Exactly half a century ago, in June 1971, Anthony Mascarenhas, the forty-two-year-old thick-set Pakistani journalist stood at the ragged mountainous frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The mustached man with a military bearing carried all his life’s savings, travel documents, and professional notes on his person. At the hazy borderline, before hurrying towards Kabul he looked back for the last time at the land where he had spent the best years of his life. Leaving behind his job, house, extended family, and friends forever, he would never see Pakistan again. In the early 1940s when Mascarenhas was studying in Karachi the world’s media was oblivious of Nazi concentration camps and gas chambers. Later the press had ignored Stalin’s horrors and the news concerning the devastation of Vietnam took years to reach the television screens. However, Mascarenhas had a first-hand account of the immense human catastrophe that was unfolding in East Pakistan at that moment. Placing his life at risk, he intended to disclose the truth about the Pakistan army’s carnage to the entire world.

Part of the minuscule Goan Catholic community of Pakistan, Neville Anthony Mascarenhas was born in Belgaum near Goa on 10 July 1928. He came from a modest, middle-class family that traced its roots to Sangolda. After his education at St Patrick’s College in Karachi, he started his career in 1947 with Reuters India and later joined the government-owned news agency – Associated Press of Pakistan. In 1952, he married Yvonne D’Souza, also a Goan, originally from Aldona and the couple had five children. A decade later he accepted a job at Karachi’s Morning News and got posted as New Delhi correspondent from July 1963 to November 1965. A tenacious newspaperman with a passion for truth, Mascarenhas closely watched the political events spiral out of control in Pakistan following the elections on 7 December 1970. After Bengali leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s victory, Jinnah’s dream of a united Pakistan faded away. Pakistan’s military dictator General Yahya Khan secretly rushed in more than 25,000 soldiers on the national airline’s seven Boeings to Dhaka. On the evening of 25 March 1971, the Pakistan army launched Operation Searchlight a pre-emptive strike to crush the independence movement in the Bengali-speaking province. But this campaign of terror remained hidden from the rest of the world due to a news blackout. Soldiers pointing assault rifles forcibly expelled every foreign reporter from East Pakistan. All their notes, films, and files were confiscated. Simultaneously the Pakistan army demolished the offices and presses of the leading dailies in Dhaka by mortar attacks. Even a portion of Dhaka Press Club was wrecked. After weeks of eliminating scores of unarmed civilians and inhumanly imposing their will on the women and children during the crackdown, the boisterous Pakistan army decided to showcase its success in subduing the revolt. The Ministry of Information cautiously picked out eight long-established journalists and camerapersons of Pakistan including Mascarenhas, the Assistant Editor of Morning News, to travel to East Pakistan on an escorted ten-day tour. They were to furnish the Pakistan army with a decent image makeover and justify the ghastly Operation Searchlight. On 14 April 1971, the strong-minded Mascarenhas after flying via Colombo landed at the military-dominated airfield of Dhaka as part of the grotesque public relations exercise. Unknown to the army, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was his friend and they had traveled together across America in 1958 where they were photographed with Ava Gardner at Paramount Studios in Hollywood. Now he saw the once-throbbing streets of Mujib’s Dhaka deserted. Pakistan’s third‐largest city was an echo chamber of shuttered shops, vacant homes and silent streets with armed military personnel positioned everywhere. Touring the Dhaka University on 15 April he discovered the heads of four students rotting on the Iqbal Hall hostel’s roof and the walls scarred by bullet holes. An acquaintance of Mascarenhas emphasized, “The Pakistan that you and I knew has ceased to exist.” Embedded with the officers of the 9th Division headquarters, he flew to Comilla, one of the most crowded places on the planet. Fat vultures brooded over the ravaged town and the population seemed to have evaporated. That night he heard the screams of numerous men being bludgeoned to death in the Circuit House compound. To his horror the Pakistan army officers discussed their kills proudly and justified ‘the sorting out’. They revealed a scheme to recast East Pakistan as a colonized Urdu-speaking province. Mascarenhas made mental notes of everything he witnessed.

After spending ten excruciating days in the killing fields of East Pakistan, Mascarenhas and his seven colleagues flew back to Karachi. Yvonne opened the door to greet her husband but saw him in a terrible state. The army’s ruthless slaughter and moral degradation had traumatized him. He quietly informed Yvonne about the ethnic cleansing on an unprecedented scale in East Pakistan. Over the next few days, his seven colleagues filed their press reports claiming that the province was peaceful again. Engineered pictures appeared of the East Pakistanis enthusiastically waving national flags and welcoming the heroic army. On the other hand, Mascarenhas knew the specifics relating to the monstrous tragedy that was underway. And if he divulged the facts, the Pakistan army would execute him and even torture his family. He was torn between exposing the horrors perpetuated in East Pakistan or giving up journalism and developing a chicken farm. Throughout those challenging days, he recalled his mother’s wise counsel, “to always stand up, speak the truth, and be counted.” The fearless journalist took a difficult decision that changed the course of his life. He decided to quit Pakistan.

