Narayana Murthy pitches for user friendly privacy laws

Infosys co-founder N R Narayana Murthy on Wednesday called for user-friendly privacy laws so that all issues of privacy can be settled once and for all.  

Delivering the keynote address at the National Supercomputing Conclave organised by the India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA), he said the Law Ministry has to take it forward.

"We have to work on user-friendly privacy laws, because whether we like it or not, when you have big data, high performance or supercomputing supporting those day to day things, if they are not used by citizens of the country, it has no value," he said.

"It should be in a way that satisfies those that  argue for privacy with others who realise that unless we use  these databases and unless these databases become useful for   benefiting citizens of this country, then it is not worth having them," Murthy said.

The task ahead is not simple and pointing at Aadhaar he called for setting up group of  experts with National Law Schools to look into privacy laws. "Technical experts in law will have to work on privacy laws as well as on cyber security, creating a cyber security environment," he said.

In an interaction with media,  NITI Aayog member  V K Saraswat said India is going ahead with its game plan to acquire capabilities in supercomputing space.  

"Indigenisation is core of the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) which is  approved in 2015 with a total outlay of Rs 4,500-crore.    We will be installing six machines, ranging from 500 teraflops to 2 petaflops," he said.

Saraswat also pointed out that three of these machines will be completely foreign-sourced and the rest three will be designed and made in India.

Besides industry veterans and academicians, the conclave was attended by Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman A S Kiran Kumar, architect of India's national initiative in supercomputing Vijay P Bhatkar and  Indian Institute of Science Director  Anuragkumar.