India pushes for strategic autonomy in biometrics, DPI and AI

Governments are increasingly pursuing technological sovereignty as concerns grow around dependence on foreign AI, cloud and biometric infrastructure.

S. Krishnan, Secretary of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), argued that India needs greater control over certain technologies, mentioning how the U.S. and Europe are also pursuing more autonomy in technology and in their respective supply chains.

“When you’re such a large market and so reliant on various devices then you also need to have some degree of strategic autonomy,” Krishnan said, as reported by The Economic Times. “We’ve started doing it in some sectors like telecom, and for CCTV cameras. “We may have to expand it to a few more areas particularly in the context of AI.”

The concerns extend beyond hardware to cloud infrastructure supporting India’s digital public infrastructure stack. Services such as DigiLocker and the airport biometrics platform Digi Yatra are hosted on Amazon Web Services, raising broader questions about dependence on foreign cloud providers for critical digital identity systems.

Speaking at an event organized by think tank the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), the secretary’s remarks have implications for biometrics hardware vendors, digital public infrastructure (DPI), Aadhaar ecosystem vendors and facial recognition deployments.

The sensitive data collected by such technologies as biometric sensors and edge devices, for AI and Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems, means the Indian government has to be sure they come from trusted sources, Krishnan said. The concerns range from supply-chain security to geopolitics and extend across the DPI stack and biometric authentication infrastructure.

India has already legislated such concerns. The national security directive ensures telecom operators source equipment from government-approved suppliers, and government departments are prohibited from acquiring non-certified surveillance products. Krishnan mentioned kill switches in his speech, which allow for devices to be shut down remotely, suggesting support for vetted local suppliers across DPI and biometric infrastructure.

Data controlled by U.S. corporations, for example, could mean access is denied should sanctions come into effect, with the editorial bringing up the example of Microsoft blocking Russia-backed Indian refiner Nayara Energy from accessing its cloud servers due to sanctions.

India and China and the unleashing of AI and DPI

The New Delhi-based NCAER also hosted a discussion on AI and DPI between its director general Suresh Goyal and its vice chairman, and cofounder of TeamLease Services, Manish Sabharwal.

The in-depth conversation goes into India Stack, UPI, Aadhaar and AI, with a frank discussion about India’s relative strengths and setbacks. It began, for example, with a candid comparison with China. The two Asian giants have similar populations and started with similarly poor economies in the twentieth century, but the two talking heads noted how China has been able to leap ahead in GDP and per capita economics.

However, the pair also observed how India leads the world in digital public infrastructure, with Aadhaar, in digital payments and the digital financial infrastructure it has built at such pace. This ability to scale is one of India’s achievements, but the scale is also a drawback. It means applying new technologies, such as AI, across a population of 1.4 billion might be more difficult compared to, say, Singapore or Luxembourg, which were mentioned. Trust is paramount.

At national scale, the discussion repeatedly returned to trust — not only in AI systems themselves, but in the infrastructure, suppliers and cloud platforms underpinning them.

In a fascinating analogy, the think tank leaders mentioned former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who opened China up to global trade beginning with landmark policies that started in 1978. Deng Xiaoping’s “Open and Reform” policies helped to usher in globalization as China opened its doors.

Japanese and U.S. companies began manufacturing their products in China, helped by government subsidies and a mass of Chinese labor, which provided a boost to profits and made many consumer goods more affordable, while China benefited from the sudden rise in foreign direct investment and wages, propelling economic growth and living standards.

Goyal and Sabharwal believe the combination of AI and DPI is “unfamiliar and uncharted territory” but that, if harnessed, the potential could offer an opportunity “to create mass prosperity in ways that China leveraged in 1978.” The exact details on how this can be achieved are a little thin, but as the pair said, it is unfamiliar territory and AI is still developing and at an accelerated pace. The full conversation can be found here.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  cloud services  |  digital public infrastructure  |  India  |  India Stack  |  national security  |  tech sovereignty  |  UIDAI