Sahyadri Books Online Trivandrum.

Tuesday, September 22, 2020

220. Face Book blocks comments against Kerala Marxist Government’s Trivandrum international gold smuggling case association

220

Face Book blocks comments against Kerala Marxist Government’s Trivandrum international gold smuggling case association

P. S. Remesh Chandran

Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum

Image by ..... Graphics: Adobe SP.

1

There have been so many allegations against Face Book India during the past years, of showing bias on social and political issues in India, of standing in secret with the Hindu BJP government of India, of spreading and favouring communal hate speech for the Hindu BJP, of suppressing posts and campaigns by the opposition Congress Party, of receiving around ten crore rupees of graft in the form of advertisements from BJP, and of a lot of other things. But in 2020 Face Book was summoned to the Indian Parliament for questioning on some of these biases and partialities, BBC reported their bias and partiality and communal and political orientation in India, and their Asia Chief was put under fire.

All the allegations, accusations, summonses and interrogations against Face Book India in 2020 from the Indian Parliament to the Delhi State Assembly had dealt with its unholy association with and subjugation to the ruling Hindu BJP Party of India. Now a new allegation is surfacing, that of the privileges and concessions associated with the BJP-FB deal being extended to the Hindu BJP’s new cronies in Kerala against the Indian National Congress- the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and its Kerala government, in total negation of the many implications of this party’s and its many leaders’, officers’ and ministers’ presence for questioning in investigations by the four main investigation agencies of India namely the Indian Customs, the National Investigation Agency, the Enforcement Directorate and the Narcotics Control Bureau in cases registered under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, the Foreign Exchange Money Regulations Act and the National Security Act. The Central Bureau of Investigation is also, it is believed, coming into the picture whereby the Anti Corruption Act will also come into force. In short, it is understood that Face Book India is going to help the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and its Kerala government to ride this storm against these four prime investigation agencies of the Government OF India and these three vital Acts of the Republic of India, for a price.

In 2020, after finding itself exposed and disrobed in association of their senior party leaders, many leaders’ sons and daughters and other family members, many senior principal secretary-level Indian Administrative Service officers, and even some state ministers in government, with the several separate investigations branching out from the main and original one of a case and investigation of several kilos of gold smuggled through diplomatic channel from the UAE to India and destination Kerala and detected in July 2020 at the Trivandrum international airport, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and its Kerala government found besides many other things that they are loosing ground support from the people of Kerala, almost all political parties in Kerala are agitating against them in the streets minding not the affliction of corona virus spread, their leaders are summoned one by one by a flotilla of central investigation officers for questioning and their capital institutions are searched, and that their defense campaigns in what they call neo social media are failing. These neo social media they call are neither Linked-In nor Twitter because for one thing their supporters cannot deal in English, and for another, these two more conservative and professional social media institutions won’t tolerate or allow cheap and vulgar political posts. Moreover, Linked-In do not accept political campaign posts and Twitter has definitely stated that it won’t accept and host political posts prior to elections anymore. So this CPI(M) party and their government, when they say neo social media, mean only that it is Face Book. In September 2020 they announced that they are going to hire a consultancy for redesigning their campaigns in the neo social media which when translated into layman’s terms means that they are going to draw immense amounts of public money from the state government treasury and going to pay those huge amounts to Face Book India to host their newly designed and revamped political posts and demand Face Book to suppress or block whatever posts or comments of political criticism are made against them, before they are to face people’s mandate in not one but two statewide and their political future-deciding critical elections in Kerala soon- the local body elections in 2020 and the state assembly elections in 2021. Do not anyone expect that an inauguration date will be announced in a public function for this clandestine deal; it has already been set in motion and posts and comments criticizing this Communist Marxist Party of Kerala and its rocking government are already begun to be blocked.

Without content no media can exist. In print, electronic and digital media the management produces the content, advertisers finance a (considerable) part of the expenses for running the media and gaining a profit, the media targets that content and those advertisements at an audience, the audience- that is the readers- also contributes to the revenue by way of subscriptions. In social media the management does not produce the content- it is the members who produce the content. Because there are members and there is content produced by those members, the advertisers get in, pay the management for advertising and the advertisements reach the audience alongside members’ content. So, if there are no members and any content produced by those members, no advertisers will ever go to a social media for advertising and giving money. Face Book survives through long standing members and the quantity and the quality of the content produced by those members. The emphasis is always on the quantity and the quality of that content because when they become scant and inferior, nothing will be there to attract members to that media and also hold them there. Many a social media platform has folded under such circumstances- that is, when there are only members and no quality content. Face Book does not give member-content creators remunerations for contributing content. So it’s free- a gift to Face Book from its members. If Face Book sacrifices a content-writing member, or his or her content, and obeys the demands and instructions of their advertisement revenue-giver, then it is its end. It is any social media’s end.