Three weeks later on 18 May 1971, Mascarenhas successfully hoodwinked Pakistan’s secret service by concocting a story of his ailing sister Ann in Britain. On his arrival at London’s Heathrow, he dashed to the Thompson House and sought a meeting with Harold Evans, the famous editor of The Sunday Times. Evans, despite his working-class background, had risen to the pinnacle of the British print media industry due to his ability to quickly grasp the scope of news reports. At the Sunday Times, he led a team of talented investigative journalists that pulled off one triumph after another. Mascarenhas was first presented before Frank Giles, the deputy editor of The Sunday Times who heard his version of events. A shaken Giles ran into Evans’s office and apprised him about their Pakistani freelancer’s story. Giles stressed, “It’s almost unbelievable, he’s talking about the massacre of hundreds of thousands of people…” Evans, recalling that important meeting, wrote: the well-dressed Mascarenhas entered his cramped office, with ‘soulful eyes and an air of profound melancholy’. With the shafts of afternoon sunlight filtering through the windows, the Pakistani journalist wearing a dark grey suit and a thin maroon tie softly narrated in impeccable English the harrowing story of life and death in East Pakistan. According to Mascarenhas, “The way Islamabad put it was to show in a patriotic way the great job the army was doing… but what I saw was genocide”. The British journalists learnt that he was an eyewitness to a systematic killing spree and pogrom that army officers had titled “final solution”. Now he was determined to write the story of the suffering of his people caught in a savage bloodbath.

Evans believed Mascarenhas was speaking the truth. Earlier his youngest brother John who was posted at the British High Commission in Islamabad had written to him that their diplomats talked of gruesome acts being performed in East Pakistan. Evans impressed by the reporter’s decent Christian upbringing took the risk and promised to run the explosive story. Evans also recognized this could be the high point of his career at The Sunday Times. His newspaper would give the world the first detailed account of Bangladesh’s war of independence. Similar in age to Mascarenhas, Evans was familiar with the enormous cost of publishing the facts concerning military dictatorships. Before filing the story, Evans decided to first safeguard Mascarenhas’ life and to evacuate his wife Yvonne and their daughter and four sons from Pakistan. Mascarenhas, later recollected, “I even with the biggest story in the world could be indefinitely knocking on the doors of Fleet Street. It was not so with The Sunday Times. I was heard, accepted, and ready to go back to Pakistan to bring out my wife and children within forty minutes of my first entering Thomson House…” Events moved swiftly thereafter and Mascarenhas sent a coded express telegram from London to Karachi. The local telegraph department man banged at the window of the Mascarenhas residence at three in the morning. Yvonne woke up to read, “Ann’s operation was successful”. She at once understood the secret signal from her husband and started packing for a family trip to visit her relatives in Italy. To avoid suspicion Mascarenhas briefly returned to Pakistan and ten days later sent a cable to a Sunday Times staffer’s residence, confirming “Export formalities completed. Shipment begins Monday”. With Sunday Times financing all the air tickets he escorted his family to the Karachi airport, for a flight to London via Rome. Softly crying they departed with one suitcase each on a one-way ticket. But Mascarenhas couldn’t fly with his family. The Government of Pakistan strictly prohibited him from taking another foreign trip. Then in early June 1971, after nearly being apprehended on his flight to Peshawar, he courageously walked across the grueling border terrain and flew out from Kabul airport to reach Heathrow in one piece. On 12 June 1971, the Mascarenhas family had a teary-eyed reunion in London and the much-relieved Evans gave the go-ahead for publishing the article.

