Government modifies telecom network security norms, due to the pressure from foreign telecom equipment vendors

   GOVERNMENT  MODIFIES  SECURITY NORMS FOR TELECOM NETWORKS, DUE TO THE PRESSURE FROM FOREIGN TELECOM EQUIPMENT VENDORS

The foreign telecom equipment vendors totally opposed the telecom security norms announced by the Government of India in 2010. Due to the concerns raised by the Indian security agencies over the possibility of embedded malware and spyware in the imported telecom equipment,  the Government of India  issued guidelines in 2010 for the foreign equipment suppliers that they should transfer their technology to Indian manufacturers within three years, they should appoint only Indians while installing, maintaining and operating the networks for the telecom services companies  and they should deposit their software source codes in an escrow account. But the foreign vendors like Motorola, Nokia, Ericsson opposed this, whereas the Chinese vendors agreed for the escrow account and deposited source codes. Finally coming under the pressure of the American and European equipment vendors, the Government diluted all these norms and issued revised guidelines on 31-5-2011. As per these revised guidelines, the foreign suppliers need not transfer their technology, need not deposit their source code in escrow account, and need not man the telecom network with Indians except at the level of Chief Technology Officer etc. While thus absolving the foreign vendors from any responsibility regarding security, these new guidelines put the entire responsibility on telecom services companies. The telecom service companies have to get their net work audited from the security point of view by a certified agency, call data  of customers must be made available along with the tracking of their location  etc. According to the estimates, the technical up gradation for acquiring these capabilities will cost Rs 5000 crore to 5800 crore per operator with in next 3 months. The telecom services operators are demanding the Government to share the burden. Thus the burden of security of the telecom network is being shifted from foreign equipment vendors to telecom services companiew which in turn are trying to shift that to the government exchequer.

In Praise of communism-A poem

In Praise of Communism

It’s sensible, anyone can understand it

It’s easy.

You are not an exploiter, so you can grasp it.

It’s a good thing for you,

Find out more about it.

The stupid call it stupid and the squalid call it squalid.

It’s against squalor and stupidity

The exploiters call it a crime, but we know

It is the end of the crime.

It is not madness, but the end of madness.

It is not chaos, but order

It is the simplest thing so hard to achieve.

                                                                       -------- Bertolt  Brecht

Foreign Direct Investment in Indian Telecom Sector

FDI (FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT) IN SOME INDI AN TELECOM COMPANIES

Sl.No	Name of the Company	Name of the Country	Activities	FDI
1.	Bharti Airtel	FIIs Mauritius/FIIs/OCBs/ NRIs	CMTS	74%
2.	Idea Cellular Ltd	FIIs/FVCIs	CMTS	74%
3.	Tata Teleservices	Japan	Telecom Services	26%
4.	Vodafone Essar	Netherlands	CMTS and UASL	74%
5.	Reliance Communication Pvt Ltd	GDR	CMTS	74%
6.	Sistema Shyam Teleservices	Russia	UASL	74%
7.	Spice Communications	mauritius	CMTS	74%
As per DoT website during the period 1-4-2000 to 31-8-2010 the amount of Foreign Direct Investment in Indian telecom sector is Rs 45495 crores.

Telecom Sector-Draining out of astronomical amount of resources from India to foreign telecom equipment manufacturers

In the year 2009-10, the cost of the telecom equipment utilised for expanding the telecom network was Rs 93600 crores. In this,  equipment costing Rs 44800 crores was imported and equipment costing Rs 48800 crores was manufactured in India. But this equipment manufactured in India is not of the category Indian Product(where the intellectual property right acquired for the research and development and the designing and manufacture all were done by Indian Companies), but only Indian manufacture Products”- (which means only assembling and soldering of the parts imported from other countries was done in India), as per the report of the PWC(Price Water Coopers-a US consultancy firm). As per this study of the PWC the value addition in this Indian manufacture is only 11%. This means out of the Rs 48800 crore worth equipment manufactured in India, the value added in India is only Rs 5368 crores. Thus out of the Rs 93600 crores  worth telecom equipment utilised by the Indian telecom services sector in 2008-09, the value created in India is only Rs 5368 crores and the remaining Rs 88232 crores belonged to foreign companies. This means  in one year a huge amount of Rs 88232 crores was paid by India to foreign telecom equipment manufacturing companies. It can be safely presumed that after the starting of mobile telecom services in India, atleast 5 lakh crores of rupees was paid to foreign companies for buying telecom equipment, indicating an astronomical amount of the draining of our resources to foreign countries.

