What's Next for Tech Policy in India After the Elections

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What role did technology play in India's elections, and what impact will the outcome have on tech policy in the country? Joining the podcast to offer their expertise are Amber Sinha and Vandinika Shukla, both fellows at Tech Policy Press, and Prateek Waghre, the executive director at the Internet Freedom Foundation. Plus, Tech Policy Press program manager Prithvi Iyer sums up the election result.

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the discussion.

Justin Hendrix:

June 4th saw the announcement of the results of India's Parliamentary elections, which took place in seven phases from April 9th through June 1st of this year. In this episode, we're going to consider the role of technology in those elections and the impact the elections on technology policy in India. But first, I asked Prithvi Iyer, who is program manager at Tech Policy Press to fill me in on how things shook out. Hey, Prithvi.

Prithvi Iyer:

Hello.

Justin Hendrix:

For any Tech Policy Press listeners who are not paying close attention to the Indian election, just remind people how it works. This is not a single day or even a single week affair.

Prithvi Iyer:

Yeah, the Indian election is one of probably the largest exercise of democracy. It's a huge election, and the election happens in multiple phases. And, it started about a couple of months ago, and as some may know or some may not know, there's a rule that you have to have polling booths and not more than about two kilometers from where someone lives. So we're really talking about a system where you're really getting into every rural part of India and really trying to get everyone to vote in this election. And, yes, it happened in I think seven phases, if I'm not mistaken. And the results came out on June 4th.

Justin Hendrix:

The outcome appeared to surprise even journalists who were covering it. The Indian voter did not behave as many had predicted.

Prithvi Iyer:

It's worth saying that the outcome is both expected and surprising. What's expected is that we did expect a third term for the Bharatiya Janata party led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But exactly how that would've happened was up to debate. A lot of the exit polls that were coming out before voting day was pegging the BJP to have a landslide victory. Many exit polls were going as far to say that the BJP would win about 370 seats, which is a lot of seats. So, just for context, this is election for the lower house of the Indian Parliament that's known as the Lok Sabha.

And the Lok Sabha has 543 seats in total. So these 543 seats are essentially for members of parliament and you need 272 seats to essentially have a single party majority. So if one party is able to secure more than 272 seats, they're considered a single party majority. The exit polls were begging the BJP to have 370. And in fact, in 2019, the BJP had a single party majority in India, they won 303 seats, which was a record. And many expected that to continue. But as we all know now, that's not what happened. And in fact, there was definitely a shift in how Indians voted. That's what I think is quite surprising.

Justin Hendrix:

Let's talk about how things shook out. The BJP lost 63 seats and the Indian National Congress, as I understand, gained 47 seats. What's the makeup of this parliament going forward?

Prithvi Iyer:

So, the BJP won 240 seats, so they won 240 seats. And again, much lower compared to the 303 that they won in 2019 and the 370 odd that the folks, the exit polls were expecting. So they did fall short of the 272 marks. So they cannot essentially have a single party majority in India, which is quite significant. However, the BJP doesn't just stand on its own. It also has its allies and together they're known as the National Democratic Alliance or the NDA. And that alliance won 294 seats. So together, if the coalition stands and if there's no shifting allegiances, which can always happen, we expect that alliance will be able to form the government. In comparison, the opposition India Alliance, which is led by the Indian National Congress and has a group of other regional parties. They won in total about 232 seats, which is quite significant with the Congress winning 99 of those seats.

Just to give folks some background, and this has increased sharply since 2019 where the Congress nearly won 52 seats. So in many ways, a lot of folks are saying that a loss here feels like a victory in many ways, and the victory for the BJP feels like a loss in many ways, just thinking about the scale that both parties are operating at. And I think that's especially pronounced when you see the campaigns that the BJP was running where Modi himself said that the party's likely to win 370 seats. So they clearly fell well short while the opposition, which was considered to barely touch a hundred seats, ended up really outperforming and getting 232 seats.

Justin Hendrix:

So we'll still see a third term for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But what does it mean for him not to have the supermajority? How will that affect his ability to govern?

Prithvi Iyer:

Unlike in 2019, the BJP will not have a single party majority. So what does this mean? I think a lot of folks in India for a long time haven't really seen what a coalition government means. What does it really mean to have significant political opposition in parliament? In the last election and for the last five years, the Modi government have had overwhelming influence, not just over parliament, but over also the judicial process and other things like that. So we do expect that this inability for them to have a landslide victory and a supermajority in parliament will mean that it'll be harder for the BJP to undermine parliamentary procedure. The political opposition in India will have a stronger say in the policies that are tabled. If Congress for example, have 99 seats in Parliament, they have a better chance at maybe disagreeing with the BJP.

