Data Protection A Distant Dream

The long-awaited Data Protection Bill has finally got the Cabinet Nod and will be tabled in Parliament shortly.

- Pavithran Rajan

This was long overdue and as a government known to be sensitive to the national security aspects of the nation the delay itself was a sign of concern. As a student of warfare and a concerned citizen that has long studied the impact of new-age technologies that will impact warcraft in the information age, the sequence of events that led to this bill was itself disturbing.

The very fact that this bill was a fallout of the Puttaswamy judgement that declared privacy as a fundamental right and not a direct fallout of the Snowden revelations that bought to light the global surveillance architecture was enlightening, and a tad disappointing in the way matters of national security is dealt with by the nation.

Wrong priorities Other nations around the world including Western Allies had strongly protested while the Indian state responded with resounding silence. To its credit the Modi 1.0 government had initially protested after winning the elections of 2014, but the actions after that displayed a shocking lack of appreciation of the national security intricacies of the information age. Wading into a slew of policy initiatives, such as massive increase in usage of Aadhar, Digital India, smart cities, promotion of cashless economy without even a privacy law displayed strategic naïveté. History will record that, while addressing his first Combined Commanders Conference, the PM asked the top most military commanders of the nation to concentrate on cybersecurity.