Modi calls for global framework on cybercrime, says technology must earn trust

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday called for international cooperation to tackle cybercrime and financial cyber fraud, stating that “technology achieves scale only when it earns trust”. He was speaking at the 10th edition of the India Mobile Congress.

Describing the cross-border nature of digital crime, Mr. Modi said a person sitting in one country could take help from a second country to commit a crime in a third. “Cyber fraud and cybercrime respect no boundaries,” he said. “It is necessary that we work on a global framework for this. Governments, technology companies, telecom operators and financial institutions will all have to join this framework.”

The Prime Minister did not specify what such a framework would contain, nor did he indicate a timeline for negotiations. His remarks place the responsibility for curbing online fraud on a combination of governments and private players, including banks and telecom service providers, rather than on any single authority.

Mr. Modi said India had achieved a large amount of digitisation in recent years, and recalled that the digital divide was once a major challenge for the country. “Until a decade ago, the digital divide was a very big challenge in India,” he said. “Through the Digital India campaign, we resolved to change this, and we put the mobile phone at its centre. This was a very big effort towards the democratisation of technology.”

He said the effort was supported by reforms in the telecom sector, expansion of infrastructure and a push to manufacture mobile phones and other telecom hardware within India.

Union Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, also speaking at the event, said the Bharat 6G Alliance from India had established 7,700 patents, most of them registered internationally. “It is our goal to be seated at the standard-setting table,” he said.

Mr. Scindia presented data on the fall in the cost of mobile internet and the rise in its use. “One GB of data would cost ₹268 in 2014,” he said. “Today, 12 years later, one GB of data costs only ₹8 — the cheapest data capability across the world. And combine that with adoption. In 2014, the average monthly data usage per customer was only 0.26 GB. Twelve years later, it has grown 140 times to 36 GB per individual across the length and breadth of our country.”

The figures cited by the Minister point to two changes over the period: a sharp reduction in the retail price of mobile data, and a corresponding increase in how much of it Indians consume. Together, they describe a market in which connectivity has moved from a limited service to a mass one.

Both sets of remarks — on fraud and on the spread of connectivity — address the same question from different directions. As more Indians transact, communicate and store information online, the exposure to digital fraud grows with the number of users. The Prime Minister framed public confidence as a condition for that growth continuing, arguing that scale in technology follows trust rather than preceding it.

The India Mobile Congress is an annual gathering of telecom operators, equipment makers, regulators and policymakers. This year's edition marked a decade of the event, which has become a platform for announcements on spectrum, standards and network rollouts.

While the call for a global framework was the central policy point of the Prime Minister's address, it remains a proposal at this stage. No draft, participating countries or institutional venue for such cooperation were announced. For a problem that Mr. Modi himself described as inherently international, that gap between diagnosis and mechanism is likely to shape how the proposal is received by other governments and by the companies that would be asked to join it.