With China playing foul, why India is looking for new business rules

New Delhi, Oct 08: India will opt for partnerships in the development of technologies such as 5G and 5G plus through government to government partnerships rather than go for off the shelf purchases in future.

India will take part through the entire development process so that it has the option to go for a different partner in case of any technology denial, officials tell OneIndia. This is an important move in the wake of China disregarding every bi-lateral agreement along the Line of Actual Control.

India's security planners are planning to weed out several countries from taking part in core sectors such as telecommunications, power and roads by verifying origins of equipment imported into the country. The new guidelines would ensure that testing for power equipment would have specific guidelines that would require importers to declare the country of origin of the equipment. This would ensure that no malware is embedded in the critical sector.

While the national security planners are in favour of the move, the players in the industry are a bit skeptical as they feel that this could raise costs and there should be a need for a defined threshold for disclosing the origin of the country.

When it comes to the power sector, the new testing norms are important. The agencies have learnt that it would be safer to have importers declare the country of origin of the equipment so that there is no malware embedded in the equipment.