 Ladies and gentlemen, please take a look at the screen as I take the privilege of welcoming the honorable minister of state for electronics and information technology and skill development and entrepreneurship Government of India, Mr. Rajiv Chandrasekharji a man of principles Symbol of honesty and of course self-reliance to welcome him. Let's put our loudest round of applause together, please So a very warm welcome to you and over to you Thank you Inviting me to speak here today along with all your colleagues From your from your talk. I understand you've had a long day. And so therefore I don't want to Extend that too long. Nor do I want to subject you to any more young That I understand you've had to hear the whole day but look, I think I I'm not sure I'm the best person to speak at a DNPA event And certainly One where there are so many stalwarts who are in the audience But I certainly think I can share with you what I see as a future of digital and Therefore by extrapolation the future of digital media. I Will break this up into two short parts. I will speak to you first about how I see the digital ecosystem Digital India in a sense progressing in the coming years and how digital media and digital content Fitted to that overall framework that we are building and expanding As you know, digital India is a vision of our honorable prime minister. He set out three broad goals in 2015 He wanted digital and technologies to empower our citizens Change our governance to improve our governance and democracy He wanted digital to create more opportunities for our youngsters and create more entrepreneurship opportunities and expand the digital economy and he wanted through digital India for India to Be the producer of technology rather than just be a consumer in in the years going forward he has As you are aware called referred to the coming decade as India decade a decade which is opportunity rich with technology opportunities and that he has referred to that India decade as our future goal and a goal that will be built by The enthusiasm and the innovation and the creativity of hundreds and thousands of lakhs of Indian young Indians from across the country But in the in the in the overall scheme of things we are today at about 800 million 80 crore Indians online Making us one of the largest Connected nations of the world. We are one clearly one of the largest connected Not not one of the largest with the largest grouping on the internet because the Chinese internet is really not the internet and it's a world of Intranet so if you consider that amongst the world's open societies and open nations where media counts Where information is the right of every citizen? India certainly is the largest Connected nations and the largest informed society on the global internet The internet as it was let us say a decade ago is not the internet that we see today It is a lot more complex and with the advent of 5g the complexity of the internet and the Participants in the internet will become even more diverse the internet which was blindly referred to as as Where there was a definition of intermediaries in the 22-year-old IT act Which basically qualified the internet and one class of Companies or platform that sat on the internet as intermediaries has become certainly in the last two decades a much more complex thing With a much more diversified set of applications of platforms that characterize the internet today Going forward. It is very clear that AI the web web 3 And many many other trends the sharper cheaper smaller devices the Cloudification the increased rapid acceleration of digitization and Cloudification of our digital economy. These are the four or five trends that you can in a sense safely assume Will drive the future and growth of the internet in India. It's clear also that we have today 80 crore Indians online and Very certainly by 2526, we will have almost 120 crores of 1.2 1.3 billion connected to the internet and And using the internet for a diverse set of services products and other other information that they seek out our approach towards Building the digital economy to be a trillion dollar digital economy and create a framework of laws, which is too pronged we have Already put out what we consider is one of the two prongs which is the digital personal data protection bill Which essentially codifies the right to data protection of the individual citizen and but creates a predictable easy Compliance unintensive framework for those who innovate on the internet To also continue to do what they do whilst respecting the data protection rights of the individual So that's one prong the second very important prong Currently is the IT Act which will be superseded and replaced by a much more contemporary Digital India Act in the coming months and this two pronged approach will create the framework That will guide the Indian digital economy in the digital in the digital ecosystem and continuous expansion continuous robust growth and Hopefully in the coming years make us the preeminent Nation in all things innovation in the digital space as we are on track to do so This is broadly what I wanted to tell you in a nutshell about where we are going With our government policies and where we think that the digital ecosystem will end up in the coming years We are at about 300 billion plus in terms of the digital economy today It is diversified significantly from 2014 where we relied Significantly on the idea and ideas pieces of the digital economy and today we have a very diverse range of Slices of the digital economy that are all growing robustly the IT ITS piece the startup and innovation piece the electronics manufacturing piece and now to that we are adding the semiconductor design semiconductor manufacturing the The AI the blockchain the blockchain and the web three piece high performance computing piece so we will see that the digital economy as We saw or knew or understood in the pre 2014 days will not be the digital economy going forward in the in the in the coming years Let me quickly also touch on my views on this whole issue of digital media and the future of digital media and we have some peripheral interest in in that because of the fact of Fundamental fact that the internet in the early years was always seen as a force for good And it was really all about connectivity and connecting people sharing ideas Connecting communities connecting people to friends and families and all of that was really the utopian idea of the internet in the early days Of the internet and that remained true for several decades after the internet was built out And it is only in the last decade or so that the internet has now begun to represent significant other challenges of openness and the market domination or Domination by some big platforms The second is that there is now Heightened awareness about user harm And the need for a focus on safety and trust on the internet and the third aspect That people are beginning to become aware of is that as millions and millions of consumers Come on to the internet use the platforms consume products and services that accountability to the little guy Accountability to the consumer is also something that needs to be built and legislated And and many of you in the audience will understand