New Delhi (India), 20 December: There is a need for “ responsible regulation” of technology such that it balances the need for citizens’ safety with a legal framework that can drive innovation by companies, Alphabet Inc and Google chief executive officer Sundar Pichai said. India has a “leadership role to play” in creating such frameworks according to the technology leader who said his company is “engaging constructively” on it with India.
Speaking at a company event in New Delhi on Monday, Pichai termed this “ an important phase” as India redraws its technology regulation framework. The draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill (DPDPB) and the draft Telecom Bill are currently open for public consultation. The IT ministry is also due to release a draft of the Digital India Act for public consultation, replacing the 22-year-old Information Technology Act of 2000 in the next few weeks.
The Google CEO also engaged in a fireside chat with India’s IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. Both spoke at a Google for India 2022 event.
Responding to a question on what the upcoming technology regulations are, Minister of IT said “multiple small sectoral focused modular regulations” will be built on top of the upcoming Telecom Bill, the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill and the Digital India Act.
“It’s a very comprehensive outlook. We should be able to complete this (public consultation and passing in Parliament of all three bills) exercise in the coming 14 to 16 months. The two bills (the telecom bill and the digital personal data protection bill) which have been put up for consultation should be completed by July, August (2022), and should pass the Parliament,” Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw stated.
“Making credit accessible to the people at the bottom of the pyramid will be a major task ahead in which we will be using AI. It is going to write all the success that we have already had in terms of the payment, and identity system,” he said.
The successful UPI model will also be replicated in other areas such as health, agriculture and logistics, according to Vaishnaw. These products, which are built on the India Stack model of creating digital public infrastructure which can then be used by private companies across the board have also generated interest across the world, he added.
“Let’s say somebody wants to have a similar identity system in France. So, our companies can go there, work with their governments, with the public institutions and their regulatory systems. Over a long period, they can develop a trusted solution for other countries,” the union minister said. India will also extend its vibrant startup ecosystem to tier-II cities and tier-III cities.
Pichai said that each time he returns to India, he finds that the startup landscape has become “more sophisticated.”
–Dr. M Shahid Siddiqui (PhD); Follow via Twitter @shahidsiddiqui
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