Digital Governance
Digital Governance
Context
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) notified significant amendments to the IT Rules, 2021. The debate has shifted from simple content removal to content provenance, mandating that all AI-generated or "synthetically generated" media carry traceable digital tags or watermarks to combat the surge in deepfakes.
About Digital Governance
- Definition: The application of digital technologies (AI, Blockchain, Cloud) alongside constitutional principles like transparency and accountability to modernize public administration.
- Core Shift: Moving beyond "digitizing paperwork" to a fundamental transformation in how citizens, the state, and markets interact for inclusive service delivery.
- Economic Impact: The digital economy contributed 13.42% to India’s national income in 2025; projected to reach 20% by 2030.
- Infrastructure: Over 97% of villages are covered by mobile connectivity, supported by 4.74 lakh 5G towers.
- Digital Identity: 142 crore Aadhaar IDs form the backbone of the world's largest biometric service delivery system.
- Real-Time Payments: UPI processed ₹24.03 lakh crore in a single month (June 2025).
- e-Governance Scale: DigiLocker reached 53.92 crore users by mid-2025, eliminating massive physical paperwork.
Need for Digital Governance in India
- Ensuring Democratic Integrity: Preventing AI-generated deepfakes from skewing public discourse.
- Example: In the 2025 state elections, the I4C intervened against fabricated videos used to incite communal tension.
- Combating Gendered Cyber-Abuse: Addressing the fact that 90% of global deepfakes are non-consensual pornographic content.
- Example: A sharp rise in deepfake complaints was recorded on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal in 2025.
- Financial Security: Preventing fraud where "animated selfies" are used to bypass remote KYC systems.
- Example: By early 2026, 1 in 5 biometric fraud attempts involved AI-generated face swaps.
- Inclusive Delivery: Breaking language barriers via the BHASHINI platform, which now supports 35+ languages.
- Administrative Accountability: Reducing "leakages" in welfare.
- Example: Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) eliminated millions of "ghost beneficiaries" in the PM-KISAN scheme in 2025.
Challenges
- Algorithmic Opacity: "Black-box" AI systems used in policing or welfare often lack transparency, making them difficult to appeal.
- Surveillance & Privacy: Risks of state overreach through excessive biometric data collection under new security apps.
- The Digital Divide: Structural inequality where rural or elderly citizens struggle with biometric-only distributions despite 5G expansion.
- Big-Tech Dominance: A few platforms acting as quasi-sovereign powers, leading to the Digital Competition Bill (2024–25).
- High Maintenance Costs: The perpetual cycle of upgrading infrastructure to stay ahead of sophisticated cybercriminals.
Ethical Principles & Way Forward
- Accountability (Dharma): Every AI decision must be traceable to a responsible human.
- Justice (Nyaya): Systems must be fair, explainable, and respect India’s linguistic diversity.
- Transparency: Citizens have a right to know if they are interacting with an algorithm or synthetic media.
- Lead Regulator: Establishing an autonomous digital regulator to unify oversight across various ministries.
- Implementation of ‘CrediMark’: Mandatory, persistent digital tags (provenance) for all synthetic content that cannot be easily stripped.
- 3-Hour Takedown Rule: New IT Rule amendments (effective Feb 20, 2026) require platforms to remove flagged deepfakes within 2–3 hours.
- Regulatory Sandboxes: Allowing startups to test advanced detection tools in a supervised environment.
- National Media-Forensics Labs: Investing in state-of-the-art labs to help citizens and authorities identify synthetic deception.
Conclusion
India’s path toward Viksit Bharat 2047 relies on a digital governance model that balances rapid innovation with constitutional guardrails. By mandating content provenance and shortening response times, India is setting a global benchmark for a trusted digital infrastructure that upholds human dignity.