6th Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) session

• Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi delivered a video address during the plenary session of the 6th Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) held on 3 September 2021 in Vladivostok.
• It may be recalled that PM was the Chief Guest for the 5th EEF in 2019, the first by an Indian Prime Minister.
• In Indian history and civilization, the word ‘Sangam’ has a special meaning. It means the confluence or coming together of rivers, people or ideas. In my view, Vladivostok is truly a ‘Sangam’ of Eurasia and the Pacific.
• Applauding President Putin’s vision for the development of the Russian Far East, PM reiterated India’s commitment as part of its "Act East Policy’ of being a reliable partner of Russia in this regard.
• In 2019, India committed to an “Act Far East” policy. This policy is an important part of our special and privileged strategic partnership with Russia.
• He underlined the natural complementarities of India and Russia in the development of the Russian Far East.
• PM stressed the importance of greater economic and commercial engagement between the two sides in line with the ‘Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership’.

• Mazagon Docks Limited will partner with ‘Zvezda’ for the construction of some of the most important commercial ships in the world.
• India and Russia are partners in space exploration through the Gaganyaan program.
• India and Russia will also be partners in opening the Northern Sea Route for international trade and Commerce.
• The friendship between India and Russia has stood the test of time. Most recently it was seen in our robust cooperation during the Covid-19 pandemic including in the area of vaccines. The pandemic has highlighted the importance of the health and pharma sectors in our bilateral cooperation.
• Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas Mr Hardeep Puri is in Vladivostok to represent India at this forum Indian workers are participating in major gas projects in the Amur region, from Yamal to Vladivostok and onward to Chennai. We envisage an energy and trade bridge known as Chennai - Vladivostok Maritime Corridor.
• This connectivity project along with the International North-South Corridor will bring India and Russia physically closer to each other.
• India has a long-term supply of coking coal to the Indian steel industry.
• We are also exploring new opportunities in the agro-industry, ceramics, strategic and rare earth minerals and diamonds.
• He also referred to other potential areas of economic cooperation including diamond, coking coal, steel, timber etc.

India at BRICS Digital Health Summit

• Digital Health has become the priority in wake of the COVID 19 Pandemic.
• The two waves presented us with unique challenges for which an effective and humane centralized response sensitive to regional needs was warranted.
• The Digital health was aptly utilized to manage the pandemic and enabled us for a much more scientific and data driven approach for strengthening our response.
• India’s National Digital Health Blueprint is an overarching architectural framework for digital initiatives of Health in India.
• We are implementing the recommendations for streamlining the digital health programmes through National Digital Health Mission (NDHM).
• NDHM through the issue of Unique Health ID will create a single source of truth for facilities and practitioners and lead to extension of various health services through digital mode.
• India’s immediate field level priorities for creating an ecosystem of Digital Health includes Hospital Management Information System (HMIS) implementation in all district hospitals for real time clinical management, affordable and accessible medical consultation to every citizen through telemedicine and establishing a framework for health disaster management integrating all stakeholders.
• On the creation of a pool of human resource for managing pandemic digitally, the Minister showcased how India leveraged iGoT (online training platform) to train more than 16 million COVID warriors across the spectrum to manage COVID which includes doctors, paramedics, nurses, community participants etc.
• BRICS digital health platform is the need of the hour to ensure health data availability across BRICS countries in an interoperable manner to ensure continuum of care
• India has priorities towards full adoption of digital health technologies at all levels and BRICS’s strategy in building a cadre of competent health informatics professionals using a standardized curriculum across BRICS countries.
• India’s expectations from the development of a repository of evidence-based digital technologies and innovations for health systems (under BRICS) and India’s strategic approach to sustaining the gains from the use of digital innovations during COVID-19 in a sustainable manner toward building health systems resilience was also discussed.
• The ability of the platform to leverage existing organizations and their experiences like Global Digital Health Partnership, World Health Organization, G20 etc. and policy advocacy for wider as well as appropriate adoption of Digital Technologies not limiting to BRICS Countries was envisioned as India’s key expectation from this platform.
• We initiated a robust mechanism through a national Covid portal which integrated surveillance, testing, logistic management, data driven analytics etc.
• We popularized Arogya Setu and ITIHAS application – Digital Surveillance Application to source data from citizens and to predict the upcoming hotpots in the community.
• Arogya Setu became one of the most downloaded application with more than 201 million downloads.
• Similarly, to take health services to the doorstep of citizen, we are augmenting the National telemedicine platform (eSanjeevani) of India and establishing telemedicine HUBs with dedicated doctors in all Districts. The HUBs will serve all facilities in their region, for both Covid & non-Covid health care support.
• India is leveraging the Disease Surveillance Programme through an Integrated Health Information Platform which source real-time data from facilities on 33 Epidemic Prone Diseases for community surveillance. India is undertaking the World’s largest vaccine drive and the whole effort is being managed through the digital tool, Co-WIN (Winning over COVID).
• Co-WIN has been declared as a global good by the Government of India for adoption by any country for managing their vaccination drive, not only limiting to COVID but for conventional immunization also.
• In presence of honourable Health Ministers of BRICS nations, BRICS Digital Health Declaration was adopted.
• India being the host of the BRICS Digital Health Summit, the conclave was presided by Union Health Secretary Shri Rajesh Bhushan who brought focus to the wide adoption of digital health in the COVID-19 Pandemic on the spectrum that includes population surveillance, active case finding, communication with common citizens in crisis.
• The embarking of nations on digital technology in embracing primary universal health coverage was highlighted.

