Most nations imposed some form of shutdown to limit the spread of the Coronavirus.  India’s lockdown, which involved a near cessation of all movement and economic activity, has been rated as one of the most stringent across the world. Not surprisingly, it had a severe impact on our economy.

A sector that was hit particularly hard is retail. This is due to several reasons. First, shops and warehouses were closed during the initial phases of the lockdown. This brought the operation of both physical and digital retailers to a standstill.  Second, restrictions on inter-State movement of goods and the opening of only specific industries disrupted supply chains. For instance, the Centre recognised both medicines and processed foods as essential goods and allowed their sale. However, similar status was not granted to units which manufacture the packaging for medicines and processed foods. Hence, sellers of these goods found it difficult to operate. Third, the system of issuing passes and permits to personnel working for physical and digital retail was not well-implemented. It was unclear which authority would issue the passes and for how long they would remain valid. Further, personnel having to travel across districts were required to obtain separate passes from the authorities for each district. Fourth, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued an order directing all employers to ensure full payment of wages to all employees even if they were unable to work. As a result of the order, several migrant labourers returned to their towns and villages once restrictions on movement of persons were lifted. A survey of retailers selling their products online, conducted as part of the Esya Centre’s report on e-commerce, shows that nearly 60 per cent of such entities will be unable to recover losses suffered because of the lockdown. Given that people are likely to be wary of entering shops and stores even after lockdowns are eased, it is important to explore different avenues through which retail outlets can avoid further losses.

One such avenue is e-retail. A report by Global Trade and Regional Integration Unit of the World Bank highlights the utility of e-commerce in the post COVID normal. Not only can e-commerce help reduce the risk of new infections and preserve jobs, it can also increase the acceptance of prolonged social distancing measures among the population. Further, previous research has shown that there are numerous benefits for MSMEs that adopt e-commerce, in the form of better price discovery, access to new consumers, support with logistics and inventory management. It is in recognition of the above that several nations, such as the United Kingdom and New Zealand, have given preference to digital forms of retail both during and after the lockdown. However, India is one of the few countries that has not leveraged the numerous benefits that e-commerce brings, particularly during a lockdown.

Policy-making towards e-commerce, both before and during the lockdown, may have hindered the operation of e-commerce entities. Prior to the lockdown, legacy government rule-making on e-commerce presented several barriers to the growth of the sector. These included ever-changing FDI rules, unresolved issues of data localisation and source code disclosure as well as the over-regulation of platforms. During the lockdown, the Government failed to adopt a clear and consistent approach to policy formulation vis-a-vis retail. As an example, both physical and digital retailers were only allowed to sell essential goods in the initial phase of the lockdown. This continued till about mid-April, when the Government issued a notification which allowed e-retailers to deliver non-essential items from April 20. In conformity with this order, e-commerce firms began to make predations to resume their full scale of operations. However, on April 19, the Government withdrew its notification, seemingly under pressure from industry organisations that represented small and medium traders. Subsequently, relaxations regarding delivery of non-essential items were first given to physical outlets while e-retail continued to be limited to essential items for 8-10 days thereafter. The zonation framework introduced by the Government additionally preferred physical outlets in Red zones, as they could sell a wide range of merchandise while e-retail tasks were limited to essential goods.

As pointed out, e-commerce enjoys numerous advantages over physical retail, particularly in a situation where social distancing continues to be important. Hence, there is a need to provide a policy environment that fosters the uptake and adoption of e-commerce by both consumers and sellers. To achieve this, we recommend a five-step recovery process. The first steps are geared towards fostering an atmosphere of trust and credibility between the Government and market entities.

This can be achieved by holding regular consultations, opening avenues for feedback and providing sufficient notice before major changes. Further, policy actions should not skew competition between physical and digital business models. Instead, both models should be allowed to leverage their respective strengths. Finally, the Government must reassess what it seeks to achieve through its proposed e-commerce policy. In the current scenario, a policy framework governing e-retail or e-commerce in general, should look to assist small enterprises in capacity-building for a digitally enabled future through the provision of finance, skill development and underlying infrastructure. There is, therefore, a need to move away from legacy regulatory institutions, based on licensing and control, to an entity that actively participates in capacity-building and development of small and medium retailers in India. In this context, it is worthwhile to explore the role being played by digital economy development authorities in countries such as Malaysia and Vietnam, which actively promote the adoption of digital solutions and e-commerce for SMEs as well as consumers. This approach would be in keeping with the Government’s focus on a Digital India where citizens are able to leverage their connectivity into better opportunities and prospects.

