CORPORATE CITIZEN CLAPS FOR THE ODISHA GOVERNMENT’S ‘SUJAL-DRINK FROM TAP’ MISSION’ ENABLING THE TEMPLE-CITY OF PURI TO BECOME INDIA’S FIRST IN SUPPLYING A 24X7 CLEAN DRINKING WATER ‘STRAIGHT’ FROM THE TAPS

The aim is to extend safe drinking tap water across 16 more cities including Cuttack, Rourkela, and Berhampur, benefitting Odisha’s four million urban population. Importantly, ‘Sujal’ will also facilitate water supply to its 66,000 slum dwellers. Odisha now joins developed nations like the U.S., the UK, Singapore, and Japan where ‘piped’ clean drinking water is not an exception. Piped drinking water is commendable in a country where most households resort to water purification methods for almost all their drinking and cooking requirements. The initiative is expected to benefit close to 2.5 lakh residents across Puri and touted to be a winner for its two crore annual tourists and pilgrims who visit its famed Jagannath Temple. Tourists will have access to 120 drinking water fountains installed all along the Grand Road and other public hotspots-a step to discourage using plastic water bottles. The Odisha government has assured water quality conformation to IS 10500 specifications set by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and have put in place an elaborate mechanism for monitoring and addressing any issues related to clean drinking water supplies. This includes building key community links at ward levels via underprivileged women or ‘Jalsaathis’ from self-help groups (SHGs) as part of ‘Mission Shakti’ who will receive remuneration under a performance-based and incentive-linked programme. Sujal was initially launched in October 2020 with a pilot to provide clean tap-drinking water to 1.5 million people in 15 towns of Odisha by March 2022, which has now been revised to October 2023. Water from the nearby Bhargavi river has been channelised to a reservoir before being sent to the Samang treatment plant for undergoing processes including chlorination before pumping it for consumption for its population of 250,000. The plant purifies 42 million litres whereas the daily demand for water across Puri is about 32-34 million litres. For residents accustomed to drinking water from household water purifiers-it’s a matter of time as they develop a ‘taste’ for this milestone endeavour.

CORPORATE CITIZEN SLAPS THE GROWING INCIDENCES OF TECHNICAL SUPPORT-RELATED SCAMS IN INDIA AS HIGHLIGHTED IN MICROSOFT’S 2021 GLOBAL TECH SUPPORT SCAM RESEARCH REPORT STATING THAT 70% OF CONSUMERS IN INDIA WERE VICTIMS OF ONLINE FRAUD IN 2021

The most common methods of losing any money as stated were through bank transfers (43%), gift cards (38%), PayPal (32%), credit cards (32%), and Bitcoin (25%). Security firm Avast detected and blocked over 200,000 tech support scams in India in the first quarter of 2021. The continuing cybercrime reality in the latest MS findings pinpoints that people in India fall victim likely due to their faith in unsolicited contact and respond to unsolicited telephone calls (45%), to a pop-up window or ad on their PC screen (33%), unsolicited emails (36%) and redirection to another website (30%). “Almost half of the consumers surveyed in India (48%) were tricked into continuing with the scam-an eight-point increase from 2018, and three times higher than the global average (16%). Thirty-one per cent of those surveyed continued engaging and eventually lost money, an increase of 17 points compared with 2018 (14%),” the survey stated. Consumers in India lost an average of `15,334 to such scams in 2021 but 88% of those who lost any money were able to recover some back, at an average of `10,797. Millennials across all age groups in India were seen as most susceptible, with 73% of males in India losing more money than 27% of females in 2021. Microsoft has been receiving around 6,500 complaints per month globally from victims of tech-support scams. K S Viswanathan, Vice President, NASSCOM (Industry Initiatives), said that the industry body has been organising interactions with various stakeholders to minimise such frauds. While Chrome claims to have put all the privacy and security concerns to rest with its new upgrade, Paul Ducklin, Principal Research Scientist at Sophos, said that with WFH becoming the norm post the pandemic, companies should also take care of employees’ cybersecurity health.