The next day, a 9,047-word article written by Mascarenhas appeared in a double-page center spread in The Sunday Times with the single word ‘Genocide’ in 72-point type screaming across its top. In the attached editorial, titled, “Stop the killing”, Evans explained, “By devoting the whole of its centre pages to one article about East Pakistan, The Sunday Times has taken a considered and exceptional step. We have done so first because this is the fullest authoritative first-hand account so far available of the acts and intentions of the central Pakistan Government in its eastern province. Secondly, because the story itself is a horrifying reveal about what the millions of refugees are fleeing from, that it needs to be told at length. The Sunday Times has checked as far as possible the accuracy of this report. But in any event, we have the fullest confidence in the integrity of our reporter, who has himself abandoned home and career in Pakistan to bring the news to the world.” The emotionally charged write-up by Mascarenhas was a vision of hell on earth. It was the only eyewitness report of the Pakistan army’s complicity in the genocidal atrocity. It stunned the world. Pakistan’s propaganda machinery was completely shattered, and the article shredded the curtains of silence in the world’s capitals. No Government or newspaper could remain a mute spectator to an ongoing genocide on Earth. Global public opinion turned in the favour of Bangladesh. It also became the turning point in the history of South Asia. The Sunday Times was dispatched by the Indian High Commission in Britain to New Delhi and reached the Indian Prime Minister’s desk at South Block. Later Indira Gandhi disclosed to Evans that the Mascarenhas report had shocked her deeply and forced her to prepare the ground for India’s armed intervention.

Finally on 16 December 1971, Dhaka became a free capital of a free country. By then subsisting in London as an immigrant, Mascarenhas had earned the lifelong enmity of Pakistan’s establishment and received death threats from terrorist organizations. In a television interview with Gus Macdonald at ITV, Mascarenhas maintained, “I don’t think I am disloyal… in fact very many people who like me think that way… I didn’t leave Pakistan easily…” Evans realized that Mascarenhas had no political agenda and was, “just a very good reporter doing an honest job”. The Sunday Times initially put him on a retainer and seven years later he joined their foreign staff. In 1972 he won Granada’s Gerald Barry Award and also the International Publishing Company’s Special Award for reporting from Bangladesh. He worked for The Sunday Times for fourteen years and authored two books, Bangladesh A legacy of Blood and The Rape of Bangladesh. Mascarenhas maintained exceptional contacts within Pakistan and in 1979 he discovered that the nation was developing nuclear weapons. He was the first media person to point the finger at the then nonentity Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan who actively assisted foreign nations to acquire nuclear capability.

On 3 December 1986, Anthony Mascarenhas, the journalist who detailed one of the saddest humanitarian crises of the twentieth century passed away. His obituary mentioned that he had accepted Indian citizenship in 1976. However, his family lived in Britain and never returned to Pakistan. As the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Bangladesh draws near, Mascarenhas’ brilliant article that chronicled a pivotal chapter of history is displayed at Dhaka’s Liberation War Museum. And across the world, Anthony Mascarenhas remains a hero for humanity for writing one of the most influential pieces of journalism in the last century.

Bhuvan Lall is the biographer of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Lala Har Dayal. He can be contacted at writerlall@gmail.com.

Gone are the days when social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter were harmless places to socialize, discover old and new friends, to post photos and the like. Now they are “Big Tech”, with an opinion of their own, prone to muzzling contrarian views, and seemingly not accountable to the law of the land, even though that land is their biggest market, as in the case of Facebook with India. The keyboard warriors of Big Tech can de-platform the President of the United States at the click of the mouse, eliminate competition by not providing them with a platform—as with the “right-wing” app Parler—take ideologically extreme-left positions, and behave like a Communist dictatorship, even though using capitalist ways and means to make money, which includes selling user data. Platforms that were supposed to give voices to differing views are now into editorialising and censorship, where even reputed media outlets can have their accounts suspended for writing against political leaders backed by the owners and employees of social media platforms. This happened in the case of New York Post when it was suspended by Twitter for reporting on Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

Big Tech—essentially a few private companies—believes that its behemoth status gives it the right to rise above governments and delegitimize opinion if it does not conform with their positions. With these positions driven by financial and/or ideological reasons, articles that are extremely critical of China may get blocked by one platform, while another platform can mark as “manipulated”, material shared by senior government ministers, just because the platform does not like the dispensation in power in a particular country—India in this case. Left unchecked, Big Tech invariably tries to play a political role in democracies by controlling narratives, influencing elections, and by overriding democratic institutions. And worse, all this it does while preaching about freedom of speech and liberty. As per this, Taliban and other terror supporting groups and radicals and extremists can maintain an online presence, Pakistan can launch anti India propaganda based on fabrications, but a Hindi movie star, Kangana Ranaut gets de-platformed because she is branded as hateful by some of those high-horsing with their keyboards in Twitter’s office. And if the country is India, these social media platforms think that they can treat it like a third world banana republic whose laws they don’t need to follow. CEOs Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey may be open to facing Congressional hearings in the US over the conduct of their platforms, but they will not do so in India, as we have seen in the case of Jack Dorsey, who was summoned to face a Parliamentary committee, but flatly refused.