And one thing to note is Modi has never really been in a coalition government before. He's used to being a majority leader. He's not used to compromising, even as chief minister of Gujarat, he never worked in that coalition framework. So what does this mean? How is Modi going to compromise? What is that compromise going to look like in terms of Indian democracy and the future of Indian policymaking is left to be seen. But what can be said is this is going to be definitely a different experience and a different style of BJP rule potentially than what we've seen in 2014 and 2019.

Justin Hendrix:

Where were there surprises across the country in terms of the outcome?

Prithvi Iyer:

There were a few key surprises, but if I had to pick, the biggest shock to me personally, I think is the state of Uttar Pradesh. Uttar Pradesh is a state in northern India. It has 80 seats up for grabs. So it's a very popular state. It's a state in northern India and historically has been very pro-BJP. In fact, in 2019, the National Democratic Alliance won 64 seats in that state, of which the BJP won 62 of them. So there was this expectation that there's really no contest in Uttar Pradesh, and the BJP really there to win. But 2024 looked very different. One of the regional parties, the Samajwadi party, which is part of the India Alliance that I mentioned, along with the Congress, they won 43 seats in Uttar Pradesh. And that is, and I think that really surprised everyone in India I would go as far to say no one expected that.

And I think within that, the biggest surprise probably is the constituency of Faizabad, which many folks, many of your listeners may have heard of the Ram Temple construction in Ayodhya. And that was, which happened recently, last year, the Modi government inaugurated the Ram temple, which was quite an opulent endeavor and many folks considered it to be the crowning achievement in terms of the Hindu nationalist vision that Modi has sought to realize. And even in that constituency to lose for the BJP really is quite a shock and maybe tells you that religious rhetoric and the rhetoric of religious polarization may not have been as persuasive as it has been before, and that there were certain key policy considerations that may have shaped voter decisions versus ideology more broadly.

Justin Hendrix:

Well, we shall see how things play out given all the BJPs attempts to control the median information environment. Certainly interesting to see that at the polls, at least, the voters had different ideas.

Prithvi Iyer:

Absolutely. This third term for BJP was expected. And a lot of folks are looking at these election results as a victory for Indian democracy. And I would say that there is definitely, it shows the muscle and the ability or the testament that the Indian voters have to hold elected officials to account. But I also want to remind your listeners that these election results happen in a context where the BJP has overwhelming control over the press. It has jailed opposition leaders in the lead up to the election. They have significantly more financial muscle compared to the political opposition. And despite all of these asymmetries, let's just say in so-called or advantages, the fact that the BJP still lost significant ground speaks to the power of the Indian voter. But also, I would caution against claiming that this is somehow indicative that Indian democracy is not in peril. And I think that more work, and there's a lot more work that needs to be done to prevent us from going down that path.

Justin Hendrix:

Prithvi, thank you very much.

Prithvi Iyer:

Thank you so much, Justin.

Justin Hendrix:

Next up, I'm joined by three individuals in Delhi, in Bangalore, to talk about the role of technology in the elections and the impact the outcome may have on technology policy.

Prateek Waghre:

I'm Prateek Waghre, I'm the executive director of the Internet Freedom Foundation.

Amber Sinha:

Amber Sinha. I'm currently an information fellow with Tech Policy Press.

Vandinika Shukla:

Hi, I'm Vandinika Shukla, and I'm a reporting fellow with Tech Policy Press.

Justin Hendrix:

I'm so pleased that the three of you can join me today. All of you in India at the moment, I suppose the first question to ask is, how does it feel? Were you surprised at this election outcome? I may think a lot of the headlines around the world suggested a degree of surprise. How about you, Prateek, perhaps I'll start with you.

Prateek Waghre:

It's been quite interesting. I think the last couple of days, it's also been fascinating to watch people's reaction to it because it did come as a bit of a surprise. And, for context, the conversations in the run-up to the elections in India have been like, "Oh, this is a done deal." It's a question of by how much the numbers will be. And there really wasn't a challenge. And, there was also the context that a lot of the opposition parties weren't really getting along that way. But I think what happened was as people went on the ground, they started talking to people. They realized that there was different forms of distress depending on different parts of the country. So during the elections, there was some conversations about, "Okay, look, maybe things could be different. Maybe this could be harder for the BJP and the National Democratic Alliance than we initially thought."

