Like-minded countries should work together to shape future of tech: MoS IT
New Delhi: Minister of State for IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Saturday said there is a fundamental reset underway in semiconductor, electronics and innovation world order post-COVID, and like-minded nations need to work together on a cooperative framework to shape the future of technology.
To safeguard citizens from online user harm, India has defined the boundary conditions of openness, safety and trust as well as accountability for platforms and companies to operate on the Indian Internet, the minister said and hoped that with global cooperation these principles will find a wider play among other nations.
Chandrasekhar was speaking at a panel discussion on `Democracy’s Eleven: Protecting our Technology Future’ at the Raisina Dialogue 2023.
To a question on internet shutdown in India, the minister said that the internet shutdowns as percentage of the total number of online users in India as also the diversity or enormity of content ecosystem, is among the smallest in the world.
Moreover, any internet shutdown or content takedown is lawfully prescribed and lawfully ordered by the government in exceptional circumstances under the law, the minister explained.
Post-COVID, clearly the digital supply chains, value chains, innovation ecosystem, and critical technologies ecosystem are undergoing a deep structural change. And while there is indeed a re-ordering of the world order in semiconductors, electronics, and innovation, “no country is going to be able to do this alone”.
“A few years ago, we allowed in a sense, a concentration of these technologies and these products and the supply chains around certain economies. We blindly believed in the global economic system or the global system of trade, and we have realised post-COVID that those hopes or beliefs were not terribly sound. So I think, the first is that there is this re-ordering of the semiconductor world order, electronics world order and innovation world order that is underway,”
he said.
The minister advocated a cooperative framework among like-minded countries in shaping the future of technology.
“So I think what we are proposing in India and we’ve been steadily arguing for this for some years now, is that among like-minded countries there ought to be more of a co-operative framework...whether through that co-operative framework or prism, you look at future tech, critical tech...regulating the internet, the rules, and go/no-go areas,” the minister said.
He asserted the post-COVID new world requires a much more institutional framework in how nations approach technologies, and the future of tech in particular.
“That is what we are doing, that is what we believe in and we are looking at this re-ordered new world order in semiconductors, electronics and critical technologies, in terms of partnerships with like-minded nations,”
he said.
There is no difference between democracy and digital democracy, and the fundamental values for physical world and cyberspace are the same, the minister added.
