Editorial 1: Holes in the Digital net
Recent Context:
- Recently three digital events are observed which compromise the reality of digital sovereignty, secrecy and free flow of information. It demonstrates a gulf between the rhetoric and reality of Digital India
- The Information related to data breach on the CoWIN platform. Sensitive personal details including date and place of vaccination, with Aadhaar, PAN, Passport, Voter ID, & Mobile numbers were circulating on the internet-based messaging platform Telegram. Though details of the breach were established by many, the Union Government responded with denials.)
- Central government responded that “Co-WIN portal of the Health Ministry is completely safe with adequate safeguards for data privacy.
Past incident of data breach:
- The past incidents of data breach include the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) breach in August 2022 and the ransomware attack on the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in November 2022.
- The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), which is tasked with such investigations, has often maintained silence and not made any of its technical findings public.
Issues with current digital policy
- All this incident of data breach are compounded by the lack of a National Cyber Security Strategy as a draft put to public consultation in December 2019 awaits finalisation.
- Also, India does not have data protection law requiring breach notifications to impacted users.
- Even the proposed Draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022, being mooted by MeitY would by notification exempt government entities from compliance.
- Therefore, Without any legal accountability, repeated data breaches now occur within the same entity or platform such as the RailYatri portal that has reportedly been breached in 2020, 2022 and 2023.
Initiatives of government related to digital infrastructure:
- Recently, MeitY organised two-day “Global DPI Summit”. DPI is an acronym for Digital Public Infrastructure, which has become a tool of geo-political advocacy for the Union government to coincide with the G20 Summit.
- The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has expanded economic and livelihood opportunities by facilitating the ease of commercial transactions for millions of Indians.
- DPI framework is much more than UPI as is clear from the public pronouncements by Union ministers and the composition of what is termed as the “IndiaStack”.
- It includes, for identification, the coercive biometric system Aadhaar, the contact tracing application Aarogya Setu, our vaccination process implemented through the CoWIN platform
- Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC): An an Amazon-style marketplace for government procurement through Government E-Marketplace (GEM) and an attempt to break market concentration in digital markets by the Open Network for Digital Commerce.
Three concern features of these platforms which require further reforms:
- Lack of statutory status:
- Due to absence of statutory status of these platforms it leads to weak governance processes. Except for Aadhaar (prompted by litigation), none of these platforms has a legal definition of their functions, roles and responsibilities from an Act of Parliament.
- Many are developed as joint ventures, or special purpose vehicles, that avoid accountability mechanisms such as audits by the Computer Auditor General (CAG) or transparency mandates under the Right to Information Act.
- Lack of efficiency in technical development:
- The concern of glitches and exclusion errors of Aadhaar, the complete failure of the Aarogya Setu to prevent Covid infections or the recent tender to overhaul the GEM platform after complaints from suppliers
- The third common aspect of all such platforms is them being data guzzlers where personal information is gathered from Indians that goes beyond the technical requirements. This only results in multiple individual and social harms, including data breaches
Way forward
- These three events occurring over a few hours is not a mere coincidence. All three emerge from an unfortunate pattern in which digital systems have been divorced from constitutional frameworks.
- There is need of hour to provide statutory status to these platform so that data can be secured with more efficiency and security in the direction of digital India.
Editorial 2: What is El Nino and how it impacts the monsoon
Context:
- Any discussion on Indian monsoon these days invariably has references to the El Nino phenomenon. It is almost as if the fate of the Indian monsoon depends on the abnormalities in sea surface temperatures in far-away Pacific Ocean.
- This year’s monsoon is also progressing under the cloud of an El Nino in the Pacific Ocean. El Nino, as is commonly known, refers to an abnormal warming of surface waters in equatorial Pacific Ocean. It is known to suppress monsoon rainfall.
- The opposite phase, La Nina, which is the abnormal cooling of sea surface waters in the same region, is known to aid rainfall over India.
- There is a third, neutral phase, as well in which the sea surface temperatures remain roughly in line with long-term averages. Together, these three phases in the Pacific Ocean are referred to as El Nino Southern Oscillation, or ENSO.
- But why do the surface waters in equatorial Pacific Ocean get abnormally warm or cold? And, why do these warm or cold phases have any bearing on Indian monsoon? Not everything about ENSO and Indian monsoon is very well understood, but scientists do have a fair idea of how this entire system works
Ocean-Atmosphere system
- Though ENSO is mostly discussed in terms of temperature abnormalities of sea surface waters, it is important to understand that it is not just an ocean system.
- ENSO actually is an interaction of ocean and atmospheric conditions. In fact, the ‘southern oscillation’ part in the term ENSO refers to a specific atmospheric condition that is a measure of the difference in sea-level air pressure over western and eastern side of the Pacific Ocean.
