Tag: #threat

Communalism in India: Threat to National Integration

Photo by Mauru00edcio Mascaro on Pexels.com

National Integration is a process by which divisive people and culture are synthesized into a unified whole, along with higher levels of cooperation, mutual understanding, shared values, common identity and above all national consciousness. In the process of national integration, people of a nation develop the sense of we feeling and are unified. The broader objective of national integration has been the attainment of ideological goals such as secularism and democracy. But these are some negative forces lurking within the society which pose as a rising threat to the national integration of India in the form of communalism, regionalism, linguism, etc.

India represents a divirse religions and cultures. Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, etc have flourished here. Whereas the Hindus constitute the major segment of India’s population, the Muslims constitute the largest minority. But the irony is that the adjustment between the Hindus and Muslims has been a failure several times, resulting in violent outbursts and communal riots. The inhuman behavior seen in the communal riots during the period of Independence of India, has no parallel instances in the entire history of the world. In fact, communalism is not a new phenomenon and has tended to exist since the times of the Muslim rule in the medieval period.

Communalism is described as a tool to mobilize people for or against, by raising an appeal on communal lines. Asghar Ali Engineer, Moin Shakir and Abdul Ahmed try to explain communalism as an ideological tool for propagation of economic and political interests. According, to them it I an instrument in the hands of the hands upper class to concentrate power by dividing people.

Communalism as an ideology may be perceived as:

  • A total commitment to a set of beliefs,
  • Far from rationality,
  • Commiting of self to the community alone,
  • Unwillingness to accept other belief patterns and faiths,
  • Closing of self and being highly emotional to it, to the extent of crossing the bounds of law at times.
  • It mostly rests on prejudices,
  • It causes rivalry and violence among masses,
  • It effects are disastrous,
  • It strikes at the roots of secularism and national integration.

There are many factors that lead to the emergence of communalism in the society. Some of these factors include provocation of enemy countries, negative effect of mass media, geographical causes, weak economic status of minorities, historical causes, organized and militant fundamentalist organization, orthodoxy and obscurantism and failure of government policies.

There stands an urgent need of eradication of communalism in our society. Some policies that can be undertaken in this regard include abolition of communal parties in our country, healthy public opinion, inter- religious marriages, declaration of national festivals, etc. These are few measures that may help in curbing communalism from causing any threat to the National integration of our country.

Horrors of Remote Work

Before the pandemic hit the world, working at remote locations or rather work from home was supposedly believed to give a sense of joy. But now, work from home has become the new normal with the trend hitting most of the multinational corporations. But as we are trying to combat the virus by confining ourselves to our homes, some data theft ‘viruses’ are lurking outside our homes. With most of us using the setups outside the security layers of office, data thieves are trying to tap on those setups to maximize their wealth.

Remote work might be enjoyable in all aspects, but it also possesses certain downsides which can be horrifying both the recipient and the sender of the network. Looking at various perspectives as well experiencing some, I would like to highlight a few such instances:

