There is a commonly held belief that there are basically three different approaches when it comes to data governance - the US, the Chinese and the European. But both the US and China leave regulation in the hands of technology companies - while the EU imposes regulations that these companies need to comply with. The middle path is the Indian techno-legal approach.

Despite India’s success in pushing the DPI agenda during its Presidency of the G20 there have been some criticisms about the actual impact of its financial inclusion efforts. While there is no doubt that we are prone to embellishment, India’s achievements in the area are substantial. Criticisms about coercion are also unfounded given some level of market orchestration is necessary — especially in low and middle-income countries that are looking for accelerated development.

With the number of extreme weather events that occurred in 2023, there is a new urgency around the need to find alternate and innovative solutions to the problem of climate change. One easy option is solar geo-engineering - that can be implemented by startups that raise donor funds to send up balloons carrying sulphates. That said this is not without its fair share of concerns. Not the least of which is uneven cooling and the impact on monsoon patterns in India.

Society’s response to disruptive technologies like AI follows a three-stage pattern: regulation, adaptation, and acceptance. Regulations tend to focus on first-order concerns, but overlook second-order consequences like the potential erosion of democratic values due to increased transparency of knowledge.

As more and more of our transactions take place within environments that are digital from end-to-end, the easier it is for us to embed regulations directly into the code that these environments are made of. To do that we will need to build governance modules into our digital public infrastructure.

In an increasingly polarised world, the 2023 New Delhi Declaration at the Leaders Summit of the G20 was a diplomatic triumph. But as you read through the pages of the text it is striking how much it covers in terms of new technologies and their governance.

Rather than simply building DPI building blocks, countries that are looking to follow India’s DPI Approach should look to develop DPI solutions that leverage individual elements of the DPI stack in an interoperable manner.

Worldcoin has been designed to address the concern that in a world saturated with artificial intelligence we are going to need a proof of humanness. As true as that might be, I believe we need to go much further. And also tackle truth in content.

The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 is not perfect. There are many things I would have liked to change. But it has been enacted and it is the law we’ve been given. It is time to stop the hand-wringing and get on with working with what we have.

India’s new data protection law is simple and principle based. But it will require companies big and small to make radical changes to the way they operate. And I don’t think businesses fully realise the changes they are going to have to make.