Science funding requires patient capital. The NRF should follow 3 principles as it disburses its funding. (i) projects should get long term funding commitments that are protected against political change, (ii) they need operational autonomy so that researchers can follow their own paths and (iii) the NRF should no longer fund government laboratories but focus on finding academia.

Any attempt to change the beliefs of vaccine skeptics using facts is bound to fail. Thanks to the backfire effect they will take the facts presented to them and bend them to fit with their beliefs rather than allow new facts to convince them that their beliefs were wrong.

The design of digital data sharing infrastructure must be federated. Where there is a need for data availability beyond the duration that data fiduciaries will retain it we need to build data storage alternatives that data principals can use. We should resist the temptation of getting the government to build these data stores as a public good because the role of the government is to govern - and it should not get into the business of data storage and data management. Instead we should take a market approach and encourage private data storage providers to offer federated, inter-operable solutions.

An analysis of the JPCs draft of the data protection bill has some welcome changes - the amendments to children’s data and the introduction of Section 62 that allows complaints to be filed. It also has some misguided changes such as the introduction of NGOs in the definitions. It also has changes that will have a significant impact such as the amendments to Section 35 and 36 on exemptions to law enforcement. Finally it introduces some new concepts that are problematic such as the requirement that data protection officers in companies need to be senior officials and the inclusion of non-personal data within the ambit of the law.

There is a growing recognition of the fact that we can use technology tools to make our regulations smarter. There are 2 categories of tools to do this. The first gives users more control over what can be done with their data by placing data in pods and only allowing them to be accessed in accordance with the privacy management protocols. The second unlocks data silos allowing data to move between them with the consent of the user. While these tools seem contradictory they operate at opposite ends of the data spectrum can can be combined to augment statutory frameworks.

Cryptocurrency regulation will have to address a number of issues. To address the fact that cryptocurrencies provide anonymity, regulations can ensure that crypto exchanges conduct customer verification checks and be trained on anti-money laundering. The exchanges themselves can be required to be registered in India to fall within the ambit of Indian law. To address taxation concerns, our laws can be amended to base the tax payable on the fair market value of cryptocurrency as on the date of payment or receipt. Any offers of cryptocurrency can be required to comply with disclosure requirements for investor protection. All this can be achieved by amending existing laws and does not need a new regulation.

Bacteriophages target specific bacterial cells and destroy them leaving all other cells unharmed. These organisms have been used for phage therapy - a treatment for disease that involves administering the specific bacteriophage corresponding to a given bacterial infection in order to treat it. Now that the continuous use of broad spectrum antibiotics has resulted in superbugs with high levels of antibiotic resistance, phage therapy might be the precision medicine solution that we need. This will require us to overhaul our current thinking about pharmaceuticals and adopt more localised manufacture.

The fictional science of psychohistory is predicated on the proposition that while human behaviour is erratic in isolation, when aggregated to population scale it becomes predictable. Today we use big data to predict customer behaviour and third wave economics uses real-time data to solve real world problems. In time this will allow us to understand the steps we need to take to shape desirable outcomes.

When there were limited uses to which data could be put, it was easy to evaluate the harms that could result from providing consent. Things are much more complex today so data protection regulations have tried to improve the quality of consent. This has resulted in the transparency paradox. If we can adopt consent templates we can give users appropriate autonomy.

Every evolution of communications technology from the printing press to the telegraph to telephones and eventually the internet has placed new and different stresses on personal privacy. As much as we welcome these technologies when launched, in time we realise the effect that they can have on personal privacy. The whole point of communicating is to violate your privacy in a controlled way. But if we do not have information about all the ways in which a given communication can affect your privacy you cannot really exercise effective control over it.