Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani supported the proposed data privacy and cryptocurrency bills on Friday, saying India is putting in place the most forward-looking policies and regulations.
Blockchain technology is a distributed ledger using decentralisation and cryptographic hashing to make the history of any digital asset unalterable and transparent.
Ambani, who has been a strong advocate for Indians to own and control their data and for India to write strict rules around digital information, believes nations have the right to build and protect strategic digital infrastructure. In addition to stating that data is the ‘new oil’, he said every citizen’s right to privacy must be protected.
At the InFinity Forum, hosted by the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA), he said, ‘India has the most forward-looking policies and regulations. Aadhaar, digital bank accounts, and digital payments are already in place in the country. Data privacy and cryptocurrency bills are on their way to the Senate. I think we’re on the right track.’
The government plans to introduce a new bill in Parliament to treat cryptocurrencies as financial assets while safeguarding small investors. A minimum amount may be imposed on investments in digital currencies while their use as legal tender is prohibited.
The legislative agenda for the current winter session of Parliament, which started on November 29, includes the introduction of a bill that would prohibit all forms of private cryptocurrency, except for “certain exceptions to help promote the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies.”
The Reserve Bank of India believes that digital currencies will affect the nation’s macroeconomic and financial stability, and therefore wants a complete ban on them. The government is considering taxing gains from cryptocurrency, but the Reserve Bank of India wants to ban digital currencies altogether.
Every nation has the right to build and protect strategic digital infrastructure, he asserted, adding a uniform global standard was needed for cross-border transactions, collaborations, and partnerships.
He said citizens’ privacy rights must be protected and that the appropriate policies and regulatory framework should balance this with the nation’s need to safeguard data and digital infrastructure.
The chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries Ltd, Mukesh Ambani, said he was a strong believer in blockchain technology. “Blockchain technology is different from cryptocurrency,” he said, adding, “Blockchain technology is crucial for a trust-based, equitable society.”
Despite the bill for regulating cryptocurrency in the works, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das is among those who believe the blockchain technology behind cryptocurrencies could exist by itself without the currency.
Ambani said that blockchain technology could be used to deliver unprecedented levels of security, trust, efficiency, automation, and automation. “The technology can be used to modernise the supply chains that form the backbone of our economies.”
Besides supercharging Internet adoption and helping lower data prices since Jio launched in 2016, Ambani’s group has developed a platform to compete with Amazon and Walmart-backed Flipkart, both of which are betting big on India’s e-commerce market.
The country, he said, is transitioning fully from 2G to 4G. Our team is working to create a more affordable ecosystem of devices backed by a more rapid rollout of optical fibre, cloud, and data centre infrastructure.
“Finance is at the core of everything, and I believe we are in the early stages of sporadic digitisation, and with several new-age technologies emerging, the opportunity is in adopting a decentralised model of finance,” he said.
