit 'The Sound of Thunder' at http://www.sba.muohio.edu/snavely/415/thunder.htm.

Current mood: enthralled

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Friday, October 15, 2004

10:59PM - Schneier: Crime is the biggest threat to information security

Bruce Schneier, who is the foremost writer (seen from a holistic perspective) on information security, has started a security blog and it is as readable as his other writings. These days I am doing a course on Network Security in the Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology at IIT Bombay and Schneier's book on Applied Cryptography is a prescribed reading, as an alternative textbook. I have been a subscriber to his monthly newsletter, Crypto-gram, for several months now and it has always a much deliberately and carefully read piece of e-mail. A friend has loaned me Schneier's latest book, 'Beyond Fear', which I intend to take up, as soon as the killing schedule of IIT gives me some spare time :-)

Coming back to Schneier's blog, it contains his interview to Searchsecurity.com, in which he puts the encashment of IT vulnerabilities by criminals, as the biggest threat to information security.

"What's the biggest threat to information security at the moment?

Schneier: Crime. Criminals have discovered IT in a big way. We're seeing a huge increase in identity theft and associated financial theft. We're seeing a rise in credit card fraud. We're seeing a rise in blackmail. Years ago, the people breaking into computers were mostly kids participating in the information-age equivalent of spray painting. Today there's a profit motive, as those same hacked computers become launching pads for spam, phishing attacks and Trojans that steal passwords. Right now we're seeing a crime wave against Internet consumers that has the potential to radically change the way people use their computers. When enough average users complain about having money stolen, the government is going to step in and do something. The results are unlikely to be pretty."

IMO, some of the reasons, why this wave of crime has still not made the critical difference to information security perceptions, are that the losses to computer users are scattered across an amorphous mass of the population, financial companies are following their culture of hushing up such losses and there is an inadequate awareness among the law enforcement agencies about the scale and nature of the threat.

Current mood: contemplative

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Friday, October 8, 2004

7:08PM - Cybersecurity: Have things improved over the last year?

An article in SecurityFocus by Scott Granneman quotes the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report to drive home the point that malicious activity on the Internet has gone up over the last one year. Here are a few extracts from the article.

"Over the past six months, Symantec documented more than 4,496 new Windows (particularly Win32) viruses and worms, over four and a half times the number as the same period in 2003."

"Over the first six months of 2004, the number of monitored bots rose from well under 2,000 computers to more than 30,000."

"Peer-to-peer services (P2P), Internet relay chat (IRC), and network file sharing continue to be popular propagation vectors for worms and other malicious code."

"The rise in targeted attackers for e-commerce ... may indicate that the motivation of attackers may be shifting from looking for notoriety toward seeking illicit financial rewards."

Referring to the original article is recommended for a more elaborate discussion of the significance of each of the above lines, but, even a plain reading would make it clear that the situation is building up moving to a much more serious threat level, unless information security is taken seriously by all and appropriate policies evolved to curb the menace.

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Friday, October 1, 2004

6:50PM - An ingenious phishing attack

I have written about phishing cases in the past.  One of the more ingenious attacks recently came to my attention.  This one had targeted Paypal, which is the most successful internet payment company.  This time someone utilized the resemblance between the lowercase 'l' and uppercase 'I' and sent phishing mails, in which urls contained the word 'paypaI' instead of the normal 'paypal'.  For anyone but the keenest of the observers, the difference is not noticeable.  Indeed, in some typefaces and at small sizes, there would be virtually no difference. 

It takes bright minds working in the wrong direction to come up with something like this!

Current mood: amused

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6:09PM - Privacy and data security appear on Indian publications' radars

The September 27, 2004 issue of India Today features privacy issues in India, under a cover story 'Privacy on Sale'.  The story has not come a day soon.  As personal information becomes more valuable to marketers, they will get it by hook or by crook.  More and more people are getting aware of this and would like to guard their privacy and personal details, but the supporting legislative and administrative infrastructure is missing.  Some of the more interesting points made in the story are as follows.

1. The threat of compromise of privacy is equally severe for persons from all walks of life.
2. The sources of data leakage are: Banks, Car dealers, Insurance firms, Cellphone companies, Clubs, Stock Exchanges, Internet Service Providers and Financial services firms.
3. Data is not considered movable property and the provisions of the Indian Penal Code on theft do not apply to it.
4. Emergence of new marketing channels like e-mail, telemarketing and SMS have led a demand for personal data.
5. Students are using the new technologies to cheat in examinations.

Businessworld of October 4, 2004, has also highlighted the issue of customer information in their latest issue.  To quote from the article: 

THE next time you get a call from a phone banker or tele-marketing executive, don't complain. Don't crib or blame your bank for sharing your personal information. Because it's you who might have authorised your bank to do so.

When you sign up for a credit card, there is a declaration and an authorisation note in the application form. The devil is in this fine print, and is often overlooked. This usually has a line whereby you, as a customer, authorise the bank to share your personal information. ...

The Tarapore Committee report on 'Procedures and Performances Audit on Public Services' observed that banks had been taking advantage of 'Know your customer' guidelines, and are collecting customer information for cross-selling to their subsidiaries and affiliates. Based on the report, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) - through a circular in May 2004 - advised banks to ensure that customer confidentiality be maintained. It also said that banks could collect customer information separately after taking the customer's express approval for the specific uses to which it would be put to use.

Privacy is often discussed as an important issue in the context of outsourcing from the Western countries.  However, the national scene regarding the need for data security and privacy measures is also causing more and more concern and it is time the policy makers thought of setting the legislative ball rolling.

Current mood: thoughtful

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5:47PM - Major success for the CBI in cleaning up the corruption scene in Mumbai

The recent arrest of P K Ajwani, Commissioner of Central Excise in Mumbai made national headlines.  The Indian Express has given details of how Ajwani used to operate.  The information was developed by the Anti Corruption Branch of the Central Bureau of Investigation.  I have had the privilege of heading the Anti Corruption Branch in Mumbai for five years from 1997-2001 and feel proud about its latest achievement.  Kiran Jadhav, the Superintendent of Police, whose guided the operation, is a soft-spoken, but tough officer, who believes more in the results of his work speaking for themselves.

One of the 'sweet' problems faced by the search party was the huge amount of cash to be counted.  An innovation introduced this time was the use of currency counting machines.  Some years earlier, this problem used to be taken care of by taking bank officials as panch witnesses.  CBI has the advantage of being able to summon central government employees to act as panch witnesses.  Most of the operations are planned in advance and getting 'fresh' witnesses, who have not appeared in any case earlier, is not a problem.  In cases where large cash is likely to be seized, having bank officials as witnesses eases things considerably, as they have practice of counting notes in their jobs and they do not mind helping the law enforcement team in the task of seizing the ill-gotten gains of the corrupt public servant.

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Friday, September 24, 2004

6:49PM - Talk at Indian Institute of Capital Markets

On Wednesday, I went to Vashi, part of the Navi Mumbai city, where the Indian Institute of Capital Markets (IICM) is located, to give a talk on Management of Information Security.  IICM, set up by the Unit Trust of India (UTI) is a training institute, which runs programmes on capital markets.  The audience comprised of officers of the Indian Revenue Service, manning customs and excise departments as well as some officers from the Enforcement Directorate.  With e-governance coming in a big way, such interactions on the importance of information assets, are of great relevance.

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Monday, September 20, 2004

10:49PM - 'System' v. 'Heroes'

Today, I was watching a TV programme on one of the news channels. The theme of discussion was the entry of former underworld dons in the electoral arena. There were two invited participants. One was a famous criminal lawyer and the other a fellow IPS officer.

When the anchor asked whether a police officer can be impartial in his investigation if he feels that the accused person whom he is investigating may later come to power, the IPS officer asserted that the system of investigation was faultless and it depended on the individual officer how he stood up to the pressures and whether he had unimpeachable integrity. While at a theoretical level, this looks like an unexceptionable logic, to my mind, it has not measured up to be the actual situation and this is what I call the 'hero syndrome'.

Somehow, we have been conditioned to believe that all crisis situations produce heroes, who deliver us from the suffering and the tribulations.  (Remember Krishna at Kurukshetra: Yada yada hi dharmasya glanirbhavati ...?)  Our rich mythology is replete with such stories. The reality as it obtains today is vastly different. The democratic ethos of today means that the stereotypical concept of 'the leader and the led' is no longer valid.  Plus, traditionally, heroism meant the ultimate altruistic act, even sacrificing one's life.  What we have now is the unabashed purveying of materialism and the pleasures of flesh through our media and its large scale acceptance.  Altruism and materialism are conflicting values.  It is therefore going to be progressively difficult to get heroes in the traditional mould.

The other day there was a big debate on the TV about the rusting of the 'Steel Frame of India'.  Everyone was lamenting that the upright officer was a dwindling species.  The fact of the matter is that it is very difficult to be 'heroic' in the traditional - or the Hindi cinema - way, if you may.  Heroism was always seen to be a one-off act, something performed after a climax of trying circumstances.  A government officer can not remain in the 'hero-taking-on-the-system' mode all through his career of 30+ years. 