- Another atmospheric condition that plays a key role in ENSO is the strength and direction of winds. As Just the abnormal warming or cooling of surface waters in Pacific Ocean does not result in an El Nino or La Nina event
- The ocean part of the ENSO is measured by what is known as the Oceanic Nino Index or ONI. The atmospheric part is monitored through Southern Oscillation Index, or SOI.
- The ocean and atmospheric conditions in El Nino or La Nina tend to reinforce each other, producing a cyclic process. That means that the warming of the sea surface waters during an El Nino event influences atmospheric conditions in a way that these, in turn, result in further warming of the waters. Similar processes happen during La Nina event as well.
- The entire system is the equatorial region in the Pacific Ocean. On the east are Ecuador and Peru in northwestern South America and on the west are the islands of Philippines and Indonesia. This region receives the most sunlight anywhere on earth, a lot of which is stored as heat in the ocean.
ENSO Neutral condition
- The tropical regions, that is the area immediately above and below the equator, is home to a permanent wind system called trade winds that move from east to west at quite low altitudes.
- Because of the exposure to sunlight, the sea surface in the Pacific Ocean is quite warm. When the trade winds move over the Pacific Ocean, they push these relatively warm waters, which also become lighter, in the westward direction.
- So, the surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, that is near the South American coast, get pushed towards the west. It is replaced by the relatively cooler waters from below. The warmer surface waters continue to get pushed till they encounter a landmass in the islands at Philippines and Indonesia.
- They cannot be pushed any further. The result of this process is the accumulation of relatively warm waters near Indonesia, called the Western Pacific Warm Pool, and relatively cold waters near Ecuador and Peru.
- This sweeping of surface waters and its accumulation also results in a relative rise in sea levels near Indonesia. The sea levels on the eastern coast of Indonesia happens to be about half a metre higher than the western coast of Ecuador and Peru.
- The warmer surface waters near Indonesia creates a region of low-pressure area, causing the air to rise upwards. This also results in formation of clouds and heavy rainfall. The air flow also helps in building up the monsoon system which brings rainfall over India.
- At higher altitudes, this air starts to move towards eastern Pacific Ocean, that is, in direction opposite to the trade winds that flow at lower altitudes. This wind system, east to west near the surface, and west to east at higher altitudes, creates a loop, and reinforces the temperature gradient between the east and west Pacific Ocean.
The Abnormal behaviour
- In some years, though reasons that are not fully understood, the trade winds get weakened. It affects the ability of the trade winds to push warmer surface waters towards the Indonesian coast.
- Not enough warmer water is swept towards western Pacific Ocean. That means the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, off the coasts of Ecuador and Peru, becoming warmer than normal. This is the El Nino phase.
- Because the sea-level at the Indonesian coast is higher, and the trade winds are not very strong to resist the motion, some accumulated warm water begins to flow backwards towards the South American coast under the influence of gravity. This further adds to the warming in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
ENSO and Climate Change
- In general, El Nino has a warming effect on the planet, while La Nina tends to cool it down. The warmest years in a decade are usually the El Nino years.
- The warmest-ever year on record, 2016, was part of one of the longest and strongest El Nino episodes ever, dubbed the Godzilla El Nino.
- It is important to note that the warming over the planet accounts only for the near-surface temperatures. It does not account for the massive amount of heat trapped in the oceans.
- El Nino or La Nina years do not alter the overall heat in the system, but these do influence how much of it gets sunk in the ocean. During the La Nina phase, for example, a larger than normal amount of warm surface water of Pacific Ocean is pushed towards the Indonesian coast.
- Here the entire column of ocean, several hundred metres deep comprises of relatively warm water. On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, relatively colder water from the deep emerges on the top.
- A large area over the eastern Pacific Ocean thus contains colder water. This has the ability to absorb some of the heat from the atmosphere, making the atmosphere slightly cooler. This is how La Nina produces a cooling effect.
- El Nino works in exactly the opposite direction, and produces a heating effect. El Nino thus accentuates the global warming phenomenon, and contributes to climate change. The reverse effect, that of climate change on ENSO – the kind of impacts climate change is having in the Pacific is not very clear, however.
- The air circulation loop also gets affected, as a result. That, in turn, reduces the amount of precipitation over Indonesia and neighbouring regions, and impacts the Indian monsoon as well.
- Exactly the opposite happens during a La Nina event. The trade winds become stronger than usual, pushing more warmer waters towards the Indonesian coast, and making the eastern Pacific Ocean colder than normal.
- The amount of energy transferred during the movement of waters and winds in the different phases of ENSO system is massive. Though the most profound impacts of ENSO events are seen in the tropical regions, weather patterns across the world get affected.