Stability, a sense of security and hopes for the future, all go for a toss for H-1B visa holders in the US and those in the long queues for Green Cards. The H-1B visas, temporary visas for highly skilled foreign nationals in the US, also come with worries about paying the next bill, finding employment in 60 days if one loses their job and trying one's best to stay in the US and realise the American dream. Though Indians dominate the H-1B visa programme, with 72% of H-1B visas held by Indians, it comes at a cost.
Monday, January 20, 2025
Held hostage by H-1B visa system, Indians show signs of depression, anxiety
From signs of depression and anxiety to not being able to visit their parents, some Indian H-1B visa holders took to social media to discuss how their lives have been hit by uncertainties. They might have to deal with the impact of H-1B visa curbs after US President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration on January 20.
Stability, a sense of security and hopes for the future, all go for a toss for H-1B visa holders in the US and those in the long queues for Green Cards. The H-1B visas, temporary visas for highly skilled foreign nationals in the US, also come with worries about paying the next bill, finding employment in 60 days if one loses their job and trying one's best to stay in the US and realise the American dream. Though Indians dominate the H-1B visa programme, with 72% of H-1B visas held by Indians, it comes at a cost.
Stability, a sense of security and hopes for the future, all go for a toss for H-1B visa holders in the US and those in the long queues for Green Cards. The H-1B visas, temporary visas for highly skilled foreign nationals in the US, also come with worries about paying the next bill, finding employment in 60 days if one loses their job and trying one's best to stay in the US and realise the American dream. Though Indians dominate the H-1B visa programme, with 72% of H-1B visas held by Indians, it comes at a cost.
With 2.7lakh scanned pages, archival project led by IITBombay on Narayana Guru to go online this May
A massive digitisation project undertaken by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, in association with the Sree Narayana Mandira Samity (SNMS), Mumbai, will give a peep into the life of Sree Narayana Guru, who paved the way for a modern Kerala during the end of the 19th and the early part of the 20th century. The archive project, titled Narayana Guru Digital Research Resource Platform (NGDRRP), which began in 2023, will be fully available online this May. Siby K. George, Professor of Philosophy, IITBombay, and principal investigator of the project, said, ‘‘Detailed academic studies, especially in English, on Sree Narayana Guru are hardly available.
The digital archive project is expected to solve this issue as over 2.7lakh pages have now been scanned and hosted on the platform.” According to Girija K.P., consultant and project coordinator who coordinated the digitisation and groundlevel work, the objective of the project is to compile, sort, classify, vet, and digitise literature on Sree Narayana Guru, currently scattered among individuals and institutions and unavailable to researchers, and to create a credible and systematic archive. It also aims to make available previously inaccessible materials, including magazines published during the Guru’s time. These materials may assist researchers and proponents of the Guru in gaining a deeper understanding of his multifaceted personality, Ms. Girija said.
The scope of the project involved digitising extensive materials collected from the private collection of individuals such as G. Priyadarsanan at Varkala, public libraries, and personal collections of Guru’s disciples and followers.
The documents will be launched in collaboration with the South Asian Open Archives. Some magazines (24 issues of Dharmam and 71 issues of Mithavadi) have been launched this month, said Pradeep Kumar P.I., Professor of Chemistry, IITBombay, and coprincipal investigator. Anish Damodaran of the SNMS, which funded the ₹42lakh project, said that to chronicle the history of modern Kerala, a comprehensive archive of Sree Narayana Guru was imperative. This forced the outt to take up the project with the IITBombay, he said.
Source: https://www.pressreader.com/india/the-hindu-erode-9WW6/20250120/281775634821359 1/1
https://www.pressreader.com/india/the-hindu-erode-9WW6/20250120/281775634821359
How is TRAI and the govt. combating spam? | Explained
How will blockchain technology effectively counter spam? What are some of the steps being taken by the government against unsolicited commercial communications? Have some of the measures already taken been effective against unwanted calls and messages? What is a do-not-disturb registry?