Therefore how to see that this drainage of resources is stopped and the telecom equipment is produced indigenously and the dependence on foreign manufacturers is stopped.

Capitalist Class and Working Class-which is really necessary

Social Classes — Necessary and Superfluous

(This is an interesting article written by Frederick Engels, who along with Karl Marx founded Scientific Socialism. It was written by him in  early August 1881 and published in the 6^th August, 1881 issue of  the journal “The Labour Standard”, the organ of the British Trade Unions. In this article Engels detailed the facts proving that there is no economical function that requires to be performed by the Capitalist Class and hence there is no necessity for its existence as a class and their interference was becoming more and more a nuisance. The reader is requested to find out whether the big capitalists in India and even the big capitalists in other countries are really performing any economical function as a capitalist or whether they have become nuisance. This article is reproduced from the website  “www.marxists.org”-----asokababu)

The question has often been asked, in what degree are the different classes of society useful or even necessary? And the answer was naturally a different one for every different epoch of history considered. There was undoubtedly a time when a territorial aristocracy was an unavoidable and necessary element of society. That, however, is very, very long ago. Then there was a time when a capitalist middle class, a bourgeoisie as the French call it, arose with equally unavoidable necessity, struggled against the territorial aristocracy, broke its political power, and in its turn became economically and politically predominant. But, since classes arose, there never was a time when society could do without a working class. The name, the social status of that class has changed; the serf took the place of the slave, to be in his turn relieved by the free working man -- free from servitude but also free from any earthly possessions save his own labour force. But it is plain: whatever changes took place in the upper, non-producing ranks of society, society could not live without a class of producers. This class, then, is necessary under all circumstances -- though the time must come, when it will no longer be a class, when it will comprise all society.

Now, what necessity is there at present for the existence of each of these three classes?

The landed aristocracy is, to say the least, economically useless in England, while in Ireland and Scotland it has become a positive nuisance by its depopulating tendencies. To send the people across the ocean or into starvation, and to replace them by sheep or deer -- that is all the merit that the Irish and Scotch landlords can lay claim to. Let the competition of American vegetable and animal food develop a little further, and the English landed aristocracy will do the same, at least those that can afford it having large town estates to fall back upon. Of the rest, American food competition will soon free us. And good riddance -- for their political action, both in the Lords and Commons, is a perfect national nuisance.

But how about the capitalist middle class, that enlightened and liberal class which founded the British colonial empire and which established British liberty? The class that reformed Parliament in 1831, [1] repealed the Corn Laws, [2] and reduced tax after tax? The class that created and still directs the giant manufactures, and the immense merchant navy, the ever spreading railway system of England? Surely that class must be at least as necessary as the working class which it directs and leads on from progress to progress.

Now the economical function of the capitalist middle class has been, indeed, to create the modern system of steam manufactures and steam communications, and to crush every economical and political obstacle which delayed or hindered the development of that system. No doubt, as long as the capitalist middle class performed this function it was, under the circumstances, a necessary class. But is it still so? Does it continue to fulfil its essential function as the manager and expander of social production for the benefit of society at large? Let us see.

To begin with the means of communication, we find the telegraphs in the hands of the Government. The railways and a large part of the sea-going steamships are owned, not by individual capitalists who manage their own business, but by joint-stock companies whose business is managed for them by paid employees, by servants whose position is to all intents and purposes that of superior, better paid workpeople. As to the directors and shareholders, they both know that the less the former interfere with the management, and the latter with the supervision, the better for the concern. A lax and mostly perfunctory supervision is, indeed, the only function left to the owners of the business. Thus we see that in reality the capitalist owners of these immense establishments have no other action left with regard to them, but to cash the half-yearly dividend warrants. The social function of the capitalist here has been transferred to servants paid by wages; but he continues to pocket, in his dividends, the pay for those functions though he has ceased to perform them.

But another function is still left to the capitalist, whom the extent of the large undertakings in question has compelled to "retire" from their management. And this function is to speculate with his shares on the Stock Exchange. For want of something better to do, our "retired" or in reality superseded capitalists, gamble to their hearts' content in this temple of mammon. They go there with the deliberate intention to pocket money which they were pretending to earn; though they say, the origin of all property is labour and saving -- the origin perhaps, but certainly not the end. What hypocrisy to forcibly close petty gambling houses, when our capitalist society cannot do without an immense gambling house, where millions after millions are lost and won, for its very centre! Here, indeed, the existence of the "retired" shareholding capitalist becomes not only superfluous, but a perfect nuisance.