I think it is time to move away from this Bollywoodish view of heroism and pay more attention to the 'System', (which invariably gets bad press!)  The trouble with 'heroism' is that it is subjective in nature and focuces more on the person than the job he is supposed to do.  We need a more objective approach.  The spotlight must shift from the 'leader' to 'the led'. 

Our only hope of ensuring the high ideals of equity, justice and the fundamental rights for the citizens lies in creating a fair system, without waiting for better people to turn up to man the present rickety edifice.  This is where we have failed so far and this is where the developed societies score over us.  Take the issue of making an 'ordinary' police officer into a professional investigator, who does his job without fear or favour.  By now, having identified that extraneous things like non-specialisation (read law and order assignments, VIP duties and unproductive court appearances) and political pressures affect the quality of investigation, we should have created an organisation insulated from these factors.  We should have empowered the 'ordinary' worker in the organisation to be a hero in his day to day work.  This, we have not done.  Coming back to my favourite theme of implementation of the recommendations of the National Police Commission (http://www.angelfire.com/theforce/npcreport/ and http://www.oocities.org/npcreport/), we should have created such laws and processes which would have assured security of tenure, professional training and created institutionalised practices of commitment to professional ethics and higher values of justice and truth.  We have singularly failed in that.  We here means all of us, the establishment, the police leadership, the legislators and their advisors and even the members of the civil society, who refuse to be drawn away from their hostile view of the police, do not bother to inform themselves of the complexities of the situation and keep hoping for a hero to turn up and do his bit.  They have a long  wait on their hands, if they do not see the truth, as it stares at them.

Current mood: contemplative

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Sunday, September 19, 2004

10:43PM - Caller ID spoofing

SecurityFocus has carried an article on commercial exploitation of caller ID falsification exploits.  The article contains a reference to another article which briefly discusses the technological background, which makes this possible.  To quote briefly from the latter article:

Hackers have discovered that the handy feature that tells you who's calling before you answer the phone is easily manipulated through weaknesses in Voice over IP (VoIP) programs and networks. They can make their phone calls appear to be from any number they want, and even pierce the veil of Caller I.D. blocking to unmask an anonymous phoner's unlisted number.

At root, the issue is one of what happens to a nugget of authentication data when it leaves the tightly-regulated realm of traditional telephony, and passes into the unregulated domain of the Internet.

On the old-fashioned phone network, Caller I.D. works this way: your local phone company or cell phone carrier sends your "Calling Party Number" (CPN) with every call, like a return address on an envelope. Transmitted along with your CPN is a privacy flag that tells the telephone switch at the receiving end of the call whether or not to share your number with the recipient: if you have blocking on your line, the phone company you're dialing into knows your number, but won't share it with the person you're calling.

This arrangement relies on telephone equipment at both ends of the call being trusted: the phone switch providing you with dial tone promises not to lie about your number to other switches, and the switch on the receiving end promises not to reveal your number if you've asked that it be blocked. In the U.S. that trust is backed by FCC regulations that dictate precisely how telephone carriers handle CPNs, Caller I.D. and blocking. Most subscribers have come to take Caller I.D. for granted, and some financial institutions even use Caller I.D. to authenticate customers over the phone.

This came as a news to me.  Some cellphone providers in a few countries offer this facility of masking the subscriber's number, but make this information available to the police if the situation so demands.  In India, masking is not permitted.  From a law enforcement perspective, the ability to hide the caller ID number, or worse, to use another person's number, will make, for example, tackling extortion cases having origin in the underworld, very difficult.

To my mind, this is another example of the unregulated nature of the Internet having the potential to create difficulties for fixing accountability for actions, especially the harmful ones and without this kind of accountability, the rule of law itself will be difficult to ensure.

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Friday, September 17, 2004

9:10AM - National IT Conference at Pune

Last Saturday, I travelled to Pune to give a talk on cyber crime at the National IT Conference (11-12 September, 2004) on 'Emerging IT Applications and Trends for Technology Accountants'. 

It was a great experience to talk to a 1000-strong group of Chartered Accountants, who were very curious and enthusiastic about knowing the threats in cyber space.  The Pune Branch of Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) had taken the responsibility of organising the conference and it turned out to be an excellent performance. 

Auditors get to see the deviations in financial systems and with proper reporting and follow-up, can act as 'early warning systems' for society's financial health.  The ICAI has been doing an exemplary job of keeping its members at the desired skill levels, through continuing training programmes.  What is really emulable is that the number of training hours to be undertaken are prescribed and that introduces the element of specificity and measurability in the training goal.  This is something which other professional bodies, including those in the government, need to adopt.

Current mood: satisfied

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Thursday, September 16, 2004

8:16AM - Express Computer editorial talks of cyber security awareness and Mumbai Cyber Lab

Val Souza, editor of Express Computer has written on the threat spamming poses to the Internet and the importance of awareness of information security issues. (http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20040913/opinion03.shtml)  

To quote:

Indeed, spammers and scammers depend upon the naiveté of first-time and novice Net users for the success of their transgressions. So, creating awareness of the potential risks while online, and educating novices on how to avoid them, is an essential and on-going task. This is something that the Cyber Safety Week initiative of the Mumbai Police, in collaboration with Nasscom, achieves admirably. Held in the last week of August, and in its second iteration this year, the Week once again succeeded in spreading the message of cyber safety to hundreds of police officers, and thousands of other Mumbai residents and college students (this last group, thanks to the initiative of the Mumbai chapter of the Computer Society of India, under the able leadership of chairman V L Mehta and his enthusiastic lieutenants Chetan Samant and Wilson Pinto). The Cyber Safety Week is a fine example of industry teaming up with law enforcement authorities to fight cyber crime, a collaboration which has also resulted in the formation of the Mumbai Cyber Lab (www.mumbaicyberlab.org). It would be great if the Lab’s website, as well as the rarely-updated website of the Mumbai Police (www.mumbaipolice.com), were made more interactive and used to carry on cyber safety education all through the year.

The same issue of Express Computer has carried another item: "CEOs call for police-IT industry collaboration".

Mumbai Cyber Lab and the Cyber Safety Week are two projects Pradnya, my wife, and I are closely associated with.  It is good that the cyber security awareness campaign and the infrastructure created for it are being noticed and ideas are bubbling up for taking the concept forward.  It is also nice on the part of Val to mention the efforts of the behind-the-scenes volunteers, who generally go unmentioned.

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Tuesday, September 14, 2004

1:45PM - Meeting of minds

My young son is in the process of losing his milk teeth and getting brand new ones.  When he grins -- which is often -- I can see a nice, broad front tooth, showing up like the moon gradually lifting up over the horizon. 

The other day, he came to me and confided that he has been observing the growth of his tooth with great interest.  He measures how much the tooth has come out every morning before he goes to school and then again, when he comes back home.  He declared that the tooth is definitely growing.

I told him,"Son, you must measure it.  After all, there is a saying in management parlance, that what you can not measure, you can not manage."  My whole hearted support made him happy and he gambolled away!

Interesting, how generations get bridged so effortlessly :-)

Current mood: blissful

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Tuesday, September 7, 2004

4:41PM - Obliteration of something beautiful

Recently, I was teaching my daughter, who is in the fifth standard, a poem by Walter de la Mare: 'Silver'.   I am quoting the poem below.

Silver

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws and a silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.

Walter de la Mare

While explaining the concept of moonlight and the village setting, I realised that she can have only a theoretical idea of a moonlit night, never having been in such a setting herself.  No amount of explaining can recreate the exact experience.  If she is lucky, someday she will find herself in such a situation, of appreciating the idyllic rural landscape, untainted by the 'signs of progress'.  Otherwise, the magic and romance of such a night does not exist any more - at least in most parts of the country.  Cities in India have the glare of electricity, pollution (read haze and dust) and lack of open spaces, which make even the full moon at its zenith one of the several luminous things, effectively depriving it of any extraordinary quality.  Does the moon excite the children of this generation any more?

One of my fond childhood memories is about a five-kilometre walk I had had with my uncle, when we were going to his village, Poharegaon.  We had got down at Kumbhari, by the last bus, at about 9.30 pm and had to negotiate the rest of the way on foot, there being no roads and no buses to our destination village those days.  We set out in right earnest.  I must've been about ten years of age and had great fears lurking in my mind, of dark nights and lonely places.  For first few hundred metres of distance, I was feeling most panicky, expecting to be picked up any moment, by a silvery ghost or to be waylaid by a ferocious snake.  After some time, I realised that all those nasty creatures were off-duty that night and I gradually started enjoying walking on the winding trail through open fields, which had little vegetation at that time of the year.  Little shrubs, distant flickering lights and the looming moon were the only things noticeable, besides the silvery path, barely wide enough for one person to walk on.  Nothing could be heard except our footfalls and there was not much to talk about.  We walked in silence and the out-of-the-world experience has remained at the back of my mind, popping out in active memory whenever I hear of a moonlit night.

Now the same village has pucca roads, electricity with streetlighting and swift vehicles to take people around.  So, even there unless one takes the trouble of going to a farmhouse and then going on the terrace to sleep in the open and then wait for the power-cut, to enjoy the glory of a starry night.  I am reminded of Byron's famous poem, which kind of defined beauty in a new light.

