Ravi Shankar Prasad: The minister who took on big tech over compliance

While Digital India, PLI for electronics have been big focus areas for him, Prasad will be remembered for sending a strong message to FB, WhatsApp and Twitter to follow the rules of the land

On Wednesday evening, after the President accepted his resignation, the former Electronics and Information Technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad changed his Twitter bio to "Member of Parliament from Patna Sahib Lok Sabha, Bihar. BJP worker".

Prasad has had a long stint—seven years—in his role as the IT minister for the country, in a government focused heavily on technology and digitalisation.

Programmes like Digital India, the Performance-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for electronics manufacturing, Common Service Centres, the Business Process Outsourcing scheme have been big focus areas for Prasad.

However, in the past few days, his single focus was on Twitter and its non-compliance with the new information technology Rules (IT Rules), 2021, under which it failed to appoint some mandated officers in India.

Prasad had also taken on big tech firm Facebook and its popular messaging service WhatsApp for invading user privacy and propagating misinformation in the past.

Whether it was the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the Israeli software Pegasus that breached WhatsApp security, spreading of misinformation through WhatsApp that led to mass lynchings, Prasad always had a tough message for Facebook and WhatsApp.

Even though central investigative agencies got involved in some cases like Cambridge Analytica, there has been no real outcome from these inquiries into the big tech firms.

Also, even though there were interesting policies in his tenure like the one on adoption of Open Source software in 2015, the product software policy to promote intellectual property creation through greater collaboration between industry and government, the ministry did not quite capture the benefits reaped from these.

A very successful endeavour under Prasad’s MeitY is however, the MyGov portal for conversations on government schemes and ideas, the DigiLocker for storing and accessing official documents on the go, eOffice, which promoted paperless office and documentation and so on.

However, until the new portfolios are allotted, it is still in the realm of speculation whether Prasad will retain the IT ministry or not. Sources said the lack of tangible results from Digital India and schemes like PLI in electronics were factors that could affect getting an extension in the same portfolio.

Of late, his message to big tech had been clear--if you do business in India, and earn big revenue from here, you must also follow the law of the land.

Telecom

Prasad took charge of the Telecom Ministry in May 2019, promising to revive the two beleaguered public sector units in the telecom sector-- BSNL and MTNL--providing universal broadband services across the length and breadth of the country and kick-starting India's 5G foray.

He has delivered on these promises, albeit partially. The revival of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd was approved by the Cabinet in October 2019, however, the asset monetization drive for these companies is yet to take-off. The voluntary retirement scheme for the employees came through but the merger of MTNL with BSNL did not.

The Union Cabinet on 23 October 2019, approved the proposal for revival of BSNL and MTNL by administrative allotment of spectrum for 4G services, debt restructuring by raising of bonds with sovereign guarantee, reducing employee costs, monetisation of assets and in-principle approval of merger of BSNL & MTNL.

National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) was launched in October 2011 and was renamed as Bharat Net Project in 2015 with the mission of providing broadband connecting to all the 250,000 Gram panchayats in the country.

On June 30, the Cabinet revised the implementation of the Bharatnet scheme by approving public private partnership mode for the rollout of BharatNet project for broadband services in villages in 16 states with viability gap funding of Rs 19,041 crore.

The total expense will be Rs 29,430 crore to cover around 360,000 villages in the 16 states, which includes Rs 19,041 crore to be spent by the government for the viability gap funding.