Data protection: Better bill needed

The government’s decision to withdraw the personal data protection bill, which was before Parliament, was not expected because even recently there were declarations that it would soon see the light of day. It is a much-discussed legislation and has a history starting from 2019.

The idea of the bill is even older than that. The government has now said that it “has identified many issues that were relevant but beyond the scope of a modern digital privacy law,” and would work on a “comprehensive legal framework” to present a new bill. The 2019 bill was first drafted by a committee led by retired Supreme Court Judge B N Srikrishna and was later scrutinised by a Joint Committee of Parliament. There were a large number of recommendations for changes in the bill. The committee prepared a revised draft bill in November last year which has now been withdrawn.

An effective bill to protect citizens’ personal data is essential when there are threats from various quarters to the right to privacy and the right of people to have ownership and control of their data. The explosion of media, especially social media, in the last many years, the increasing tendency of the government to intrude into the lives of citizens, and the pressures and attacks on liberal values and those fighting for those values, have made the need for a legal framework that protects citizens’ rights urgent.

The bill which has now been withdrawn was seen as inadequate to protect these rights, and its draft provisions have attracted much criticism. Some of them were even seen to be detrimental to the aims that the bill ostensibly had. The criticism had emerged both from within the country and outside.

The bill provided for establishment of a single regulatory authority to oversee both personal and non-personal data and proposed that the Centre should prepare an extensive policy on data localisation. Big Tech companies and the Indian IT sector, including many start-ups, opposed these provisions. Some of the criticism was related to provisions on the inclusion of non-personal data and treating social media as publishers.

The exemptions provided to the government were against the spirit of the bill as they would give the government more power to curb citizen’s rights while the bill should actually empower citizens. It not known what exactly the reasons and compulsions were that made the government withdraw the bill. But a vacuum in which there is no law for protection of data and regulations to implement it is not a desirable situation.

The government should bring forward at the earliest a better and more effective legislation that will address all the concerns voiced till now and with stronger provisions to protect privacy.