WhatsApp users in Europe can opt out of the platform’s new privacy policy, but not those in India, because the European Union has General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which gives users the option of saying no to WhatsApp policy of sharing data with third party users. So why cannot India have its own laws in the interest of its own citizens? It is in this context that the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 have to be seen. The social media companies may discuss these with the government, may even buy time, but they cannot refuse to comply.

WhatsApp has gone to court against one of the clauses of the laws that requires social media platforms to locate the “first originator of the information” if the government asks for it. WhatsApp’s argument is “traceability would break end-to-end encryption and fundamentally undermine people’s right to privacy”—presumably even if that means trying to curb fake messages or anti India activities. Right to privacy is a serious matter, however, by WhatsApp’s logic, that right is not violated when it sells Indian users’ data to advertisers based on the conversations that they have with “business accounts”. As the new WhatsApp policy says, “when you communicate with a business by phone, email, or WhatsApp, it can see what you’re saying and may use that information for its own marketing purposes, which may include advertising on Facebook”.

Government control is generally intrusive in nature. But the social media giants are no saints either. Data mining is their primary focus and censorship is a tool they use liberally. They don’t even store Indian users’ data in India, which has to change. But first the message needs to go across that to operate in India, India’s laws will have to be followed..

The demise of Sundarlal Bahuguna marks the passing away of a generation that could uproot what it felt was harming the environment, like a mother protecting her child. For them, it was unethical to ask questions about the quantum of harm not because they had any intentions of being anti-development but as they believed, tradeoffs between environment and development may only bring unsustainable development. The visibility which the environment received in the early eighties was also due to the sensitive journalism of people like Darryl D’Monte whose Temples or Tombs: Industry versus Environment, a pioneering book that penetrated the discourses in universities as well as the grassroots transforming a generation in the process. On the environment day of 5th June, none of these environmental mentors are with us, and the protection laws they could achieve tend to lose their grip over enforcement once tossed off as an order from the judge’s table.

Law has never been enough for protecting anyone and last of all the ‘environment’. These meek denizens of the environment form powerful nation-states which are called ecosystems in the language of science and communicate through a voice, language, or a signal rarely understood by most people despite being one of them. They also have armies laced with toxic guns of bacteria and viruses to rebel against an illegitimate advance into their territories. Environmental laws have mostly been made in contravention to this understanding and mostly in a material mode of econometric models of growth.

Human beings, being just one of the animal species in this vast network of ecosystems, have illegitimately abrogated to themselves sole copyright to overconsume every other species the way it wishes to. In ignorance, greed, and vanity, it has become the most invasive species. Worse, laws sometimes are seen to be giving licences for destroying them. So, what’s the use of making laws for protecting the environment when the interpreters of law have seldom waded through the flooded streets or tasted mine effluents in their glass of drinking water and worse still the stench of dead animals at the coasts? As this insensitive inebriated humanity disconnected with nature marches over the corpse of ecosystems, it gets closer to death, destruction, and a reckless genocide of its own race.

Modern Criminology studies the human brain as a primary habitat of any harm before it materialises externally but those living close to nature are relatively happier and better adjusted. Yet forests, birds, water bodies, wilderness, and flowery hills are being allowed to shrink due to pollution, mining, and habitat destruction. In normal times when human interference is quite less we lose 10 species per year but currently, we have exceeded 10,000 species extinction per year. Much of the damage has also come from the laboratory modifications, mixing and generating or creating new species which are capable of bringing many more pandemics in the earth’s environment. Millions of food species with the farmer have been lost as governments over time have promoted only those 20 species which were produced and owned by US laboratories. The deadly 1980s Kalahandi famine of Odisha was the result of an adjoining dam due to which these local tribals lost 20 wild rice species that would give them free food even in drought periods.

The charm of wilderness is not a luxury, it has its own calming and spiritual impact upon human beings. Henry Bugbee’s The Inward Morning attracted the attention of Americans in terms of its spiritual content but ten years later in 1968, Aldo Leopold of the World Resources Institute brought greater clarity to the environmental question when he focused on land as the primary crucible of all environment. In his famous A Sand County Almanac, his anguished heart wrote, ‘One of the penalties of ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen’. The judiciary has not been able to deliver justice to the misuse of land in the environment. When the one-man environmental brigade of M.C. Mehta made the court listen to the woes of Punjab mothers who could not feed their children due to excess phosphorus in their bodies, it was the land that suffered prior to these mothers. The land had become a dump yard for chemicals due to an overuse of chemical NPK fertilizers as a strategy for HYV crops during the green revolution, Many chemicals flowed to rivers and the fodder of animals. The dairy products and then the mothers became toxic. When Mehta’s organization ICELA (Indian Council of Enviro-Legal Action) won the case the other problem was just waiting to be attended to. This was the overuse of oxytocin injection just before milking cattle. Oxytocin is a hormone that is produced in female bodies before childbirth. The helpless animals were subjected to this childbirth-like pain twice a day for speeding up milk extraction. Much of the Vegan movement is related to the dairy-based cruelties on animals which were slowly affecting the health of people, causing early puberty in girls and boys and also becoming a cause for osteoporosis in advancing age.

