Scindia calls for guardrails to prevent misuse of technology
Communications minister Jyotiraditya Scindia stressed on the importance of setting up guardrails and standards as India becomes more digital to protect citizens online from scams, deepfakes and other issues
Communications minister Jyotiraditya Scindia stressed on the importance of setting up guardrails and standards as India becomes more digital to protect citizens online from scams, deepfakes and other issues. He was speaking at a panel with tech influencers and content creators at the India Mobile Congress.
“Technology and innovation always bring with them tremendous amounts of improvement, a lot of agility. But along with it, it must bring certain guardrails, certain standardisation such that it is not misused,” he said.
He talked about the dangers of deepfakes and people falling for scams online as he stressed on the importance of standards and guardrails created by bodies such as the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly to stem the abuse of technology.
Scindia specifically asked influencers how the department of telecommunications could disseminate information about its portals such as Sanchar Saathi and Chakshu, which enable citizens to report spam and scam calls and messages.
“I do believe that the government’s role is to lay out the carriageway as well as the guardrails. Carriageway is your fibre, your telecom infrastructure. The guardrails are regulations, standardisation,” he said.
Scindia talked about how the democratisation of access to information is one of the biggest revolutions in the world today, and while the West might lead the charge in terms of innovation and technology, India today and in future will lead the charge for content creation.
“Today, content creation is a $30 billion enterprise will be about close to $480 billion by 2030-2035. That is the kind of leap that is being enabled by this carriageway, this highway,” he said.
“Content has to be tailored specifically to our [Indians’] needs,” he said as he said that for traditional forms of media, the numbers for vernacular languages have always been higher for the numbers in English.