She Walks in Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night
  Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
  Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
  Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
  Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
  Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
  How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

Will the new generation appreciate the grace of the imagery in the same way as the poet did?  I am not so sure and it is a depressing thought!

Current mood: distressed

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Friday, August 27, 2004

8:49AM - Cyber Safety Week in Mumbai

    Mumbai Police has organised 'Cyber Safety Week 2004', from 23 August to 28 August, in association with NASSCOM.  This follows the success of a similar exercise last year.  The idea is to raise awareness about information security issues, by reaching out to the various stakeholders and addressing their concerns.  Though security awareness has always been recognised as the chief strategy to ensure information security, most of the efforts are directed towards a closed use- group, such as a company's employees or bank customers.  While focusing on such homogeneous groups enables in customising the campaign, it must be kept in mind that there is a need for raising the awareness levels about the common threats on the Internet among the lay users of computers connected to the net.  Most of the soldiers in the rumoured zombie army of hijacked PCs, which are used to launch Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and to act as Spam forwarders, belong to home users, who do not consider that they have any information of economic value to protect.  Thus the importance of the Mumbai Police campaign, which seeks to reach out to not only people in the financial community, telecom services, lawyers, other law enforcement agencies and IT/ITES companies, but also to the students and parents, through organising seminars, talks and demonstrations.  The specific concerns of each distinct target group are discussed and problems and possible solutions discussed.  Current year's programmes are expected to touch as many as 10,000 persons, in a face to face situation, apart from media coverage and activities on the Internet.  This will be an ongoing exercise, later in the year, of training programmes and seminars and will be co-ordinated by the Mumbai Cyber Lab, which was setup as a result of last year's Cyber Safety Week and is a shining example of Industry-Police partnership, which draws upon the strengths of the two partners to provide inputs for better citizen services.
    The credit of seting the idea rolling belongs to Mr Vijay Mukhi, who came with the idea in June 2003 to Dr Pradnya Saravade, Deputy Commissioner of Police, handling cyber crime cases in Mumbai Police and who happens to be my wife.  The concept found an immediate and overwhelming acceptance among both NASSCOM and Mumbai Police echelons.  The Commissioner of Police, Mumbai Mr A.N. Roy has been very enthusiastic about the idea and provided great leadership for the whole campaign.  Pradnya has been the key person for planning the nitty-gritty of the multifarious activities.  Rajiv Vaishnav of NASSCOM has committed all his time and energy for ensuring that the Week has the desired impact.  I have been providing whatever advice I could, regarding the planning part as well as as a speaker on some occasions.
    During the first three days, I have attended one panel discussion on the financial services and the cybercrime threats, a seminar for bank officers, one workshop for middle level police officers (of the rank of Deputy Commissioners of Police and above) and one discussion with the CIOs of manufacturing and service companies.  There has been tremendous response everywhere and the concern for disruption free services is palpable.  People like Mr. Anand Mahindra, Chairman of the Confederation of Indian Industries, Mr. M. Damodaran, Chairman, IDBI Bank and Unit Trust of India, Mr. G.N. Bajpai, Chairman, SEBI and Mr A.K. Purwar, Chairman, State Bank of India, have spared their time for various activities and their talks have been full of insight and personal appreciation of the threat of cyber crime impacting their respective industries.
    The Cyber Safety Week will now be an annual exercise and should serve as one of the major events in the information security landscape in India.
    At this stage, I am reminded of an old legend: it was said that during the regime of Krishnadevaraya of Vijayanagar, in Medieval India, the citizens felt no need for having locks and bolts on their doors, because of the almost complete absence of any crime and the swiftness and sureness of justice.  I do not know if I will see this happy situation in the cyber space in my lifetime, but it is not a bad goal to aim at!

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Thursday, August 19, 2004

9:27PM - Some more musings and a good laugh!

After today's journal entry about the risks of dealing in electronic money, I got thinking about how one can keep such important pieces of information, like ATM card's PIN, safe, without the hassle of remembering something as inherently unrememberable as a four digit number.  The answer of course was staring me in face: the mobile phone.  For someone with substantial money riding on the various credit/debit/ATM cards, a mobile phone is a same-bracket accessory.  Mobile phones have rudimentary security features like password protected SIM access (albeit only on startup).  They also have increasingly capacious storage, which is ideal for storing alphanumeric data.  So, for example, I would store a Citibank ATM PIN as "Dhaniram 982000xxxx" in the address book, the last four digits being the PIN.  (Not that I have a Citibank card!)  Similar mnemonical tricks can be employed, secured with one's personal memory clues.

Anyway, this is also a time to tell an InfoSec joke.  Someone recently sent it to me and it was so simple to understand, I actually told it to my kids.  Here it goes:

A sardar was drawing money from ATM. The sardar behind him in the line said, "Ha! Ha! Haaa! I've seen ur password. Its 4 asterisks(****)."
The first sardar replies, " Ha! Ha! Haaa! U r wrong. Its 1258."

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2:50PM - InfoSec Incident, but not so obvious!

Recently, a report in the Mid-day, caught my attention. It was about a businessman losing Rs 9 lakh, through ATM theft, after his briefcase containing the card and its PIN, was stolen. (http://www.mid-day.com/news/city/2004/august/89564.htm)  Here is an extract:

The missing briefcase

Taparia had opened a current account with Citibank a few months ago and the bank had issued the ATM card accordingly. However Taparia said he’d never used the card. 

He recalls that on July 23, on his way to the office, he had halted at Heera Panna shopping centre to buy a cordless phone. He was carrying his briefcase, which he misplaced in the shopping centre. He’d looked for it all over, but in vain and then returned to office. He also informed the respective credit card companies about the loss.

The phone call

In the evening, he received a telephone call from Worli police station. The police informed him that their constable had found an abandoned briefcase lying near a temple. Taparia said that the police had also called a bomb squad, but the briefcase proved to be a dud.

“I identified my briefcase, but my umbrella, credit cards and dictaphone were missing.  However, I was happy that my office papers and locker keys were intact,” he said.

It was only after his ATM card had been misused that he realised that his Citibank ATM card and the password, which were in the briefcase were also missing. “I’d forgotten to check these at the police station,” he said.

“The thief did not use the Citibank ATM centre deliberately as he was aware of being captured on the CCTV there. So, he went to ICICI and UTI bank ATMs which do not have a CCTV,” added Taparia.


The story had a few human interest ingredients, but for me, the sanguine approach of a person, who has been issued an ATM card, never had the need to use it and who kept the password (PIN in this case) along with the card, was of special interest. A small number, written on a piece of paper, was the real reason and not the stolen card itself, which caused the loss. Had the gentleman not kept the slip in the briefcase and had he bothered to memorise his PIN, he would not have been poorer by a substantial sum. Another example of the potential value of information!

People are so trusting, because they feel that the safeguards available in the real world are available in the virtual world also. Sadly, it is not true and in this case, it was proved at the cost of loss of Rs 9 lakh. The issuing bank also failed to revoke the ATM privileges of the stolen card. There are some lessons here for the card users and the issuing banks. The Mid-day article gives some tips for the readers, which are quite useful.

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Wednesday, July 21, 2004

1:18PM - More on phishing cases

Apropos my recent blog-post on occurence of 'phishing' cases in India, there have been further reports on the Internet, of the growing concern over phishing.  A report (http://www.securitypipeline.com/22104197) on the Security Pipeline website examines the links between phishing cases and organised crime.  At present, the criminals seem to be operating from the former Soviet bloc countries.  However, given the worldwide links of organised crime, it would not be surprising if they spread all over and target other countries.  Incidentally, given India's large pool of technologically literate young people, it is gratifying that there have hardly been any cases where malicious and criminal hacking, with potential for graduating to organised crime, has been noticed.  May be it has something to do with the bright minds being 'gainfully employed'!

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Saturday, July 17, 2004

2:32PM

Hindu Businessline recently carried a story on India's first reported 'phishing' case.  (More resources on 'phishing' are available at the antiphishing.org site.)  Similar reports were carried by rediff.com and sify.com.  To quote from the Sify report:

Online fraudsters targeted ICICI Bank customers through spam mail that asked them to disclose passwords and other information, but the bank said no financial loss was reported so far. E-mails from `support@icici.com' with the subject `Important information from ICICI Bank' and `Official information from ICICI Bank' started circulating from Monday. Once opened, the mail asked customers to click on a link.

"For security purposes your account has been randomly chosen for verification. To verify your account information we are asking you to provide us with all the data we are requesting. Otherwise we will not be able to verify your identity and access to your account will be denied. Please click on the link below to get to the ICICI secure page and verify your account details. Thank you," the e-mail said.

The ingenuity of the e-mail is striking as when clicked on the link, it opens a Web page that is an exact replica of ICICI Bank's and simultaneously opens the bank Web site.   Customers were asked to key in their identification number, login and fund transfer passwords. The link, however, didn't work on Wednesday.   An ICICI Bank spokesman said so far no financial loss was reported because of the fraud. "It's not easy to say how many of our customers have got it. First, we felt it will be a large number. But now our assessment is it's a small number," the spokesman said.