this that for many many decades Regulation and government lawmaking or government scrutiny or indeed societal scrutiny or oversight About digital platforms lag innovation because it was seen that these are all innovation platforms And they did not represent any threat. They did not represent any criminal Criminality, but today's understanding is that as much as these platforms and platforms represent good and can enable can empower They can also be misused. They can also be be forces for harm and And illegality and criminality. So I think these are What shape Our discourse on what the future of digital media can be should be digital media is obviously Media as we know it has always been viewed by consumers of media as being responsible Being accountable being transparent And that is how media was seen for many many years and decades and we've had legendary brands That were built around those values of and tenets of trust and credibility And somewhere along the line with the digital media and digital brands proliferating We have seen that those old values of media have been challenged or put to test And I in in the ministry in our ministry We have done many experiments and I want to just share this with you in the audience where we have seen that newer D2C type of media platforms Who use misinformation? They use partially true information Create more velocity and much more reach for their content than traditional brands that still do the right thing and do research Content and do content that is absolutely accurate And so therefore there is a tendency in in in almost like a written incentive now given the characteristics of misinformation and characteristics of of less than accurate reporting or That they reach a wider audience they reach a wider audience faster and that is a temptation increasingly for even the Even the traditional value-based Media platforms to adopt so I think that is a challenge. It's not a challenge for the government It is a challenge for the consumers. It's a challenge for platforms that believe in In doing things right and this this characteristic of The bad news or the wrong news traveling Further and faster than the the good news and the correct news is something that requires Our discussion and conversation and discourse to see what we should do about it. So I'll leave that with you to think about Clearly the other big area in the overall digital economy is the economics of digital content the economics of digital content whether that's news or entertainment and There are certain Issues in the way the internet has evolved where the power of digital advertising with at tech Platforms controlling more and more of this digital platform digital advertising revenues and monetization Revenues that there is a deeply inbuilt imbalance into that whole dynamic Of content creation and content monetization that leaves the small guy at a disadvantage And and is really not the right thing for a country like ours where we have potentially hundreds and thousands of creative content creators and and many many true hard You know value driven Truth driven content creators in the news segment So I think this is an area and I I I sought in today's paper right in today's paper that the gentleman from australia Mr. Fletcher who has commented on it. It is His thinking is not very different from how we are approaching this issue and we hope to in the digital india addresses issue of the The disproportionate control and the imbalance in the dynamics between content creation and content creators Requirements and the power that at tech companies and at tech platform for today I won't speak to too much more on this issue excepting to say It is clear that at some point and at some inflection point that the consumption of news in particular And content in general will swing sharply to The internet the covid pandemic has caused one Big jump in the in the consumption patterns of consumers for all types of content All types of news the you can see from the proliferation of the otis and you can see from a proliferation of digital streaming services How entertainment has pivoted almost from the conventional Entertainment models to internet driven digitally driven entertainment. The same is true for news and I suspect that More and more video-led content more and more Digitally video-led content will be the trend that we should all be keeping a close eye on And and a sharp pivot away from traditional platforms that deliver news But that is just my point of view. I am not a crystal ball geyser by any stretch of imagination This is just my instinct that I'm sharing with you But it is quite possible that That that trend may be a long more prolonged trend than something more that something abrupt that I am suggesting or that I suspect will happen I will leave it at that. I I think I will just end by saying that We are living in extremely interesting times I think the the digital space is only going to be Uh, there's only one thing that you can accurately predict about the digital space If you're operating in that if you're in a stakeholder that that it will be continuously Disruptive Disruption will be the regular normal for all things digital and all platforms digital. So Like we have just seen In the last few months the chat gpt phenomenon is going to turn on its head Many many conventional digital platforms Including search that we all thought had been Conquered and the winner had been declared but I think The ai and the power of ai and the the learning platforms that are just going to now come out In increasing numbers Are going to continuously disrupt What is the leading platform? Who's the leader? And who delivers what products functionality and service in what form so I think We are leaving living in interesting times I with uh, I personally after having spent over three decades In technology Find that this the period that we are living in Represents more challenge and more opportunity and excitement than ever before And so I I will just alert you all to that And say that That you know when disruption is a new normal Being paranoid is every day and every time is absolutely the right thing to do for your businesses and your Technologies and your platforms and your friends. So I believe that thank you for the opportunity to speak to you I know it's been a long day and I thank you very much for your patient. Listen, and I wish all of you the very best In the coming new year and more success. Thank you jayan Rajiv jay, thanks a lot I think so Right from the Menace of the fake news to the Monetization issues, which all of us actually face on day to day basis. So we are really, you know, thankful to you for all of this Secondly, we all of us, you know, especially, you know in the organized news media are really, you know, looking Forward to the new bills and I must, you know, thank you, you know on behalf of the entire body that you know the kind of you know Initiatives, which you know the government has taken To, you know, protect the interest of the organized digital media industry is really, you know Appreciated by all of us and we really look forward to our new ecosystem Where we have a much more level playing field so that all of us can again prosper and grow. Thanks a lot, sir Thank you