Big tech firms should be held accountable: Jaishankar

Big tech firms that harvest knowledge of Indians should be held accountable, stated External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar at an interplay with former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair on the India Global Forum 2021. Answering a query, he identified that nations had responded “nationally” to a world downside like the present pandemic. He urged the world to return collectively to cope with the differing method to vaccines.

“Right now a big debate on big tech is going on in different parts of the world, including a vigorous one in India. Nobody denies that these are forces of progress that are taking us in directions and opening up new vistas that we could not have imagined. But in a democratic society we have to ask ourselves, big tech is there in my life, but where is the responsibility [of the big tech]? You have a huge power but where is the accountability,” he acknowledged.

Whether to carry massive tech firms accountable was being considered as a “governance issue and a democratic issue” by some. International relation was created to incorporate states however the function of “non- state players who are in some ways bigger than many states” wanted to be “seriously debated”.

Twitter-GoI tussle

The Minister’s remarks have added to the continuing tussle between Twitter and the Government of India (GoI), which has accused the previous of non-compliance of nationwide legal guidelines. Mr. Jaishankar hinted that social media platforms should be held answerable to nationwide legal guidelines.

“This is not an issue limited to India. They harvest our data as they do across the world. So you have in a sense the opposite of the American revolution. You have representation but no taxation,” he confused, arguing that these points should be taken up in a dialogue that he described as a “very legitimate debate”.

The function of the massive tech in democratic societies should not be “brushed under the carpet”. However, searching for a world method to the pandemic, Mr. Jaishankar famous that nations should come collectively to deal with the problem posed by the virus.

“One of the paradoxes of our era is real problems are global but our responses are national. Climate change is global, terrorism is global and pandemics are global. But our responses tend to be national. Just look at the last year and the half. Which country has not acted nationally?,” he noticed.

Mr. Jaishankar sought a world method to counter the risk posed by the pandemic. He described the affect of the second wave of COVID-19 on India as “scarring” however pointed to the truth that the world got here collectively to assist India. There was willingness on this planet to work collectively in direction of containing the pandemic in a united method.

Covishield-EU problem

The remark concerning a world resolution to the pandemic from Mr. Jaishankar got here within the backdrop of studies that the Covishield vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India is but to be recognised for the “Green Pass”, which can be launched within the EU (European Union) from July 1.

In that context, Mr. Jaishankar on Wednesday requested the worldwide group to make sure “vaccine equity”. Maintaining that place, he reminded on the India Global Forum – “No body can make vaccines by themselves. Because the world has to come together if we have to scale up vaccines.”