ICICI Bank sent e-mail to its customers, warning them about the fraud and urging not to respond to such mails. "Such fraudulent communication may also be sent via SMS or the phone," the bank said.   The ICICI Bank spokesman said the bank has alerted the cyber crime cells about the spam mails. But the origin of the spam mail had not been traced, he said.   Such fraudulent mails are becoming rampant across the world as Internet banking has grown in popularity. "

With the rise of the internet-users' population in India and the growing popularity of internet banking, it was a matter of time before some such attempted fraud came to light.  Such a fraud, necessarily requires elaborate preparation, not only in the cyber space, but also by way of opening bank accounts to siphon off the stolen funds.  An organised gang, showing unprecedented sophistication and understanding of the criminal potential of the largely anonymous Internet, seems to be behind the attempt. 

Indian banks need to take information security more seriously and create awareness among the customers about the modus operandi of fraudsters, apart from promptly reporting any attempts of hacking or outright frauds to the law enforcement agencies and providing them all possible help.

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1:49PM - Landmarks in a City

One of my favourite TV programs is 'Great Hotels'. It is aired by Discovery Channel on Wednesdays and I watch it whenever I can. Great Hotels is all about luxury and 'The Unique Experience'. But before someone jumps to the conclusion that I am partial to a luxurious life, I hasten to add that the aspect of the program which appeals to me is not luxury per se, but the high degree of refinement and excellence one sees in the featured hotels. The locations seem to have been chosen carefully.  The presenter is very informal and appropriately fun-loving, rather than analytical. 
When one sees the architecture and the interiors, one realises that a lot of thought has gone in building a theme. The more important part, however, is the service which is on offer and the all-encompassing attention to details.
Having watched quite a few episodes, I am struck by one thing: even the smallest of the towns in the developed world have architecturally significant structures and monuments. There may not be much history behind them, but there is grandeur of scale, audacity of conception and harmony of outlines and the environs. From an Indian perspective, one wishes that there were such structures in our cities, where an increasingly larger percentage of our population resides. We do not have many soul-stirring-edifices, so to say, around us to captivate and inspire to greater things than a mundane existence.  Here I am talking not only of hotels, but public buidings like universities, libraries, museums, courts, amusement places, malls, railway and bus stations and so on.
There is a lot of new construction in our cities. Most of it is residential or commercial in nature. With the current squeeze on government finances, there are very few public structures being built of late. Whatever is being built, is strictly functional in a non-enlightened way. (The railway stations CIDCO has built in Navi Mumbai are different, no doubt, but not significant from an architectural point of view.) We have no new public buildings, which are architectural landmarks. There are very few fountains and gardens. There are very few 'wow' buildings around us. We seem to have reconciled to an ugly present and are not making little effort to bootstrap ourselves out of this gloomy situation.
The urban planners and the leading lights in public life should give it a thought -- how to create impressive monuments, which liberate and transport the blasé urbanite, the city child, the visitor-tourist, the harried house-wife, the tired commuter, to a dream of a better tomorrow.

Current mood: thoughtful

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1:19PM - A Little Boy's Life and Poetry

Reading out story books to my children is something I do religiously, though not as frequently as I would like to, or I should.  Recently, I got A A Milne's 'Stories of Winnie-The-Pooh' from the library.  It had this poem on its last page, which I found very endearing, since it describes my six year old son rather well.

When I was One,
I had just begun.

When I was Two,
I was nearly new.

When I was Three,
I was hardly Me.

When I was Four,
I was not much more.

When I was Five,
I was just alive.

But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever.
So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.

How blessed, and blissful, childhood is!

Current mood: thankful

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Wednesday, July 14, 2004

6:19PM

In one of the mailing lists I subscribe to, a thought-provoking discussion is afoot about the advisability of participation in government initiatives by NGOs and the 'civil society'. This was relating to nomination of many well-known social workers in the National Advisory Council set up by the new government. One such person is Mr Jayaprakash Narayan of Loksatta (www.loksatta.org), who describes himself as "a physician by training, a public servant by choice, and a democrat by conviction." Mr Narayan, resigned in 1996 from the Indian Administrative service after 17 years of working with the government.

Regarding the decision of Mr Jayaprakash Narayan, one of the respondents wrote: "...
I personally don't know much about Mr Jayprakash Narayan, except that he has been a major political leader for several decades. Political parties and NGOs can work together... but they should not MERGE. The NGOs should not become a synonym for a politcal parties outfits. Loksatta might get itself a bad spot on its reputation if Mr Jayprakash Narayan doesn't takes extra efforts to show his solidarity more to Loksatta and less to his political party and if needed confront its party for people's rights. If Loksatta is confident of such a thing happening, it may retain Mr Jay Prakash Narayan, and also understand that if this gentleman fails to deliver or buckles under pressure it risks loosing its good name and efforts over years. BUT ITS ALWAYS HIGH RISKS GET HIGH REWARDS.

If JP is a leader of the solidarity [Name deleted] beleives, well then loksatta may have betted for a big game..."

It is apparent from the writing that the respondent has confused the identities of the eponymous, late JP (http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Jai%20Prakash%20Narayan) and the present Mr Narayan of Loksatta. On this mistake being detected, here is the explanation offered by the respondent.

"...I think i had taken him being a wrong person, just did some google to find he is not the politician I thought he was. I though he was one of the Jayprakash Narayan who was active during Morarji Desai's time. So I kept wondering, how come he is still alive and suddenly working for civil rights and becomes a person for people's right.

As the founder of an NGO and as an representative of an NGO with any political party is absolutely fine, rather essential. No doubt about it...."

Such unintended humour is what relieves the gloominess of a rainy day!

Current mood: mischievous

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Wednesday, June 9, 2004

1:47PM

Sometime ago, I came across a passage, which was used as a comprehension essay in a 'Linguistic Ability Test' paper, which describes the thoughts of a policeman, remarkably accurately. I am quoting the passage below. I have been unable to find any information about the source of the passage or its author, but would like to congratulate him/her for the insight and the empathy.

Have a look!

"Real policemen hardly recognize any resemblance between their lives and what they see on TV -- if they ever get home in time. There are similarities, of course, but the cops don't think much of them.

The first difference is that a policeman's real life revolves round the law. Most of his training is in criminal law. He has to know exactly what actions are crimes and what evidence can be used to prove them in court. He has to know nearly as much law as a professional lawyer, and what is more, he has to apply it on his feet, in the dark and rain, running down an alley after someone he wants to talk to.

Little of his time is spent in chatting to scantily-clad ladies or in dramatic confrontations with desperate criminals. He will spend most of his working life typing millions of words on thousands of forms about hundreds of sad, unimportant people who are guilty - or not - of stupid, pretty crimes.

Most television crime drama is about finding the criminal: as soon as he's arrested, the story is over. In real life, finding criminals is seldom much of a problem. Except in very serious cases like murders and terrorist attacks - where failure to produce results reflects on the standing of the police - little effort is spent on searching.

Having made an arrest, a detective really starts to work. He has to prove his case in court and to do that he often has to gather a lot of different evidence. Much of this has to be given by people who don't want to get involved in a court case. So, as well as being overworked, a detective has to be out at all hours of the day and night interviewing his witnesses and persuading them usually against their own best interests, to help him.

A third big difference between the drama detective and the real one is the unpleasant moral twilight in which the real one lives. Detectives are subject to two opposing pressures: first, as members of a police force, they always have to behave with absolute legality; secondly, as expensive public servants, they have to get results. They can hardly ever do both. Most of the time, some of them have to break the rules in small ways.

If the detective has to deceive the world, the world often deceives him. Hardly anyone he meets, tells him the truth. And this separation the detective feels between himself and the rest of the world is deepened by the simple-mindedeness - as he sees it - of citizens, social workers, doctors, law-makers, and judges who, instead of stamping out crime, punish the criminals less severely in the hope that this will make them reform. The result, detecives feel, is that nine-tenths of their work is re-catching poeple who should have stayed behind bars. This makes them rather cynical."

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Monday, June 7, 2004

1:24PM

Indian Express has carried a news item about the recently-inaugurated call centre of Mumbai Police. (http://cities.expressindia.com/archivefullstory.php?newsid=86751&creation_date=2004-06-06)

A police department call centre is an interesting concept, borrowed from the private sector. (There is much to learn from the operating practices of the corporate world and, hence, this new effort of the Mumbai Police needs appreciation.) What is remarkable is that the call centre is providing an interface with the general public through a toll-free telephone number and is generating a lot of queries, not all of which are complaints. In today's world, information is an important commodity and if a 24x7 agency like police can provide it, it will generate a lot of goodwill for the police. The wide-spread penetration of telephone services also makes the service accessible to almost all population segments in the city. This initiative needs to be studied and adopted by other metropolitan police organisations in the country.

Private sector companies measure their internal efficiency on parameters like the number of times a customer's phone rings before it is answered. With new technologies becoming available, it will not be difficult for police organisations to evolve similar such indices of measuring customer satisfaction and use them in improving delivery of citizen services.

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Wednesday, May 19, 2004

7:58AM - Power Failure in Mumbai

Last night, I had some harrowing time, as did millions of Mumbaikars, when electricity vanished for over two hours. In our house, we are having a large number of adults and children at the moment as my sisters' and brother's families have come over to Mumbai for the summer vacation. The prospect of the water in the overhead tank running out in case of an extended power shortage and other attendant hardships was not enjoyable all. I was scanning the radio channels for any announcements, but there were none. The channels were busy playing old Hindi songs, which while very soothing, were no replacement for hard information. Even the news on Akashwani totally failed to mention the power failure.

