Recent developments with respect to Facebook and Cambridge Analytica raise some questions on how the Government can protect data. Although the Government claims data is safe, but incidents like this privacy breach lead to concerns about security — be it Facebook or Google or Amazon or Apple or any other foreign company. Further, will the Government take on these big Tech 4? They are the main firms driving data in the country and globally. But so far, India has shown no signs of doing anything to control them.

The Data protection law in India is also still in the making, but past experiences are not promising. For example, the earlier government had disallowed the use of gmail for official purposes, and had encouraged the use of ‘.nic.in’, but is this rule followed?

The Government should start by asking these tech giants to set up their data centres here. This is not a big investment for such companies, especially as they rarely pay tax in India. However, every time they have been asked to set up shop, they have raised issues ranging from problems acquiring land to electricity.

Data should remain within India and be subject to Indian laws. Without such laws or regulations the threats by government to such companies are ring hollow. And, such breaches will only grow in future with India being the centre of expansion by these tech giants.

The Government has also been talking about creating an Indian Google, but its been years now. There should be firms in India, like WeChat and Baidu in China, to counter these firms. We can follow the example set by China instead of doing lip service. We must back big India-owned e-commerce and mobility players to fight the Amazons and Ubers of the world.

Tech is not the challenge, user-behaviour is. So, at the end of the day, it is time for action and not reaction.

S Ronendra Singh Senior Assistant Editor

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