What about paying readers to produce additional content even while the management produces theirs? Some bold electronic media are doing this. The Times of India owned by the Times Group of the Bennett, Coleman and Company Limited does this and provides readers points and star-levels to write comments ranging from one word to Three thousand characters on news articles they publish. They do not pay their content-writing readers money but pay in kind. These readers’ points could be redeemed later from their accounts as commercial articles and goods of the writers’ choosing from the media's catalogue, which would be delivered to their homes even without collecting courier charges. The benefit is the reader/writer- actually a member of that media- gets an incentive and motivation for writing, the media gets additional content, and the comment being proof that the article has been read and apreciated the advertiser gets satisfied and puts in more money. This is the case with professional media content management groups. The meaning is, Face Book cannot go on indefinitely without paying writers money or in kind even while generating money out of their content. Face Book does not generate content by itself anyway.

Written and first published on: 22 September 2020

Ref: (Media news just within two months)

1. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/allegations-against-facebook-alarming-says-digital-advocacy-group/articleshow/77603715.cms

2. https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/facebook-india-grilled-hate-speech-alleged-bias-72769758

3. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-47797151

4. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-44856910

5. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53803256

6. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53995717

7. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/antitrust-allegations-against-facebooks-whatsapp-in-india/articleshow/75769504.cms

Tags:

Communist Party Of India (Marxist) Kerala, Face Book India, India Kerala Politics, Indian Investigation Agencies, International Gold Smuggling Cases, Suppression Of Freedom Of Expression,

About the Author P. S. Remesh Chandran:

Author Profile Of P S Remesh Chandran By Sahyadri Archives.

Editor of Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum. Author of several books in English and in Malayalam. And also author of Swan: The Intelligent Picture Book. Born and brought up in the beautiful village of Nanniyode in the Sahya Mountain Valley in Trivandrum, in Kerala. Father British Council trained English teacher and Mother University educated. Matriculation with distinction and Pre Degree Studies in Science with National Merit Scholarship. Discontinued Diploma studies in Electronics and entered politics. Unmarried and single.

Face Book: https://www.facebook.com/psremeshchandra.trivandrum
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PSRemeshChandra
You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/user/bloombooks/videos
Blog: http://sahyadribooks-remesh.blogspot.com/
Site: https://sites.google.com/site/timeuponmywindowsill/
E-Mail: bloombookstvm@gmail.com

Post: P. S. Remesh Chandran, Editor, Sahyadri Books, Trivandrum, Padmalayam, Nanniyode, Pacha Post, Trivandrum- 695562, Kerala State, South India.

219. A spineless group of Kerala writers who vanishes when CPIM comes into power and reappears when CPIM goes out of power

219

A spineless group of Kerala writers who vanishes when CPIM comes into power and reappears when CPIM goes out of power

P. S. Remesh Chandran

Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum

Image by ..... Graphics: Adobe SP.

1

A group of writers appear on the Kerala scene each time when the Communist Party of India (Marxist) goes out of power and issues a lot of press releases, speeches and videos on a wide variety of issues that may put the governments in the centre and the state at a spot. When Marxist Party comes into power in Kerala and these critical issues continue and new and graver issues appear, this group of writers vanishes, only to surface again when Marxist Party has gone out of power. So, they criticize governments which they know are tolerant towards criticism and will not break their legs, and withdraw themselves from criticizing the actions of the government and the ruling political party when the Marxist Party is in power in Kerala and ‘shrink to their holes, cells and cellars’ as the English revolutionary poet Shelley who predicted a workers’ revolution in England put it in his famous poem Song To The Men Of England, because they know this party is an intellectually ugly party as it was with the Shiv Sena in the past and is not at all tolerant towards any kind of criticism. These Kerala writers who call themselves ‘Literary Leaders’ either fear Marxist Party for its intolerance or they are the Marxist Party. It is only a question of having a backbone, a spine, to question and criticize a government which they do not have. And we do not still know what worthy ‘literature’ they produce or which people or movements they ‘lead’. The names of these impostors are worth noting because we will need sometime soon to remember the names of these literary fascists.

