First draft of Digital India Bill to be completed by month end: MoS Rajeev Chandrasekhar

“We (India) are signalling to the world as the largest connected nation we are shaping the guardrails and through a process of consultation and engagement, trying to create a framework that other countries can follow,” the minister said.

He said that the Digital India Bill was a good framework for a forward-looking global standard cyber law. The Bill will replace the 23 year-old Information Technology Act (IT) and is a much sought-after legislation by the industry.

Also read | High-risk data fiduciaries to be regulated more granularly under Data Bill: MoS IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar

He said that the government had already done three in-depth pre-consultations on the Bill, the first of its kind, with lawyers, users, companies and start-ups about the principles of the Bill before drafting it.

Chandrasekhar also said that the India Stack – which is an open source platform would be offered to the Global South. “For countries with zero or no digital economy this can be the catalyst to a new innovative system in their own countries,” he said.

Discover the stories of your interest

Adding that three countries had already signed Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) recently with India to adopt solutions and 10 to 12 more nations are also considering plans to implement it very soon.Talking about artificial intelligence (AI), Chandrasekhar said that it is a “kinetic enabler of the digital economy”. He said that “We (India) are in a position to bring to bear one of the largest and most diverse data sets in the world.” Regarding the issue of AI harm, particularly job losses, he said that in the current context, AI is putting the spotlight on reskilling the workforce rather than replacing it.

AI, he said, was not just about innovations and numbers but also about billions of dollars worth of computing capacity. The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing,(C-DAC) an autonomous Indian scientific society operating under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) is pivoting towards AI compute as their core application, he said. He added that AI compute capacity will be made available to all research institutions of the country.