Far in the east, the Damodar Valley Project had come up in Bihar to generate power and eradicate poverty in the surrounding region. Within 15 years it was visible that something was not right and scientific studies revealed that excess metal flow from effluents in the coal and manganese quarries had affected the poor communities in the river catchment whose only source of water was the Damodar river. Soon the press exposed that the river was already dead and the only metal flows through the Damodar. A little away the Piparwar open cast mine was started with Australian miners and a promise of 2% local employment for the next 20 years that they would mine the metal. With their highly sophisticated machinery, the Australians dug out all metal within 4-5 years, no job to the locals who in the process also lost their dense and precious Saal (Shorea robusta)forest which gave them usufruct to sustain life in their village economy. Niyamagiri in Odisha and Athirapally in Kerala may soon meet this fate. The excavated land like a looted, pauperised, and the injured entity is left behind by developers as a museum of man’s murderous ravenousness. It was in this context that the 2019 Supreme Court orders passed by Justices Arun Mishra and Navin Sinha for demolition of five apartments in Maradu Municipality in Kerala for violation of Coastal Regulation Zone would go down in history for its determined verdict, unaffected by scheming politicians and money power. Environmental law is equally for the protection of the poor. In 1978 the Supreme Court had ruled that a mere right to life is not to have an animal existence but a life of dignity that is every human being’s primordial natural right. Environmental activism of the courts was at its peak during justice Kuldeep Singh as the Chief Justice and M.C. Mehta as the environmental lawyer in the Supreme Court.

Environmental destruction leads to immense destitution of many living beings, we only see the dominant species and remain blind to the small and speechless. Whenever a new modern city is made developers demand not just plots but a whole city from the political leaders of those states. Their mega machines dig out the land, shrubs, and village forests. The village wells become electronic waste pits and the water bodies and underground channels are blocked. Chennai and Mumbai floods have shown the consequences of blocking these water channels. Gurgaon’s more than 100 plus villages were overnight handed over to the developer in 1995. Dominant village groups were encouraged to grab land and through the Sarpanch on their side, it was easy to take away all Panchayat land. There were many rags to riches stories but poor villagers such as the potters, animal rearers, and grass cutters to name a few gradually started disappearing. Most animals who roamed free on common area panchayat lands and village forests were now declared stray and vermins. They mostly ended at slaughterhouses or stuffed in overcrowded shelter homes. The skyscrapers used a glass that killed sparrows, destroyed birds and their ability to breed. The city that had clouds of fireflies buzzing around and several rabbits peeped through a burrow as a car approached their shrub area were soon gone. Snake charmers started daylight poaching as some nexus between the police and developer wanted to remove the wild from what was to be a high-end apartment area, the mall, or a city club.

However, the question remains on what is the role of the state in environmental protection? This question perplexed those who carried their Public Interest litigation to the courts in cases regarding dams, mines, and power projects. A landmark case of Span Motels where the club of a politician was built after encroaching upon 28 bighas of forest land and Beas river catchment in Manali changed perspective on the role of the state. The notion of public trust was invoked in which certain common properties such as rivers, forests, and air were held by the government in trust to be its protector so that generations today and tomorrow would use it unimpeded in its original form.

When Justice Gita Mittal was posted as Chief Justice of J&K High Court, she could demonstrate the power of courts in implementing the trusteeship doctrine in protecting the state’s lakes, forests, and community livelihood options. As she says that the way a judge designs an order is in itself an art that can prevent defiance or contempt but alas most judges on environmental benches are themselves so unsure about the environmental problem that the orders they deliver lead much fuzziness on its enforcement. Why can’t judges be sent on some training to expose them to a milieu which could recharge the judiciary and inject contemporaneous environmental justice?

It’s time to look at the environment as a living resource, understand the language in which it speaks to us, and prevent another Covid-19 kind of a calamity that none of the governments, epidemiologists, or even virologists are in a position to handle anymore.

