Cyber Fraud Knows No Borders, Warns Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday called for a global framework bringing together governments, technology companies, telecom operators and financial institutions to combat cyber fraud and deepfakes, warning that digital threats crossed national borders.

Speaking after inaugurating the 10th India Mobile Congress (IMC) at Yashobhoomi, Modi said India had gained considerable experience in tackling cyber fraud and was ready to share its lessons with the world.

“Technology achieves scale only when it earns trust. And we all know that cyber fraud and cybercrime do not respect borders. They have already crossed boundaries. A person sitting in one country may commit a crime in a third country with assistance from a second country,” he said.

“We are also witnessing how serious a challenge deepfakes have become. Therefore, it is necessary that we work on a global framework to address these issues. Governments, technology companies, telecom operators, and financial institutions must all become part of such a framework,” he said.

Modi urged the GSMA and telecom operators worldwide to develop a global mechanism to prevent such fraud before it reached people. The GSMA represents mobile operators and organisations across the mobile ecosystem and related industries.

He said users must be able to identify callers, verify the authenticity of messages and feel secure while making payments or sharing personal data. Consumer confidence, he said, was central to digital expansion.

“When he provides his data in any form, he should have the trust that his data is safe,” Modi said.

On semiconductor manufacturing, he said India’s domestic ecosystem was expanding rapidly, with commercial production already underway at five locations. The next phase of the India Semiconductor Mission would focus on localising the entire supply chain, he said.

Modi recalled launching 5G services from the IMC platform in 2022 and predicting their expansion in 2023. He said 5G connectivity had now reached every district through more than 5.5 lakh base stations, increasing internet speeds tenfold.

He credited the IMC with helping advance India’s telecom ambitions and said it had emerged as a platform for the country’s progress and aspirations. Referring to the congress theme, “scale without boundaries”, he said India’s experience demonstrated how such expansion could be achieved.

Modi said that while global telecom discussions focused on spectrum, towers and network speeds, mobile phones had become a tool of good governance in India over the past 10-12 years and were central to the Digital India vision.

He said India’s telecom growth, affordable devices and large user base had drawn global interest, but urged delegates to examine the purpose and approach behind these developments to understand the country’s priorities.

Modi said modern technology was becoming a privilege of a few a decade ago. The Digital India campaign placed mobile phones at the centre of efforts to widen access through telecom reforms, infrastructure expansion and domestic device manufacturing.

“This was a very big effort for the democratisation of technology,” he said.

He said wider access to mobile phones and data had improved people’s ease of living and helped offices, banks and schools continue functioning during the pandemic. Digital education was also bringing quality learning within reach of children in remote villages, including the poorest, he said.

Citing the national Diksha platform, Modi said it had facilitated more than five billion learning sessions and 60 billion learning minutes during the pandemic up to July 2022.

“Now our effort is to connect about 25 crore students with all our digital and online education mediums,” he said.

Modi said mobile connectivity had helped bridge geographic and linguistic barriers, making banking, healthcare and government services easier to access and reducing the need to travel to urban centres.

He said more than Rs 50 lakh crore had been transferred directly to beneficiaries through mobile platforms, preventing Rs 5 lakh crore from being lost to corruption.

Under the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi, more than Rs 4 lakh crore had been deposited directly into the accounts of small farmers who had previously not received government benefits, he said.