The story so far: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) will be using distributed ledger technology (DLT) to register spam preferences from customers, TRAI chairman Anil Kumar Lahoti said. Spam rules will be tightened to make commercial messages traceable, the TRAI has indicated.
What is TRAI’s role in fighting spam?
The TRAI regulates the telecom industry, and its main role is in regulating Unsolicited Commercial Communications (UCC), the official name for spam. Starting in 2007, the regulator implemented a do-not-disturb (DND) registry, which would force telemarketers to abide by customer preferences when it came to commercial calls.
If a telecom customer signs up to the DND registry, they are not supposed to get any spam calls or SMS messages.
TRAI had also worked with an external agency to develop a DND app, which would allow customers to register their DND preference, and accept complaints. Under the Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulation (TCCCPR), 2018, telemarketers who called or sent messages to DND-registered customers would receive warnings, and if enough warnings accumulated, they would be blacklisted from sending messages to telecom operators.
The DND app has not always been maintained by the TRAI, and was briefly unavailable from 2022 onwards. An SMS reporting facility where users would have to report messages in a particular format was available, but further steps were taken to make the process more user friendly. In 2024, TRAI mandated that DND reporting be made available on every telecom provider’s app.
What role does blockchain play?
In order to fight the deluge of spam messages, TRAI mandated in the TCCCPR that telcos use a blockchain ledger, also known as a distributed ledger, in order to store a constantly-updated list of approved senders of SMS messages. Telcos would also be required to approve specific formats of messages. For instance, an OTP message that goes, “Your OTP is 433212,” would be stored in the blockchain as “Your OTP is …” with space for a variable. These messages have been required to be sent from sender IDs, and not phone numbers.
This has been one of the most stringent rules that have been issued to fight SMS spam anywhere in the world. Blockchain as a technology allows for so-called immutability, which means that every stakeholder involved in a transaction has a reliable, un-tamperable version of the same data. At the time of the 2018 regulations, the necessity to use blockchain for the purpose of maintaining a spam exemption database was debated, as enthusiasm about the technology’s potential had spilled over beyond cryptocurrencies, where it continues to be a mainstay.
In 2024, the regulations were tightened to ensure “traceability” of messages, thus making sure that telcos would have a complete record of who issued a message before it is sent to an SMS gateway. This was aimed at plugging a crucial flaw in the system that would allow anyone to register on the blockchain solutions implemented by telecom operators and send out fraudulent or spam messages in spite of the systems in place to combat them. These, Mr. Lahoti has said, will be further tightened in the coming year.
Have these measures been effective?
For those who have registered their DND preferences, communications from legitimate businesses that follow the rules may have reduced. However, spam has a constantly changing character. While much of spam is merely commercial messages that may be annoying but harmless, the wave of digitisation has increased incentives to get around the protections against commercial messaging and calling. A wave of fraudulent calls have also emerged, with cyber frauds seeking to ensnare Indians in financial scams. Many of these operations are done outside the framework of SMS sender IDs, and are run through disposable 10-digit phone numbers, making it hard for real-time enforcement of anti-spam regulations.
There is also the issue of spam and scam calls from international numbers, which can be leased from certain online Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers, but appear as legitimate international call traffic.
Which are the other steps taken by the government to end spam?
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has launched the Sanchar Saathi portal, which has a reporting site called Chakshu. DoT has partnered with law enforcement, banks, and other stakeholders in order to accept reports of “suspected fraudulent” calls and messages, and has moved to cancel lakhs of numbers that are associated with unauthorised telemarketers and scammers.
It also set up the Telecom Security Operation Centre at its New Delhi headquarters to monitor suspicious internet traffic in real time. Meanwhile, firms like Airtel have taken steps to declare suspicious calls using Artificial Intelligence as “Suspected Spam,” a move that is being replicated by other telcos as well. The telco has also started labelling international calls on smartphones.
