Digital India was one of the flagship schemes of the National Democratic Alliance-government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and while the administration met its target of laying down optic fibre cables in 1 lakh villages across India, bringing internet connectivity to these villages remains a target for the new government. Further, for the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology – which was split from the Ministry of Communications in 2016 – the most important focus area will remain passage of the data protection law, which has been in the works for over a year now. Officials in the IT ministry said that the government wanted to hold the widest consultations possible before instating the data protection law, which will be a first of its kind in the country. One official said, however, that the government is expected to continue its push towards data localisation even under the new regime. For the telecom ministry, the industry expects the government to provide relief in taxation to uplift the financially stressed sector, which saw foreign direct investment during 2018-19 falling to $2.67 bn from $6.21 bn a year ago. The stressed financial condition of the sector has been a drag on revenues of the exchequer with lukewarm participation in the last spectrum sale back in 2016 as well as falling inflows from licence fee and spectrum usage charges, which are functions of operators’ revenues.