The topics, subjects and issues they spoke upon, released press releases on or made videos about were listless during the reign of tolerant governments like those led by the long-ruled Indian National Congress. But during the time of the Marxist rule, the topics, subjects and issues about which speeches are to be made, press releases issued and videos made were endless but people never saw them appear anywhere and respond to this multitude of immediate issues. Why? They were once making this noise so that they would be noted by the Marxist party and given noted positions in government or in the hundreds of governmental and non-governmental bodies under the control of the government. A few of these who made the loudest of noises were appointed indeed in posts such as Press Advisers to government and the lesser strident as members or chairmen of hundreds of peripheral government bodies which posts do have a government car and a government seal. This long list of bodies start from the Kerala Literary Academy, Kerala Music and Drama Academy, Kerala Folklore Academy, Kerala Film Academy and such, which do have enough posts to engage and keep happy all these puny little minds who raised all this noise in the past just for a government car, a government seal, a little government allowance, and a little governmental authority. Still, they call themselves the ‘cultural and literary leaders of Kerala’, the cream of the crop of Kerala. The names of these opportunists and betrayers of the people of Kerala are endless and someday these names will need to be collected and compiled from their previous joint press releases condemning previous other governments, though it would be easier to go to the almanacs of these govermantal and non-governmental institutions and look up the names of their members and chairmen straight.

Written and first published on: 07 September 2020

Tags:

Communist Party of India (Marxist), India Kerala Politics, Kerala Film Academy, Kerala Literary Academy, Kerala Literary Leaders Writers, Kerala Music Drama, Kerala Press, Literary Fascism,

About the Author P. S. Remesh Chandran:

Author Profile Of P S Remesh Chandran By Sahyadri Archives.

218. Expelling a recently joined few, particularly those with women problems, will be the future for the Indian National Congress

218

Expelling a recently joined few, particularly those with women problems, will be the future for the Indian National Congress

P. S. Remesh Chandran

Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum

Image by ..... Graphics: Adobe SP.

Expelling a recently added few, particularly those with women problems, will be the future for the Indian National Congress. They are the prime source of the turmoil and indiscipline in this party which has ruled India for decades since the country’s gaining independence in 1947. Their indiscipline is not originated from any difference in the policy issues in Congress but simply from the desire of one or two among them to join a Parliament Board in Congress, use that address abroad for personal gains or even simply to show vanity, and secure the Congress Presidency if possible through schism. As long as they are allowed to continue in this party they will sure cause the rifting away of groups, as is happening in Kerala, which are presently amalgamated enough to face the coming elections and win too. The Hindu fascist ruling party BJP does not tolerate such victories for Congress in Kerala and these letter writers in Congress are their agents in disguise. They are indebted to BJP for any number of reasons. Many of their actions in the past has proved that they are suffocating for joining BJP. Let them dive and join BJP and let that party bear this burden and carry this waste. But expel them first from the party so that they will have no bargaining power when they reach BJP. They have no followers in their native lands anyway. So, there is no risk of anybody accompanying them to their new party. Letting these opportunists into Congress was a mistake which must be corrected at the earliest possible. But there indeed are a few senior leaders among the new group of dissidents who must be listened to and their opinions sought ‘on occasions’. It is disuse which eroded their trust in their party’s leadership and turned them mutinous. They indeed have contributed to Congress’ cause in their time and never shall their services be neglected on any account. But first isolate, separate and weaken the newly joined MPs with women problems and expel them for a start. It will only do good to this party which is the hope for the ordinary people of India in upholding their democratic rights and the secularity of the nation.

Written and first published on: 28 August 2020

Tags:

Congress Parliament Board, Congress Presidency, Democratic Rights And secularism In India, Hindu Fascist Ruling Party BJP, Indian Politics, Turmoil Mutiny In Indian National Congress,

About the Author P. S. Remesh Chandran:

Author Profile Of P S Remesh Chandran By Sahyadri Archives.

217. Face Book-India is becoming racial, partial and yielding to the Hindu fascist ruling party

217

Face Book-India is becoming racial, partial and yielding to the Hindu fascist ruling party. Made this complaint on 27 June 2020.

P. S. Remesh Chandran

Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum

Image by ..... Graphics: Adobe SP.

Face Book-India is becoming racial and partial and yielding to the Hindu fascist ruling party named Bharathiya Janatha Party or BJP. This member made this very complaint on 27 June 2020 to an international and independent team that investigated Face Book. Now after two months, the truth is coming out and even international publications like the Wall Street Journal are writing reports about how Face Book’s Director of Public Policy for India, South Asia and Central Asia was embracing BJP, allowing this Hindu fascist ruling party of India to spread communal hatred through Face Book and harass, abuse and hunt political opponents, and by refusing to take such warranted action as post removal against BJP’s Face Book Accounts that violate community rules, spread communal hatred and fake news among the people, and harass opposition political parties. She was also responsible for not removing the ten thousands of fake accounts created by this party. Her political aspirations are very clear and go very high. The Indian National Congress which ruled India for decades has publicly raised protests against this policy which is clearly against Face Book’s international rules. They are raising this question in the parliament and demanding a Joint Parliamentary Committee investigation. Cases are being filed in several courts against this particular pro-BJP person leading Face Book in India. Naturally, Face Book-India will be investigated and Face Book members will be asked questions in surveys as to whether they have had such experiences of bullying, harassing and threatening by pro-BJP factions, and have felt Face Book authorities not willing to take action in reported cases.

