Ignorance and greed biggest challenge to India

The problem with security and intelligence agencies in India is the lack of communication and the greed for credit and power. India is not the only exception or victim of such traits. Politics inside the bureaucracy and the power game is almost same in all the other countries of the world too; but the very basic difference between them and us is the fear of getting caught and getting punished. Deterrence of getting caught and failing in investigation and punishments somewhat controls their greed.

We lack proper laws and proper implementation of the same. Those in the power have every knack and control over twisting the law as per their convenience. Those in power and those who have the power are the two most dangerous factors in administration. For example there are a couple of “information and security research organizations” operating from India but the research they do here are for the foreign countries. We can’t question them or ask for any clarification as they operate from India in the name of “threat analysis/research”. They are not directly working on hardcore intelligence; instead they are working on the development and activities of various hackers groups who operate from these regions. Now the question that arises is how hackers and hacking can be an issue for national security? This issue needs completely different analysis and explanations. Looking at the recent terror attacks and threats to this country lets go little in-depth and understand the issue.

The problems are not limited to specific categories; the majority of issues are on smaller scales and that is the reason why they are less talked about, discussed and thought over. Hence it’s easier for all these terrorist organizations and other intelligence agencies to target India and that too so frequently. Let us take a simple example of the communication issues over the border areas of India. Mostly, the way security personnel/armed forces and terrorists who are deployed in the border areas communicate with each other in more or less the same manner and uses almost same technology and communication devices like walkie-talkie, wireless frequency and satellite phones (mostly used in base camps because of its high price).

The way communication gets trapped is not something extra ordinary; it happens because of a very simple reason that the communication cannot be encrypted over such mediums, and that is why it is easier to intercept them. But the irony is that it is not necessary that communication which is intercepted is true and accurate, the possibility of making this conversation for the purpose of misguiding the security forces in and around those areas is high. And at the same time we can’t even ignore them because if by any chance the incident happens then those soldiers who are deployed in the area will be considered guilty because the communication is passed to the senior officers sitting in the base camps. The percentage of number of security forces deployed in and around the borders is the maximum and the strength of Indian army and armed forces is among the top 6 in the world, so it is not possible to make any excuses for the “man power”, if such incidents happens and we fail to avoid them.

The very common problem that seems to be simple and hence ignored is “social engineering”. Most of the time both the forces deployed over the border keeps on scanning the wireless frequency ranges of each other’s and also the different specific frequency on which the patrolling forces are communicating. Because of the similarity in the language spoken, it is not a hard job for someone who is really good in social engineering to fool and collect information from these various patrolling forces/parties. All you need to do is make a call on the same frequency of the other side party and just ask them in a commanding and confident voice that you are so and so senior speaking from their respective bases and ask them for their progress or current location or some other outputs. Due to the hierarchy in the forces and couple of protocols which we ignore to follow, it makes it very difficult for that soldier to ask many questions regarding the caller’s identification and justify the reason of calling as no one wants to make their boss unhappy and that too if you are in armed force.

Thus, these types of problems are not very big and complicated but what makes it more difficult to be taken care of and encountered is the ignorance and lack of interest by those who are responsible for making the protocols and process by the think tanks. Unfortunately, they are focusing more on the issues that happen less frequently but make big news. The problems occurring because of such ignorance are not talked about much and fail to make big news. The one who has to be held responsible for such ignorance is the irresponsible media in such locations.

Now if we talk about these think tanks and decision and policy makers, then they are busy most of the time giving lectures all over the world. They only talk about big and critical issues which are not present but are expected to happen or occur in future. What our intelligence agencies are doing working under the banner of “research organizations” is extracting the money from the central government under the name of “research” or “strategy development” or “analysis”. Someone told me once about one such research which was like “understanding and studying the mind of “black hat hackers”. In this research the organization took assistance from couple of senior doctors (more preciously – psychiatrists) to complete the entire exercise. During their entire exercise there was not even a single time they talked or discussed things with any hacker or infosec professionals (forget about the black hats). They completed the entire exercise and study within the specific time, even prepared and gave the report to the top bosses. When I came to know about the amount of money spent on this, I was really shocked and was like “OMG”. With so much of money and time in available, had they done the research in a proper manner, then they could have finished their research in a terrific and successful manner. Their success in fact would have been fruitful and useful to those who were assigned to work on it and actually implement it. Being in this domain I can easily make out what they would have done during the entire project and what the entire project report would comprise of. If you ask me to tell this in simple words, then I would call it “shit”.

Inputs r45c4l

Cisco Sucks

While surfing I came across a news on ITpro website about Cisco, a worldwide leader in networking that it may eliminate as many as 10,000 jobs to maintain its competitiveness going forward. According to Bloomberg, Cisco is also providing early-retirement packages to about 3,000 workers who took buyouts.