(The writer is a research assistant at the Esya Centre)

The character assassinations and defamatory campaigns, witnessed on some television channels by some anchors and reporters against individual film personalities and the Mumbai movie industry, have understandably been strongly condemned. While the public response has mainly been focussed on the campaign and its gross violation of the principles of fair play, there is a compelling need to examine the character of television itself as a medium and its impact on society.

As a medium, television combines unfolding visuals with verbal narratives, besides bringing distant events to the homes of viewers, giving them a feeling of being in the midst of an unfolding development or its aftermath, with all its sights and sounds. In contrast, radio, which provides only audio accounts, does not give the feeling of being there and seeing it all. Not surprisingly, television coverage attracts more people than radio reportage and provokes more intense public reaction than radio.

The question arises: What are the consequences of its impact? One frequently heard in the 1960s that television coverage brought the horrors of the Vietnamese War into American drawing rooms and was a major factor in triggering massive protest demonstrations and rioting, hastening the United States’ withdrawal from Vietnam. Why go so far? We are now witness to the investigations into the rape and murder of a 19-year-old girl in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh, in the aftermath of a nationwide uproar sparked principally by television reports.

Pieces in the print media — daily newspapers and magazines—have cost important people their perches. Newspaper reports have caused riots, violent demonstrations and general strikes, paralysing entire countries. This, however, was when newspapers and magazines constituted the dominant media. Now television has replaced them. This is the result not only of the pronounced edge that audio-visual reportage has over audio or print coverage, but of the fact that reports appear on television the same evening — or even earlier. An event has occurred, and by the time it is in newspapers the next morning, people already know the broad contours of what has happened.

There is, however, a fundamental difference in popular response to television and print medium coverage respectively. It lies in not just the actions they trigger but the mindsets they create. This, in turn, follows from a basic difference in the character of the two. Visual images constitute the USP of television. An image is recognised; the mental process involved in cognition. A printed word is first decoded from the combination of the letters that constitute it, and is then linked by a mental process —association — to an object or an image. The ability to associate is central to the process of rational thinking and the latter is the principal instrument in the formulation of systems of thought or critical examination of the import of events.

Cognition primarily involves visual identification. It is not an act of intelligence though it can lead to one when externally stimulated. Much depends on the nature of the stimulus. In Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Neil Postman states that entertainment is “the supra-ideology of all discourse on television. No matter what is depicted and from what point of view, the overarching presumption is that it is there for our amusement and pleasure.” This is hardly surprising. A very large section of people wants entertainment. Hence programmes that entertain earn higher Target Rating Points (TRPs) than those that do not, and advertisers, who sustain media, also prefer these.

There are doubtless television channels that consciously try to tread a different path and come up with programmes that inform and promote socially and politically relevant discourse. But even their programmes have an ambience of entertainment as they are preceded, followed and punctuated by music and advertisements featuring visuals of attractive models and products in the most arresting possible settings. For example, the advertisement of a car or a motorbike often shows it in shining colours, driven by a beautiful model or her equally attractive male companion, through a picturesque landscape. People enjoy watching these, sometimes more than the programmes themselves.

This writer has no quarrel with entertainment. Life would be terribly boring without it. He also believes that each person is entitled to his/her brand of entertainment within the limits prescribed by law and a very liberal definition of decency. There is, however, a dark dimension to what is happening now. Viewers, who remain glued to television sets while some anchors, reporters and talking heads gloat over the travails of film personalities and berate them hour after hour, behave in the same manner as the crowds in ancient Rome’s Colosseum, who roared in delight as a gladiator killed another or a lion. By catering to them, the mindset that television engenders is that of wanting to be perennially and brutally entertained. The result is a progressive coarsening of sensibilities and erosion of the virtues of compassion, tolerance and a sense of fair-play.

This is the most detrimental effect of television as a medium that needs to be countered. The print media is a very different cup of tea. It is the outcome of the written culture. Alvin Gouldner states in The Dialectic of Ideology and Technology: The Origins, Grammar and Future of Ideology, that writing confers a permanence to statements that verbal articulation does not. He argues that it also confers a certain finality. A mistake made during a conversation may be corrected then and there. A printed word cannot be easily recalled for correction once widely circulated. One, therefore, carefully seeks to avoid mistakes, embarrassing statements and faulty arguments while writing. This contributes to the drafting of informed and reasoned texts.

Besides, while one can interrupt and resume a conversation, one cannot do so in a written text where one has to proceed from premise to conclusion, rationally and convincingly, step by step — a process that leads to rational articulation and critical thought. 