The author is president, NDRG, and former Professor of Administrative Reforms and Emergency Governance at JNU. The views expressed are personal.

Every time there is a loss of faith in the Modi government, we are asked the inevitable question: If not Narendra Modi, then who? Surveys will then give us the option of Rahul Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee, Sharad Pawar, Arvind Kejriwal, Nitish Kumar and so on. Inevitably, in the face of these options—one national leader and the others being leaders of regional parties—we end up with a shrug and say: oh well, Modi is the best of the lot. In fact, as a recent C Voter survey showed, PM Modi’s popularity is dipping but not enough to be overtaken by anyone else.

Yes, Rahul Gandhi has been talking a great deal of sense on social media and at his (many) press conferences. Be it on China, Covid or the economy, his views do strike a chord especially with the middle class. But when it comes to the electoral ground, his views do not seem to matter all that much. Take a look at the recent Assembly polls where the Congress was in a straight fight with the BJP in Assam. It even had a formidable alliance in place, but for reasons of his own, Rahul Gandhi stayed away from the poll campaign. And second, the Congress could not put up a credible fight against the BJP. That the BJP’s campaign was led by a former Congress leader (and current CM) would have only added insult to the injury. Neither did the Congress do well in the state that Rahul did focus on, Kerala. In West Bengal the party came away with zero. The only state where it did well was Tamil Nadu where it piggy backed on the DMK’s campaign.

Hence to expect the Congress to emerge as an alternative to the BJP is not an option, though a lot can happen between now and 2024 (the next general elections). This still gives the BJP and PM Modi three years to get their act together and undo the damage from their handling of Covid-19. Will he be able to do this—for unlike demonetisation, Covid has not just destroyed livelihoods but also lives. Each one of us—both in rural India and the metros—has lost someone or knows someone who has. This was not the case during the first wave. Yes, there is an attempt to shift the blame to the chief ministers, but unlike the Congress leadership, Mamata Banerjee, Uddhav Thakeray, Hemant Soren and Navin Patnaik will not let this narrative go without challenging it. And they have the credentials of good governance to back them. Even Congress regional chieftains like Capt Amarinder Singh, Bhupesh Baghel and Ashok Gehlot will strike back with their own version—and in this post-truth world, they may find more than a few takers.

Moreover with nearly three years for a general election, the question of leadership belongs as much to the BJP as it does to the Opposition. The Opposition cannot change the BJP leadership, but the RSS and the BJP can. Question is: will they and do they want to? Because PM Modi still remains their best vote catcher. Take a look at the recent state polls—the BJP retained Assam and did creditably well in West Bengal. Only it fell prey to its own hype that it was going to sweep the state, but remove this assumption and you will admit that the party notched up some credible numbers, taking its tally from 3 MLAs to 77, emerging as the second largest party in the state. The test will of course be the UP elections due early next year. Will Ram Mandir work—and will the elections be fought on Yogi Adityanath’s name or PM Modi’s? The RSS too is said to be keeping a keen eye on the Hindi heartland, and it would be interesting to see who gets to lead this campaign between the two Hindutva icons. Given the current panchayat poll results, it does seem as if Yogi will need PM Modi’s campaigning to help him.

In the meantime, we are told that a Cabinet reshuffle is on the cards and one in which performers rather than loyalists may get a place, or an upgrade. All in all the mishandling of Covid has exposed a big hole in PM Modi’s governance story. It is for him to breach this gap, or not.

The US’ largest fuel pipeline paid $4.4 million to a gang of ransomware operators who breached into its computer systems recently. After the 7 May ransomware attack, the company took its pipeline system offline and supplies tightened across the US. Prices started rising and a number of US states declared an emergency.

In March 2021, the London-based Harris Federation suffered a ransomware attack and was forced to “temporarily” disable the devices and email systems of all the 50 secondary and primary academies it manages, resulting in over 37,000 students being unable to access their coursework and correspondence.

Bombardier, the Canadian plane manufacturer, suffered a data breach in February 2021. The stolen data of suppliers, customers and around 130 employees located in Costa Rica was leaked on the site operated by the Clop ransomware gang.

The globally renowned computer giant Acer suffered a ransomware attack and was asked to pay a record ransom of $50 million, by a cyber criminal group called REvil.

On 20 March 2021, the multinational IoT device manufacturer Sierra Wireless was hit by a ransomware attack against its internal IT systems and had to halt production at its manufacturing sites and the company was able to resume production after a week.

