Q. From the intermediary rules to the upcoming Data Protection Bill and Digital India Act, the government is aiming to bring some order into the chaotic digital landscape in India.
A. India has become the preeminent nation using technology in governance. India Stack is a powerful globally recognised symbol of Indian innovation, with Aadhaar and UPI creating an entire ecosystem of their own. An interesting fallout has been that India’s innovation ecosystem is now one of the fastest growing in the world. As the prime minister said, the next decade can be India’s ‘Tech’ade!
[But] if you look at the framework, we have a 22-year-old Information Technology (IT) Act. The challenges that the internet and the technology space represents today are far more challenging and the changing nature of technology far more disruptive, leading to the need of a new framework. The first element of that is the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill. Second [is] the Digital India Act (DIA), essentially a successor to the IT Act, and there [will be] other elements, like the Telecom Bill and Cyber Security Acts. But the two underpinning legislations are the DIA that is in the pipeline and the Data Protection Bill which is around the corner.
Q. What were the concern points that led to these new laws?
A. The internet of 2022 is dramatically different, qualitatively, quantitatively and substantively, from the internet of 2010 or 2019. The challenges and opportunities are very different. Therefore, the laws have to be contemporaneous with those challenges and opportunities.
Secondly, by the very nature of what is technology, every two years or every three years there are going to be new trends, new challenges. No law can stand still and has to be by its very architecture and design evolving. Since the earlier laws were built for a particular time and particular landscape of technology and we are in a very different world today and going forward our ambitions are very different, the law have to be much more contemporaneous. The difference is one [that is] evolving versus [one that is] static. The scope of the law is much broader today than what it was in the past.
Q. Can you tell us more about the Digital India Act (DIA)
A. Not all of the 1.2 billion Indians getting on the internet are tech experts. Indians in remote parts of the country use it as a lifeline, to claim pensions and benefits. Therefore the internet cannot be but safe and trusted.
I have been associated with the internet right from its early days [when] it was seen as a power for good, to connect people and exchange ideas. That utopia has long since then been demolished by Big Tech and the toxicity of the past few years. But we cannot allow Indians to be subject to that user harm.
The IT Act is from 2000, that is why [it cannot deal with] a lot of the challenges we face today on the internet. Because it was not envisaged for the internet’s toxicity and its user harm. The internet today is like the water in a pipe in a village, you should be able to trust the quality of the water. Because a vast majority of Indians are going to use it for their livelihood, safety and trust on the internet is paramount.
See the Competition Commission of India’s decision on Google. I am not commenting on the decision. But clearly many Big Tech companies have a huge influence on the nature of free choice and competition and value creation. Those are the issues we want to create the right balance on. It is not just social media that is an intermediary, there are different intermediaries. AdTech and sharing of media revenue for example. There should be some fair formula that drive monetisation of content. Those will be addressed in the DIA. There should be no presence on the internet that distort free and fair competition, and free and fair choice.
Q. Even now, somehow Big Tech is taking it lightly.
A. For too long, the platforms have evaded accountability by pretending to be innovators. ‘We are technology, innovators, why should the government come in our way?’ For the last 10 years, the world [agreed to this] and now, we are where we are. They have become big, they have money and lobbying power and they are very difficult to regulate.
You saw FTX collapse. It was a $32 billion company. In the future of technology, there will be some dos and don’ts. I’m not saying the government is going to regulate the internet. But clearly, there will be obligations cast by law on every platform and intermediary, and in India’s case, that will be (for) openness, safety and trust, and accountability.
Q. For long the issue has been that the law has been trying to catch up with technology.
A. Governments have been trying to catch-up with Big Tech. The world has woken up, India has taken the lead. We will not play catch-up, we will set the boundary conditions and now everybody should play by those. And, by the way, Mister Big Tech, this is not adversarial. This is as much in your interest as it is in the people’s interest.
Q. Talking of privacy, the Data Protection Act was delayed for long.
A. It was not a delay. We withdrew it for a reason. Because it had become too complex and unwieldy and it would have finished off our startup ecosystem.
Second, there is a general impression that there is a choice to be made between supporting startups and protecting individual rights. It is not a binary, we will do both. We will keep it easy for startups and we will ensure individual’s right to data protection is maintained. The current document is a new formulation. The previous bill dealt with so many issues beyond data protection, including regulating social media. So we withdrew it and [have] come up with something modern, contemporary.
Q. The 2019 draft had raised a lot of allegations of Big Brother and too much government control. Would you say the new draft addresses all those?
A. That you will have to tell me after you see it. I will say this is a much more contemporary bill. A bill that will be allowed to evolve. There will be subordinate legislation that will take care of situations we cannot foresee today. It is an evolvable framework that balances both ease of doing business as well as individual’s rights to data protection.