However, the inside story is something different. As per news, India Country President Naresh Wadhva is said to be on leave from past three weeks which comes as a surprise as how can a country president be on leave at a crucial stage when the financial year of 2011 is ending on July 29. Isn’t it strange that at such crucial stage the country president of Cisco is enjoying holidays? By the way, the sources have informed that he has quit. Cisco has officially announced 17% lay off in India.
Including Anil Basin, Senior Vice President Sales and several other top and middle management level employees of Cisco are quitting due to sudden changes at ‘APAC” (Asia Pacific Countertrade Association). The changes have brought lots of insecurity and dissatisfaction amongst employees. On the other side, the arch rival of Cisco is taking advantage of this scenario and hiring best of the employees of Cisco team. To say, the over all scenario of Cisco in India is not so well. It seems that there is no security of job in Cisco India. Naresh Wadhwa worked for thirteen years in this company and he is the one who established entire India operations; but today he is been asked to quit just because he couldn’t manage to nod his head to managements unreasonable approach. Top management need shoe lickers in company and there are many who believe in their caliber refused to do so.

Newly appointed Edzard Overbeek, APCA head replaced Naresh Wadhva with his own source Janesh Murjani. Edzard had joined Cisco just two years back. Unfortunately, he and Naresh Wadhva had differences in opinion and hence couldn’t go well with each other. Obviously, Naresh is here from 13 years and he is well versed with market and business set up in India. Employees are waiting for Janesh to take charge, and there are probable chances that Anil Basin BSFI head, Jagdish Mahapatra- IT/ ITCS head and Shrikant Shintole – Real estate business head, Sandeep Raina- Government/ public sector head looking for their way out and may evict from Cisco. As part of its broader plan to cut costs and increase profits, the networking company may slash about 7,000 jobs by August this year. Earlier it was reported that Cisco might cut 5,000 jobs meaning a nearly 7 per cent work force reduction for Cisco, which has about 73,400 employees worldwide.

Cisco currently expects annual revenue to grow by 12 per cent to 17 per cent. Its share price fell by about 2 per cent at $15.43, in a market that was broadly lower due to concerns about the U.S. budget talks and the euro-zone debt crisis. With a view to meet its goal of slashing costs by $1 billion and lower its long-term revenue growth target to about 10 per cent from a forecast of 12 per cent to 17 per cent, Cisco may plan to trim its workforce. By laying of so much staff, cutting down other expenses and optimizing discount level may bring some financial stability to company, but if you look at the shares (IPO) flown in the market are just 10 % and 90 % shares are with are with Cisco CEO, John Chambers, if the revenue is not thrown in the market how one can expect the growth? If such International company terminates top old management level employees, what is the guarantee the new comers will pour in their heart towards growth in such critical situations? The elegant old staffs are panic; there are too many projects and not enough resources to execute. In order to be successful, management will need to take a serious look at the project load and make some tough decisions. However, it must be noted that Cisco's revenue has increased 11 per cent over the past five calendar years. While viewing this as a positive move, analysts believe the company needs to reset its long-term financial targets. Cisco had earlier shed some 8,000 jobs in 2001 followed by some major job cuts in 2002.

Cisco never hesitates about firing employees. Although labour in India is comparatively cheap than other nations, but the company’s strategy has been failing miserably. Even at this historic time for the company, almost no coherent message is being conveyed to the employees on how the company can recover from this downward twist. Cisco in definitely weak at management level and unsaid, unseen internal politics has always attacked the integrity of Company. Whenever this company came in crises the only solution they could come up with is lay off, may be this is the biggest reason that company is not growing the way it should be because it lacks job security. The state of upper-management at Cisco is absolutely appalling.

More over the CBI probe is another pain to Cisco. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has expanded its inquiry net to probe the role of original equipment manufacturers and network implementation partners involved in the Commonwealth Games communication deal, allegedly a highly inflated contract. CWG's communication, video and data transfer bribe/scam appears to be in range of Rs 350-400 crore. MTNL and Bharti Airtel were the only two bidders of this deal. CWG chief Suresh Kalmadi awarded the contract to MTNL, thinking no one would question him for giving work to a government body. MTNL manipulated the specifications and quoted a whopping sum of Rs 570.12 crore for it while Bharti Airtel wanted a nominal fee of Rs 10 crore but negotiated for branding advantage during the sporting event. Eventually, MTNL subcontracted the work to HCL Infosystems for Rs 380.04 crore. Later on HCL gave contract to Cisco for Rs. 180 crore. CBI’s question is that why and where Rs. 550 crore was invested for the job worth only Rs. 50 crore. Cisco’s top two legal department people are in New Delhi, dealing with this issue. The statestic over this issue are published in so many news papers, including Mint.

The unreasonable deals and mismanagement in admin may give big jolt to this biggest IT Company. At this moment Cisco is discussed on very appalling and sad notes amongst IT industry.

