Cyber Threats Respect No Borders, Neither Should Cooperation: Union MoS for Communications Dr. Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani at ITU PP-26

1. At a Glance

• At the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference (PP-26) in Doha on 11 Nov 2026, Dr. Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani, Union MoS for Communications and Rural Development, presented India's model of inclusive digital connectivity, emerging technologies and cybersecurity. [1]
• His central point: cyber threats are cross-border, so defending against them needs international cooperation and shared best practices. [1]
• He also asked that developing countries help shape global technology standards and spectrum policies, "not merely adopt them". This is the Global South argument for fairness in how technology is governed. [1]
• UPSC relevance: GS-II (international bodies, India's multilateral diplomacy), GS-III (cybersecurity, digital infrastructure, S&T). Prelims can test the flagship schemes (BharatNet, Samriddh Gram, Bharat 6G Vision) and ITU basics. [1][2]

2. Why in the News

• 11 Nov 2026: MoS Pemmasani's address at ITU PP-26, Doha. [1]
• On the sidelines, India held bilateral talks with Malaysia, Iran and Uzbekistan on cyber fraud, digital infrastructure security and quantum cooperation. [1]
• India presented Samriddh Gram Centres (a WSIS Prize winner) as a model for delivering services in rural areas. [1]

3. Background & Evolution

• Origin of ITU: the International Telegraph Convention was signed in Paris on 17 May 1865 by the plenipotentiaries of 20 founding states, creating the International Telegraph Union. [2]
• Merger: the Madrid Convention merged the International Telegraph Union and the International Radio-telegraph Union into a single organisation, which came into being on 1 Jan 1934. [2]
• UN linkage: after 1945 the ITU became part of the UN system as a specialised agency (the UN Yearbook 1947–48 covers this). [2]
• Domestic evolution: India's approach moved in stages:
• Network: public investment in rural broadband through BharatNet (about $15 bn). [1]
• Services: turning that connectivity into services through Samriddh Gram Centres. [1]
• Frontier tech: 100 5G use-case labs, AI models in Indian languages, affordable AI computing and quantum research. [1]

• Next-generation networks: the Bharat 6G Vision, where telecom, AI and satellites converge. [1]

• Fraud prevention: sending alerts to banks helped prevent over ₹5,000 crore in suspected financial losses. [1]

4. Core Static Facts

Item	Fact	Src
Event	ITU Plenipotentiary Conference PP-26, Doha, 2026	[1]
Speaker	Dr. Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani, MoS for Communications and Rural Development	[1]
Date of address	11 Nov 2026	[1]
Global offline population	2.2 billion people	[1]
BharatNet investment	about $15 billion; public investment in rural broadband	[1]
Fraud losses prevented	over ₹5,000 crore (alerts sent to banks)	[1]
5G use-case labs	100 (for building talent)	[1]
Samriddh Gram Centres	WSIS Prize winner; healthcare, agricultural advice, banking and government certificates under one roof	[1]
Bharat 6G Vision	India's future-network roadmap; telecom + AI + satellite convergence under a modern regulatory framework	[1]
Bilateral partners at PP-26	Malaysia, Iran, Uzbekistan	[1]
ITU founding	17 May 1865, Paris, 20 states, as International Telegraph Union	[2]
Merger	Madrid Convention; merged organisation in place from 1 Jan 1934	[2]

Key terms [1]:

• Digital divide: the gap between people who have internet access and people who don't.
• Last-mile service delivery: connectivity matters only when services actually travel over it.
• Democratising technology: making advanced technology accessible and affordable.
• Standards vs spectrum policy:
• Standards are the technical rules for technologies.
• Spectrum policy governs how radio frequencies are allocated.
• Both are decided in global forums.