Doubtless, written communication lacks the advantages that a speaker has at a lecture. He/she can convey a great deal through gestures, facial expressions and body movements; a listener/ viewer can also glean considerable information about the speaker and what he/she is saying and stands for. Equally, excessive focus on the speaker can distract attention from the substance of the speech. There is no such distraction when it comes to looking at a printed text. The reader can concentrate solely on the latter, absorbing its contents and reflecting on the same. Reading conduces to thought and thought spurs further thought. This fact, as well as the capacity for rational argumentation from premise to conclusion that the print medium promotes, has led to the rise of great systems of thought which have come to be known as ideologies.

That is another story. What is important now is the fact that the process of critical thinking can — and often does — mediate in a person’s internalisation of the information generated by the print medium. Given this and some other of its attributes, those associated with it have a responsibility in countering the socially and morally devastating effect of the kind of deplorable fare that some channels are churning out. The process must begin by making people aware.

(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author)

Most phone and high-tech companies globally are investing in environmental accountability. For instance Apple, which recently launched its new range of products, would be shipping them without the customary charger and headphones being included in the box. Though this might put off quite a few of its customers, it is part of the company’s commitment to reduce carbon emissions and ramp up the use of clean energy. With over 700 million headphones and two billion power adapters already out there with the customers, the firm has taken a bold measure to stop including the same in its retail product pack to cut down electronic waste generation at source and reduce carbon emissions, which are generated in the process of mining for precious earth materials. Moreover, due to the removal of the charger and headphones, Apple has been able to reduce the size of its boxes, enabling it to fit 70 per cent more boxes and, therefore, transition to a more effective logistics template. By 2030 the consumer technology giant aims to achieve net zero climate impact from its entire business, including manufacturing, supply chain and product cycles.

Samsung, too, is setting up new standards in conserving the environment through its “circular resource management system” that hinges on recycling, green purchasing from vendors amid effective hazardous material management. The company is focussing on reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) emissions to the extent of 70 per cent in the near future. Another global tech giant, Nokia, is redefining how products become more environmentally accountable. It calls this “Responsible Technology” and has gone a step further by joining 86 other like-minded companies to ensure that the strategic vision for the group is aligned with reducing the global temperatures by 1.5° Celsius in order to collectively battle climate change. This is in addition to the active initiative currently under way to completely remove single-use plastics across its production spectrum.

 For a world that is drowning in electronic waste, especially in countries such as India where e-waste regulations are anything but effective, these firms are setting a benchmark in product responsibility and accountability towards the environment. However, they still have a long way to go since not all products end up getting 100 per cent recycled. The day they can recall their “end of life cycle product” back to the starting point for recycling is the day they can claim 100 per cent environmental accountability. However, their efforts are thought-provoking and make one wonder where do Indian companies figure in comparison? And why do none of the Indian-made products achieve such comprehensive environmental accountability? The answer lies in vision or the lack of it. Much of the corporate social and environmental responsibility in India is aimed at satisfying Government protocols and very little actually percolates to the ground level. One can still see the impact corporate vision has on some social project, but one is hard-pressed to effectively find an environmental project that has the stamp of a sincere corporate effort on it.

Indian manufacturing companies need to build a much-needed environmental dimension into their products. This is no easy task given the fact that sometimes even finding after sales service for many products we buy today can prove to be a harrowing experience. To graduate from this stage to a level where the companies produce a 100 per cent recyclable product is a long journey that needs encouraging policies and incentives from the Government and world-class corporate leadership. In this journey, innovative methods and ideas can lay the foundation for Indian companies to produce environmentally-accountable products. One of the initiatives that can be pursued is to create a category of “green” electrical and white goods which are made of 100 per cent recyclable material and have a clear-cut end of life cycle disposal plan. This category can be promoted and encouraged by the Government through tax and logistics sops besides finance options to manufacture them. On the consumer end, they can also carry compelling finance schemes or lucrative discounts. The clear environmental and viability-related benefits would surely drive manufacturing firms to increase their “green product” portfolio as it would also improve the company’s image and standing for being environmentally conscious. Similarly, the drive to produce at the lowest cost and sell at the maximum profit is the root of all evils because in the pursuit of driving down costs, manufacturers disregard all ecological concerns and use suspect material that is environmentally hazardous. Recycling then is impossible. Therefore, to give credence to the concept of “green products”, the Government must rein in the supply chain and third-party vendors for whom quality assurance and environmental responsibility are alien concepts. Surprise checks, quality control at Government laboratories and harsh penalties for defaulters can help infuse new-found respect for the environment. Products that we buy today continue to exist long after we dispose them. Whether they harm the environment or not depends on how environmentally accountable the producer is.