From the following news item on the Mid-day site (http://web.mid-day.com/news/city/2004/may/83577.htm), it appears that railway commuters faced worse predicaments.

Large parts of Mumbai without power
By: PTI
May 18, 2004

Almost the entire south and several suburbs of north and northwest Mumbai ranging from Nariman Point to Bandra and Dadar were plunged into darkness around 9.30 pm Wednesday as a result of a massive power supply.

A BEST spokesman said,''The problem is due a fault in the Kalwa and Trombay power stations of the Tata Power Company.'' The TPC engineers were busy rectifying the problem but said they could not specify a time frame to restore power.

Tata Power officials said,''We are trying to restore the power supply step-by-stepand our first priority is the railways.''

Meanwhile, commuters had a harrowing time as the suburban rail system was thrown out of gear. Commuters were stranded at the platforms and apparently because of the power failure, no announcements were being made.

One wonders what happened to the much-publicised schemes of Disaster Management. Two hours of unscheduled power cut in Mumbai is a big crisis for any Mumbaikar. Two channels of making information available to the citizens would have been the radio stations and the mobile phones (SMS messages). I hope the next such mini-crisis sees more information availability. After all, such instances but test our ability to handle the bigger ones, like a war, a terrorist strike or an earthquake.

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Monday, May 10, 2004

8:02PM - Touch Typing: An Essential Skill

Traditional wisdom has always stressed on proficiency in the three Rs, viz. Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. These basic skills were supposed to be essential for success in any field. With the dawn of the Information Age, one more R, viz. Computers has got added to the three basic skills.

Well, I, for one, do not believe in alliteration as an expression of Fate. So rather than fit in another R, I would like to mention Touch Typing as an important skill, on par with good handwriting of yore. As Internet spreads deeper and wider, written communication is taking the form of type-written text. More and more people are taking to writing as the dominant form of communication, scoring over the oral one, as it enables them to reach a wider (numerically and geographically) audience/readership. How fast one can input data becomes important when there are more mails to write and more pages to visit, browse and read.

For long, I was a two-finger typist. Having been inspired by the prolific output of Isaac Asimov, the great science Fiction and popular science author, who prided himself on his very fast two-finger typing, I resisted any thought of formally acquiring the touch typing skills. However, two years ago, I decided to bite the bullet and break my old mould. With the help of self-help typing tutors, I taught my fingers to identify by touch and use the various letter keys on the keyboard and my eyes, not to look down. With some dogged hard work, I picked up touch typing and acquired a decent speed (40 words per minute). Apart from the satisfaction of teaching an old dog (myself) new tricks, the advantages of touch typing have proved to be many. It has improved my productivity as a writer. I remember I had dictated my first article to my stenographer and had kept the first draft, which was full of broken thought streams, grammatical mistakes and spelling errors, on my table for a few weeks before I could bring myself to rework it. Now, what I type, gets sent/finalised in one sitting. Plus, there have been occasions, when I typed something urgent and secret, without the usual exercise of locating and trasporting the stenographer to the office, disturbing his holiday sojourn. One important gain has been the increased stamina for typing. One can work virtually tirelessly and at all times of the day.

For us senior officers in the government, a stenographer is generally easily available, as contrasted with the corporate world where even senior executives have to do their own typing work. However, despite this lack of incentive, I evangelise and recommnd learning touch typing to all who care to listen. It was never easier to self-learn touch typing. There are freeware and shareware software programs available for download. http://typingsoft.com/all_typing_tutors.htm lists such programs. Among the shareware programs, TypingMaster, at http://www.typingmaster.com/ is the best alternative. http://www.aetech.co.uk/ttutor/download.php, http://www.mrkent.com/kb/keyboard.htm and http://sourceforge.net/projects/typefaster/

, which are the free alternatives also seem pretty decent.

Best of luck to those who would like to try them out!

Current mood: energetic

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Friday, May 7, 2004

7:30PM - Policy for naming of government websites in India

Various government organisations in India have gradually realised the importance of having a presence on the World Wide Web. The various police units are no exception. The National Police Academy (http://www.svpnpa.gov.in/otherlinks.asp) gives a list of such sites. Clicking on the various links takes one to the webpages of many state police forces, police academies and city police units. Some of the sites have been designed imaginatively to provide a front desk in the cyberspace and have been kept updated. Some sites do not open at all. Some sites (e.g. http://uppolice.up.nic.in/) have exclusive areas for their employees, accessible through a special login. Many websites are apparently designed and hosted by the National Informatics Centre (http://indiaimage.nic.in/). These are characterised by the nic.in suffix. The rest of urls have .com or .org suffixes, except for the NPA site, which has the .gov.in suffix.

With this variety in domain names, I set about finding the practices elsewhere. I came across the authoritative site of the UK government (http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk/Home/Homepage/fs/en). The Office of the e-Envoy " is part of the Prime Minister's Delivery and Reform team based in the Cabinet Office. The primary focus of the Office of the e-Envoy is to improve the delivery of public services and achieve long term cost savings by joining-up online government services around the needs of customers. The e-Envoy is responsible for ensuring that all government services are available electronically by 2005 with key services achieving high levels of use." Here is what it has to say about departmental websites.

"Your website is your electronic front desk. A poorly resourced website presents as bad an image of the local authority as poorly trained front desk staff. For customers to have a satisfactory experience online, local authority websites need to be developed based on citizen’s needs and preferences. To support this, the website will need to contain information that is useful to citizens, presented in a way that will help them with their enquiries, and which will enable them to transact business with local authorities. Local authorities will need to measure the success of their website through use of web performance management tools and/or customer surveys and/or user testing.
The strategy for using the website should be an integral part of a communications strategy for the local authority. In particular, the corporate communications strategy of the authority should be updated to reflect the maturity of the web as a mainstream communication channel, including measures of policy, performance and self-assessment in enabling interactions for electronic service delivery.
Resourcing should be part of an organisation-wide strategy. For example, training in web writing should be provided to those staff responsible for producing documents that will go online. As a consequence of their training, authors should be able to provide summary data and take responsibility for keeping information up to date. In this way, the documents they submit will require much less revision by the web team before being posted to the website.
Content management systems allow for the more efficient management and tracking of the flow of electronic content to a website. Such content management systems make it easier for people across the organisation to update their own pages."

More importantly for my concern about a uniform naming policy, it has this to say:
"1.9.2 Develop a domain name strategy
An organisation with or planning to have an Internet presence should adopt and exercise a centralised approach on planning the acquisition, management and use of appropriate domain names.
A domain name is intellectual property and accordingly may have both financial and strategic value.
The registration of a .gov.uk domain is undertaken within clearly detailed guidelines. An individual department or agency may wish, as part of a defensive strategy, to consider acquiring other, closely related host names, eg, in the .org, info, .com Top Level Domains. This may reduce the risk of confusingly similar domain names being registered by third parties, thereby leading to confusion amongst Web users. This also reduces the genuine risk of third parties acquiring names for vexatious purposes.
When registering any name you should be aware of the need to avoid infringing existing trademarks and third party business names.
Web managers also should be aware of ‘cybersquatting’. This is a practice of buying up domain names reflecting the names of existing organisations with the intention of selling the names back to you or for using them for ‘bad faith’ purposes, such as, passing off." Further detailed instructions follow at http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk/Resources/WebHandbookIndex1Article/fs/en?CONTENT_ID=4000064&chk=fUJBmm.

I think we in India also need a similar policy document, specifying not only about the naming conventions to be adopted, but also detailed guidelines regarding web-designing informative and interactive websites for citizen facilitation. In my opinion, .com suffix sitenames should be totally avoided for government sites, as it is antithetical to the not-for-profit nature of activities of a government department. However, these alternative domains should be booked and webpages put up to redirect visitors to the actual site. While we wait for the back-ends to get organised during the e-governance drive, as and when it happens, the front ends should be kept ready.

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Sunday, April 4, 2004

3:47PM - An Excellent Discussion on Ethical Principles

Recently, I came across the following discussion of ethical principles, in a book on e-commerce. The book, written by Kenneth Laudon and Carol Guercio Traver (http://www.aw-bc.com/laudon/) is an excellent treatise on the technology and the business principles of e-commerce. It is characterised by an extremely lucid treatment of the subject and enables the student to get a remarkable insight into the emerging world of Internet commerce. I used it as the de facto textbook for the course on 'e-business Strategies and Implementation', which I had taken as a part of the coursework for my PhD (http://www.oocities.org/nsaravade/PhDPage.html). Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/032112202X/qid=1081073773/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/103-8600406-3643060?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) also has glowing reviews of the book.

From Chapter 9 of E-commerce by Loudon and Traver.

Definitions

Ethics is the study of principles that individuals and organisations can use to determine right and wrong courses of action. It is assumed in ethics that individuals are free moral agents who are in a position to make choices.
Responsibility means that as free moral agents, individuals, organisations, and societies are responsible for the actions they take.
Accountability means individuals, organisations, and societies should be held accountable to others for the consequences of their actions. The third concept - liability - extends the concepts of responsibility and accountability to the area of law.
Liability is a feature of political systems in which a body of law is in place that permits individuals to recover the damages done to them by other actors, systems, or organisations.
Due process is a feature of law-governed societies and refers to a process in which laws are known and understood and there is an ability to appeal to higher authorities to ensure that the laws have been applied correctly.

