Resources

The Global Technology Summit brings together industry experts, policymakers, scientists, and other stakeholders from all over the world to deliberate on the changing nature of technology and geopolitics.

UPI powers India’s digital transactions. RBI’s eRupee is compelling but must argue retail use

Could the eRupee piggyback as a key piece of the larger 'digital stack'? RBI's concept note gives a direction, but there are concerns that must be addressed.

India can’t afford to keep pvt healthcare out of Ayushman Bharat Digital. Govt must do more

Smaller healthcare providers are less likely to participate due to the high labour costs and financial costs of upgrading digital health systems.

Green superpower: India must leverage its startup ecosystem for its net-zero transition

The climate tech puzzle for India cannot be solved by the corporations alone. India must draw upon its dynamic startup ecosystem.

Indian space tech should now build small satellites, forge big global partnerships

As luck would have it, India’s domestic policy matrix as well as the international space regulatory scenario are currently aligned with the geopolitical aims.

UPI redefining digital economy but govt coercion can stifle innovation

The government should be neutral toward organisations involved in integrating the digital economy and let the market pick the winner.

US-China tech rivalry will have spillover effects. India must hedge itself

In the field of tech cooperation, India has created products—UPI to Aadhaar— that it can leverage, provided that questions about use cases are answered.

How Washington and New Delhi Can Further Tech Ties

If implemented well, the new Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies can help the two countries coordinate on science and tech research, civilian space, quantum technology, and semiconduct...

Biotechnology Collaboration Through the iCET: A New Beginning

Based on preliminary research and stakeholder discussions, this article features four areas of biosafety and biosecurity that could potentially become concrete agenda items for collaboration betwee...

The United States and India: A Digital Partnership in Need of a Strategy

India-US relations have transformed in the last two decades. Yet, there is an aspect of this relationship that has been largely neglected: the need to bridge growing divergences in each countries’ ...

What Is Happening to India’s COVID-19 Vaccine Program?

India suffered a devastating second wave of infection from the coronavirus pandemic. Here's the challenges it faced with its vaccine program

To Friends in the United States: Facilitate Global Vaccine Manufacturing

The COVID-19 crisis in India was devastating. The Biden administration should have considered exceptions to the Defense Production Act and eased the global vaccine supply chain.

Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC): Critical Issues and the Indian Perspective

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has also revealed similar plans with an Indian CBDC expected in the near future. Any evaluation of such a major change in the nature of money requires a broader unde...

On ‘Decoupling’

By 2020, the United States and China had already begun to decouple—selectively paring back their interdependence in sensitive areas, especially technology. This process of ‘decoupling’ obscures ste...

International Strategy to Better Protect the Financial System Against Cyber Threats

A vision for how the international community could better protect the financial system against cyber threats.

What Is in India’s Sweeping Personal Data Protection Bill?

A far-reaching information privacy bill is making its way through India’s parliament. This paper explores what will be the likely consequences of it for India’s people and economy.

How India Can Get Most Out of Biden Presidency

The India-US relationship is too big to fail. But as US president-elect Joe Biden aims to restore America’s role in the global order, India must play to its own interests

Pivoting to Biden: The Future of U.S.-India Relations

While Indian officials are enthusiastic about Biden’s election, many policymakers are wary of protecting the gains they received from Trump.

The Day After: On India’s Role in Technology Standards

India could play a leading role in establishing multilateral data governance, but it will have to back away from protectionist impulses.

The Withdrawal of the Proposed Data Protection Law Is a Pragmatic Move

The withdrawal of the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 intends to help the Indian government to focus on technology policy in a holistic manner

Regulations Proposed by Draft Report on Non-Personal Data Need a Relook

State regulation must identify concrete problems, not create interventionist bureaucracies based on potential ones. These lessons have made India one of the world’s largest economies and enabled th...

View: The digital rupee can transform RBI’s and GoI’s ability to manage the economy

How can the 2022 budget on technology and innovation pave the way for India to become an economic superpower by 2047?

The Draft Personal Data Protection Bill is Flawed

The debate on privacy that started with Aadhaar is at a curious inflection point with the introduction of The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 in Parliament.

Correct design can ensure CBDCs don’t destabilise banks

Can Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) have a destabilising effect on the banking sector in India, and what are the possible solutions that may lie in designing CBDCs appropriately?

Lost in the Data Localization Debate: Does India Have Full Power to Exploit Its Own Data?

The Narendra Modi government wants to reportedly water down the provisions related to data localization proposed in the draft Personal Data Protection Bill 2018 formulated by the Justice Srikrishna...

China could use Russia’s cyber and hybrid war playbook against India

Geopolitics experts and strategic thinkers in India have been focused on what the military standoff in Ukraine will mean for India. What are the implications for India’s geopolitical alignments and...

