A new data regulator for India has been called for by a nine-member panel appointed by the government. Lead by former Infosys Ltd vice-chairman Kris Gopalakrishnan, the panel is looking at a law that will regulate the sharing, commercial use, and privacy of non-personal information.
The committee includes Debjani Ghosh (NASSCOM President), Neeta Verma (Director General, National Informatics Centre), and Ponnurangam Kumaraguru (Indraprastha Institution of Information Technology Delhi member)
The report that was accessed by Bloomberg News said that the panel discussed that market forces on their own will not bring about the maximum social and economic benefits from data for the society. The report has highlighted the key issues that the new regulator would be looking after. It would be a way of making sure that stakeholders are following rules, levelling the field for businesses and providing data when requested for legitimate reasons.
Tech giants like Alphabet’s Google, Zuckerberg’s Facebook, Bezos’ Amazon and Uber were recognised as companies having the first-mover advantage which has proved difficult for new entrants and startups to make entry into the field. With the new law in place, there might be some help to startups in entering the market and creating more space for innovation, economic growth and social well being.
India already has a bill that helps in governing the use of personal data and with this new law it will extend to non-personal data as well. Non-personal data is the information that may not include things like name, address, age, etc which helps in identifying a person. It is the data that was personal but later made anonymous.
The report speaks of rules that would govern how enterprises are collecting, analysing, sharing and distributing data. It will also govern the destruction of data. This law will provide some certainty to existing businesses and give opportunities to new ones.
“Just like the economic rights to natural resources arising from a community are considered to primarily belong to it, the value of social resources of Community Non-Personal Data should primarily accrue to it (instead of the default whereby data custodians take up the entire value of such data),” the report said.
(inputs from Bloomberg)
Some amount of government oversight is needed to ensure that there is no monopoly as well as there is fair competition as well as ethical business practices, employment practices.This applies to all companies. Also, NASSCOM should also look into the interests of employees as well in stead of acting like advocate of employers and try to make sure that companies follow ethical and legal employment practices