Indian Government’s Big Digital Plays (#9)
Talks about how a few dominate the digital landscape, how tough it is to regulate, and how the govt. is developing its plays in the domain
The article talks about how the digital landscape is dominated by few, how tough it is to regulate, and how the government is developing its plays in the domain.
Credits: FreePik
The digital economy works differently. The principles are all the same, but the methods differ. We see businesses on the web rise up fast and fall faster. And underlying all such businesses are two components: data — the currency of the digital world, and capital — the fuel for growth. The big companies have access to more of both. And data only invites more capital, which feeds more data and even more capital onto them. A reinforcing loop, if ever there was on. And this loop allows big companies to keep growing.
In this scenario, anyone who challenges the leaders, unless backed by equally potent funds or data-capability, is usually acquired or stepped on. A serious threat to smaller businesses. And the big five tech players, popularly called FAAMG, have been at the core of such an acquisition drive. With the power of money and networks they bring to each acquisition, they have given rise to many a digital monopoly and, to challenge the popular rhetoric, perhaps killed quite a few innovations.
The idea is similar, but the players dominating the digital landscape are a little different in the Indian context. As one of the blogs on The Ken covered recently in its newsletter, Jio, Paytm, and Times Internet are fast becoming part of the ‘Big Tech’ club. And this ongoing crisis, with the array of converted digital customers, is only aiding them.
Now, whether to fight the growing digital influence in the hands of few or not is a null question. The more important question is rather how to do so. There have been calls and actions by the antitrust bodies on issues of monopoly, privacy, and security across the world. More so in the EU and US, and importantly in India as well. But the challenges of regulating the new forms of pricing, markets, and platforms are equally complex.
We would expect lawlessness on the web to be a big issue for the governing bodies, but it seems to spark as many opportunities to them. In this context, the Indian government appears to have become more innovative. The rest of the article talks about three such developments.
Surveillance without Rules
Reports over the last couple of years have suggested how strict the government surveillance of citizen data is in India. Forrester called it alarming, Compritech ranked it third across surveillance states (only behind the almost dictator-esque states of China and Russia), and the experts from India have not been quiet either. While much of the raised eyebrows get directed towards ill-formed and archaic data protection laws, it is the state actions over the last couple of years that have made the reality scarier.
Take, for instance, the formalisation of a section of IT Act in late 2018 that allows central agencies ranging from the Intelligence Bureau to the Cabinet Secretariat to intercept, monitor, and decrypt “any information” from any computer resource. Not only can our email or call be intercepted, but any data found on our computers can be. So much for the Right to Privacy.
A report in Indian express in March signalled how the government has been forcing telecom companies to share Call Data Records (CDRs) of all mobile subscribers on an ad-hoc basis for months, although the request went against the rules and was soon red-flagged by Cellular Operations Association of India (COAI). This has not been the standalone instance, however. A more famous controversy was the assertion in the Pegasus case that ~121 spywares had been used in India to track phones through WhatsApp, and more alarming was the premise that the government had used these spywares to spy on their critics. In light of these developments, imagine that the government announces the formation of a social registry that acts as an “an all-encompassing, auto-updating, searchable database to track every aspect of the lives of each of India’s over 1.2 billion residents”. It is tough to remain optimistic about its prospects.
Remember that these were all before the ongoing lockdown. And the issues of public surveillance in a health crisis only assume lower ranks of priority. Especially when guidelines are pushed and mandated almost daily, there is little stopping the authorities to push surveillance in the guise of public health measures. We can only hope that the Indian government takes the sensible route. And I would rather not add anything to the topic when you can read Yuva Noah Harari talk about it.
Applications for the Masses
Surveillance is usually a behind-the-scenes activity, and the common man has little patience to patrol how he or she is being surveyed. But a pandemic and a popular government can change that form of surveillance, for the worse. Not to challenge the motive of introducing Aarogya Setu — the contact-tracing app from the Indian government — but its adoption by over 10 million citizens in only a couple of months acts as a good case study for any future government digital product. And the celebrations by the top execs are only an indication of how successful this new form of achieving mass adoption was for the government. If put to good use, this ability to reach millions digitally is a massive opportunity to provide banking, rations, subsidies. But the issues of security are hardly two feet away.
While the users were mostly concerned with the GPS and Bluetooth accesses granted to Aarogya Setu, a report by the Paris-based cyber-security agency highlighted how the application could potentially access all our contacts and phone sensors, including our microphones. Even though it shared none of that information with the users. For the consumers heavily reliant on everything digital today, the possibility of surveillance on the apps heavily pushed or sometimes mandated by the government should be scary.
Now, this might signal a trend. Government intervention into domains that are usually filtrated by private players has happened before. Think of BHIM and Rupay. To make matters confounding, BHIM was developed by NPCI, the body governing the other UPI apps. So not only can the government make big buck applications, but it can also govern its competitors.
The app, in its three and a half years of existence, has seen over 50 million downloads, a significant number by any measure. And although BHIM’s market share is quite low right now, this reinforces how a government body can use applications to reach the masses, for good or bad.
Rupay, on the other hand, is challenging Mastercard and Visa through its cards. This again was developed by NPCI, with the idea of making India cashless. A good initiative, without a doubt. But more astonishing is the reach of Rupay, with over a billion transactions and ~33 percent cards market share. Again, there is little to question here, but the concept of a governing body competing with the private players itself is uncommon.
As we move forward, encouraged by the experiments during the pandemic, the government might opt for building its applications in areas of national interest. Maybe an e-commerce platform or a marketplace for gig workers is next in line. Either way, the questions against the governance of such products will remain, and data protection laws will continue to be debated.
Controlling App Store
…prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order
Outside the great firewall built by China, the bans in free-market economies of digital products have been far and few. But invoking a small section of the IT act was enough to ban 59 Chinese apps for the Indian government. This is a crucial moment in time, because it may very well set the precedent for how the Indian government treats the millions of applications in the play store.
The possibility of removing one off the face of the country with little warning or explanation — by simply calling out the potential ‘threat’ to integrity, defence, or security of the country — lies very well in the grey area. Disturbingly, roles seem reversed, and the onus is on the makers to get themselves out of their bans. That is, they are guilty until proved innocent. The sudden disappearance of the privacy-browser DuckDuckGo on a few telecom networks might be a case in point.
A cause of more recent developments, but forcefully removing an application is a trend that might shape the future of many major digital products in the country. More so, it is a power move. With little in the way of government stepping on a product, hardly any business would think twice before sharing the information that the government desires. Only a hypothesis, yes, but a real and alarming possibility with our history of state surveillance.
Final few words
A few tech giants monopolise the digital economy, and the reinforcing loop of data and capital lowers the hurdles to these players becoming stronger. More so then, governments play an important role in how it governs this landscape. But in India, with some help from the crisis, three digital plays of the government have become apparent:
Public surveillance with little regard for rules,
The introduction of digital products that reach far and compete against private players, and
The assumed authority of the government to force a verdict on products that potentially threaten our security
As the population becomes digital-first, we can expect to see these trends shaping the future of the applications on the web. And it can be as delightful as it can be scary to imagine how they might evolve. But for the time being, awareness and a keen eye towards the government’s digital plays is all we should aim for!
Hope the article was informative. If you have any thoughts to share, let me know in the responses or over LinkedIn. Have a great day!