March 21, 2013-The government must allow room for innovation and Internet freedom while creating a legal framework so that India’s regulatory system does not become regressive like China’s, Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt has said.
Schmidt is in India to attend The Guardian’s ‘Big Tent Activate India’ event, which will he held in New Delhi on Thursday. Gujarat chief minister (CM) Narendra Modi, Jammu and Kashmir CM Omar Abdullah, Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of The Guardian, and Stephanie Cutter, who served as deputy director in US President Barrack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 election campaigns, will also address the summit.
“Managing government was one of my biggest tasks in all the markets Google was operating. I hope that the Indian regulatory system would not become as regressive as it is prevalent in China,” Schmidt said speaking at the Nasscom for Startup initiatives function here on Wednesday.
“In seeking to control all of it, including the good parts that are working well, they’ll stop good Indians from doing great things,” Schmidt added.
India made the highest number of requests to Google (4,750) after the US’ 16,407 seeking personal Web details of users. Courts and police in India wanted 96 pages taken down in the first half of 2012. “At present, India has around 600 million phones, 130 million Internet users and 20 million people with broadband connections. As those numbers increase, it is unlikely that all the people going online would have nice things to say about the government.”
Stressing on mobility and mobile application as the future technology, Schmidt said that India must invest in Internet to create another boom here. “Outsourcing created one kind of boom. However, the sad part is Internet penetration is still very low. India must invest in Internet so that it can create another boom. Also, they must use local languages to increase Internet penetration.” He also brushed aside fears of privacy problems in the upcoming products like Google Goggle, which allows the user to talk to the device and use it for a variety of functions including photography and scanning.”It is designed in a way that anyone using it in a public place would be noticeable.”
INDIA TODAY