Shielding dignity of women

There was breaking news on all the newspapers and on channels that Maharashtra is considering to make offences pertaining to sexual harassment or outraging the modesty of women non-bailable. As far as outraging modesty is considered then 70 percent women face humiliation everyday either by her boss, neighbour or colleague. Every woman, whether she accepts it or not get humiliated several times and her modesty is outraged by many direct and indirect elements of society. Whom will we punish and how will be define term outraging modesty? There are many female journalists who are randomly abused on internet. Forget about journalists, but if you go on Face Book you will find hundreds of abusers. Its fashion on social networking sites and due to lack of moral watch and inadequate law there is no controll over these issues.There are many bloggers who abuse Sonia Gandhi, Uma Bharati and Sushma Swaraj like elite weman of this country..these are just examples. Every day on an average thousands of girls get abused, insulted and outraged but these incidences goes unreported; the reason is that,no specific terms defined in Law to explain outraging modesty.

Even if a girl gets brutally raped then she has to go through different procedures to prove it and go through formalities such as narrating exact locations of rape, identifying the face of rapist, sequence of rape, time of report. While going through all these procedures, she is been mentally raped again and again. If the rapist is punished then why not all those social animals and media who made her rape a mockery and hammered it by raping her psychologically? There are laws but there is no accurate definition to all these side effects.

If you see in flesh trading, numbers of women pimps are actually more than that of men, however only few such cases come into light. There are many communities in our country in which men use their woman as sex slaves, only for their sexual pleasure and producing children, a glorified servant. These domestic rapes and violence are not reported because the woman is at the mercy of a man. She is imbibed with these false rules in the name of tradition or social norms by birth. Men are given every right to dictate. Male chauvinism is still a big curse for fairer sex; ego of a man over any successful woman is always dealt with outraging the modesty. If you visit family court in any metropolitan city, then you will find that divorce cases piled up and most of them for the reason cruelty towards woman and outraging modesty. The cases are under trial for years, during the trial too woman has to depend on the alimony decided by court from man to woman. Then comes social stigma for that we treat divorce, second marriage and live-in relationship a taboo. Also, the condition of concubines and mistresses in contract marriages are much more miserable. If you take the case of famous singer Udit Narayan, his first wife gave him miserable time but the sufferer was his second wife. Actually, Udit Narayan was the one who cheated both the women for his career and comfort. Hema Malini and Dharmendra had to adopt their own daughters, because their marriage was not legal.

Plight of a Muslim woman is much miserable because Muslims anywhere in the world are allowed to have more than one wife. In addition to this pleasure, his wife is not allowed to keep more than one man at a time. Tribal women had to satisfy men out of wedlock’s to prove herself a perfect wife on bed, and capable of giving birth to children and its happening even today. If one visits tribal areas, the he can see how women are treated even today.

In the recent past a woman politician from Kuwait has sparked anger and disbelief by calling for legalization of sex slaves, saying it would protect men from adultery, and suggesting that female prisoners from war-torn countries should be purchased for the same, as it would be a “better life” for them, and they would not die of starvation. What a barbaric talk. No surprise, the quarters it is coming from. For them women is a second grade human. Even if a woman is raped she is to be blamed for it. If a woman is raped by her father in law then as per their law, they should get married and thus ultimately her husband becomes her son. It is very surprising to know that people are still living in the medieval period, the time when such thinking actually originated. Salwa al Mutairi, a woman politician from Kuwait who made the above statements should be asked if she would have liked to be a sex slave of Iraqi's when Kuwait was a slave country of Iraq and she was a prisoner of war.

Anyways, let me come back to the new law. Maharashtra Government has proposed to be done through an amendment to section 354 of the Indian Penal Code which deals with assault or use of criminal force on women with the intent to outrage their modesty -- to make these crimes as non-bailable offences in the state. The matter was discussed extensively which deliberated upon measures to reduce crimes against women. Though no time-frame has been set for the entire process, the government is determined to push through the proposal as early as possible, the official said. In India, we do not have a sexual harassment law. We have provisions in the Indian Penal Code such as outraging the modesty of a woman or insulting the modesty of women. These provisions are, by and large, used in cases where you have a situation which is almost akin to rape. The first time, it came up in the Supreme Court.

Child marriage is one of the biggest challenges in India. Small girls are subjected to go through the physical abuse done to them by their so called husbands who can be clearly called as rapists of minors. Negligence of authorities is the major factor due to which child marriage still exist in our country. We have substantive laws that exist, even about outraging of the modesty, retrograde as the language is. If you want to give it a wider interpretation, you can; it is entirely upto the judiciary to interpret that way. We have the same problem with the definition of rape as it is only defined by the penetration of private parts. We do not expand the concept of rape beyond specific body parts. Let’s see how these new law changes the fate of woman in coming time.