5. Multi-Dimensional Analysis

Geopolitical / Strategic

• India is positioning itself as a voice for the Global South: developing countries should shape standards and spectrum rules, not just take them. [1]
• Cyber-fraud diplomacy is spread across several regions: Southeast Asia (Malaysia), West Asia (Iran) and Central Asia (Uzbekistan). [1]
• India asks for cooperation on capacity building, which fits its "digital public goods" approach to diplomacy. [1]

Scientific / Technological

• Convergence of telecom, AI and satellites is the design idea behind the Bharat 6G Vision. [1]
• AI in Indian languages and affordable AI computing reduce the barriers of language and cost. [1]
• Quantum research is a new area of bilateral cooperation (e.g., with partners at PP-26). [1]

Security (Internal / Cyber)

• Cyber fraud ignores national borders, so purely national enforcement is not enough. Shared best practices are needed. [1]
• The preventive model (early alerts to banks, over ₹5,000 crore saved) shows that stopping fraud early works better than trying to recover money afterwards. [1]
• Digital infrastructure security is now an explicit item in bilateral talks. [1]

Economic

• Public investment (BharatNet, about $15 bn) fills the gap left by private operators, who focus on profitable urban markets. [1]
• The 5G labs build a talent pipeline for the telecom and tech ecosystem. [1]

Social / Equity

• Of the 2.2 bn people still offline worldwide, many are in rural areas and developing countries. Universal connectivity is an equity issue. [1]
• Samriddh Gram Centres combine health, agriculture, finance and certificate services, lowering the cost for citizens of reaching the state. [1]

Ethical / Governance

• Making global technology governance more democratic raises the question of who writes the rules for digital public infrastructure. [1]
• One risk: the network can exist without services being delivered over it. The BharatNet-to-Samriddh-Gram sequence addresses this "connectivity without utility" gap. [1]

6. Recent Developments (last 12–18 months)

• 11 Nov 2026: India addresses ITU PP-26, Doha. [1]
• Nov 2026: bilateral talks at PP-26 with Malaysia, Iran and Uzbekistan on cyber fraud, digital infrastructure security and quantum cooperation. [1]
• 2026: India showcases Samriddh Gram Centres, a WSIS Prize winner. [1]
• 2026: India cites over ₹5,000 crore in suspected losses prevented through its bank-alert mechanism. [1]

7. Prelims Hooks

• PP-26 is the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference held in Doha in 2026. [1]
• India's address at PP-26 was delivered by the MoS for Communications and Rural Development, not the Cabinet Minister. [1]
• 2.2 billion people worldwide remain offline. [1]
• India's investment in BharatNet is about $15 billion. [1]
• Samriddh Gram Centres won a WSIS Prize (WSIS = World Summit on the Information Society). [1]
• Samriddh Gram Centres offer healthcare, agricultural advice, banking and government certificates in one place. [1]
• India has set up 100 5G use-case labs. [1]
• The Bharat 6G Vision links convergence of telecom networks, AI and satellites. [1]
• Alerts to banks prevented over ₹5,000 crore in suspected financial losses. [1]
• India's PP-26 bilateral partners on cyber fraud and quantum cooperation: Malaysia, Iran, Uzbekistan. [1]
• The ITU was founded on 17 May 1865 in Paris as the International Telegraph Union. [2]
• The ITU had 20 founding states. [2]
• The Madrid Convention merged the Telegraph and Radio-telegraph Unions; the merged organisation began on 1 Jan 1934. [2]

8. Built Is Not the Same as Used: What Audits Found in BharatNet

• Most of the network is ready, but very little of it is used
• CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General, India's official auditor of government spending) audited BharatNet in 2026. It found 96.70% of Gram Panchayats (GPs) "service-ready" by November 2025, measured against a reduced, revised target [3].
• "Service-ready" only means the line can carry a connection. It does not mean anyone is using it.

• The same audit found that only 17.91% of the available bandwidth (the data capacity of the line) was being used [3].

• Parliament's committee counted a much smaller number of working connections

• The Standing Committee reviewing Digital Bharat Nidhi (the fund that pays for BharatNet) found that only about 30% of GPs had a working BharatNet connection, as of February 2026 [4].

• The 96.70% and 30% figures measure different things. Read together, they show a large gap between laying fibre and actually giving service.

• Unused fibre sits idle because states have not decided how to rent it out

• Dark fibre (laid but unused cable that could be rented to private operators) often went unleased. The reasons were a missing policy or late decisions by states [3].

• So the ~$15 bn public network [1] earns little and serves few, even where the cable is already in the ground.

• When the line breaks, it stays broken for weeks

• Fibre faults took 17 days to repair on average [3].

• A village cannot run a health clinic or banking service on a line that is down for half a month.

• Some work was simply abandoned

• Work was abandoned in 16,271 GPs across six states [3].

• Only 766 GPs had active public Wi-Fi hotspots as of September 2025, and BharatNet funds have gone underspent since 2022-23 [5].

