A country with a 1.34 billion population dwelling in a growing digital economy, information on every individual ‘s private details in a multi-dimensional matrices form is gigantic. Looking at that right to privacy is a fundamental right redefining digital governance that was anticipated because it’s a crucial facet of information privacy. While the Personal Data Protection Bill (PDPB) 2019 happens to be drafted on the lines of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), it also needs close scrutiny thinking about India’s digital economy.
While it’s been called as Personal Data Protection Bill (PDPB) 2019, I interpret it to be a regulation somewhat compared to protection in the right context.
Here is the evaluation of the Personal Data Protection Bill:
- Regulate the processing and storing of personal data by entities without the explicit consent of a user.
- Regulate the processing of sensitive and personal data of children while mandating the processing of’ critical’ personal data just in India.
- While critical private data should be processed only in India, it could be transferred exterior India in case of emergency or health services “where such transfer is needed for prompt action”.
- Sensitive personal data like health data, gender orientation, financial data, genetic or biometric data, political or religious belief/affiliation could be transferred outside India with explicit consent but will go on to be stored in India.
- Watchdog on data fiduciary which is identified as an individual, which includes the State, a company, a juristic entity or any person that alone or in conjunction with others determines the objective and ways of processing of personal data.
- Setting up of authority for protecting personal data and prescribing rigid penalties for violation of different provisions.
Considering these points, it can be summarized as not a data protection law but, as a law regulating all kinds of data processing.
Digitally driven technology is continuously helping to boost our living conditions. By virtue of that data captured is been utilized by data-driven sciences to improvise such living conditions. In case we curtail the development of such data which has the right goal it is going to hamper our digitally-driven economy in which the world is setting up data hubs as a result of talents available right here in India. In case that gets impacted, it is going to impact employment generation. It’s been approximated that Indian analytics, big data industry, and data science is believed to be $3 billion in revenues and increasing at a healthy rate. It’s a problem that we have to assess so long as PDP identifies and regulates the dangerous use of data it is fine.
Corporates have by now began to be responsible by way of establishing data compliance governance by a method of privacy readiness evaluation, defining sensitive data, or perhaps developing a lifestyle of privacy with the awareness of and training sessions. We have to be self-regulatory and responsible.