THE STAGES OF RANSOMWARE

1.     Infection: The victim’s machine is infected when/after a compromised website is accessed or when attachment is opened from a spam message.

2.     Data encryption: The victim’s files or devices are locked down via cryptographic keys that utilise the Public Key Infrastructure on either the infected machine or Command and Control server.

3.     Demand: A message demanding payment of a ransom for releasing the locked data or files is displayed by the ransomware software.

4.     Outcome: Which is based on the actions taken by the victim. Such as: In event the victim does not pay the ransom but is able to eliminate the ransomware and recover the locked data or files; another event when the victim pays the ransom through anonymous channels such as Bitcoin and, hopefully, receives the key to unlock the data or devices (not recommended though). If not the above two, then the event of non-payment of the ransom and subsequent destruction of the data or files; without a backup, the victim will suffer permanent loss.

IMPACT ON BUSINESSES

The impact of ransomware to an organisation is many-fold: Reputational damage, theft, financial losses, fines, and below the surface costs.

1.     Reputational damage: Taking a reputational hit may also affect the ability to attract the best talent, suppliers and investors. Losing trust of customers and stakeholders is one of the harmful impacts of the ransomware event as the overwhelming majority of people would not do business with a company that had been breached, especially in the event of failing to protect its customers’ data. This intangible loss will easily translate directly into a loss of business, as well as devaluation of the brand.

2.     Theft: Apart from monetary losses, stolen data can be worth far more to hackers, especially when sold on the Dark Web. For example, the 2015 ‘Hidden Data Economy’ report by Kaspersky Labs puts the value of login credentials to hotel loyalty programmes or online auction accounts at up to $1,400. Not to forget the intellectual property theft which may be equally or more damaging, with companies losing years of effort and R&D investment in trade secrets or copyrighted material also their competitive advantage.

3.     Financial losses: Ransomware costs businesses disproportionately when adjusted for organisational size. A casual stance on security could quite easily put you out of business.

4.     Fines: As if direct financial losses weren’t punishment enough, there is the prospect of monetary penalties for businesses that fail to comply with data protection legislation. The example of GDPR which in case of privacy breach attracts a fine of 2% to 4% of global turnover. And such regulation is forming shape globally which would threaten many growing businesses with insolvency.

SOME FAMOUS CASES OF RANSOMWARE ATTACKS

1. Ryuk, 2019 and 2020

2. SamSam, 2018

3. WannaCry, 2017

4. Petya, 2016

5. TeslaCrypt, 2015

6. CryptoLocker, 2013

7. AIDS Trojan or PC Cyborg, 1989

WHAT TO DO WHEN IT HAPPENS

In the event of ransomware attack, the victim must immediately engage incident response teams to limit the damage. A passive approach to ransomware poses a huge risk given the potential losses that may be incurred with a ransomware attack; both organisations and users must proactively plan to prevent and respond to ransomware attacks. The teams should immediately notify users and turn off infected devices. Additionally, a backup device should be deployed to run the network; train users on how to respond to a ransomware attack; continuously backup IoT data to back-end servers; prepare a backup of application and device configuration files.

SHOULD WE PAY?

There cannot be a straight answer to whether to pay threat actors. It is pertinent that companies balance the potential near-term benefit of decrypting data, which is not always guaranteed, against the risk of legal and reputational exposure for making a payment to a prohibited person or entity, not to mention the risk of increased targeting by threat actors once a payment has been made. Waiting will only complicate the situation. Thus, the only simple answer to the question is that companies should have a plan in place before an attack ever occurs.

LESSONS LEARNT & WAY AHEAD

Data stolen and leaked on publicly available websites could provide targeting attackers with victim data that could inform or guide future disruptive attacks. Cyber security awareness plays an important role in preventing cyber-attacks. A tailored (ransomware threats) educational framework as well as a tool which mimicked ransomware attacks proved to be playing a pivotal role in reducing ransomware infections. Moreover, technical countermeasures of verifying applications’ trustworthiness when calling a crypto library or minimising attack surface by limiting end-users privilege has proved effective in preventing ransomware attacks.

CONCLUSIONS

Alarmed by the impunity with which ransomware operators are disrupting critical infrastructure world over, the US government has formed a Ransomware Task Force (RTF). It convened in early 2021 with participants from governments, software firms, cyber security vendors, non-profit and academic institutions from across the world.

The task force is synthesising best practices across sectors, identifying solutions in all steps of the ransomware kill chain, targeting gaps in solution applications, and engaging with stakeholders across industries to coalesce around a diverse set of ideas and solutions.

