“We should not have a proliferation of regulators—a personal data regulator and a non-personal data regulator. There are some businesses that enjoy this kind of arbitrage opportunity that is represented by multiple regulators. I will have no problem if there is a convergence of regulatory entities or institutions for the entire data economy,” said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, during a conversation with Samir Saran, President, Observer Research Foundation. Chandrasekhar was speaking at CyFy 2021 in a session on regulation of the digital ecosystem in India. He stressed the need for data sets as “fuel for artificial intelligence (AI)” and added that India cannot afford to stay out of the AI space as China is ahead of everyone in the world. “A large reason for the delay of the Personal Data Protection bill has been the fact that the (parliamentary) committee had to work during COVID-19. There was patchy attendance of members because people couldn't travel to Delhi,” Chandrasekhar said, adding that he is hoping the committee's report will be tabled in the next session of Parliament. Rajeev Chandrasekhar is the second-most important person in India's IT Ministry and his remarks may indicate which way the Indian government is leaning when it comes to its regulatory priorities. Key Takeaways from the ORF session Encryption is not a fundamental right for terrorists: “We do not have a problem with encryption. Some of our disagreements with the platforms are because platforms tend to take away these fundamental…