Analysing Ethical Dilemmas

Ethical, social and political controversies usually present themselves as dilemmas. A dilemma is a situation in which there are at least two diametrically opposed actions, each of which supports a desirable outcome.

How can you analyse and reason the situation?

• Identify and describe clearly the facts. Find out who did what to whom, and where, when and how. In many instances, you will be surprised at the errors in the initially reported facts, and often you will find that simply getting the facts straight helps define the solution. It also helps to get the opposing parties involved in an ethical dilemma to agree on the facts.
• Define the conflict or dilemma and identify the higher order values involved. Ethical, social and political issues always reference higher values. Otherwise, there would be no debate. The parties to a dispute all claim to be pursuing higher values (e.g., freedom, privacy, protection of property, and the free enterprise system).
• Identify the stakeholders. Every ethical, social and political issue has stakeholders: players in the game who have an interest in the outcome, who have invested in the situation, and usually have vocal opinions. Find out the identity of these groups and what they want. This will be useful later when designing a solution.
• Identify the options that you can reasonably take. You may find that none of the options satisfies all the interests involved, but that some options do a better job than others. Sometimes, arriving at a 'good' or ethical solution may not always be a balancing of consequences to stakeholders.
• Identify the potential consequences of your options. Some options may be ethically correct, but disastrous from other points of view. Other options may work in this instance, but not in other similar instances. Always ask yourself, "what if I choose this option consistently over time?"

Candidate Ethical Principles

• The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Putting yourself into the place of others and thinking of yourself as the object of the decision can help you think about fairness in decision making.
• Universalism: If an action is not right for all situations, then it is not right for any specific situation (Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative). Ask yourself, "If we adopted this rule in every case, could the organisation, or society, survive?"
• Slippery Slope: If an action cannot be taken repeatedly, then it is not right to take at all (Descartes' rule of change). An action may appear to work in one instance to solve a problem, but if repeated, would result in a negative outcome. "Once started down a slippery path, you may not be able to stop."
• Collective Utilitarian Principle: Take the action that achieves the greater value for all of society. This rule assumes you can prioritise values in a rank order and understand the consequences of various courses of action.
• Risk Aversion: Take the action that produces the least harm, or the least potential cost. Some actions have extremely high failure costs of very low probability (e.g., building a nuclear generating facility in an urban area) or extremely high failure costs of moderate probability (speeding and automobile accidents). Avoid the high failure cost actions and choose those actions whose consequences would not be catastrophic, even if there were a failure.
• No Free Lunch: Assume that virtually all tangible and intangible objects are owned by someone else unless there is a specific declaration otherwise. (This is the ethical 'no free lunch' rule.)
• The New York Times test (Perfect Information Rule): Assume that the results of your decision on a matter will be subject of the lead article in the New York Times the next day. Will the reaction of readers positive or negative? Would your parents, friends, and children be proud of your decision? When making decisions involving ethical dilemmas, it is wise to assume perfect information.
• The Social Contract Rule: Would you like to live in a society where the principle you are supporting would become an organising principle of the entire society?

In the Indian way of thinking, there are concepts of dharma, karma and salvation. However, due to a multiplicity of schools of thought and a confusing mixture of mythology with philosophy and religion with the social/caste system, there is no one formalised way of dealing with ethical questions. On this background, I found the above discussion by Loudon and Traver, as a very well articulated set of guiding principles, which are universal in nature.

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Monday, March 29, 2004

9:08AM - Fruadnet: An Initiative to Combat International Frauds

Recently a friend wrote to inform about setting up of Fraudnet, an initiative of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). To quote: "CCS [ICC Commercial Crime Services] frequently receives inquiries from individuals and companies believing that they have been defrauded. Quite often these individuals do not know where to turn for redress and recovery of their assets. Fraudnet will allow us to refer them to legal professionals with intimate knowledge of their specific jurisdiction." (More details at http://www.iccwbo.org/home/news_archives/2004/fraudnet.asp)
I think the setting up of a body to act as a resource centre on frauds is an excellent idea. Frauds have always been part of the economic activities and their sophistication and magnitude has gone up continuously. Due to expansion of geographical boundaries in business as well as use of cyberspace for carrying out financial transactions, new kinds of frauds have come about. The latest trend is 'jurisdictional arbitrage' where criminals carefully plan - depending on the legal landscape and enforcement practices - where to commit crime, where to stash away the proceeds and where to take shelter. Abu Salem, having roots in India, business interests in the Gulf and found living in Spain is a classic example. International co-operation in law enforcement is in its infancy. Therefore, any new initiative, which seeks to bring together stake-holders in different countries together and aims to serve as an information resource, is to be welcomed. The law enforcement agencies should make their expertise available to this initiative.

Current mood: energetic

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Sunday, March 28, 2004

9:46AM - Portrayal of senior police officers in Hindi films

If there is anything which galls the senior police officers about their depiction in Hindi films is the utter ignorance/disregard displayed by the directors of Hindi films towards accuracy in getting the details of uniform and the departmental structure right. This is in sharp contrast to the levels of professionalism in Hollywood, where exhaustive research is carried out to get even the smallest fact right. I am listing some common errors seen in Hindi films.

• The Police Inspector, who is generally the hero of the film, is shown to be the most powerful and important person in the department, who advises senior officers like Commissioners of Police. In real life, decision making is not person-based, but works under well-defined rules and procedures and is not so spontaneous and whimsical as depicted.

• The senior police officers are always shown wearing tunics (khaki coat and blue tie, with a cross-belt), whereas in real life, tunics are worn once in a blue moon, depending on the occasion. I have not worn my tunic after the initial training, which ended in 1989!

• Various items of uniform are mixed up. For example, collar tabs, with navy blue background, with silver strip/olive leaf pattern go with peak caps with similar coloured blue bands and embroidered insignia of the IPS. However, sometimes either of the two are shown missing.

• The hero, who is the angry young man in uniform, sports long hair beneath his cap. Long hair is a strict no-no in police at all levels. One wonders why the actors themselves do not insist on achieving verisimilitude, a la Hollywood.

The uniform rules of the IPS are available at http://persmin.nic.in/ais/B11_ind.htm. A good compilation on Indian Police system, including the various badges of rank can be downloaded from http://www.humanrightsinitiative.org/publications/police/police_organisations.pdf.

These will provide good starting points, but the bottom line is that Hindi film-makers need to do their research on policing more thoroughly.

Current mood: disappointed

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Saturday, March 27, 2004

11:26AM - ...and that made my day!

I first came to Mumbai in 1982 for post-graduation at IIT Bombay, after spending four years at Aurangabad, a sleepy little town those days. Aurangabad was a place where there was severe dearth of reading material. One had to scrounge around for locating a good read. So, I felt like Ali Baba, stumbling into the cave containing dazzling riches, when I chanced upon the rows and rows of second-hand paperbacks at the footpath book shops near Flora Fountain, in Mumbai's Central Business District, also called the Fort area. Many of the books had come within reach thanks to the princely M.Tech. stipend of Rs. 600 per month. Looking at the thousands of books, neatly displayed on the makeshift wooden frames, hinting at exotic worlds and gripping stories, became my preferred way of spending some spare time. I really gorged myself on thrillers, science fiction, mysteries and such easily digestible stuff. I also developed a fine bargaining technique, where the key was not to show too much interest in the book sighted, though internally one would be fairly salivating at the prospect of a few hours of bliss, curled up with the book! One would be willing to walk away, or make a show of, and pop one's final bid over the shoulder. More often than not, this would land the book.
After those carefree student days, I never got that kind of time to browse and buy. I also moved away from Mumbai till I returned in 1996. Even after the return, the lack of time to read the books meant that there was no occasion to visit those shops. My reading has also became less varied and mostly focused on non-fiction.
Last Monday, I wanted to pick up a couple of paperbacks and decided to visit the 'caves' again. My kids were with me and I took them along. They became quite excited at the range of kiddie books available at the stalls and started leafing through the colourful story books. I located the books I wanted to buy and duly negotiated the price, though without the earlier 'sharpness', as one feels that the streetside vendor needs a better deal. The money and the books changed hands. The seller, a middle-aged portly man, was very pleasant and recommended a few more books to me, which I politely declined. Meanwhile, the kids, who had wanted to pick up an 'Amar Chitra Katha' brought down a whole stack of books crashing. I was tut-tutting to them, when the shop-keeper said,"Are sahab, koi baat naheen. Hum log hain na, kitaab lagane ke liye. Unko dekhne deejiye. Yehi badi baat hai ke is umar mein woh kitaab dekhna chahte hai." In the middle of Mumbai's heartless and hectic business district, with vehicles rushing around and pedestrians jostling by, his kind words made my day.

Current mood: touched

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Friday, March 26, 2004

6:09PM - "When Was The Last Time You Did Something For The First Time?"