• Why this matters for the PP-26 speech

• India presented BharatNet and then Samriddh Gram as a clean story: first the network, then the services [1].
• The audit record shows the middle step, where people actually use the network, is the weak link. A Mains answer should say this, not just repeat the model.

9. What the ₹5,000 Crore Fraud Figure Does Not Tell You

• The figure comes from one system. A different system shows the total losses.
• The ₹5,000 crore in the speech comes from alerts sent to banks [1].

• Separately, MHA (Ministry of Home Affairs) told the Lok Sabha that citizens reported more than ₹55,050 crore lost to financial cyber fraud from 2021 to 2025. That covers 65.89 lakh complaints on NCRP (National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal) [6].

• Most stolen money still gets away

• Of those reported losses, only about ₹8,189 crore was put under lien (the bank freezes the money so the fraudster cannot withdraw it) [6].
• That is roughly 15% of the money reported lost. The other 85% was not stopped.

• Even these figures cover only frauds that victims reported. Many victims never complain, so the real loss is likely higher.

• Do not add the two "saved" figures together

• MHA's own count is more than ₹11,158 crore saved by 30 June 2026, through the CFCFRMS (Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System, launched in 2021 for fast reporting) [6].

• The ₹5,000 crore bank-alert figure is a different mechanism [1]. The two may cover some of the same cases, so adding them can double-count.

• Why money that crosses a border is hardest to stop

• Freezing works only while the money is still inside an Indian bank.
• Once it moves abroad, India needs another country to act fast. This is exactly the gap the "cooperation" argument at PP-26 is about [1].

10. Cooperation Needs Shared Rules, and Shared Rules Are Disputed

• A global treaty now exists, so the real question is how India uses it
• The UN General Assembly adopted the UN Convention against Cybercrime in December 2024 [7].
• It sets up a common platform for sharing electronic evidence between countries, protecting victims and preventing crime [7].

• This is the legal channel that cross-border fraud cases need. Talks at PP-26 alone cannot replace it.

• The same tools that catch fraudsters can be used against citizens

• During UN negotiations, several countries warned that some states may misuse the treaty to justify human rights abuses [8].
• The problem is that "share data on cybercrime" can also mean "hand over data on a journalist or critic", if the partner country defines cybercrime very widely.

• So every bilateral cyber deal needs clear limits: which crimes are covered, and what data can be shared.

• Why the choice of partners raises this question

• India's PP-26 partners (Malaysia, Iran, Uzbekistan) have very different legal systems [1].
• Cooperation on fraud and on securing infrastructure is useful. But an aspirant should be able to say that data-sharing deals must carry the same safeguards that the UN debate asked for [8].

11. What Should Follow, and Who Should Do It

• DoT and the states should fix usage, not keep laying more fibre
• The Standing Committee asked for a state-wise performance audit of BharatNet [4].
• It also asked for more household connections and for renting out unused capacity, to raise how much the network is used [4].

• CAG's finding on unleased dark fibre points to one specific task: each state must finalise its fibre-leasing policy [3].

• Set a repair deadline and track it

• Average repair time is 17 days [3]. A time-bound repair standard, with penalties for implementing agencies, would directly support Samriddh Gram-type services, which cannot run on a dead line.

• MHA and banks should report what share of reported money is frozen, not just the total saved

• A large "saved" number can hide the fact that only about 15% of reported losses are frozen [6].

• Publishing the share of money frozen, and how fast it was frozen, would show whether fraud prevention is actually improving.

• MEA should push cross-border fraud cases through the UN Convention's evidence-sharing channels, with safeguards

• Use the treaty's platform for sharing evidence [7], and write in the human-rights limits that countries raised during negotiations [8].

• India's claim to shape global standards will be stronger with a working domestic record

• The call for developing countries to shape standards [1] carries more weight when India can show its own rural network is used, not just built [3].