(The writer is an environmental journalist)

Facebook should be answerable to Governments as the technology giant can fundamentally alter the course of public discourse not just through its own network but through other assets like messaging application WhatsApp and photo-sharing application Instagram. These are all powerful tools to build organisation and opposition but can also be used to silence dissent or manufacture violence. The safe harbour provisions under which such technology companies have escaped sanction for many years cannot be allowed to continue unchallenged. The likes of Facebook and Google are not just technology companies, they are media companies, too, and should be subjected to similar laws. Technologies like deepfake videos, where even a few photographs can be used to manufacture a video showing a personality spouting opinions far from his/her real stand, can potentially alter the course of a democracy. Think of this as the new terrorist attack before an election. By the time any rectification takes place, often due to delays, the damage has been done.

We agree that it is impossible to keep a check on every single user at every single point of time. However, it is also true that technologies are being developed to be able to quickly find potential hateful content. That said, it is important to haul these companies under the Central Government and on that front, Facebook India does have a point in refusing to appear before the Delhi Government’s Peace and Harmony Committee. The company is currently being hauled over the coals in a parliamentary committee, not just in India but in several countries across the world as Governments realise that its power needs to be kept in check for the growth of democracy. This includes the United Kingdom and the United States. Indeed, we wish the parliamentary committee hearings in India were streamed live for the public to observe and decide for themselves. Tech majors can do more themselves. For example, they should work a lot closer with traditional media companies as well as develop technologies that can easily detect videos that promote hate as well as those where users threaten self-harm. Facebook should not be allowed to escape with impunity but making it answerable to multiple agencies will serve little purpose either. Indeed that could actually delay meaningful reform.  

(Courtesy: The Pioneer)

Now that most of us are becoming video-conferencing experts, innovating on every call with a new virtual background, while also ordering groceries online and keeping an eye on the latest news updates popping up on our phone and computer screen, will it be too early to crystal gaze into a not-so-distant future, say 2021? Yes, it may be too early to call  2020  a “gap year”, specially when each new day has its own set of surprises. But there is no harm in peeping a little into next year’s trends. First, there is no escaping the fact that technology will tremendously impact the way we live, work, exercise, eat or buy next year, too. If the pandemic has thrown us into an ocean of uncertainties, if we look around carefully, it is an ocean of data. Those that learn to swim through pretty quickly and get a raft or something to latch on to will soon realise the potential of this ocean of opportunities. It has already started happening but a new technology called Artificial Intelligence (AI) will take over most of what is today relegated to a digital world.

To start with, algorithms would be put to use for early detection or even prediction of pandemics, assessment and even solutions for traffic patterns in a city, incremental/severe weather forecasts, healthcare, care for the most vulnerable and so on. But soon, like everything else, it will be all-pervasive in every little life decision. I am not sticking my neck out to say it will happen by next year but events of 2020 have hugely accelerated the human civilisation’s race towards finding an alternative to its own organic intelligent brains. The world is already flush with examples on how AI will have multiples of applications from that which is already available across the web. In short, we are on the verge of entering a new technological era which is predictive, sophisticated and has an eerie inorganic intelligence almost running into infinity (it is not enough to cut the cord and think that an AI system has switched off; remember there are thousands of machines crunching data points from multiple sources to predict  simple buying behaviour). This will definitely have a deep impact on the human race.

Next will come an age of extreme speeds of data access over the air or 5G. The world would have already been piloting cutting- edge 5G or fifth-generation mobile technology across large geographies and would have been near phase-wise national rollouts, had the pandemic not hit. India definitely has lost a year in the 5G race. However, the protocols and network vendor partner solutions may have been made more secure as a result of the delay.

In fact, 5G is likely to see the first level of deployment in urban areas (where the revenues are) and besides helping you download (at say five times the speeds of your current streaming action) social media videos/your favourite films and cricket matches, will also prove to be a great tool for remote and risky jobs. If some of the arterial sewer lines in a city are fitted with 5G chips, there could be a possibility of completely eradicating the need for human intervention in maintenance of a city’s drainage system. If the data coming in and also fed into the chips are analysed at the back-end by smart machines (think AI), who, then takes decisions to deploy little machine worms into the sludge to clean a choke or fix a leakage or even defuse a toxic gas emission, it would mean saving a few thousand precious lives each year. Together with this will come the ultra-smart homes (the protocols for which are already in advanced stages of negotiation by big tech companies) where perhaps your cooking burner will decide the menu and your bar may order itself a few of your favorite wines in case you aren’t stocked for the weekend. While robotic surgeries performed over the network specially for remote terrains (read rural) are already happening outside India, a self-driving car in Chandni Chowk may be further away.

