The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY), is working closely with the semiconductor ecosystem to achieve the vision of Viksit Bharat (Developed India) 2047, and is coming out with an incentive scheme for electronics components soon. In an interaction with ETTelecom, MeitY Secretary S Krishnan talks on semiconductor sector, electronics components, regulating AI, implementation of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, and a consultative process with Big Tech companies. Edited excerpts.
Do you think recent developments in the semiconductor space align with the vision of Viksit Bharat 2047?
Of course. Seeing a country like India, given its size and importance of having Atmanirbharta or self reliance in a key technology sector like semiconductors, is very vital. You can imagine, during the pandemic, there was a non-availability of semiconductors for automobiles, and those (supply chain) things created a problem. The car was produced, but it was not brought out because the chip was not there. When electric vehicles (EV) will emerge, the chip requirement will be huge, and we will use practically in every domestic and other devices. So there’s a huge requirement for electronics and definitely India must have its own value chain production of those chips.
How much contribution will it make to the Indian economy, and do you have any study to back this?
See, for semiconductor, it’s difficult to quantify it because the use will only grow in different sectors of the economy, and different industries are using it. So it’s more about building resilience than about adding to growth, and in an advanced area we have our presence that is what is more important.
Share an update on mobile manufacturing especially, on the value addition side. You earlier talked about increasing the local content?
There was a report by NITI Aayog on the electronic components that are global value chains and opportunities. So, what they have said is that we have to increase the production of electronic components in India. In that report, we worked very closely with leading retailers. So, we fully support that and what they are basically advocating for, is that electronics in any case are a global value chain, no one country dominates the entire supply of course, So, this is the position as far as the electronics sector is concerned, and in India’s case, today, we are at about 18 to 20% of the valuation that we wanted to reach. We have to target certain kinds of companies and make sure that they manufacture in India. So, NITI Aayog has advocated a scheme with that purpose, and we will be participating in that.
Status of this scheme for components?
Scheme has been under preparation, and requires necessary approvals.
How soon will it be available for the industry?
It is for electronic components. We will do it as quickly as possible.
So you basically incentivise companies who add more value?
Yeah, that was the short answer.
What is the update on the India AI Mission?
We are in the process of launching the mission. We have to do the procurement of GPUs, and it is in the process.
How MeitY is dealing with Big Tech, especially when it comes to user data privacy on the backdrop of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023?
Point is that PDP rules have to be finalised. Unless the PDP rules are finalised there is an issue with how we operate them. We are able to have rules which comply with the requirements. And at the same time, we don’t have an issue with their compliance. It should not become impossible to comply and there should not be much disruption.
Are you advocating some sort of consultative process?
The issue there is that we wanted to understand because there are some restrictions in Section 9 of the GDPR about how child’s data etc can be used, so we wanted to see how to evolve that particular practice, and what is the practice in other countries. Are they addressing the same issue? The safety has been taken care of, because there are two parts to this. If they track who the children are then they can do targeted advertising directly, but if they don’t take the child how will they prevent a predator or a bad actor from reaching them.
So are you talking to these Big Tech companies on these issues?
Yes we are talking, and saying, what is the practice and how we want you to comply. This is the law to comply. You tell us what are the mechanisms by which we ensure that the rules can be written in a way that will sort of achieve our objective we In terms of what the Act entails, and the compliance is least disruptive.
Do you think it’s time to regulate artificial intelligence (AI), and how you are looking at it?
In March, we had issued an advisory in which we suggested some steps that the company should take including labelling, and they should ensure it. You don’t experiment with India with all this. We have to be very careful about this. At the same time, it should not cause user harm. We are prepared. I mean, if we have to legislate, we will.
Is the government preparing some sort of framework?
We are working on it but initially we will issue an advisory if there is something like deepfake or misrepresentation, then they know provisions under the present law.
