Data

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The revised Personal Data Protection Bill, expected to be tabled in the current monsoon session of Parliament, is a significant move towards India’s first dedicated personal data protection legislation. One of the proposals is a data protection authority, a cross-sectoral regulator that will significantly influence the Indian regulatory landscape. Against the backdrop of these developments, the author seeks to draw out the appropriate regulatory design keeping in mind essential questions of India’s existing regulatory capacity, framework, and jurisprudence.

“Technological federalism” or the interface of the landscape of technological and data governance with the federal structure, as enshrined in the Constitution of India, needs to be ideally adjudicated upon. Till the time it happens, it needs to be theorised and understood in detail. The centralisation of data, digital architectures as well as decision-making will be inevitable in the absence of a new perspective.

Researchers and academia seldom think about the foot soldiers who collect data by travelling to villages, blocks, or districts and interviewing households and communities.

In recent years, the Indian official data has been challenged for many reasons, most of them arising out of the perception that the government is reluctant to release unfavourable data. These doubts have been exacerbated by the controversy posed by the debate around Citizenship (Amendment) Act, National Population Register, and National Register of Citizens and the weakening of established institutions like the National Statistical Commission. The COVID-19 pandemic has further upset the data collection so that the first phase of the decennial population census and the proposed NPR exercise now stand postponed. Questions on credibility of official data and the pandemic-induced problems have come at a time when technology offers solutions to data collection, processing and dissemination. The initiatives launched by the government to improve the statistical system utilise these possibilities.