Information, Disinformation, Fake News

“…the government is responsible for Bipin Rawat’s death, Bipin Rawat’s daughter is accepting Islam, the North Korean army is going to Kashmir, etc. What sort of nonsense is this!,” while addressing a press conference, Information & Broadcasting (I&B) Secretary Apurva Chandra stated. “We have used the provision of section 69A of the IT Act to block these (Pakistani)channels under the emergency provisions as their contents were totally toxic…”

 

The government has ordered the blocking of 35 channels on online video-sharing platforms YouTube and 2 websites. These websites were engaged in spreading anti-India propaganda and fake news on the Internet in a coordinated manner through digital media. YouTube accounts blocked by the Ministry had a total subscriber base of over 1 crore 20 lakh, and their videos had over 130 crore views.

 

Disinformation is a more generic term and is prevalent across almost all walks of life, some accidentally and some by design. Disinformation causes fake news is well illustrated by the classical example from the greatest epic, Mahabharata. In the middle of the war Yudhisthira, whose honesty could be counted upon, shouted अश्वत्थामा हतः इित नरो वा कुं जरो वा ( Ashwatthama is dead, not sure if its the man or the elephant). His formidable enemy creating the havoc was none other than his teacher Dronacharya who dearly loved his son by the name of Ashwatthama. The noise of the battleground caused him to hear only the first half of the utterance from Yudhisthira and was enough to sink him in deep sorrow, dropping the weapons and getting killed. Disinformation caused by noise in the system turned out to be fake news causing ultimate damage for the unsuspecting father.

 

 Social media has leveraged digital connectivity & reach to make societies more democratic as the source of information is distributed now. One can argue that fake news is an inherent problem of this powerful technology and needs to be carefully understood and dealt with by media houses, regulatory bodies, and society at large. During covid times, the massive slowdown in print and electronic media content generation and consumption has cleared the way for the accelerated growth of digital news. With this, the menace of fake news has become a nightmare with utmost urgency to be dealt with.

More than Chipping In

Posts of CEO, CTO and CFO have just been advertised for ISM. India Semiconductor Mission(ISM) is an independent and specialised nodal agency being set up by the Government of India with a mandate to drive strategies for the development of a sustainable semiconductor and display ecosystem. These and many other posts are expected to rope in global experts to contribute to nation-building.

Today’s digitization race-winning strategy requires new electronic systems whose power consumption is low and battery backup is high, speed is very high and new designs should roll out fast, and of course, all of it should be affordable for the masses.

VLSI or very large scale integration is the stream of electronics that helps in achieving these systems by shrinking their size that is used in remotes of television, cell phone, microwave oven, AC, washing machines, Cars, space ships, aviation, weather forecast, satellites, defence and many other domains of modern life.

So far India manufactures chips for defence and space research at fabs present within IISc, SCL Mohali, and few others places. Large scale manufacturing for consumer electronics and other high-tech industries though is altogether a different ball game. The technical complexity of the domain, huge investment requirements, availability of the purest form of silica ( raw material), very stringent cleanliness requirements at the manufacturing site as well as huge water and uninterrupted power supply needs of this industry pose a real challenge for India to match the competition of Taiwan, South Korea and China.

IIT Kharagpur has one of the first VLSI labs in India, where R&D efforts in this domain and chip design seem to have come to an age with the Centre of Excellence in Nanoelectronics at IIS Bangalore, IIT Bombay and other institutions doing excellent work. Domestic semiconductor consumption has been consistently growing at a healthy rate and the need of the hour is accelerated progress on setting up chip manufacturing companies (also known as fab). In addition to meeting the challenges of technical complexity, Investment requirement is huge for any semiconductor fab unit. The electronic sector is one of the domains where 100% FDI is allowed under automatic route. Chipmakers are likely to get support beyond normal PLIs if they are really committed to India.

Aatmanirbharta Bharat is clearly aiming to cover the lost ground and make India one of the leaders in this essential domain of modern civilisation. Ministry of Electronics and Information (MeitY) has sought applications from 100 academia, R&D organisations, start-ups and MSMEs under its Chips to Startup (C2S) Programme. A Cabinet committee chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi had initiated this program to usher in a new era in electronics manufacturing by providing a globally competitive incentive package to companies in semiconductors and display manufacturing as well as design.

विश्व के सर्वाधिक लोकप्रिय नेता है PM मोदी: सर्वे

Changing Sports and Games Paradigm

The recent success at the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics showcased that India is no longer dominated by Cricket. Seven medals in the Olympics and 19 and Paralympics demonstrate amply that there is a lot of potential for other sports in the nation. Schemes like TOPS and with government support, the nation can achieve new heights. These successes seem to have ushered in new and big development in the Indian Games and sports Arena.

