Mobile phones provide opportunities to obtain real-time movement information, aiding in crisis management like tracking disease spread. However, the balance between utilizing this data and ensuring privacy is complex. Current anonymization methods are inadequate, and conscientious use obligations may be a more effective approach to protect privacy.

This year marked a significant shift in global privacy regulation, with the enforcement of Europe’s GDPR and similar laws in other regions. While focusing on consent, the inadequacy of this approach was exposed by tech companies’ practices. In India, the privacy debate intensified with court decisions on Aadhaar and the release of the Justice Srikrishna Committee’s draft bill.

For the past 12,000 years, Earth’s circular orbit has provided stable temperatures, fostering the Holocene era, crucial for human development and agriculture. This unique period of warmth, longer than previous interglacials, is threatened by human-induced climate change, with CO2 levels exceeding safe limits. The transition to the Anthropocene era, marked by significant human impact, necessitates urgent global action on sustainability and emissions reduction, as highlighted in recent international agreements and commitments by various US entities, despite federal resistance.

The intricate, global supply chains and specialized production processes in modern industry, poses challenges - especially in pharmaceutical manufacturing, where supply chain disruptions can be life-threatening. Recent developments in continuous, on-demand drug manufacturing, like MIT’s compact synthesis unit, offer revolutionary solutions but clash with current regulatory frameworks, necessitating regulatory adaptation to embrace these technological advancements.

Chinese researcher He Jiankui’s use of CRISPR-Cas9 technology to edit a human embryo has sparked international condemnation. The editing, aimed at disabling a gene to increase resistance to diseases like AIDS, raises ethical concerns, risks unforeseen consequences, and highlights the need for a formal global treaty on gene editing.

Ayushman Bharat, the world’s largest public health insurance program, aims to cover 500 million people in India. Its success depends on using technology to scale health services, monitor treatment, and ensure accountability. Despite challenges in digitizing healthcare, India has the opportunity to create a unified framework for medical data exchange, prioritizing patient rights, privacy, and cross-platform accessibility.

The information revolution has disrupted traditional media gatekeeping, leading to the unchecked spread of misinformation. The rise of deep fake technology, creating indistinguishable false content, exacerbates this issue. Governments are struggling to regulate, and potential solutions like immutable life logs raise privacy concerns.

Despite its initial promise, AI solutions often fall short in the Indian legal context due to training on non-local data. A hybrid human-AI approach could build more responsive and effective systems.

Population bottlenecks increase susceptibility to genetic diseases like Tay-Sachs. To mitigate this, initiatives like Dor Yeshorem screen for recessive genes in high-risk communities. Similar genetic risks exist in India’s endogamous groups, indicating a need for widespread genetic analysis to improve medical outcomes and potentially integrate genetic compatibility into marriage decisions.

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court judgment the use of offline QR-based verification will prove to be a viable alternative that will allow us to continue to benefit from the Aadhaar identity system without exposing Aadhaar number holders to the many harms that the SC judgment was at pains to avoid.