But at that point, you still don't know. Because it's all hearsay and you ultimately have to wait for counting day. And that's where, and again, the context for listeners there who may not be aware was that just a couple of days before the counting, there was, you do these exit polls in India, which you're not allowed to do during the election. You only put them out after. And a lot of them projected significantly high numbers for the National Democratic Alliance and for the BJP.

And the final numbers that came in were much well below that mark. So since then, it's been this sense that look, there is an opportunity for change, and especially, again, as a digitized organization, we've been tracking some of the excesses, especially over the last five, eight years that we've been around. So there is this sense that, look, now there is an opportunity to change. I think there's a realization that there's a lot of work to be done, still. A lot of hard work that still needs to be put into it. But there is that glimmer, there is that hope that there is some opportunity to change, to improve things going ahead.

Amber Sinha:

And I think over the last five years, in 2019 when the BJP got a huge mandate. Since then, what we have witnessed is a fairly aggressive and systematic dismantling of various public institutions in India. And also the fact that institutions outside the government, such as the press and media have been largely planned or in some cases have been bought by corporates, supposed to be close to the government. And the civil society has been fairly, through use of laws such as the FCR, the civil society also has been quite restrained. So, I think the bigger concerns for anybody closely following the political and democratic process in India was how much of a level playing field there was for all political actors. And I think that's where a lot of people who, even with the opposition in some sense, getting attacked together and cobbling together, multi-party coalition of various parties who have not traditionally been aligned with each other, but do see themselves aligned against the ruling BJP party.

So even with that coming together, there was a concern, and I think with the face of the opposition in Congress, [foreign language 00:14:47] who's not really managed to turn any election on its head on his own. She went on these yatra's across the country, which definitely played a part in people's perception of him and his perception as a leader improving. But whether that perception would actually translate into a mandate for this party, that was not very clear. And even the journalists that I would speak to were on the ground. There was a sense that there was discontent, particularly with regard to issues around unemployment, around inflation, around access to benefits and services that the government provided. But there wasn't a wave of discontent against the government. So whether that would effectively translate into a mandate against the government was not clear. I think what we see in terms of the result is also something similar.

The BJP has a truncated mandate. Now the NDOA is in power. And I think one of the things is, I think in India, perhaps the coalition, there are governments, which has largely been from 89 to 2014. So 1989 to 2014. Have witnessed more political deliberation. They've also witnessed a lot of very significant economic progress as well as economic reforms. I think we are, for the last 10 years, we again had one party who had majority on its own. And this could potentially be going back to that coalition or stage. And the most important thing I think that could come out of it is the fact that no single party can have that hegemonic control. And, hopefully the public institutions in India can also respond to this electoral change and not be as client to the executive.

Vandinika Shukla:

I think it is a hopeful and positive response to the surprise that we saw with the election results. And, I think the return of this deeply competitive political system in India is that source of hope of saying that there will be now required consensus building and coalition building. That was not the case for many years. But what is interesting to me is that I've been speaking to a lot of local reporters and rural news outlets, and for them, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, which was in the Hindi heartland of Modi. To them, this is not as surprising as it is to the mainstream media because from the reporting that we are seeing on the ground in the field, Indian voters when they were asked about what they care they, across regions, religions, costs and class, were making it very clear that for them it was less about this polarizing rhetoric or this entertainment meets politics and a whole lot of empty promises.

But it was still about asking their representatives for issues of local importance. So it was agrarian distress, water scarcity, unemployment, hunger, youth employment, education. And particularly when we see the results in Uttar Pradesh and the stronghold where a lot of the political communications was built around this Hindu-Western divide or communal divide and re-asserting a whole lot of the personality politics. It is interesting that the field and find it as surprising because that sentiment was very much alive before the results were announced. But what that also means for the future is, how will political parties respond to that local need, to that new tension amongst voters? And, what role will technology and party communications or government communications play? Because what we also saw in the Indian AI experiment was that there was a lot of AI-generated content that was entertainment, political meme wars, emotional appeals to the voters, resurrected politicians, lots of persuasion through very hyper-personalized phone calls to voters.