Written and first published on: 19 August 2020

Tags:

Bharathiya Janatha Party BJP, Face Book Bias Racial Partiality, Hindu Fascist Ruling Party, Indian National Congress, Investigating Face Book, Political Harassment, Social Media In India,

About the Author P. S. Remesh Chandran:

Author Profile Of P S Remesh Chandran By Sahyadri Archives.

Wednesday, July 22, 2020

216. Terrorized CPIM pressurizes Face Book Group Admins to take over or suppress posts against them. P S Remesh Chandran

216

Terrorized CPIM pressurizes Face Book Group Admins to take over or suppress posts against them

P. S. Remesh Chandran

Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum

Image by ..... Graphics: Adobe SP.

1

There were not a few Indian Political Groups in Face Book which for long had been discussing the various aspects of the Indian political, social and economic life. The attitudes, activities and decisions of the major political parties of India, including the Indian National Congress, Bharatiya Janatha Party, Communist Party of India Marxist and so many North Indian Hindi-based national and regional parties had been dissected and either praised or condemned there for long. These groups allowed perfect freedom of opinion to members and entertained posts having contradictory views, upholding the meaning and purpose of democratic politics and were actually growing up as the Fifth Estate of India where after the Four other Estates of the Executive, Legislature, Judiciary and the Press people directly expressed and permanently recorded their opinions and views and participated in a national debate. Then the BJP under its present leadership, especially after the bifurcation of the twin states of Jammu and Kashmir and the introduction of the Citizenship Amendment bill, began to approach the admins of these groups, most probably with offers of huge amounts of money, to lead these groups to under their umbrella, and shed members who openly opposed their party. They were as anyone can assume willing to pay huge amounts of money to the group administrators or owners to buy out larger groups with large memberships built through years. They knew, even if they started a new group, it would take years to reach such memberships. So it would always be easier and useful to buy out an old group with large membership. Due to this interference or even total take over by the BJP all these groups lost their credibility, popularity and membership. In short, this interference or total take over served no purpose of the BJP. If and when needed, the names of a few such groups could me mentioned here. Had they posted their own posts among the sea of posts, explaining theirs’ or debunking others’ stands, it would still have served their purpose well, instead of being left with a shrunken and discredited group.

In 2020, the Indian National Congress which had been running a group with a large membership base, highly informative posts and lively discussions going on decided to change their name to something like ‘the followers of such and such young and promising politician in Bihar or somewhere’ who they thought was going to become the chief minister of that state. Actually this young politician was buying out this group to misuse it for organizing his coming election campaigns. Being thus betrayed, ridiculed and sold out wholesale, hordes of members left this group and that politician is now left with the job of running a group with no members, at least no credible members. The digital front of the Indian National Congress also lost credibility in this buy out. People who can write join Face Book Groups to start and participate in National Politics, not to raise hands and applaud in support of some obscure cheap politician.

During the Sabarimala Women Entry Agitation in 2018-19, the state branch of the Communist Party of India Marxist lost its digital war in Face Book to BJP. They were swept away by the sheer volume of BJP posts opposing women entry to the Sabarimala Temple for one thing, and by the reality that they were fighting against the national stand of their party in matters relating to gender justice and freedom for another. Moreover, their cyber warriors in their defense lines who were maninly consisting of voluntary as well as paid brigades in Face Book, and miserably underqualified and politically totally inexperienced digital staff employed in the Chief Ministers’ Office, Party’s Offices, Government’s fully paid as well as contracted-out Digital War Rooms, and those borrowed, brought and misused from party and government-controlled organizations like C-DIT, knew nothing about fighting digital wars based on sure-footed rich wide knowledge, new information, unheard-of arguments, theoretical and tactical exposure, and a decent language. And the elders and leaders in this party who led this war knew nothing about digital electronics nor had read anything that was coming against them in the social media sites. They were more interested in reading posts praising them which almost all were. The BJP literally bought out or turned supposed Free Thinker Groups and won this war. The state branch of the Communist Party of India Marxist learned the lesson that it is in the social media like Face Book that wars are lost or won. The same maneuver was repeated in the 2019 Parliament Elections and the state branch of the Communist Party of India Marxist was thoroughly defeated not only in the digital war but also in the actual war in the real world. The Indian National Congress who was a silent observer in this digital war took away the real victory in the field.

