August 29, 2017, by Tushar Imade 13
While at one end, the 9-member Constitution panel of the Supreme Court is scrutinizing whether the right to privacy should be deemed as a fundamental right, on the other end, the previous Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), Nandan Nilekani, said that India required a data protection regulation “at the earliest” as it is a “fundamental thing” so that it can enable the users to demand from the foreign or domestic organizations to share their information when required. Nilekani, at the Delhi Economics Conclave 2017, said,“This is not a technology issue, but a policy issue.”
He further said, “We need to have a regulation that commands whoever assembles information, be it an Indian or the government or global company, will share information with businesses/consumers on request.”
Mukul Rohatgi, the previous Attorney General, had earlier said that the government was intending to present this year a data protection policy. The necessity for the regulation was sensed after online messaging service WhatsApp altered its rule of data non-sharing for its users after procurement in 2016 by Facebook to enable sharing of the elements for advertisement targeting of its users.
In the previous month, R. S. Sharma, the Chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India—who is also the UIDAI’s previous Director General—had emphasize that confidentiality was a culture-specific concern that was being introduced in the nation by multinationals, which he assumed were influenced by Aadhaar as it was at odds with their endeavors to generate their own user database.
Nilekani further said that information from platforms such as Aadhaar is essential for setting the economy on a growth cycle and can also endow users with information, eliminate knowledge unevenness, and encourage invention. He also commended policymakers for taking measures for data inversion to authorize users, who can gain from their own data.
Referring to the prospective information that can be produced by the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN), he said such information, for example, can be utilized by companies to secure bank loans, stating that India will be a data rich prior to it becomes an economically rich country.
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