All of this within an embedded structure of a very vast network of party workers using unmoderated, unscrupulous platforms to reach voters at the very local level, at the block, at the district, at the booth level. But that didn't translate necessarily to that response in the election count that they were hoping for. And why that didn't translate is because of this frustration that has grown amongst voters because they're no longer ready to wait another five years, another 10 years for the promises that were made to them in terms of actual benefits and actual economic growth and actual employment and livelihood. And so, it'd be interesting to what extent party communications or government communications and government services and the role that technology plays in improving access to them will have now that there is a very palpable understanding of that need.

Justin Hendrix:

We're going to talk a little more about the role of technology in the election and then talk about the impact of the election on tech policy in India, at least as we can see it at the moment. But Prateek, I just want to come back to you on this question about this moment of hope. The last time I was in India, I had the chance to meet with you and I think that the general sense of the folks that I met with there at the time, was that things were going to get worse, with regard to generally the freedom of expression, with regard to democratic factors more broadly.

And yet, it looks like at least things have got better in this context or there's been some demonstration that you're not on a one-way train. With regard to some of the indicators that we've talked about on this show in the past. Did this result almost show maybe some of the limitations of some of the concerns about control the information environment or use of technology to reinforce the majority, as it were? Does it show the limitations of tech to control or direct the voters intent? Do you have that sense at all?

Prateek Waghre:

That is a very deep question. In my mind, and I think we've spoken about this in the past. It's always been a question or open question in my mind of what is the gap between prevalence and persuasion? That's one part of it. Just because people are exposed to some sort of information, is it necessarily changing their decision-making because of that? Are there other factors, and what are those other factors? I don't think we've done enough to understand that. There's also, while I'm saying we're talking about hope. Again, I think there are still some unanswered questions here in terms of what even this word represents. I don't necessarily think it is an unequivocal rejection of the hateful politics or hateful politics and that rhetoric. It's an open question in my mind. I think there's certainly a shift. I don't think we can ignore that completely.

But again, the question in my mind is, look, have we just sidestepped that question or have we voted against it? Did other issues... Because look, a voting decision is a very complex thing. There are multiple factors that go into someone's decision-making process before they finally say, "Okay, this is who I'm going to vote for." And for the ones that, in this case exercise their vote against the BJP or the NDA, was that necessarily a vote against the divisive rhetoric or was that to essentially a response to some of the other forms of distress they were feeling? And then the question also then remains, how long will that can you expect them to continue voting that way? And I think this is unclear to me. And I think this is also where we need to temper the optimism in the sense that I think there's hope, but that you still need to build on it.

There is still this long-term work that needs to happen to both understand and respond to some of this. Again, when it comes to I think limitation of information control, maybe potentially, but I don't think that's going to stop anyone from continuing to try and exert that control. The set of actors who are used to operating in that way and believe in that mode of operation. And for a long time it seemingly has delivered returns. I don't necessarily see a change in course, at least in some of the approach. Now, again, what role coalition politics plays in this is, again, an open question because even the coalition partners they have are notorious for being flexible, if I can put it that way. In terms of where they may or may not line up on certain issues or on who they might ally with or who they might align with. At this stage, I think there are a lot of unopened or unanswered questions.

Justin Hendrix:

Amber, I'll come to you because you covered a lot of this through regular dispatches for tech policy press, which were very useful to me to keep an eye from the outside. What do you make of this question, but also generally of the role of tech in this recent election?

Amber Sinha:

I wouldn't look at the results in this election as against a referendum on the use of technological tools for the election year. In fact, perhaps what happened to some extent was that the messaging that the BJP had, I think it was largely built around perhaps the misread what that messaging should be. And it was largely built around the stature of the Prime Minister. And that was seen as fishing to garner votes. On the other hand, in terms of creating more viral content and more satirical content, the Congress did much better than the BJP. So they don't have the same digital infrastructure or the same kind of an organized machinery for dissemination of information that the BJP possesses. But the opposition did a pretty good job with limited resources at its disposal, in terms of building a narrative, presenting that narrative through content on YouTube and on through Instagram Reels.

