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Hasgeek, a Bengaluru-based community of tech start-ups and developers, wrote to the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on the Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill last week appealing for wider consultations with the tech community on the bill citing issues regarding ambiguous definitions, data localisation and lack of alignment with international regulations, cost of compliance, powers of the Data Protection Authority (DPA), and the governance of non-personal data.
Addressed to Chairperson PP Chaudhury, the letter highlights that a large number of Indian businesses and start-ups are technology enabled and work on cross border flow of data provisions. Clamping down such free flow of data would make it difficult for businesses.
Free flow of data
A huge number of businesses and start-ups in India are enabled by technology and cross border flow of data Provisions clamping down on such free flow of data will cause difficulties for tech entities. Moreover, the PDP Bill will increase the cost of compliance for all businesses, owing to the requirements for hiring a data protection officer, excessive documentation, and grievance redressal processes. This will especially impact smaller businesses, which work on limited budgets and are still working out their unit economics.
The bill also affect growth and innovation of Indian mid-sized entities as they aim to grow and capture global markets, the letter said. Ultimately, representation from small, medium, and large tech organizations via public consultations is key to get formulate the bill.
Also see: ‘Enabling legislation crucial to nurture a competitive ecosystem’
The submission was prepared by the Privacy Mode programme at Hasgeek. The submission is consolidated from the study on Non-Personal Data (NPD) with engineering and product teams in start-ups, founders, and venture capitalists, surveys conducted with tech practitioners on building privacy features, and views shared in India’s first Data Privacy Product and Engineering Conference, Hasgeek said.
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