India is the host for the 2022 AFC Women’s Asian Cup for football for the second time in history and it begins today. The blue tigresses will take on Iran in the opening match of group A. “Our Goal for All” is the official tagline of the 2022 AFC Women’s Asian Cup. Hosting after 42 years, the matches will be played in India in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, and Pune. Next year, India will be hosting the Men’s Hockey World Cup for the fourth time. Around this time next year matches will be played in Bhubaneswar and Rourkela.

Another interesting, and green, development is the potential formula E World championships being hosted in India in the city of Hyderabad. The Telangana state and formula E have signed a letter of intent to make Hyderabad the official candidate city for hosting formula E racing. This will be a fantastic opportunity to usher in electric cars and to showcase the green progress in Telangana. Formula E is an all-electric racing series while Formula 1 showcases hybrid races with internal combustion engines powered by fossil fuels. Formula E racing aims to transfer technologies from the race track to the road and inspire innovations to fix the climate crisis as we see India is taking rapid strides towards the sustainability goals for ensuring a healthy planet for future generations.

The gaming industry, particularly mobile gaming, in India has witnessed a growth of around 40% in 19-20. 86% of this market consists of mobile phone users. The gaming sector in India is growing faster than most media sub-sectors – including cinema and home entertainment, audio, and more. Recently, The Government of India announced that it will set up a National Center of Excellence for Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming and Comics to create a world-class talent pool in India to cater to the Indian as well as a global industry.

Physical to electric to digital, Indian sports are sure to come back strongly in post covid world.

IPPB : Bridging the Digital Divide

“India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) would usher in economic transformation by bringing banks to the doorsteps of the villagers and the poor.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi had set this goal while launching India Post Payments Bank in 2018. IPPB is the fastest-growing digital payments bank in the country to cross the five crore subscriber mark within 3 years, which has been opened in digital and paperless mode through its 1.36 lakh post offices, of which 1.20 lakh are in rural areas with the help of about 1.47 lakh doorstep banking service providers.

Goal of this ‘Digital-First-Bank’ is to make the “technology” of modern finance available to a wider population. Dealing with the post GFC of 2008, one cannot help but notice that financial technology has been abused and credit growth has been non-responsible. This is where Responsible Financial Inclusion makes IPPB a world class leader in true sense.

The first and foremost target audience for IPPB services are rural population, migrant workers and small capital entrepreneurs. IPPB is well placed to utilize last mile connectivity of DoP to serve the agenda of responsible financial inclusion and financial growth of this prime target audience.

IPPB has achieved the world’s largest digital financial literacy program leveraging the strength of 2.8 lakh post office employees. It has taken digital banking to the grassroots level in more than 13 languages through interoperable payments and settlement systems of NPCI, RBI and UIDAI. Further, about 48% of the total account holders are women.

Building on the current capabilities, IPPB has to strive to become the intermediary by facilitating relevant information and processing and monitoring capability for following and earning fee rather than profit. Three clear domains are Peer-to-Peer lending, Company loan for salaried staff and SME cash management – all helped and managed by IPPB. These and similar business opportunities need to be capitalized upon in response to the changing paradigm of payments services and financial inclusion ecosystem.

Factors of Production

India is a capital starved country and world is now flushed with cheap capital, thanks to shock absorption measures taken by central banks across the developed world since GFC of 2008. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has laid out an enticing recipe to world investors in world economic forum, Davos.

In this Digital age, India has leaped ahead in creating appropriate “Land”, e.g. a huge, secure and successful digital payments platform, fibre connectivity of gram panchayats and many more fundamental assets are ready. Further, Gati Shakti National Master Plan is strengthening connectivity like never before.

Today India is home to over 5mln software engineers and many more are working across the world. There are multiple public and private sector measures to harness the benefits of demographic dividend by providing appropriate skills to the largest young population of the world.

Today India has the third largest number of Unicorns in the world. More than 10 thousand start-ups have been registered in the last 6 months. India has also deregulated many sectors like Drones, Space, Geo-spatial mapping and made major reforms in the outdated telecom regulations related to IT sector and BPO. The spirit of Entrepreneurship is high and shining bright in the times of Atmanirbhar Bharat.

To solve the problems of Capital availability, one route is taken by DIPAM, “Asset Monetization involves creation of new sources of revenue by unlocking of value of hitherto unutilized or underutilized public assets….The objective of the asset monetization programme of the Government of India (GOI) is to unlock the value of investment made in public assets which have not yielded appropriate or potential returns so far, create hitherto unexplored sources of income ….”

Clearly, the global investor is blue to see India as a hub not just for return on Capital but also for a sustainable future. P3(Pro-Planet-People) is a viable slogan from a country which has achieved Paris commitments 9 years ahead of schedule.

Measures like PLIs across 14 sector, improvements in Ease of doing business! reforming retrospective tax, various FTAs, a Competitive corporate tax regime and Gati Shakti National Master Plan are getting noticed by Global investors and investments should spur in the country.