The November 5 guidelines issued by Meity on AI, is a guideline meant to unlock AI’s benefits for growth, inclusion, and competitiveness, while safeguarding against risks to individuals and society.
The PIB press note indicates that “These are envisioned as a foundational reference for policymakers, researchers, and industry to foster greater national and international cooperation for safe, responsible, and inclusive AI adoption”.
In other words, this document is not a standard or requirement. It is a background document for further action.
Part 4 of the guidelines indicate “Practical Guidelines for the Industry” . It states that any person developing or deploying AI systems in India should be guided by the following.
- Comply with all Indian laws and regulations, including but not limited to laws relating to information technology, data protection, copyright, consumer protection, offences against women, children, and other vulnerable groups that may apply to AI systems
- Demonstrate compliance with applicable laws and regulations when called upon to do so by relevant agencies or sectoral regulators.
- Adopt voluntary measures (principles, codes, and standards), including with respect to privacy and security; fairness, inclusivity; non-discrimination; transparency; and other technical and organisational measures.
- Create a grievance redressal mechanism to enable reporting of AI-related harms and ensure resolution of such issues within a reasonable timeframe.
- Publish transparency reports that evaluate the risk of harm to individuals and society in the Indian context. If they contain any sensitive or proprietary information, the reports should be shared confidentially with relevant regulators
- Explore the use of techno-legal solutions to mitigate the risks of AI, including privacy-enhancing technologies, machine unlearning capabilities, algorithmic auditing systems, and automated bias detection mechanisms.
It is heartening to note that FDPPI’s framework for compliance of DPDPA in the AI environment already incorporates all these suggestions.
I wish the drafting committee had read the book “Taming the twin challenges of DPDPA and AI with DGPSI-AI” .This book is now available in E Book form from Amazon. It was released in pre-print version during the IDPS 2025 at Bengaluru on September 17. I am not sure that the committee members were unaware of this framework but chose to deliberately suppress the information from the report. I urge the members to atleast read the framework now and compare the 6 principles with 9 Implementation specifications for the deployers and 13 implementation specifications for the developers.
It is possible that the research of the committee was inadequate and they neither follow www.naavi.org nor the linked in. Had they done so, they would have known the recommendations contained in this book and could have atleast made a reference to the document in the report.
It is also possible that the last meeting of the committee was well before September 17 and hence the members of the committee were unaware of the book at that point of time.
It may also be true that the Committee did not want to share any credit and wanted to show case the report as a original recommendation.
It is therefore apt to say that “Data input Bias” was indicative in the development of the report itself.
However, we forget the bias and try to correct it through a series of articles highlighting how DGPSI-AI compares with the 7 Sutras and recommendations related to Policy and Regulations, Risk Mitigation, the suggested action plans particularly for the industry.
Watch this space for more….
Naavi