I read this tagline today in a television ad and was exhilarated. How simple and common words can be put together to say something profound!
I think this sentence should form the motto for personal growth and innovation. The curious mind seeks out new stimuli, new facts, new ways of thinking. So, what better line than this one to remind one of that.
A search on the net led to http://www.danskin.com/main.html, a women's clothing company, which also sponsors triathlons. Apparently, the sentence was used first in an event at Seattle, Washington (see http://www.thehealthyplanet.com/the_adventurous.htm).
Curious about the triathlon races, I clicked on http://www.danskin.com/triathlon/, which had another gem for this year's race:

"The Woman who starts the Race is not the same Woman who finishes the Race"

Of course, one had heard a similar one before: "You never step in the same river twice". Still, in the context of the event, an inspiring one.
I must confess that I am fascinated by the power of well-crafted writing and have a page for my favourite quotations on my personal website: http://www.oocities.org/nsaravade/Quotations.htm and a page for inspiring writings: http://www.oocities.org/nsaravade/inspiring.html.
So, a couple of good ones for my collection!

Current mood: enthralled

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Monday, March 15, 2004

6:59PM - Feedback mechanisms in government

Recently there was a news item in Indian Express, about the experiences of retired civil servants. The original item can be accessed at http://www.newindpress.com/Print.asp?ID=IEH20040308124928. Quoted below are the opening paragraphs of the story.

Cabinet Secretary takes steps to improve govt-public relations

NEW DELHI: * ``I have been unable to get a new voter card since I shifted to suburban NOIDA. When I moved in here and wanted an ISD connection on my phone so I did not have to book a call to talk to my son in the US, a chap asked me for one 'peti' which I was told was Rs 10,000. Later I had to call up the then Telecom secretary to intervene'' _ T.S.R. Subramanian, former cabinet secretary and author of the recently released 'Journey through Babudom and Netaland'.

* ``The biggest problem is accessibility of officers; they hardly ever respond to calls by retired civil servants and their PAs never let anybody get through to their bosses'' _ S.S. Dawra, former secretary, Department of Personnel and Training

* ``I found it so difficult to get a ration card made that I have even dropped the idea. I specifically remember that I had a problem with my electricity bill and the assessment of my property tax for both of which I did not need any favour, just routine grievances to be heard, but I had to approach the Grievances Cell and wait for years before the issues were resolved'' _ R.C. Jain, former coal secretary of the 1958 batch

These are the experiences of the once ``powerful'' bureaucrats who have now crossed over to the other side of the fence to become common citizens of the country which is supposed to be going through a `feelgood' phase. But the feelgood factor could remain just a slogan like many others in the past for political parties to garner votes ...

Following points emerged after discussion with colleagues in the civil service.

1.. Most of us, in the civil service, tend to see things mostly through the prism of our own experiences. We feel that if we find something acceptable personally, it must be acceptable to the society also. There is a loss of objectivity here, apart from the risk of creeping-in of personal biases.
2.. The policy makers' reaction that 'if this is the treatment meted out to them, how much worse it must be for juniors and the common man' also betrays the bureaucracy-centric thinking. The right way in an organisation committed to the citizen, would be to approach the problem from the common man's perspective and other segments of the society would automatically be taken care of.
3.. Till we are in positions of authority, we are too busy enjoying the experience and the responsibility. We do not focus on evolving mechanisms for collecting specific feedback from the various sections of society we serve and improve our internal processes and external interface with them. It is when we get tranferred out, or retire, that the shoe starts pinching.
4.. All successful organisations in the private sector, and now even political parties, rely on opinion polls and surveys, done through professional agencies, to identify their areas of strength and weakness and the directions for changes in operational and general strategies. On the other hand, we, in the government, do not have free and frank communications even within the organisations. The problems and constraints faced at the operational level seldom filter up to the decision-making level at their true scale.
In my humble opinion, we need to become more citizen-focused in our thinking and translate it into policies, processes and practices as an organisation truly serving the society.

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Saturday, March 6, 2004

2:25PM - Nuances in Enforcing India's Information Technology Ac

There was an exchange on the Cyberlaw-India group about the implications of certain 'innocent' actions, under the new Information Technology Act. I am quoting my views on the subject.

The traditional wisdom said that the single most ingredient of a criminal act as per the principles of jurisprudence is 'mens rea' or the criminal intent. An online definition, at http://www.legal-definitions.com/mens-rea.htm, says "mens rea definition - in most cases, an act is a crime because the person committing it intended to do something wrong. This mental state is generally referred to as Mens rea, or guilty mind. Mens rea expresses a belief that people should be punished only when they have acted in a way that makes them morally blameworthy."
Most of the offences in the Indian Penal Code, an Act enacted in 1860, require that 'mens rea' should be proved. There are a few exceptions, though. Driving negligently is specifically made an offence (albeit with milder penalties). Though the driver may not have any intent to harm the victim, his failure to exercise reasonable caution, is deemed blameworthy. Now, in today's complex world, the age-old wisdom seems a bit inadequate. The aftermath of a negligent act sometimes creates consequences, which alarm and at times, horrify the common man. (For example, the BMW case in Delhi and the Salman case in Mumbai) Then there is a demand for harsher penalties for an act which otherwise is not considered so objectionable.
Imagine another scenario, from the cyberworld. A teenager writes a virus and releases it out of, let us say, intellectual curiosity. It spreads all over the world, causing serious financial loss, causes deaths of several patients on life-support systems controlled by computers and finally causes a nuclear incident, etc. What is the liability of the kid, who had no idea what his virus will achieve and who had no animosity against the victims of his handiwork?
The situation is also affected by the fact that persons of a very young age are legally deemed incapable of a completely malicious action and are tried under a separate act, called Juvenile Justice Act. Sections 82 and 83 of the Indian Penal Code are quoted below.

82. Act of a child under seven years of age Nothing is an offence which is done by a child under seven years of age.

83. Act of a child above seven and under twelve of immature understanding Nothing is an offence which is done by a child above seven years of age and under twelve, who has not attained sufficient maturity of understanding to judge of the nature and consequences of his conduct on that occasion.

Theft of internet time emerged as the first type of cybercrime reported in India and has now practically vanished thanks to the rock-bottom internet access rates. Mere use of someone's else's password, by the consent of that person is of course no offence. Use of the password without that person's knowledge and consent, but without any financial loss, would raise issues of loss of privacy, for which we have no laws in India. Higher in the hierarchy would be theft of identity and financial loss, the latter being prosecutable under the existing laws. Many more laws are required, however, and there needs to be an informed discussion and debate on this.

Current mood: contemplative

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Monday, March 1, 2004

8:05PM - Resurfacing after a month and a half

I am going to make this journal entry after a pretty long time. Last entry was more than a month and a half ago. To say that I have been busy, would be an understatement. It was more like getting on a treadmill, which speeded up suddenly, making one wonder whether it was a good idea to get on it in the first place! I had taken 5 courses, as a part of the coursework requirement for the PhD I am pursuing at the Shailesh J Mehta School of Management (SJM SoM), at IIT Bombay. The IIT way of teaching is to keep you on your toes all through the term. Assessment is continuous, there is considerable weightage for class participation and assignments and projects are liberally sprinkled in. The profs expect one to do one's best and one can't let them down. One gets really pushed to one's capabilities and beyond. However, now that I am out of the woods, they seem quite lovely, dark and deep, as I move away from them! The next term has a lighter workload and I am more self-assured about negotiating it.

There have been several memorable expriences during the last few weeks. As a part of the Leadership Lectures series, organised by the SoM, Mr Narayana Murthy shared his thoughts at the Institute auditorium. It was very interesting to know the mind of a living legend. He made a few points, which I am listing below.

• When asked about his greatest worries, he replied that at a personal level, he feared that Infosys may become complacent due to its success and stop learning. He also said that for the country, he worried that the disparities in the society, where one section is prospering and a much larger one is barely surviving, may result in a situation, where the law and order breaks down completely and the concept of private property as we know it today, is obliterated. (For a police officer like me, this is a grim thought, due to the implications for the working of the police.)

• When he narrated how he and his friends set up Infosys, they chose 'trust' as the defining value and decided that they will make Infosys as 'the most respected company in the world'. They also decided that they will ensure that their employees also benefit from the wealth, which will be created by the company.

• Infosys was set up first in Mumbai and shifted to Pune, due to the high real estate prices and cost of living. They decided to move from Pune also due to the regressive rent laws, which made obtaining decent accommodation difficult. Mr Murthy remarked how important it is for governments to make laws which facilitate growth of industry.

• He also narrated instances where the moment of decision and truth dawned on him, when there was a potential conflict of the ethical practices of the company and its commercial interests and how an unstinting commitment to the correct principles saw him through the dilemmas.

Mr Murthy's talk generated a lot of response and participation from the students. He is the quintessential role model for the middle class and comes across as a very sincere perosn who believes in his thoughts and dreams. There was a very lively question and answer session, following the talk.

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Thursday, January 15, 2004

1:44PM - More thoughts on 'Broken Window'

In continuation of the previous journal entry about the Broken Windows' article, I feel that it holds certain important insights into community policing.  I am penning some points, as follows.