India’s Digital Payments Innovation

Making fast, cross-border payments involves onerous hurdles. But progress in India points toward promising solutions.

The Great Tech Game' excerpt: No global consensus on whether and when cyber-incidents constitute an act of war

Unlike nuclear weapons, whose development and conditions of use were debated heavily in the public realm, especially after their first use in World War II, the same has not happened yet for cyber w...

China’s Central Bank Unveils Digital Currency, in Challenge to U.S. Dollar

As an early adopter of new payment networks, China could set standards for a transformative change in the global financial system.

How Ladakh and Doklam played into US’ great tech game

There is a need for a strategic rethink for all countries, big and small, as technology will shape the nature and raison d’être for alliances.

Watch out RBI, China's Central Bank Digital Currency is here

While the rest of the world is all hands on deck tackling the coronavirus pandemic, China has made a powerful move that might significantly strengthen its geopolitical influence in the global finan...

Russia-Ukraine: Could Central Bank Digital Currencies Help Countries Bypass Sanctions?

How do sanctions work within the current payments system, how a CBDC-based new payments system will be different, and how effective can sanctions be in the new system?

Recovery, Resilience, and Adaptation: India from 2020 to 2030

India must treat recovery from the coronavirus pandemic as an opportunity to remedy long-standing problems with its economy. If left untreated, these problems could precipitate other crises.

Assessing the viability of an Indian Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)

A major change in the nature of money requires a broader understanding of the opportunities and challenges arising from the adoption of CBDCs.

Lesson from Ukraine: Not Just Tanks, Troops, India Needs Cyberwar Doctrine to Fight Enemies

The Russia-Ukraine war has reinforced the role of big tech firms as geopolitical actors and clearly established the dual-use nature of information technology. There is a need for India to have a cy...

Anirudh Suri, managing partner at India Internet Fund, on the tech imperatives for India, in his new book

What are the strategic imperatives for India in technology, including the importance of identifying the next big waves of tech, and for the country to find ways to be an early surfer of these waves?

Biological Risks in India: Perspectives and Analysis

India faces a host of biological risk factors. Drawing lessons from the coronavirus pandemic and prior biological disasters, India’s government should pursue new safety protocols and develop new in...

What next on data protection?

The sudden withdrawal of the Personal Data Protection Bill (2019) from the Parliament increases uncertainty about the future of privacy regulation in India.

What India’s Budget Needs to Do to Move Its Space Program Forward

The proposal allocates a major funding increase for research, but the government needs to implement measures to stoke the private space industry.

Putting trust back in trusted connectivity: a call for more congruence in cross-border data transfers

What are the emerging areas of commonality or convergence for cross-border data flows between the EU and Asia?

Where the Coronavirus Stands in India

As its number of coronavirus cases grows, India is just beginning to expand diagnostic and manufacturing capacities. The road ahead will be long.

In India, a National Public Health Stockpile Is Overdue

Although India holds strategic reserves of crude oil and food, it entered the coronavirus pandemic with severe shortages of essential medical equipment

Is the climate tech opportunity real this time around?

The fundamentals and macro trends clearly suggest that the climate tech story will be significantly different from what was witnessed a decade ago. We are now seeing a unique confluence of trends i...

Combating Vaccine Hesitancy in India

Unless the government can up its communications game, anti-vax movements could prolong India’s pandemic effects.

How Will Digital Currencies Change Wallets?

Faster and more trackable than cash, newly minted, state-managed digital currencies are poised to revolutionize how the world buys, sells, and invests. Here’s how

India Can’t Keep Delaying Its Personal Data Protection Bill

There may be merit in first creating a privacy or data protection law, then addressing other concerns and objectives in subsequent legislation or policies

Govt Can Ban Bitcoin but for ‘Digital Rupee’ to Succeed, India Has To Do A Lot

The ‘digital rupee’ could be India’s chance to move away from being an economy with one of the highest cash to GDP ratios.

Modern Biotechnology and India’s Governance Imperatives

India needs to craft a more streamlined regulatory system and take other concrete steps to support growth in its domestic biotechnology sector.

The War in Ukraine and its Implications on India’s Space Program

The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that India needs to establish a strong domestic space economy in order to weather geopolitical storms.

Lessons from the Coronavirus Pandemic: Leveraging Biotechnology to Tackle Infectious Diseases in India

In India, biotechnology has played an important role in helping stakeholders in academia, industry, and government develop new pandemic-related technology, from test kits to respiratory devices. Bu...

What the history of the telegraph shows about the use of technology for geopolitical power

The history of the telegraph provides an illustrative example of how technology has shaped the geopolitics and geo-economics of the world in the recent past.