  1. Public Wi-Fi network. Usage of public Wi-Fi internet connection to do office work can be very unsecure owing to the malicious parties trying to tap the internet traffic to collect confidential information. Potential malwares such as Trojan horse, virus, worms, spyware, rootkits etc. can very easily damage your service with irreparable effects.
  2. Unlocked device. When working in a public location or at home, sometimes we have the tendency to just leave it and get up to do some chore or to even just get a glass of water. In the meantime the confidential data such as office website, servers or mails gets exposed to the stranger or children at home, which can lead to data leakage, thus compromising the security.
  3. Use of personal devices and networks. Most companies have started this policy where you can use your personal setups such as laptop or desktop at your home. Usually the IT Department configures all the required software in your personal device and you can use it for professional reasons. Issue arises when you are using the same device for your personal work such as installing an app or browsing in such websites which can have malicious content and thus your system, data and majorly, your confidential office data gets compromised. But then the question arises, who is to be blamed here? Is it the organization who allowed the associate to compromise company’s data with the personal setup without enough security firewall? Or is the associate who should have taken care while using it for personal uses?
  4. Wary of VPN. Many a times, the remote workers are over-confident about the confidential data-security and since VPN can make the internet connection a bit slower, people tend to just overlook it. But what they forget in the meantime is that Virtual Private Network (VPN) can restrict the flow of information or data to the intended recipient as well as encrypt the data.
  5. Exposure of home router. It’s a human habit to either go for very weak password or avoid password altogether, lest one might forget. And such a habit can easily throw us into the devil’s mouth.
  6. Opening ‘all’ kinds of e-mails. Hackers and phishers wait for the opportunity to bask in glory when they send us a very catchy and a ‘congratulatory’ kind of mail and wait for our ‘one-click’ on that mail. And after that, everything becomes a history.
  7. Device always switched-on. If we get a notification on our setup asking to restart the system in order to install the updates, we tend to reschedule it to the point when we can avoid it altogether. Non-updated device are the most-prone device to each and every kind of threat.

Just a heads up, these are some, but not exhaustive, lists of threats and danger one can face from remote work. Nevertheless, these also have their own solution but it demands a chunk of our attention and intervention. So from the next time, when you sit down and switch on your system to work, always remember there is an extra pair of eyes looking upon you.

Abort the virus, inside and outside.

Till then, stay safe.

Source:

https://www.comparitech.com/blog/information-security/security-remote-working/

Self

Indian Cinema: A Hostage to Controversies

Bollywood is a traditional Indian movie. Vector illustration with marquee lights

Bollywood never runs out of issues that capture the nation’s headlines. Anyone who is a Bollywood fan knows that controversies and cinemas go hand in hand. The issues can be related to anything to everything in a movie, be it, the cast of the film or their personal beliefs to their personal lives, everything revolves around it.

Every time there is a movie that will attract politicians, certain communal groups or even the Indian censor board and it is not easy for a film to go down the throat of the sensitive people.

Over 63 movies have faced controversies by different communities since 2008 according to an internet source. The reasons range from religious (PK gained criticism for the projection of Hindu God in a manner unacceptable to people), political (Ae Dil Hai Mushkil was in the fire for casting a Pakistani actor, Fawad Khan), historical (Bajirao Mastani was accused of distorting facts related to the ruler Peshwa Bajirao and his wives) and community (Ek Thi Daayan has a report filed against it for the projection of witches in a bad light).
Lately, filmmakers have been struggling to make movies, a smooth run but the protestors have it all. Be it blackmailing to burning down the school bus, nothing seems to be enough for the haters to calm down their ‘pride’ and ‘ego’.
Moreover, there was a threat to chop off Deepika Padukone’s nose referring to the epic Ramayana where chopping off nose was a punishment.
Madhur Bhandarkar, a filmmaker said “Let’s accept that making historical and political films is a problem in India,” who refers to an old experience with Indu Sarkar (July, 2017) as a nightmare.
Nonetheless, the truth remains that the real issues that need peoples’ concern are lacking behind and are considered shameful to talk about.
We show rejection, intolerance for a movie being released who casts a Pakistani actor. Why? Was this reaction to be made over the issues like dowry, poverty or even women protection?
The humor is getting lost and people are becoming a hard rock statue that reacts only when it opposes ‘their’ sentiments or beliefs.

The thought needs to change, let the 1.3 billion people decide whether the movie is worth it or not.
Chief Justice Dipak Misra says”Cinemas are an inseparable part of the right to free speech and expression, States cannot issue notifications prohibiting the screening of a film.”
A movie despite controversies and hatred of certain groups still remains purely INDIAN, purely BOLLYWOOD that has the hard work of lakhs of people who worked day and night to get good results not anger and anguish of people.
Let’s think whether the ”VIRODH PRADARSHAN” is fair enough on part of being an Indian and a responsible human being.