What is true for railways and steam shipping is becoming more and more true every day for all large manufacturing and trading establishments. "Floating" -- transforming large private concerns into limited companies -- has been the order of the day for the last ten years and more. From the large Manchester warehouses of the City to the ironworks and coalpits of Wales and the North and the factories of Lancashire, everything has been, or is being, floated. In all Oldham there is scarcely a cotton mill left in private hands; nay, even the retail tradesman is more and more superseded by "co-operative stores", the great majority of which are co-operative in name only -- but of that another time. Thus we see that by the very development of the system of capitalists' production the capitalist is superseded quite as much as the handloom-weaver. With this difference, though, that the handloom-weaver is doomed to slow starvation, and the superseded capitalist to slow death from overfeeding. In this they generally are both alike, that neither knows what to do with himself.

This, then, is the result: the economical development of our actual society tends more and more to concentrate, to socialise production into immense establishments which cannot any longer be managed by single capitalists. All the trash of "the eye of the master", and the wonders it does, turns into sheer nonsense as soon as an undertaking reaches a certain size. Imagine "the eye of the master" of the London and North Western Railway! But what the master cannot do the workman, the wages-paid servants of the Company, can do, and do it successfully.

Thus the capitalist can no longer lay claim to his profits as "wages of supervision", as he supervises nothing. Let us remember that when the defenders of capital drum that hollow phrase into our ears.

But we have attempted to show, in our last week's issue, that the capitalist class had also become unable to manage the immense productive system of this country; that they on the one hand expanded production so as to periodically flood all the markets with produce, and on the other became more and more incapable of holding their own against foreign competition. Thus we find that, not only can we manage very well without the interference of the capitalist class in the great industries of the country, but that their interference is becoming more and more a nuisance.

Again we say to them, "Stand back! Give the working class the chance of a turn."

Notes

1 This refers to the movement for Parliamentary reform in England in 1830-31. The 1832 Reform Act in England granted the franchise to property owners and leaseholders with no less than £10 annual income. The workers and the petty bourgeoisie, who were the main force in the campaign for the reform, remained unenfranchised.

2 The laws passed by the British Parliament on June 26, 1846 -- "An Act to amend the laws relating to the importation of corn" and "An Act to alter certain duties of customs" -- abolished all restrictions on the import of grain into Great Britain, which was a major victory for the industrial bourgeoisie over the landed aristocracy.

Einstein's Quotations

    28-5-2011

EINSTEIN’S QUOTATIONS

(The following are some of the quotations from the great scientist Einstein. They are enlightening and relevant)

Motivation

1.       In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity

Life quotes

2.       Only a life lived for others is worth living

3.       Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death

4.       Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people

5.       Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.

6.       A person starts to live when he can live outside himself

7.       Imagination is every thing. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

8.       I believe that a simple unassuming manner of life is best for every one, best for both for the body and the mind.

9.       The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat.

Intelligence

10.   It’s not that I’m smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer

11.   Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death

12.   Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them

13.   The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination

14.   Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.

15.   Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelationship of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations and to t set them fast in the emotional life of individual seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to perform in the social life of man.

16.   Two things are infinite: universe and human stupidity; and I am  not sure about the universe.

Humanity

17.      It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

Character

18.   Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character

Mysterious

19.   The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

20.   The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.

21.   The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility

Living

22.   Only a life lived for others is worth living

23.   A person starts to live when he can live outside himself

24.   I believe you should live each day as if it is your last, which is why I don’t have any clean laundry, because, come on, who wants to wash clothes on the last day of their life?

25.   Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow

Religion

26.   I am a deeply religious nonbeliever-This is a somewhat new kind of religion.

27.   True religion is real living; living with all one’s soul, with all one’s goodness and righteousness

28.   My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of highest importance-but for us, not for god.

29.   Science without religion is lame, religion without science

30.   A man’s moral worth is not measured by what his religious beliefs are but rather by what emotional impulses he has received from Nature during his lifetime

31.   The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. The religion will be based on experience, which refuses to be dogmatic. If there’s any religion that would cope the scientific needs it will be Buddhism..

32.   My feeling is religious in so far as I am imbued with the consciousness of the insufficiency of the human mind to understand more deeply the harmony of the universe which we try to formulate as laws of nature.

Understanding

33.   Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift

34.   Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better

35.   The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.