So, I think that obviously in a country like India where digital literacy and access to digital technology are limited apart, but more and more people do have access to WhatsApp and that becomes the primary mode of communication. And also, in a lot of cases the primary mode of access to information. So, the actual efficacy of a lot of these messaging campaigns is anybody's case at the end of the day. But I do think that there will ways in which the opposition parties use the digital tools fairly well. And I think that had a telling road. And I think the other thing about, like Prateek was saying, this is not in anywhere a referendum on [foreign language 00:26:50] politics or on Hindu national politics. Because largely if you see the BJP has continued to perform fairly well in urban centers. And, it is in the rural segments where the opposition has managed to cut into its both bank.

And perhaps what has happened is that other issues such as inflation, such as unemployment, have in a way trumped the [foreign language 00:27:18]. That doesn't mean that issue is not important or doesn't continue to dominate politics to a certain extent. It's perhaps a statement on its limited effectiveness when other more mundane and much more important issues, which are socioeconomic in nature, continue to prevail. That is how I would look at it.

I think much like the last two elections, there has been very effective use of digital technology and obviously in this election, like Vindinika alluded, there is this added, a new element to use of synthetic content and generative AI, which has played a small role, I would say. Perhaps a lot of campaigns, I would say dabbled with it. It was very eye-catching. It was a new form of manipulation or a new more entertaining form of content that grabbed a lot of eyeballs. But it was not, I think in any way central to political campaigning strategies in any way. But, having said that, it does give us a sense of how synthetic content could be used in political campaigns. Particularly in the south, in future elections. So I think to that extent, this election was quite instructive. It didn't play a huge role, but it gives us a good sense of the ways in which it would evolve.

Vandinika Shukla:

Ambar, I think, to your point about, that it didn't play a big role. I think it didn't. And there's actually a really interesting nuance. In some ways, a deepfake like apocalypse of there will be a disinformation influx of deep fake and synthetic media-led disinformation campaigns or adversarial content. That didn't happen as much as we had anticipated for a country as big as India, for the amount of money being pumped into this. But what happened was, there was almost authorized content from political parties that were going to these young synthetic media companies, AI startups and saying, "Create us content that is entertaining, that is translated to local languages, particularly to languages in the south and regional languages to make the personality and the political party more accessible in the south and more relatable." And also, they're creating that sort of entertainment value of political communications and party people communications. And making it more relational and making it more entertaining.

And to the point that a lot of the interviews that I did, they said, people were saying, "It doesn't matter if it is AI generated or not. If it is entertaining, I will consume it. I will forward it." It's all part of the political game. And so there was that combination of political parties creating or authorizing AI generated content for this vast influx of flooding the voter with targeted emotional content and influential content as well as that political meme war or the satirical content that was floating with a lot of competition between the two political parties. And I think, you're right, Amber in that the content wasn't necessarily very sophisticated either. So a lot of the times it's just a colored background with text, and it is basically just a poster being circulated or a photo with a bubble or a comment bubble.

So the examples that we see of politicians in the south being resurrected in video form or the audio clips that we're seeing, both... And also authorized content. For example, the Delhi chief minister's voice that was cloned with his message while he was behind bars and still campaigning. All of this was happening, but at the same time, it was the vast majority of the content that I also saw in a whole lot of the WhatsApp groups that were created, was very simple and straightforward and serving the same purpose of volume. And so when people saw a volume of content that set the same message or had the same message, their reaction to it was, "We believe it and we trust it and we will therefore circulated." Or if that volume of content reinforced certain stereotypical beliefs or ideologies, they believed it. And that trust then led them to circulate it more.

And so, it was an interesting experiment with AI generated content in political campaigning in India, which I think can be very telling for what's to come in the future. And I think it could also be an interesting window into how AI and the cross-section of AI and political party communications can be good for democracy. It can be targeted, it can be more relational, it can be more accessible to rural areas where digital literacy is low, or generally literacy rates are low. And so how do you create that targeted outreach? And we do want stronger, better constituent communication. So, it would be interesting to see what different manifestations this can take.

Prateek Waghre:

Largely agree with what both Amber and Vandinika said. I think it's, again, been this almost journey through the phase of the election. Before this was like, "Oh God, we are going to have an AI apocalypse," that you'll have an equivalent of, I think what you think of in the US election, there's the October surprise. You'll have something coming up that will... And a lot of these conversations with people, my point was that look, you have a situation where political parties already have a fairly well-developed, established information distribution mechanism. They're already generating... They have the ability to spread whatever narrative they want, positive, negative, and it's largely to one extent the BJP and some of the others then trailing behind them. But, they have the extent to push through narrative they want through WhatsApp. They've been able to amass significant amount of involvement or interest from influencers in the election as well who've been going and talking about their policies and things like that.