How India Can Take a Strategic Approach to Data Protection

India’s proposed data protection law would create an enormous task for the new agency formed to regulate it. Given stretched resources, the new Data Protection Authority should take a strategic app...

How Would Data Localization Benefit India?

The Indian government has presented data localization as a way to boost growth and help law enforcement access data for investigations, but some measures are far more effective than others.

China’s Digital Yuan: An Alternative to the Dollar-Dominated Financial System

China’s central bank has plans to roll out a digital yuan, which could circumvent the U.S. dollar in important global financial transactions. Here are some ways the digital yuan could pose a challe...

The Blessing and Curse of Biotechnology: A Primer on Biosafety and Biosecurity

Biotechnology has unlocked vast potential for improving human life, but the risks it poses mean that multilateral safeguards are due for an update.

How WHO’s “One Health” Program Can Help India Tackle Monkeypox

With monkeypox being declared a global health emergency, the WHO approach is an innovative and effective way to curb outbreaks of zoonotic diseases.

Understanding the Encryption Debate in India

While some policymakers argue that encryption must only be weakened to solve specific problems, most experts agree that there is no technological solution that would weaken encryption for specific ...

What India’s Proposed Drone Law Means for Its Economy

India has proposed a simpler set of rules for drones. These rules could offer a welcome opening for India’s economy.

How Should Countries Study Viruses Safely?

The uncertain origin of the coronavirus has focused attention on gain-of-function research—studying viruses to learn how they spread. How can countries work together to ensure stringent safety stan...

AUKUS and Afghanistan – Now is the time for Modi govt to deploy every diplomatic instinct

India’s diplomatic advance in the US could be pivotal with long-lasting effects in both South Asia as well as the future of the Indo-Pacific

To Help India, Biden Must Unclog the Vaccine Supply Chains

The United States and many other countries rushed to send aid to India when the country was battling with the second wave of Covid-19. U.S. President Joe Biden needed to focus his administration’s ...

What next on data protection?

There are two issues – the form that a new law will take, and the nature of protections it will offer

"Assessing the viability of an Indian Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) "

A large number of Central Banks around the world are planning to introduce Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) as a legal tender in their countries. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has also rev...

Russia-Ukraine: Could Central Bank Digital Currencies Help Countries Bypass Sanctions?

Even though sanctions will still be possible with a CBDC-based payments system, it will definitely be more difficult.

How Washington and New Delhi Can Further Tech Ties

If implemented well, the new Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology can help the two countries coordinate on science and tech research, civilian space, quantum technology, and semiconductor...

The Withdrawal of the Proposed Data Protection Law Is a Pragmatic Move

"The withdrawal of the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 intends to help the Indian government to focus on technology policy in a holistic manner. Related Media and Tools "

India Can’t Keep Delaying Its Personal Data Protection Bill

There may be merit in first creating the law, then addressing other concerns later.

India’s Digital Payments Innovation

Making fast, cross-border payments involves onerous hurdles. But progress in India points toward promising solutions.

Indian space tech should now build small satellites, forge big global partnerships

As luck would have it, India’s domestic policy matrix as well as the international space regulatory scenario are currently aligned with the geopolitical aims.

What India’s Budget Needs to Do to Move Its Space Program Forward

The proposal allocates a major funding increase for research, but the government needs to implement measures to stoke the private space industry.

The War in Ukraine and its Implications on India’s Space Program

The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that India needs to establish a strong domestic space economy in order to weather geopolitical storms.

US-China tech rivalry will have spillover effects. India must hedge itself

"In the field of tech cooperation, India has created products—UPI to Aadhaar— that it can leverage, provided that questions about use cases are answered. "

What is the United States- India initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET)

"This article explicates what iCET is and what it should not be mistaken for. The initiative is not designed to deliver a single deal. Instead, it involves multiple streams for cooperation and coll...

The US-India initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET): The Way Forward

The article highlights critical takeaways from the unofficial discussions led by Carnegie India on the iCET with officials from both the countries, industry leaders, technologists, fund managers, e...

Militarizing Re-entry of Space objects- An Indian perspective

Countries must reduce the subjectivity of space-based threats by clarifying terminology used in space treaties, including the definition of a “space object and component parts.”

What does the United States' MTCR Polciy reform mean for India's space sector?

The latest U.S. policy reform on the Missile Technology Control Regime may benefit the Indian space economy.

Is India ready for Semi-conductor manufacturing?

"India’s technological prowess has largely been built on software. It may now be time to look at hardware, especially semiconductors, where things look promising but more needs to be done. "

India and the United States' Good Bet: One Year of the US-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET)

This article reflects on the iCET’s mobilization since it was announced nearly a year ago and argues why this framework is the best structured bet between India and the United States.

