MeitY Secy S Krishnan on India's semiconductor strategy, AI regulations, personal data protection

S Krishnan has seen it all. A career bureaucrat, he has led finance, commerce, and infrastructure departments for the Tamil Nadu state government over the past three decades, and was even an advisor to the International Monetary Fund. 

Despite that wealth of experience, though, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Krishnan’s current posting is his trickiest and most consequential one yet. In September 2023, the bespectacled bureaucrat was appointed as secretary of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology at a pivotal time in India’s electronics and IT journey.

The country had just secured its first major semiconductor investment from US-based memory chip giant Micron Technologies. Mere months earlier, the parliament had already enacted the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023—India’s first data protection law. Shortly after his appointment, the government attracted a slew of semiconductor fabrication and packaging investments and also launched a Rs 10,000-crore IndiaAI Mission.