Wide consultation needed to avoid tech policy U-turns
In a swift policy reversal, the Union government has revoked its order requiring all smartphones to compulsorily install the State-issued Sanchar Saathi app. The telecom department’s direction to phone companies on November 28, made public this Monday, was withdrawn on Wednesday after howls of protest over privacy concerns and the intrusive ‘Big Brotherly’ move from the State. However, another directive requiring ‘SIM binding’ of apps remains on the table. It means that an app would be disabled when the linked SIM is removed. It will affect those who, when travelling abroad or in network blindspots, rely on wifi to stay connected, especially through messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, or Arattai. Also up in the air is the future of such apps’ business users, whose accounts are often not linked to a SIM, but to software on a server.
Both ideas seek to address the hydra-headed monster of cyberfraud that often rears its heads from abroad. SIM cards bought in India are taken to scam farms in Myanmar or Cambodia to target Indian nationals back home. The Prime Minister has warned citizens to stay alert against the menace of ‘digital arrests’. On Monday, the Supreme Court tasked the Central Bureau of Investigation to crack down on the menace, giving the agency a “free hand” to go after bankers complicit with the scammers.
The problems are genuine but the medicines are often ill-advised. This is not the first instance in the tech policy space where the government has taken one step forward and two hurried steps back. Other examples include a ban on several blogs in 2006, a draft encryption policy proposed in 2015, and an advisory issued in 2024 to register artificial intelligence models. One deficiency apparent from these recurring reversals is the use of narrow consultation channels—often lined only by industry representatives—before putting out a policy. Stability is one of the hallmarks of good policymaking. For a country that rightly claims to have some of the best tech talent on the planet, playing hopscotch with tech policy speaks to inadequate preparation. Embedding effective modules on digital safety in school curriculums and constantly training members of the executive and the judiciary on its evolving nuances is no longer a luxury in this digital era. It’s a sheer necessity.