Enumerate the advantages and concerns with regard to India’s Data Localisation Policy
Enumerate the advantages and concerns with regard to India’s Data Localisation Policy.
Data localisation mandates that the personal data of a country’s residents should be processed and stored in the local platforms of the same country. This concept is gaining ground throughout the world since data is the new oil henceforth. Till 2018 India relied upon bilateral Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATs) to govern much of cross-border data transfer.
However from April 2018 onwards the same matter is dealt with by RBI’s Data Localisation norms, suggesting these companies had to store data on Indian servers only.
Advantages of Data Localisation:
- It could help ensure India’s security remains intact to a major extent from terror attacks
- It could effectively secure the privacy of Indian customers
- The governments can effectively utilise the data pooled in India for vibrant policy making
- It could enable the government to have more direct control over these companies, including to levy more taxes on them.
- Moreover, the cases of tax evasion by both individuals and companies can be effectively checked by the governments
Associated Concerns and Challenges:
- The developed countries like USA and Japan voice against the data localisation policies, which cannot be unheeded by India for a long time.
- It might reduce the competition among the companies especially in the card payments domain, which might ultimately end up with poor services for the Indian consumers (in case of foreign companies feeling the heat of establishing the local servers in India)
- The localised data could be misused by the government authorities to meet their personal gains.
- It is said that the RBI’s data localisation policy is actually meant to eliminate the foreign card companies like Mastercard and Visa from India.
- The local companies could continue to exploit the consumer data, if proper rules were not put in place.
Road Ahead:
It is pertinent for any country to have a data localisation policy in this Digital era. However all the necessary arrangements should be put in place to ensure that the pooled data serves only for the common good.
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