Technology Inclusion: MeitY Secy on Bridging Digital Divide

New Delhi, Mar 28 (PTI) Ensuring greater inclusion in technology access is critical in today's digital age, MeitY Secretary S Krishnan said on Friday, highlighting the growing concerns of exclusionary barriers such as language, regionality, age, and education, which hinder universal access to technology.

Krishnan, Secretary of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), speaking on the occasion of Universal Acceptance Day 2025, said technology access is often taken for granted, and there are critical blocks in the path for democratising technology with impact from exclusionary barriers such as language, regionality, age, and education.

"Fundamentally, we need to work towards greater inclusion, something which in the initial stages of popularising the internet was less of a concern, but now that it has become so popular, it is significantly more of a concern," he said.

He stressed the need to simplify technology access and ensure that multilingualism is not a barrier, especially in a country as linguistically diverse as India.

"We need to be much more inclusionary in the way that we operate and democratise technology, enable access to technology for a lot more people. And increasingly, as more of it is digital-driven and technology-driven, we have to ensure that people don't get excluded by any kind of mean," Krishnan noted.

Universal Acceptance (UA) Day is a global initiative to promote the use of multilingual and inclusive internet technologies.

The MeitY secretary outlined key initiatives aimed at democratising technology access, including internationalised domain names (IDN) through NIXI (National Internet Exchange of India), and the Bhashini project.

"Through Bhashini, we enable seamless translation across multiple languages, allowing people to access services in the language of their choice and preference," he said, adding that these efforts are being applied across government and private entities to bridge linguistic divides.

Bhashini is an AI-driven language translation platform launched by the Indian government.

Furthermore, Krishnan underscored the importance of inclusion in combating cybercrime by addressing information asymmetry.

"A lot of cybercrime, in its elemental way, is nothing but a con game. It's nothing but a confidence trick. It's basically based on information asymmetry. And the only way you can bridge that kind of information asymmetry is by making sure it's in a language that they clearly understand," he explained.

He affirmed India's commitment to a multi-stakeholder approach in internet governance, ensuring that local cultures and languages are preserved amidst global influences.

"We are open to global influence. We are open to what comes in from every part of the world, but at the same time, we need to preserve our own identity, ensure that local culture, local languages don't get swamped and ensure that we have a way in which people of the country who speak or who read in languages other than English are able to easily access," he said.