Can a Defense Innovation Bridge Elevate India-U.S. Defense Cooperation?

"With considerable progress made by India and the United States in deepening defense ties, the bilateral focus is now on furthering defense innovation cooperation. Can the newly announced defense i...

The Business case for DPI

DPIs have the potential to transform how businesses deliver their services, given the benefits of scale, efficiency, and innovation. But leveraging the power of DPIs in a sustainable way will requi...

INDUS-X: Charting the way ahead for India-US Defence industrial cooperation

"U.S. President Joe Biden’s upcoming visit to India serves as an opportunity to keep the momentum on INDUS-X going. This commentary highlights some areas where the two countries could work toward a...

The Geopolitics of the Semiconductor Industry and India's place in it

Amid the economic decoupling underway between China and the United States, semiconductor supply chains are recalibrating. Given these geopolitical shifts, where will India and other countries fit i...

Forging a High-Technology Partnership Between the United States and India in the Age of Export Controls

U.S. export control reform may hold the cards to forging closer India-U.S. technology ties.

Decoding the G20 consensus on Digital Public Infrastructure: A key outcome of India's presidency

Seven months ago, few thought that a consensus on the DPI framework was possible. Now that this has been achieved under India’s G20 presidency, what’s next for the global future of DPIs?

Data Protection in India with Anirudh Burman

Anirudh Burman and Srinath Raghavan discuss the implications of India's draft personal data protection bill in this episode of Interpreting India

The Encryption Debate with Matthew D. Green

Matthew D. Green joins Udbhav Tiwari for an episode of Interpreting India to delve into the debate surrounding end-to-end encryption.

India's Cryptocurrency Space with Tanvi Ratna

Tanvi Ratna joins Priyadarshini D. for an episode of Interpreting India to discuss the cryptocurrency space in India.

China's Digital Yuan with Robert Greene

Robert Greene joins Priyadarshini D. for an episode of Interpreting India to explore the use and impact of China’s digital yuan.

India's Space Sector with Narayan Prasad Nagendra

Narayan Prasad Nagendra joins Konark Bhandari for an episode of Interpreting India to discuss some of the key developments in India’s space sector.

How might central bank digital currencies change the way we transact?

Jonathan Dharmapalan joins Carnegie India's Rajesh Bansal for an episode of Interpreting India to shed light on Central Bank Digital Currencies, which are meant to act as a replacement for cash. To...

Will India’s Proposed Data Protection Law Protect Privacy and Promote Growth?

In this podcast episode, Anirudh Burman unpacks the Data Privacy landscape and the effects of Data Privacy regulations on other fields of law and daily life

Sarang Bhoyar on Blockchain

Sarang Bhoyar joins Priyadarshini D. for an episode of Interpreting India to discuss the adoption and limitations of blockchain in the Indian context.

Crafting a Semiconductor Policy for India with G S Madhusudan

G S Madhusudan joins Konark Bhandari for an episode of Interpreting India to take a closer look at the Indian government’s semiconductor policy and the country’s potential in the space

Semiconductor supply chains with Sanjay Gupta

In this episode of Interpreting India, Sanjay Gupta joins Konark Bhandari to shed an industry perspective at semiconductor supply chains and India’s potential in the space.

Getting Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) right for India: Lessons from G20 and the rest of the world

"Webinar on Getting Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Right for India: Lessons from G20 and the Rest of the World April 7, 2022 at 6:00 pm -7:30 pm(IST)"

NSA Doval & iCET: Implementation of intent is key to "Next Big Things" in India- US partnership

On ‘Talking Point‘, Ambassador Arun K. Singh, Former India Envoy to the U.S., France, Member, National Security Advisory Board(2021-22), Non Resident Senior Fellow, Carnegie India in conversation w...

iCET has potential to take US-India ties to next level: Arun Singh

The newly unveiled Initiative on critical and emerging information technology (iCET) has the potential to take the US-India collaboration to the next level, former Indian envoy to the US Arun Singh...

Susmita Mohanty on Developments in India's Space Sector

In this episode of Interpreting India, Susmita Mohanty joins Konark Bhandari to discuss recent developments in India's space sector. What does it take to set up a successful space company?

Arun K. Singh on the iCET and India-US Relations

In this episode of Interpreting India, Arun K. Singh joins Konark Bhandari to discuss the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET), Prime Minister Narendra Modi's upcoming state visit ...

Exploring India's Data Protection law with Rahul Matthan

In this episode of Interpreting India, Rahul Matthan joins Anirudh Burman to discuss the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.