In July 2020 the Communist Party of India Marxist-led government, especially its Chief Minister Mr. Pinarayi Vijayan’s office, came under suspicion, and according to opposition parties in the state even under accusation, after the India Customs and the National Investigation Agency of India began investigations on an illegal gold shipment confiscated in the Trivandrum International Airport, sent from the United Arab Emirates to their Attache at their Trivandram Consulates, under the guise of a diplomatic bag. The bag was opened and checked anyway, under authority of course, and 30 kilograms of gold were recovered. One illegal appointee at the Chief Minister’s I.T. Department and her two cahoots were arrested and put under custody and the Chief Minister’s own Principal Secretary-cum-the Principal Secretary of his I. T. Department was held for aiding them all at various levels and servicing them day-night. The Chief Minister’s specially appointed I. T. Fellow-cum-Directors of Special I. T. Services was proved to have been arranging lodgings for the culprit trio. A Civil Police Officer from the Chief Minister-run Home Department was proved to have been irregularly attached to the Foreign Consulate as the Attache’s Personal Security Officer violating the Foreign Ministry’s and the Union Home Ministry’s protocols and was found to have received from the Airport illegal gold shipments camouflaged as diplomatic baggage. One Minister in the Chief Minister’s Cabinet was even found to have been directly dealing with and involving himself in money matters with the foreign embassy.

So naturally this created uproar in the social media including Face Book and all the defense lines of the Communist Party of India Marxist and its Chief Minister and his government collapsed. So the party announced that it was moving towards beginning to to build up massive social media support to defend this issue. No sooner their state committee on 20 July 2020 announced this than a few Face Book Political Groups with the largest of memberships (as a fact, exceeding 50000) came under barrage and are now disrupted- a sign before a take-over. The party intends to intensify Face Book Campaigns to save face in the midst of Gold Smuggling Accusations against their ministry and party and their young leaders deputed for this job are pressurizing several Face Book groups to stop running posts accusing them. It has happened several times earlier as we have seen here. It is not new. And every time they did this, they miserably failed. Because the number of credible posts against them was increasing, the number of posts supporting them was failing, or decreasing, or becoming totally ineffective. It does happen during times when this party actually looses face. They are searching for any supportive faces in Face Book which they do not find. The last it happened was during the Sabarimala Women’s Entry Campaign when BJP overwhelmed them in Face Book Groups and scored a mark. But, by the way, I was one who supported this party in that campaign for women’s entry into all temples with full governmental and party support.

Images Courtesy: ....
Written and first published on: 22 July 2020

FROM THE BOOK: ....

Tags:

Communist Party India Marxist, Face Book Political Groups Takeover, Kerala Chief Minister IT, Parliament Election 2019, Sabarimala Women Entry, Trivandrum Airport Gold Smuggling, UAE Tvm Consulate,

About the Author P. S. Remesh Chandran:

Author Profile Of P S Remesh Chandran By Sahyadri Archives.

Saturday, May 30, 2020

215. Kerala’s corona electronic medical data deal ends in shambles. P S Remesh Chandran

215

Kerala’s corona electronic medical data deal ends in shambles

P. S. Remesh Chandran

Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum

Image by Kewl. Graphics: Adobe SP.

1

The first corona virus case in the world was reported in China towards the end of 2019. The first corona virus case in India was reported in Kerala in Trichur in Kerala when a student traveling from Wuhan in China to India reached the native town on 01 January 2020. Soon many people came from foreign countries carrying this disease and people in Kerala began to be affected from them. As the number of cases increased the health data of the people who came to Kerala from abroad and who came to Kerala from other states of India had to be collected and analyzed and a follow-up action charted. In addition to updating data on people either under observation or under treatment, the data on the health staff in the state engaged in disease control and treatment and interacting with them also had to be collected and analyzed to identify who would be next susceptible to be affected. Considering that around 2,00,000 people were under quarantine in Kerala during this period, it was not small data. It was enormous.

This data comprising of complete medical and personal data of the affected and the likely to be affected people of Kerala including their symptoms and health conditions, present and past diseases, their treatments present and past, and geo-positioned satellite tracking of all these people, not to mention details of their insurance coverage if any for treatment, collected at lower levels and sent upwards had to be processed and analyzed and decisions arrived at in each individual case and at the community level for which special tools had to be engaged.

To track patients, digital intelligence on them has to be created which is done by collecting patients’ structured and unstructured data and processing and analyzing them. Government needed software in the form of an App which could be downloaded into and made functional in the various devices including mobile phones, laptops and computers used by personnel from the field staff level to the master controlling centre level. Thus data would be collected by field staff and fed to the control centre and the control centre in its turn would process and analyze this data and inform the field staff what to do in each individual case and at the community level.