Now that the all-pervasive technology has started to co-exist with us in our altered carbon realities, the threats to humanity will also increase. These threats would be increasingly cyber and 2021 will likely see more cyber security attacks (small, big, macro) than all of these years of digital revolution put together. The tell-tale volumes of these cyber security attacks (think SIM cloning, phishing attacks, stealing of bank passwords and OTPs) are already giving consumers and lawmakers a nightmare with increased adoption of the digital world during these work from home times. Think of the manifold increase of these forces as the technology world starts getting more complex with evolving protocols and appendages. You are more likely to hear the word cyber security in almost every important public forum and ministerial dialogues than you have ever heard in your life. Along with these, and one can only wish, multilateral solutions to tackling emerging threats will also emerge, which prevent anti-State forces from manipulating users of emerging technology. There will be new policy regimes, language and grammar for embracing these brave new islands we are heading towards, but let’s keep those for a later piece.                

 (The writer is a policy analyst)

In the new digital era, where data is growing at an unprecedented rate by the second and where organisations are quickly becoming data-first, one thing has become crystal clear. That the “this is good enough” approach by businesses, across the globe and in India, is no more acceptable when it comes to safeguarding the most precious capital, i.e. data, from an external intrusion. Ever since businesses have become increasingly dependent on their data to fuel innovation, drive new revenue streams and so on, Information Technology decision-makers have not just been evaluating their current data protection preparedness but have also been ramping up their investments in this regard.

However, over the past few months, since organisations have been fixated on quickly transitioning towards remote working due to the Coronavirus pandemic, they might have missed out on something vital that they should have been focussing on and that is the threats that come along with this work culture. As a result, the world and India with it, has been witnessing a steady uptick in the instances of cyber attacks.

For example, as per a recent report, India witnessed a 37 per cent increase in cyber attacks in the first quarter of this year as compared to the last quarter of 2019. The data also show that India now ranks 27th globally in the number of web-threats detected in the first quarter of this year as compared to when it ranked on the 32nd position globally in the fourth quarter of 2019. India also ranks 11th worldwide in the number of attacks caused by servers that were hosted in the country, which accounts for 22,99,682 incidents in the first quarter of this year as compared to 8,54,782 incidents detected in the fourth quarter of 2019, says the Kaspersky Security Network report.

Another report claims that data of over 21,000 Indian students, including their Aadhaar cards, photos and so on, have been put on sale on the Dark Web. Another instance of data being leaked on the Dark Web came to light in June, with a massive data packet — nearly 100 gigabytes in size — being put up for sale. The data comprises scanned identity documents of over one lakh Indians, including passports, PAN cards, Aadhaar cards, voter IDs and driver’s licences. Thus, given the rising data security concerns and incidents, chief technology officers (CTOs) need to look for a holistic approach towards data protection and management. Now, they need to be cognisant about how to respond, recover and learn in case a cyber intrusion occurs. Here are a few tips for CTOs that will help them redefine their data protection strategy.

Drift away from security to resilience: With the evolving nature of cyber attacks, it’s time for businesses to stop reacting and start anticipating. Loss of critical data has the power to not just cripple a company in no time but also damage its reputation for the long-term. Hence, instead of relying on traditional methods of data security i.e. identify, protect, detect, respond and then recover, organisations must imbibe state-of-the-art resilience strategies i.e. learn, respond, monitor and anticipate.

Adopt a security strategy ingrained in product mindset: Businesses must not only think about making security intrinsic to technology infrastructure but also aim at enabling security professionals become intrinsic to future product development. They need to transform into a data-first and product-first mindset organisation in order to be able to remain competitive in the future. Thus, instead of thinking of security as a prevention tool, the need of the hour is to incorporate it into the product design from the beginning so that it will make the architect systems and processes impenetrable.

The key to a winning strike is the right digital partner: In the past, businesses have been using a hit and trial method with regard to choosing their digital partner and this approach has brought in more vulnerability to their sensitive data assets. As per a report by Vanson Bourne, organisations in the Asia Pacific and Japan, which were relying on more than one data protection solution provider, were almost four times more vulnerable to a cyber incident that prevents access to their data. Hence, in order to combat the external threats, businesses must choose a single technology partner that delivers multi-platform security.

While it is critical to invest in the right technologies, it has also become utmost important for businesses to ramp up their education and awareness levels to stay abreast with new security threats. Therefore, to end the constant tussle between finding the right data protection architecture and keeping up with the modern security approaches, CTOs must focus on strategies that redefine their data protection ecosystems from time to time.

(The writer is Director and General Manager, Data Protection Solutions, Dell Technologies)