India too needs to develop a comprehensive anti-ransomware strategy post haste, otherwise coming days would see large-scale disruptions in various critical sectors ranging from manufacturing, public transport, power grids to healthcare and education. Many would pay exorbitant sums in ransom as the gangs have evolved their tactics to double and triple extortion by leveraging the data stolen in such attacks.

Brijesh Singh, IPS, is an author and IG Maharashtra. Khushbu Jain is an advocate practising before the Supreme Court and a founding partner of law firm Ark Legal. They can be contacted Twitter: @brijeshbsingh and @advocatekhushbu. The views expressed are personal.

Alarmed by the impunity with which ransomware operators are disrupting critical infrastructure world over, the US government has formed a Ransomware Task Force. It convened in early 2021 with participants from governments, software firms, cyber security vendors, non-profit and academic institutions from across the world. The task force is synthesising best practices across sectors, identifying solutions in all steps of the ransomware kill chain, targeting gaps in solution applications, and engaging with stakeholders across industries to coalesce around a diverse set of ideas and solutions.

Is the tide turning against China, finally? Are questions being asked about the origins of Covid-19 and is pressure mounting on the US government in particular about holding China accountable for the spread of the virus that has crippled the world? Equally importantly, will pressure now mount on China to disclose everything about the virus so that a treatment can be found, or the best way to contain it? After over a year’s silence on the Chinese communist regime’s direct involvement in the spread of the virus worldwide, legacy media in the United States seems to have started asking the right questions: where, when and how did the virus emerge? In this context, it does not come as a surprise that the US may have known all along that Covid-19 may not be a natural virus. A Wall Street Journal report on Sunday disclosed a US intelligence report that says that way back in November 2019, much before China admitted the existence of the virus, three researchers working in China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), fell ill with a mysterious illness and had to seek hospital care, thus suggesting that the virus may have escaped from the laboratory, even if not deliberately leaked. Interestingly, the face of America’s fightback against Covid-19, Dr Anthony Fauci too has suddenly made an about-turn about the origin of the virus. A year ago, in May 2020, Dr Fauci was clear that the virus was natural and did not result from a laboratory leak. In an interview to the National Geographic, he had said that “If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats…[it] could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated.” The very same Dr Fauci said in early May 2021 that “I am not convinced about that (if the virus originated naturally), I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened… So, you know, that’s the reason why I said I’m perfectly in favor of any investigation that looks into the origin of the virus.” Dr Fauci’s change of heart could have had to do with the fact that he is countering serious allegations that the National Institutes of Health under him funded a “gain of function” research on bat coronaviruses at the WIV. Even though he denies he did it, only an independent investigation into the origin of the virus will exonerate him of all the charges hurled at him. So it’s hoped that the formidable Dr Fauci will use his influence with the Joe Biden administration to push for an independent probe into the origin of the virus.

In fact, it was the World Health Organization that should have helmed the probe—a proper probe and not the Chinese-dictated one that the earlier one was, led by 17 Chinese scientists and 17 international scientist whose names were vetted by Beijing. But then the last one year has dealt a body-blow to WHO’s credibility for the way it did Beijing’s bidding in trying to deflect attention from China’s role in the spread of the pandemic. Even now, when WHO expands its list of anti-Covid-19 vaccines for emergency use, it approves China’s Sinopharm, about whose efficacy serious questions exist, but not India’s Covaxin, one of the most potent vaccines in the market. Apprehensions are that by the time Covaxin gets its approval, China’s vaccine would have flooded the poorer countries in spite of its dubious quality, but not provide them with adequate protection against the virus, thus endangering the health of large swathes of people. Can a world body behaving like China’s handmaid ever be trusted to conduct an independent probe? India had an opportunity to push for such a probe when it was elected chairman of WHO’s executive board exactly a year ago on 22 May 2020, and it would have had the support of the developing world in this, but it wasted it. Even as India gave up the chair on Monday, it will continue to be a member of the executive board until 2023. Will it be too much to expect India to take the lead against China in the next two years? Also, at a time when External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar is visiting the US, it is hoped that he will impress upon Secretary of State Antony Blinken that action against China should go beyond lip service.

The fundamental premise of any probe against China will have to take into account Beijing’s propensity to deny everything it is accused of. The suspicion that the Communist regime is not averse to using a pathogen as a political and economic tool also needs to be addressed, if the world wants to secure its own future. Else, who knows what will come from China next? Without a fair and independent probe, China will get away with genocide. For once nations will have to raise themselves above Beijing’s influential reach within their governments, and ignore the lure of cheap supply chains while putting pressure on China to open up for a probe.