When the corona virus spread through Kerala during the months of February-March of 2020, the government had this immense data but ‘according to them’ had no know-how to process and meaningfully use it. The political commission agents in government came up with the name of a foreign data collection and processing service provider who in records agreed to provide this service free of cost under conditions for a few months. They were assigned the job and entrusted with the data which they were expected to receive and store in their server wherever it was. They were soon exposed and proved to have been illegally involved in the American presidential elections. The only justification the government had to offer was this company was founded by an American-resident Keralite and his services were offered free-of-cost.

A government can contract the help of private technology specialists if and only when governmental capabilities are not sufficient and contract foreign private technology specialists only if native private technology specialists are not available there for use. But a government overriding governmental and native capabilities and going after inferior and dubious foreign private ‘capabilities’ who have practically no experience in health care was what the Kerala government did in its Sprinklr deal. Knowing well in advance that the nefarious data transfers in this deal in future may result in legal litigation, to escape Indian courts, the government also agreed to the law governing jurisdiction being fixed as New York. This law-breaking tendency of the people in government was clear indication of the breaking of many laws by its collaborating company itself on their part in future in that they were hoping the government would be functioning as the collector and the company as the seller, an experienced seller, of the data. The mutual benefit would be the people in government- that is the political commission agents associated with or in the ruling party of the government- would be unburdened with the complexities of selling the data and the company would be relieved of the huge expenses of collecting the huge data.

One thing which must be noted here is that though collection and processing of health data by electronic means is what is called e-health, the government, the media and everyone associated with this undercover deal carefully avoided using the name e-health. They called it everything but e-health, keeping the already much publicized and expensive e-health project of Kerala out of the picture and keeping it in reserve for more lucrative other deals in future before the term of government expires in a few months.

Medical data stored in a server can be misused or lost due to a multitude of reasons. Discussing the data outside of the office and business associates breaching privacy, security and data confidentiality are common. Phones, laptops and USB devices attached to using the data can be lost or stolen, hack-wares may invade and mal-wares run. Improper security safeguards and lack of ample access controls may lead to data unauthorizedly accessed, stolen, misused or sold. The security protocols may have purposefully inbuilt loopholes to override administrative, technical and physical safeguards in the system and drain data onto the black market where it will get on average three times more of important and confidential financial data and be used for thousands of purposes by hundreds of companies and individuals including blackmailers and ransom seekers.
Instead of the minimum data needed for the execution of a given assignment, the bulk of the data in the repository could be made to be exposed to an accessing person who could sell it piecemeal on who-needs what-basis to be used for a wide variety of companies and individuals. Employers of firms may want confidential medical data of staff and will pay handsomely for getting hold of that information. The amount that changes hands will always be many times higher than the legal fine for that information unauthorizedly changing hands if detected.

The National Informatics Centre is India’s prime and paramount institution in the IT sector, far experienced and credible compared to its foreign competitors, and the most ideal IT tool and the biggest data analytics platform in India for the various Indian states to crunch the personal health information of citizens collected by field workers. While this institution’s services were available without the hassle of the data being stolen and misused by foreign agencies when the corona virus threat was becoming a reality in India, the Kerala government ignoring this national institution approached an American-based and controversial- controversial in being illegally involved in the American presidential elections and facing prosecution there- firm to receive, store and process the health data the state was collecting from citizens in connection with the corona defense. When this deal came to public light and the government’s motivation for this deal was questioned, the Chief Minister of the state, Comrade Mr. Pinarayi Vijayan told that this American company was offering its services free, the state had no other companies accessible or available at the time, and the government had proprietary rights over the health data collected electronically which will be protected and will never be misused or monetized by this American company. He also emphasized the fact that this company was run by a Malayali as if all Malayalis are clean!

Many large multinational hospital chains which operate even within India have excellent electronic patient data management systems which already handle very big data collected in real time from patients, analyzes it in no time, and tell doctors and nurses what to do. Their systems manage millions of patients at one time and it is very strange that the Kerala government did not approach any of them for help to handle a large volume of data when an epidemic began to make its sweep in Kerala.