IT Rules 2021 for Social Media & OTT Platforms

Introduction

• The government has notified guidelines to provide a grievance redressal mechanism for users of digital platforms of all kinds — social media sites, messaging apps, over-the-top (OTT) streaming services, and digital news publishers.
• The Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 also mandate that social media and messaging platforms will have to adhere to new requirements in assisting investigative agencies of the government.

Rules for Social media intermediaries

Although there is no single set of rules that uniformly applies to the different kinds of digital platforms.

• Grievance Officer: Social media platforms like Google or Facebook, or intermediaries, for instance, will now have to appoint a grievance officer to deal with users’ complaints.
• Chief Compliance Officer: There are additional requirements on ‘significant’ social media intermediaries — meaning the platforms whose registered users in India are above the threshold notified by the government. Such intermediaries have to appoint a ‘Chief Compliance Officer, who will have to ensure that the rules are followed; the officer “shall be liable in any proceedings relating to any relevant third-party information, data or communication link made available or hosted by that intermediary”.
• Nodal contact person: The intermediaries will also have to appoint a nodal contact person for 24x7 coordination with law enforcement agencies.
• Identification of 1^st originator: The other key requirement is that such a social media intermediary would have to “enable the identification of the first originator of the information on its computer resource” as may be required by judicial order.
  • In other words, a problematic message, that is considered “an offence related to the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign states, or public order, or of incitement to an offence relating to the above or in relation with rape, sexually explicit material or child sexual abuse material”, will have to be traced to its initiator on messaging applications like WhatsApp and Signal.

Rules for digital publishers

• 3 tier Grievance Redressal mechanism: For digital publishers of news and current affairs as well as video streaming services, an identical three-tier structure for grievance redressal has been mandated.
  • This structure will look into grievances in relation to a Code of Ethics, which is listed in the appendix to the rules.
• Code of Ethics: Among other things, the Code of Ethics includes the ‘Norms of Journalistic Conduct’ as prescribed by the Press Council of India, as also content that shall not be published — “content which is prohibited under any law for the time being in force shall not be published or transmitted”, and the Programme Code under the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995.
• Classification of content: The guidelines also require streaming services to classify content based on its nature and type.
  • So, for instance, content “for persons aged 16 years and above, and can be viewed by a person under the age of 16 years with parental guidance shall be classified as U/A 16+”.

What is the context in which these rules have been framed?

• The issue came up last year when the Supreme Court was hearing a case involving Sudarshan TV.
• In the course of the case, it asked the government for suggestions to improve the self-regulatory mechanism for electronic media. The government, in its affidavit, highlighted the need to regulate web-based media.
• There has also been a face-off between the government and Twitter in recent weeks over the social media platform’s non-compliance with its order to block several hashtags and handles of journalists, activists and politicians in the backdrop of the ongoing farmers’ protests. Twitter eventually complied, though not fully.
• Questions about how social media platforms can be made accountable for the spread of fake news and pornographic content have been raised in Parliament and by the Supreme Court in recent years, something that has been highlighted by the government in its release as well.

What has changed from earlier?

• The scope of regulation of the digital space has been expanded.
• The new guidelines not only replace the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules, 2011 but go a step further.
• They also regulate digital news publishers and streaming services, which was not the case earlier. The 2011 rules were a narrower set of guidelines for intermediaries.
• Under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, the intermediaries are not liable for user-generated content, provided they adhere to the rules — “an intermediary shall not be liable for any third-party information, data, or communication link made available or hosted by him,” it states. These rules have been tightened now.

Why are the rules being criticised?

• Strict government regulation: For digital news media, these guidelines will subject it to governmental regulation in a way.
  • The three-tier structure of regulation will entail oversight by a government committee at the highest level. Any grievance that does not get satisfactorily solved at the self-regulatory levels will get escalated to the government panel.
  • The Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), a digital liberties organisation, refers to this as “excessive governmental control over digital news and OTT content”.
• Traceability of Originator: The other rule that has been criticised by the IFF is the requirement of traceability of the originator of a problematic message.
  • The news guidelines do suggest that this will not be required “where other less intrusive means are effective in identifying the originator of the information”.
  • Censorship and surveillance: The rules have also been criticised for increasing the potential for censorship and surveillance.