12. Anchors for Answers

• Data: Only 17.91% of BharatNet bandwidth was used; fibre faults took 17 days to repair on average [3]
• Data: About 30% of GPs had a working BharatNet connection (Feb 2026) [4]
• Data: More than ₹55,050 crore in cyber-fraud losses reported in 2021–25; only about ₹8,189 crore put under lien [6]
• Report/Committee: CAG Audit Report No. 19 of 2026 (BharatNet performance audit) [3]; Standing Committee report on Review of Schemes/Projects under Digital Bharat Nidhi [4]
• Law/Case: UN Convention against Cybercrime, adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2024 [7]
• Scheme: CFCFRMS (2021): fast reporting and freezing of fraud money; more than ₹11,158 crore saved by 30 June 2026 [6]

13. Mains Relevance

• GS-II: important international institutions, agencies and fora (their structure and mandate); India and its bilateral, regional and global groupings.
• GS-III: challenges to internal security through communication networks; basics of cybersecurity; infrastructure (telecom); awareness in IT, AI, quantum and space.
• Possible question stems: 1. "Cyber threats are transnational, but cyber governance remains largely national." Examine the case for international cooperation against cyber fraud, with reference to India's recent initiatives. (GS-III, 15 marks) 2. Developing countries must shape, not merely adopt, global technology standards. Discuss in the context of India's role at the ITU. (GS-II, 10 marks) 3. Connectivity is necessary but not sufficient for digital inclusion. Evaluate with reference to BharatNet and Samriddh Gram Centres. (GS-III, 15 marks)

14. Related Topics to Study Next

• WSIS process and its Action Lines: the framework behind the prize Samriddh Gram won.
• Spectrum allocation and the World Radiocommunication Conference: the global spectrum rule-making India wants a voice in.
• Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) and fraud-reporting systems: the domestic machinery behind fraud prevention.
• Bharat 6G Vision and Bharat 6G Alliance: India's next-generation network roadmap.
• IndiaAI Mission and Indian-language AI models: links to "democratising technology".
• National Quantum Mission: the domestic base for quantum cooperation abroad.
• UN cybercrime convention / Budapest Convention debate: the multilateral legal frameworks on cross-border cybercrime.
• Digital Public Infrastructure diplomacy (G20 and after): India's broader Global South technology narrative.

15. NCERT Concepts to Revise

• International Telecommunication Union (Polity): The conference is the ITU's top policy meeting, where India made its case on standards and spectrum.
• UN specialised agency (Polity): ITU became a UN specialised agency after 1945, so this explains its status and how it relates to the UN.
• Global South (Polity): India argues developing countries should help shape technology rules, not just adopt them.
• Spectrum (Economy): Spectrum policy is one of the two global rule areas, with standards, that India wants a voice in.
• BharatNet (Geography): India's flagship rural fibre network, the first step in its connectivity-to-services model.
• Digital divide (Geography): The 2.2 billion people still offline and rural-urban gaps are the problem India's model targets.
• Digital public infrastructure (Polity): India's digital public goods approach underlies its technology diplomacy and its Samriddh Gram service model.
• Digital Bharat Nidhi (Economy): This fund pays for BharatNet, and a parliamentary committee reviewed it in the note.
• Dark fibre (Geography): Laid but unleased fibre explains why BharatNet earns little and is barely used.
• Performance audit (Polity): CAG's performance audit found BharatNet ready on paper but barely used, the key critique.
• Comptroller and Auditor General (Polity): The constitutional auditor whose 2026 report exposed low bandwidth use and slow repairs.
• Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (Polity): The home ministry body behind India's fraud reporting and prevention systems cited in the note.
• Financial fraud (Economy): Cyber fraud is the cross-border threat driving the cooperation argument and the ₹5,000 crore figure.
• Human rights (Polity): Cybercrime treaties and data-sharing deals need safeguards against misuse, as countries warned during UN negotiations.
• National Quantum Mission (Economy): The domestic base for the quantum cooperation discussed with partner countries at PP-26.

16. Common Errors / Trap Areas

• Speaker's rank: the speaker was the MoS (Communications and Rural Development), not the Cabinet Minister for Communications. [1]
• Network vs service: BharatNet is the network; Samriddh Gram Centres are the service-delivery layer. Don't swap them. [1]
• Name and year: the ITU began as the International Telegraph Union (1865), not "Telecommunication". The current name follows the Madrid Convention merger (1934). [2]
• Standards vs spectrum: standards are technical rules; spectrum policy is about allocating frequencies. Questions may test which is which. [1]
• Currencies: BharatNet's figure is in US dollars (about $15 bn), while the fraud-losses figure is in rupees (over ₹5,000 crore). Don't mix them up. [1]