In that scenario. In that scenario, how much of a shift or how much of a delta is relatively not mature deep fake situation going to add? Where possibly able to look at the video, especially with video. Or I think audio is a much more challenging problem. But, with video, at the point where we are, and this could change as some of these things get better. But at the point where we're able to tell apart what is synthetically generated versus what is indirectly. I'm not experts who studying this and are well-trained, are able to do that. So we expected to see that use case, but it hasn't happened. One thing that we have seen, and I think this is also going to be an interesting trend to watch is, dismissal of evidence as it being a deep fake. And we've seen some instances of this as well, where a short eight-second video clip was put out of a BJP candidate saying something, and then the party came out and said, "No, this is a deep fake."

But it turned out it wasn't a deep fake. It was just an extract, not even a cheap fake in the sense that it was deceptively edited. It was just an extract of a much longer conversation. And I think we should expect to see some of this in the political communication context where you're going to see video evidence potentially being dismissed as a deep fake. And that I think there are implications to that, because we're at a point where we tend to go back and look to video evidence as with some finality in terms of, "Okay, this will prove this happened or didn't happen."

And I think we have to watch out how this plays out. And then there's of course the voter outreach, the outreach use case. And again, it's interesting there because even though it's happening with the consent of the politician or the political party, it's still unclear in my mind of whether you characterize it as deceptive or not. Because the value of that message to a voter getting, let's say a call from a senior leader. And this time it's not been senior leaders, it's been relatively low profile leaders who've experimented with it.

I think part of that is because this is not so mature at this stage. Which is why, I think Prateek pointed, this is a trend that we'll see. The value is in not having a disclaimer there. There is a social currency to saying, a politician reached out to me. And that dissipates when there is a clear disclaimer as many of us would want or many of us would with such communication. Or if you have resurrecting a deceased politician, you're essentially making the likeness say something they probably didn't say during their lifetime.

Yes, maybe the family contested it or what happened in the case of contested legacy as is not uncommon in India where we have so many political dynasties and infighting between subsequent generations. So it's going to be interesting to watch how some of these play out. And the question of was this India's first AI election? My answer to that has always been absolutely not. It's been about the institution. I think Amber laid that out very well in the beginning in terms of the imbalances that we've had in terms of the constitutional bodies and the role that they've played. Yet it wasn't something that we could ignore. So, it had that interesting dynamic in the sense that if you followed it closely, it's probably not going to be something that turns the election. But you also couldn't ignore it.

Justin Hendrix:

I want to turn to the implications of the election on tech policy in India. What can you tell me about early indications of where things may head? Is there any impact on legislation? Is there any impact on regulation? I'll go around to each of you and Prateek, start with you.

Prateek Waghre:

I'm not expecting any surprises over, between the time we record this and this goes out. You're likely to have an NDA government in place. And, as recently as earlier this week, you had the gentleman who's the secretary of the Ministry of Electronics Information Technology coming out and saying that, "Look, we have this agenda that's carrying on in terms of the rules for the Digital Personal Data Protection Act." The project to overhaul the IT Act, which is very presumptuously being called the Digital India Act. So let's call it the Digital India Bill. So, I think there is this sense of, at least my reading of that statement was maybe it was to signal continuity because there was a question mark of what could happen to some of these. So you'll have some of these playing out. This is from the Ministry of Electronics Information Technology. But, going back, there's also a lot of other stuff that was happening with the previous version of the NDA, the previous iteration of the NDA, the more centralized one where we had the telecommunication act or telecom act coming in, at least being passed.

So there should be rules for that, that the Department of Telecom needs to come out with. There was a very worrying broadcasting bill that was also floated for feedback. Strangely enough, just after the winter session between, before the budget session where you don't really expect any legislative or significant legislative business of this sort to take place. And again, that was concerning in the sense that it sought to impose a level of control over digital news and digital video, and essentially... You could almost call it the YouTube law. In a way, if I'm being a little flippant about it. But you could almost call it the YouTube law, but essentially bringing in an element of control, the ability to penalize some of them, and the context to that being that a lot of mainstream journalists who were pushed out and I'm reference the media capture, a lot of mainstream journalists who were pushed out of those channels, then set up YouTube, created a YouTube presence, and you had a number of, "Influencers," and creators as well, challenging the government narrative very fiercely on YouTube.