This company was till then only a social media management company providing apps and software for social media management. They were never experienced in managing massive health data from hundred thousands of people. It was their first attempt of this kind and one or two of their software was modified to accommodate the health data collection and processing needs of the Kerala government. They were using Kerala government as a stepping stone in to big health data management. Had this deal originated in any other state in India it would not have ended in controversy. The people of Kerala- the highest literate state in India- are unique in that they view suspiciously any data storage system, especially health data collection and storage, and if it is handed over to and stored by a private company as highly suspicious. The perpetrators of this deal did not consider this mindset of the people in Kerala whose data was what they were going to collect and as a result this deal became controversial and a topic of public debate. As a result the trustworthiness and honesty of this data collection was lost and people of Kerala are now doubly suspicious. Remember that the crowd of IT experts and net investigators and net hackers on the right side of law in India and in the world are a large part Keralites and they are now vigilant enough to detect where and when this data resurfaces and is made use of commercially by parties who were never signatories to this agreement between Kerala government and a foreign company on behalf of Kerala people.

Why should their services be free under conditions of course at least for a time? It is because they are in possession of the data free. Any insurance company would be eager to get hold of this data to learn in advance which of their policy holders had which of the diseases before taking their insurance policy so that they can deny payment of medical expenses saying, and also proving, that the policy holder concealed information on treatments of previous diseases. If they escape payment of 2,00,000 rupees of medical coverage and had to pay 50,000 rupees for getting hold of information on that particular case, still they had made a very handsome profit. Think how elaborate and efficient medical data theft would be and is! Of course the service provider can offer their services to government free. What is most important for them is access to the data which they get free anyway.

2

In government’s opinion manual processes of medical care which were generating thousands of medical records which were dispersed across several different locations were creating problems. The meaning: A person or a company sitting at or situated at Bombay or New York cannot now see the medical records in the General Hospital or the Medical College, Trivandrum. Therefore every medical record should be kept in the electronic form, uploaded in real time to a central data base, and stored there to be available to anyone from anywhere to see.

HP Enterprise Services India officially announced on 27 July 2015 that they were selected as partners in the e-health project of Kerala by the Department of Health and Family Welfare, Government of Kerala, for providing the core technology, applications, various online and real time services, and collect, store, analyze and research medical data. The HP was to be in partnership with JK Technosoft in this deal with the Kerala Government. The e-clinical services they offered included online prescription, online diagnostics and online imaging, the data and images they all generated going to their dynamically updated central universal database in a cloud server and accessible to doctors from anywhere on a need-only-basis. The idea was, once HP takes care of the responsibility of data collection and monitoring of treatment, doctors can access their data repository, get real-time advice and focus on patients better and take care of treatments more efficiently.

How this e-health will be working in hospitals is in more or less this way: All the people above 30 will be invited to screen for hypertension and diabetes, records will be created of those tested positive, their current medications noted, and they will be notified in their mobile phones after three months to go check their blood pressure and sugar levels again, all data fed into the central data bank under unique identification. The concept is these persons using their biometric authentication can go to any hospital and for the doctors there access on the desktops or other devices there their demographic and medical data by the help of the authorized employee in that institution. Other diseases detected will have other similar sub data bases from which other regimens will be advised to the patients through their doctors.

The mobile health world of 32000 apps and 28 billion US dollars as assets!

The m-health or mobile health apps are the new applications for collecting and stealing medical data. Their projected value in 2018 was 28 billion US dollars. More than 200 mobile health apps are added to the worldwide app stores each day and as of now 320,000 of them are available to download and install in websites, tablet computers and mobile phones now. Ninety percent of these are created exclusively for the purpose of stealing medical data of people for various interested companies and nearly all of them are fronts, backs, subsidiaries or associates of ‘interested’ companies. Any government installing them in their health network system and advising people with tablets and mobile phones to comply will never fully know whatever they would be doing with the data passing through them; the government will know only bits and parcels of the operation.

The government suppressed medical data theft and tried to portray the end result as the cause!

So the government of Kerala installed an m-health application- most probably the cheapest one recommended by the greediest of the political cronies in the minister’s office- in their e-health project website. No sooner the e-health project was inaugurated on 26 January 2018 than the data thieves began their operation with the full blessings of the project’s political promoters. By the beginning of March 2018 more than ten million people’s personal and medical data had been collected in their app and successfully leaked out. The end result was a number of tablet computers which stored personal medical data of people becoming damaged or dysfunctional and most people’s data messed up and found to be mixed together or jumbled- the inevitable result of any clumsy hasty operations. The government tried many ways to portray this end result as the cause! Finding no other option the government stopped e-health data collection from 23 March 2018 and removed the m-health app from the e-health project’s website. The government suppressed this data theft but it came out in April 2018. On 10 April 2018 it was reported that the health department, under the direction of the health secretary, initiated an investigation on the irregularities in the e-health project and shared the people’s forewarned anxieties over insurance companies and medical companies acting behind and getting hold of this information for illegally using them.

