At a hackers' conference in the capital last week, attended by droves of ethical hackers in the audience, a speaker was explaining how most hackers did not have any formal training in hacking or cyber security. Most of them had had to educate themselves in hacking techniques on their own, he said, praising their efforts to protect the country's networks against cyber-attacks for little in return.
The speaker, who oversaw critical government infrastructure and protected it from cyber threats, was himself a major in finance, he told the audience. The next speaker was the head of the Bharatiya Janata Party's technology cell Arvind Gupta. He opened his speech by saying that he was different from the audience. "I am educated," he said with bland humour, but the audience caught the joke about his credentials, which won him thunderous applause.