I think we need to watch what happens with that law. There's also the fact that we have basically overhauled a criminal justice system in the span of a few months. And a bill, again, a bill that was... Three sets of three bills that were passed with 146 members of opposition suspended when it was actually passed with very little debate, very little discourse. As of now schedule to come into effect on July 1st, and we have no idea of what the rollout is going to be. So again, it's going to be interesting to see how some of that plays out. And the other thing that's in play right now is the digital competition bill. Which again, interestingly, the consultation phase coincided with the elections. Crazy in my mind for something like that to take place. But, again, that's something that I think we'll expect to see coming up and being discussed in the early phases of, I think it would be in the year four.

Vandinika Shukla:

In terms of tech policy coming up after the selection or regulation, I think I'm concerned about that middle zone. While a whole lot of these institutional challenges that you just heard about are underway and the bills are underway and getting clarity and definitional clarity. I'm curious about now that we've seen this strength and almost escalation and capacity for a whole lot of AI startups creating audiovisual to wage and take phone calls and a whole lot of deep fake content. I'm curious of how they will then translate that into different domains and to what extent now there will be a need for that self-regulation. We've seen these ethical AI coalition manifestos floating about from AI startups promising that they will uphold integrity, protect data privacy, and prevent creation of and distribution of harmful content. But to what extent will the wider market that this has opened, hold that integrity true?

And so while we wait for tech policy and regulation, I think what I'm looking at is what happens to smaller outfits who are then now at their own discretion with the types of content that they can create, and for which clients. Not just political parties, not just entertainment, but which other clients that they will be serving. And I think the bigger challenge also here is in terms of labeling or content provenance, that still hasn't, we haven't built that muscle in the masses for people to recognize what is deceptive content, what is AI generated content. And so, we're walking into an environment where the market is flooded with the capacity to create this content. The market is flooded with the demand, but not necessarily a critical consumption of it or a clear sense of how to regulate it or ethically produce and distribute it. And so I think the thing that I'm looking at is, what happens to self-regulation in the meantime, while we wait for a whole lot of government regulation?

Amber Sinha:

I think Prateek captured most of the regulatory developments that we expect to continue to see. I will just flag a couple of things. So one, in terms of what could change after this election. So, overall, I don't see a lot of changes to the overall direction. However, in the last seven, eight years, the Ministry for Electronics and information technology in India has tried to respond to create or locate India within the geopolitical context around control over data, around control over content, take down in India as well as broadcast related rules. Now, they've had a fairly free rein in doing that. One key question is whether this coalition is going impact the nature of, and then the continuity of a similar approach. It's hard to say because none of the political actors who are going to be in coalition with the BJP have been vocal about any of these digital issues.

Chandra Babu Naidu, who leads the second-largest party has in the past positioned himself as an IT man. While most of his attention will be on his own state of Telangana, but it could be that we might see a 19 minister coming out of another party also, potentially. A lot of direction and need on this was taken by Rajiv Chandra Shekhar, who is the minister of state. But as of now, has lost the election. So unless he comes back as a minister via the Rajya Sabha route, we will have to see whether tech projects that Rajiv Chandra Shekhar had, to what extent they will continue. But I think the immediate focus will be on the data privacy rules and the broadcasting related legislation, which will have a huge impact on future elections. Because one of the things that media persons who had been resistant to the narrative controlled by the ruling party, they had moved out and created their own YouTube channels and things of that nature.

So, a lot of us are seen as these broadcast rules as a clear tool to suppress the factors, regulate them more heavily, so we could see a direct impact on electoral and democratic processes in the future. I don't know how long the Digital India Act will take, because the privacy law itself was several years in the making and with the Digital India act, much as we saw with the privacy bill, there would be these why statements about how it was coming the next month or in the next session of the Parliament, where purely the government is still very much at its early stages of drafting it. So we'll have to wait and watch on what priority that takes. But for me, I think data privacy and on broadcast regulations as they apply to OTT actors are going to be the big things to watch out for.

Justin Hendrix:

What I'm taking from this conversation is, moment of opportunity, and wait and watch. So, I hope that we'll have this opportunity to talk again soon and that the three of you'll continue to share your thoughts with Tech Policy Press. Thank you so much.

Amber Sinha:

Thank you.

Vandinika Shukla:

Thank you.

Prateek Waghre:

Thanks so much.