Naavi.org has been in existence as a blog on Cyber Law since 1998-2000 even before ITA 2000 was passed. Any professional in the domain of Cyber Law and/or Data Protection is aware of the enormous information that is present on the website. Over the last few years, Naavi has been working on assisting of the industry for compliance of DPDPA 2023 much more than what MeitY has been doing. If any member of the India AI Governance committee says that he was unaware of the information available on naavi.org, they were perhaps not ready to be in the committee.
The committee has given some useful recommendations on how AI as a technology should be adopted in India and in the process made references to policy and regulations as well as the responsibility of the industry to “develop governance frameworks that are balanced, agile, flexible, and principle-based, and enable monitoring and recalibration based on feedback.”
In part 3, the committee also suggested short term goals which included “development of India-specific AI risk assessment and classification frameworks with sectoral inputs”.
In part 4, the Committee stated in its recommendation to the industry “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.”
The committee listed in annexure 2 various foreign laws which it took note of, in Annexure 3 different laws in India which it perhaps studied as relevant, in Annexure 5 listed types of voluntary frameworks such as “Developer’s Playbook for Responsible AI in India published by NASSCOM.” It also published in annexure 6, various ISO standards related to AI including standards under development.
The committee also appended a list of references which included many private blogs including from some of the members of the Committee.
Amidst all these references, the Committee lost sight of naavi.org , the framework DGPSI and DGPSI-AI about which many results are available in a Google Search and published books are available.
I am not suggesting that the committee should have accepted the framework or endorsed the framework. But not referencing the existence of the framework is a gross show of ignorance or deliberate bias on the part of the committee members.
Academicians like Dr Balaraman have no excuse in my view not to have studied the framework of DGPSI-AI and the book “Taming the Twin Challenges of DPDPA and AI” about which we had conducted an IDPS event in Chennai itself recently. If they were ignorant, they have to question themselves if their work was fair and unbiased.
The DGPSI-AI framework contained the only recommendations available in India today on how Deployers of AI should respond to AI and how developers of AI should support the Data Fiduciaries.
The Committee should feel ashamed that they did not study these available publications and incorporate its reference if not the recommendations into the committee’s work.
For those who may think, Naavi is trying to blame the committee because the DGPSI and DGPSI-AI framework were not included, I want to state that this committee had a duty to recognize work going on in India in these fields and a duty to highlight the work of DGPSI irrespective of who was behind the creation of these frameworks.
For those of you who think like “Good Indians” and say ..
“What was the motive for such an omission?… It could be an honest mistake… etc..”,
it is my duty to disclose that in the last few months, I had a major confrontation with Meity when NIXI wanted to forcefully take over the domain dpdpa.in registered by me and I was forced to issue a legal notice forcing them to back off.
The request for such take over had come from MeitY and was a serious violation of the rule of law which had to be pointed out in self defence. There was therefore a motive for MeitY to reject any reference to the undersigned. Only Mr Krishnan, the MeitY secretary can clarify if this was true or not.
Dr Balaraman in the meantime should clarify if he was aware of all the work of Naavi regarding AI framework and rejected it unworthy of mention after due consideration.
Since I am the aggrieved person, I have a right to raise my objection. I expect clarifications from the members of the committee if none of them were aware that here was a ready frame work on how industry could adopt AI and also be compliant with DPDPA including from Mr Rahul Mathan of Tri Legal. It is possible that the report could have been prepared without taking into consideration the views of the members. The committee could have just endorsed a pre-prepared report without proper deliberations.
Assuming that all the Committee members were honestly ignorant, I am now having an open discussion on November 15 at 6.30 pm on Zoom on introducing DGPSI and DGPSI-AI and invite every one of the members of the Committee and those who are supporting their right to chose what data they can reference and quote in a public interest report such as this.
The link is provided below.
Due diligence suggests that after November 15, the members of the Committee shall be considered that they have taken note of the “Made in India Framework” and if they continue to ignore it would a show of deliberate bias.
Naavi