The story so far: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) will be using distributed ledger technology (DLT) to register spam preferences from customers, TRAI chairman Anil Kumar Lahoti said. Spam rules will be tightened to make commercial messages traceable, the TRAI has indicated.
What is TRAI’s role in fighting spam?
The TRAI regulates the telecom industry, and its main role is in regulating Unsolicited Commercial Communications (UCC), the official name for spam. Starting in 2007, the regulator implemented a do-not-disturb (DND) registry, which would force telemarketers to abide by customer preferences when it came to commercial calls.
If a telecom customer signs up to the DND registry, they are not supposed to get any spam calls or SMS messages.
TRAI had also worked with an external agency to develop a DND app, which would allow customers to register their DND preference, and accept complaints. Under the Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulation (TCCCPR), 2018, telemarketers who called or sent messages to DND-registered customers would receive warnings, and if enough warnings accumulated, they would be blacklisted from sending messages to telecom operators.
The DND app has not always been maintained by the TRAI, and was briefly unavailable from 2022 onwards. An SMS reporting facility where users would have to report messages in a particular format was available, but further steps were taken to make the process more user friendly. In 2024, TRAI mandated that DND reporting be made available on every telecom provider’s app.
What role does blockchain play?
In order to fight the deluge of spam messages, TRAI mandated in the TCCCPR that telcos use a blockchain ledger, also known as a distributed ledger, in order to store a constantly-updated list of approved senders of SMS messages. Telcos would also be required to approve specific formats of messages. For instance, an OTP message that goes, “Your OTP is 433212,” would be stored in the blockchain as “Your OTP is …” with space for a variable. These messages have been required to be sent from sender IDs, and not phone numbers.
This has been one of the most stringent rules that have been issued to fight SMS spam anywhere in the world. Blockchain as a technology allows for so-called immutability, which means that every stakeholder involved in a transaction has a reliable, un-tamperable version of the same data. At the time of the 2018 regulations, the necessity to use blockchain for the purpose of maintaining a spam exemption database was debated, as enthusiasm about the technology’s potential had spilled over beyond cryptocurrencies, where it continues to be a mainstay.
In 2024, the regulations were tightened to ensure “traceability” of messages, thus making sure that telcos would have a complete record of who issued a message before it is sent to an SMS gateway. This was aimed at plugging a crucial flaw in the system that would allow anyone to register on the blockchain solutions implemented by telecom operators and send out fraudulent or spam messages in spite of the systems in place to combat them. These, Mr. Lahoti has said, will be further tightened in the coming year.
Have these measures been effective?
For those who have registered their DND preferences, communications from legitimate businesses that follow the rules may have reduced. However, spam has a constantly changing character. While much of spam is merely commercial messages that may be annoying but harmless, the wave of digitisation has increased incentives to get around the protections against commercial messaging and calling. A wave of fraudulent calls have also emerged, with cyber frauds seeking to ensnare Indians in financial scams. Many of these operations are done outside the framework of SMS sender IDs, and are run through disposable 10-digit phone numbers, making it hard for real-time enforcement of anti-spam regulations.
There is also the issue of spam and scam calls from international numbers, which can be leased from certain online Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers, but appear as legitimate international call traffic.
Which are the other steps taken by the government to end spam?
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has launched the Sanchar Saathi portal, which has a reporting site called Chakshu. DoT has partnered with law enforcement, banks, and other stakeholders in order to accept reports of “suspected fraudulent” calls and messages, and has moved to cancel lakhs of numbers that are associated with unauthorised telemarketers and scammers.
It also set up the Telecom Security Operation Centre at its New Delhi headquarters to monitor suspicious internet traffic in real time. Meanwhile, firms like Airtel have taken steps to declare suspicious calls using Artificial Intelligence as “Suspected Spam,” a move that is being replicated by other telcos as well. The telco has also started labelling international calls on smartphones.
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Source: Maharashtra Times (Mumbai edition) Marathi dated January 22, 2019 (Accessed on January 22, 2019)
