Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back
28th July 2019
Dear Reader,
In the last week there were three important developments in the Indian tech space that anyone interested in the field should be aware of.
- An official panel set up by the Government of India to study cryptocurrencies has suggested banning them. That is every single cryptocurrency except one, which the panel proposes be floated by the government itself.
- WhatsApp will finally rollout the payments feature on its messaging service by the end of this year. WhatsApp Pay has been in beta-testing for ages and has had to comply with stringent data localization norms set out by the Reserve Bank of India. With all that out of the way WhatsApp is now ready to shake up India’s fintech incumbents. Also, the official number of WhatsApp users in India? 400 million.
- It seems highly unlikely that the Data Protection Bill will see the light of day anytime soon. In a fresh twist on the data protection story in India, disagreements between several ministries have been reported about the proposed bill and the government is planning on watering down the most stringent provisions.
Each of these developments will reshape India’s digital environment profoundly. This week we have articles that help you understand how this might happen, along with other pieces that highlight the most interesting news of the week. Do read, share, and subscribe as always.
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My Money is the Only Money
Given the very nature of cryptocurrencies, it is not surprising that governments across the world are uncomfortable with their growing usage. There is a great deal of policy flux about the best way to deal with cryptocurrencies, and if a government panel has its way, India could ban them outright. This is symptomatic of the knee-jerk manner in which the Indian government often deals with new technologies and the statist attitude that has become increasingly prevalent in domestic policymaking. There is also the additional issue that the definition of cryptocurrency as per the panel would cover a whole host of online products that are decidedly not cryptocurrencies of any sort, as Pranesh Prakash points out in this thread.
Data Protection Chameleon
Just when everyone thought the data protection debate in India was done and dusted, atleast from a legislative perspective, it has arisen once again like a bureaucratic zombie. New proposed changes will likely water down existing provisions on data privacy and localization. This could be because of sustained pressure from the American on the back of protests from the likes of Amazon, Facebook, and Google. Whatever the reason, the government is now looking to enforce the localization of only ‘critical data’, whatever that means.
WhatsApp Me the Money
WhatsApp now has 400 million users in India. How did it plan on monetizing this market? Where does its true value lie? The answer to these questions is Payments. WhatsApp Pay was scheduled to roll out sometime back but has been stuck in beta-testing and the Reserve Bank of India’s data localization norms. Now WhatsApp is ready to take the financial world by storm. A ready user-base of 400 million people. Ease of money transfers built on the back of the UPI system. Maybe WhatsApp Pay will be the final catalyst in making India a digital-payments first economy. We just have to wait and find out. Until then this explainer from Hindustan Times succinctly outlines what WhatsApp Pay is and how it works.
A Data Treatment
As with many things, India’s healthcare data is spotty. There is no centralized database and different data sets often contain wildly differing numbers on everything from the number of hospital beds to incidents of a particular disease. To combat this, the government of India recently unveiled a ‘National DigitalHealth Blueprint’, which aims to consolidate all healthcare data in the country into one meta-database. This database will be open to public and private sector entities to take advantage of. While an interesting and much needed policy measure in principle, such centralization of data also raises important questions that are yet to be answered. How much of access will non-government entities? Who will control access? How will the data be protected?
Kitne Account Hai Re Kaliya?
There is a new government backed financial services product in town- Sahamati, an account aggregator. Like the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Sahamati too as the potential to fundamentally transform financial services in the country and establish a new data-sharing protocol. With the official launch of the app taking place this week, this slightly old piece explains the product and its implications clearly.
Make Videos, Not Politics
TikTok is hands down the most popular social network app in India. It is free, easy to use, and most importantly, fun. Almost all the content on it is pure entertainment. So what happens when a few of India’s biggest TikTok stars decide to speak out on a political issue? And what if these stars also happen to be young Muslim men? Read on to find out in this fascinating article on the continuing intersection of social media, politics, and religion in India.