On 11 April 2018 it was announced by the health secretary of the state that this e-health project which was officially launched on 26 January 2018 has succeeded in securing World Bank assistance as a project for the automation of hospital processes and collection and storage of electronic demographic and health data of the population, it would automate all health care and patient care activities in the state and link all government health institutions through a high bandwidth (reliable!) network, and will have a complete profile of every citizen living in Kerala in the end to enable surveillance of each and everyone’s diseases. He also admitted in not too many words that this project would use the insecure Aadhaar unique identification number of citizens, it would be implemented first in the rural areas where there will be the least resistance, and there could be no guarantee as to the protection of personal identifiable data and privacy in the new massive data repository to be set up.

On 10 January 2019 the health minister announced that 14 million of the 35 million population of Kerala had already been brought to the digital health platform, 79 of the 170 Family Health Centres had been digitized, e-health was being extended to all districts and all government medical colleges, outpatient registration, clinical examination and administration were working on the e-Health software, and that hospitals were going patient-friendly and paperless. Six months later, on 15 may 2019, the health minister announced that 20 million people had been covered under e-health, hard copies of patient records are going extinct, diagnosis and treatment are done from soft copies available in computers and the system, and that patients were being given virtual tokens for doctor consultation with appointment time marked.

If corona data collection had to be assigned to a foreign firm, then what were the HP Enterprises India and the Government E-Health Project doing in Kerala?

The three people in Kerala who most claimed in media that the e-health project of Kerala which was in operation since 2014 is a great success were Mr. Pinarayi Vijayan, the Chief Minister of Kerala, Smt. K K Shylaja, the Health Minister of Kerala, and Mr. Rajiv Sadanandan, the Health Secretary. If what they claimed was true, by 2020 Kerala must have had a vast repository of people’s demographic and medical data covering some 33 million residents in Kerala. Or are they jokers? When the corona virus broke out in the beginning of 2020, the Kerala government was seen engaged in busily setting up data banks of demographic and medical details of all people of Kerala with foreign assistance. Then how was the e-health project of Kerala which has been in operation since 2014 a success? Moreover, these three people separated corona monitoring from e-health to avoid the question why there was not enough data in e-health demographic-wise and medical-wise to cater to the needs of corona monitoring, and if not, why were they claiming the e-health project was a success. In fact the e-health project was a thorough failure in spite of bringing in and assigning the job of setting up the data repository to the famed HP Enterprises in 2015. Even HP Enterprises India’s Vice President & General Manager Marshal Correia on 27 July 2015 publicly announced that ‘they were assigned the job of creating an e-Health IT platform for Kerala, electronically linking 1,000 government health centres, 200 hospitals and 3 medical colleges across the state, to provide healthcare to 33 million citizens, and coordinating all public health programmes, medical inventories, electronic medical records and hospital management information systems in the state.’ In their own admission their duty in this deal was ‘to provide the core technology and mobile applications for capturing all activities and processes of patient care, compile and store and analyze the medical data and report them, provide centralized monitoring and management, e-clinical services and disease surveillance, and do medical research’. If in 2020 corona data collection and care had to be assigned to a foreign American firm then what were the HP Enterprises India and the Government E-Health Project doing in Kerala?

(UNDER EDIT. WILL CONTINUE….)

Images Courtesy: Pixabay.
Written and first published in: May 2020

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Tuesday, September 22, 2020

220. Face Book blocks comments against Kerala Marxist Government’s Trivandrum international gold smuggling case association

219. A spineless group of Kerala writers who vanishes when CPIM comes into power and reappears when CPIM goes out of power

218. Expelling a recently joined few, particularly those with women problems, will be the future for the Indian National Congress

217. Face Book-India is becoming racial, partial and yielding to the Hindu fascist ruling party

Wednesday, July 22, 2020

216. Terrorized CPIM pressurizes Face Book Group Admins to take over or suppress posts against them. P S Remesh Chandran

Saturday, May 30, 2020

215. Kerala’s corona electronic medical data deal ends in shambles. P S Remesh Chandran

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Tuesday, September 22, 2020

220. Face Book blocks comments against Kerala Marxist Government’s Trivandrum international gold smuggling case association

219. A spineless group of Kerala writers who vanishes when CPIM comes into power and reappears when CPIM goes out of power

218. Expelling a recently joined few, particularly those with women problems, will be the future for the Indian National Congress

217. Face Book-India is becoming racial, partial and yielding to the Hindu fascist ruling party

Wednesday, July 22, 2020

216. Terrorized CPIM pressurizes Face Book Group Admins to take over or suppress posts against them. P S Remesh Chandran

Saturday, May 30, 2020

215. Kerala’s corona electronic medical data deal ends in shambles. P S Remesh Chandran

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