1. Sometimes change has to be pushed from the top, irrespective of the misgivings of the people at the field level.

2. A mechanism needs to be evolved to elicit unbiased public opinion regarding police performance, including specific feedback on community policing programmes, to act as an important input in deciding strategies for policing initiatives.  NGOs, which specialise in policing issues, may be an answer to the need for a structured approach.  For example, in Mumbai, we have AGNI, an NGO run by respected retired civil servants and police officers and concerned citizens, which is providing a mirror for the performance of the civic administration and acting as a forum as well as a pressure group for the cause of good governance.  Retired respected police officers all over the country are ideally placed to conceive and execute such initiatives.  With the help of the Internet, large groups can be organised and run efficiently without much cost.

3. Social scientists and lay thinkers should be encouraged to write and publish about the real policing work - and not about unreliable statistics and 'crime stories' dished out by the newspapers - in a manner which facilitates public appreciation of police functioning along with the attendant problems and need for administrative and legislative reform.

4. The IPS officers, should choose areas of policing, which have niches for specialisation and spend the second half of the career in acquiring and applying deep knowledge about those areas.  The present approach of 'Been There, Done That' is not useful to the organisations we serve.  For example,an officer may choose to opt for any of the areas in crime investigation,intelligence, technology crimes, traffic management, security, modernisation and innovation, training, community policing and so on.

5. We have to empower the policeman on the street to think and act like an 'officer', who not only becomes the image the police department wants to project to the society - of a protector - but also truly becomes the eyes
and the ears of the organisation.  We lament that the numbers available for policing the society are becoming increasingly inadequate.  However, if we could improve the effectiveness of the constabulary by a factor of even 50%, we would have made a qualitative difference to this generation.  Training programmes, which will cover especially the younger section of the constabulary, and related budgeting need a close look in this regard.  To quote the Maharashtra Administrative Reforms Committee report, "Training has been a neglected subject in police for decades. Even today not even one percent of the total police budget of Rs. 1,631 crore (Year 2000-01) is spent on police training. It is in fact abysmally low, just 0.55 percent as compared to the all-India average of 1.3 percent."

6. We will do well to remember Einstein's proposition, "The problems that exist in the world today, cannot be solved by the level of thinking that
created them" and move beyond the traditional and the obvious.

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Friday, January 9, 2004

5:12PM - 'Broken Windows in Cyber Neighborhood'

'Broken Windows', an article, written by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling and published in the Atlantic Monthly of March 1982, (available online at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/crime/windows.htm) is a seminal work in criminology.  Apart from other masterful insights into the working of police organizations, it contains a compelling logic for community policing.  With life in the virtual world becoming an important part of our life, the logic of 'broken windows' is now applicable to cyber space.  I am quoting a paragraph of the original article.

"...at the community level, disorder and crime are usually inextricably linked, in a kind of developmental sequence. Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in rundown ones. Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing. (It has always been fun.)"

The coincidence of the cyber space being increasingly full of broken (Microsoft) Windows only serves to emphasize that there needs to be a greater awareness about the problem of anonymous and anti-social behaviour on the cyber space.  While the netizens are by temperament more averse to regulation and policing of any sort, certain forms of behaviour need to be formally designated as criminal to delineate what is acceptable and what is not.  Concurrent to definition of cyber offences is its reporting and investigation.  Special mechanisms are required to handle these highly technical, trans-national and complex issues.  More of that, later!

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Tuesday, December 23, 2003

9:47AM - Information Security Awareness in India

Information Security (IS) needs to be given due attention in the e-governance initiatives.  It is very easy to build in security features in a system, which is being designed from scratch, as compared to adding them later.  Most Indian offices have a very 'trusting' approach, when it comes to security.  Passwords are freely shared, there is no accountability and IS practices are unknown.  Recently, I came across a case in Mumbai, where a forex dealer's system had no system administrator, the server password was known to everyone and no logs were kept.  Result: a fraud involving over Rs 3 lakh.

In government offices, due to deterioration of paper-based systems, very sketchy information is available about the physical assets of the organisation.  Dead-stock verification is done rarely.  There is a need to understand that information is a vital asset of the organisation and any damage to that may cause severe problems.  Information may be time-sensitive.  For example, for example, for an organisation like the CBI, information relating to ongoing investigations is sensitive and needs to be guarded, as any leakage may result in disappearance of evidence.  Once the investigation is over and the results are laid before the court having jurisdiction, it becomes information in public domain, which can be seen by obtaining copies by paying the prescribed charges at the court.

In recent times, the most interesting case of breach of information security in India occured, when the papers of the Common Admission Test (CAT) of the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) got leaked.  Any information asset is required to have three characteristics, which are of value to its owner and users, viz. Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability, famously called CIA of information security.  It is clear that in the CAT paper leakage case, the confidentiality aspect was compromised.  The damage sustained by the IIMs' credibility, at a stage when they were thinking of offering admissions to an international student community, can only be imagined.  (In other walks of life, one can easily think of implications of breach of integrity of voters' list data, or availability aspect of financial data in internet banking.)

Till the CAT incident occured, no one thought of giving the processes and procedures of guarding the information much importance.  Now these are being analysed and solutions suggested.  Prof Indiresan, former Director, IITM, suggests a re-look at the admission test process.  (Pl read the article at http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=37044).  Atanu Dey, of Deeshaa.org, suggests publishing the CAT paper over the internet in encrypted form and making it available for download to the various centres one hour before the examination (Pl see http://www.deeshaa.org/archives/2003/12/04/index.html#the_cat_and_transaction_costs).  These solutions need to be given a serious thought.  What is also required is that the decision makers in all sectors, especially those in critical ones as well as the governement, keep in sight the dangers associated with digitisation of information and evolve secure systems ab initio.  Information breaches affecting people's faith in public institutions are likely to affect e-governance and other IT initiatives adversely.

Current mood: productive

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Monday, December 22, 2003

11:54AM - Police Reforms in India

Recently, there was an interesting mail exchange on the India-egov list on Yahoogroups. I am quoting my reply, which deals with the topic of police reforms in India. This is one subject, which really agitates a police officer, because nothing much has been done in this area, despite continuous discussions over last several decades.

Here it goes: "The first and foremost job of the State is to maintain the Rule of Law; other issues, including economic development, come later. Only the State can fulfil this role, whereas economic development can be left to the creative genius and entrepreneurship of the society. This simple principle has been overlooked in independent India, and thus, we have seen the State dabbling into everything, including making bread (Modern Foods) to running hotels (ITDC), but not bothering about a modern criminal justice system.

The National Police Commission, set up immediately after the Emergency, had gone into the entire gamut of the problems of policing in this country and had produced reports, which are unparalleled in Indian administrative history for their thoroughness and scholarship. The reports published in 1980 remain as contemporary today. They have not been implemented, because of resistance from the vested interests. Those, who would like to browse the report in its entirety, may visit http://www.angelfire.com/theforce/npcreport// and http://www.oocities.org/npcreport/.

The most important recommendation of the NPC was about freeing policing from political interference through the mechanism of a State Security Council. Please see http://www.angelfire.com/theforce/npcreport/Vol2Chap15.htm and http://www.oocities.org/npcreport/Vol2Chap15.htm. Had this recommendation been implemented, many scams, including the current hot one, viz. Telgi Scam, may have been averted.

It can be said that the Criminal Justice System is like the immune system of the society. It stops various pathogens from attacking the body. If the immune system itself is infected by corruption, we have something like AIDS on our hand, where the patient contracts all kinds of diseases very easily. An effective Criminal Justice System ensures that the deviants in the society are dealt with according to the due process of law, keeping anti-social behaviour under control. The Indian society is feeling the lack of an effective justice-dispensing mechanism for quite some time now.

When I joined the Indian Police Service in 1987, I studied the reports enthusiastically, with an idea to benefit from the erudition and with a hope that soon the recommendations will be implemented, giving me an opportunity to participate in creation of a modern Indian police, which will be accountable to the society and responsive to its needs and aspirations. Sadly, after 16 years, the hope has faded. No major change has come about in functioning of the police during half my career. The change has to be top-down. It can not be bottom-up. It requires structural changes in the police organization. It requires legislative changes in the form of revamped laws, starting with replacement of the British-enacted Police Act, which governs the working of all police organizations in the country. It requires modernization of police through separation of criminal investigation from maintenance of law and order, better personnel policies, massive training and large-scale computerization.

The blue-print of all this is already there in the reports of the National Police Commission. There is no dearth of honest and committed IPS officers in our country, who would be more than willing to lead the change and who are now constrained to work in maintenance mode. They work in a kind of marginal equilibrium. If the right environment can be created through enactment of the right laws, policies, administrative structures, the much-delayed process of institution building, can be undertaken even now, to bring about a law enforcement machinery, which our country deserves. It will be a long-haul, as no institution is built overnight, but we would have made a beginning."

Current mood: contemplative

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Saturday, December 20, 2003

4:36PM - First Steps

I have been wanting to get going on the weblogging front for a long time. Today, the excuses ran out.

I intend to write regularly, on topics which generate a storm of thoughts in the mind, as they come and go. If nothing, this should help me pick up some writing skills. It is never too late to do that, I suppose!

I also want to use my palmtop, a Sony Clie T615, to capture my thoughts, before they disappear back in the recesses of the mind.

Current mood: accomplished

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