Government accommodative on data protection concerns

Chennai: The government said it will address the concerns raised by technology companies and e-commerce companies with regard to data protection laws.

During a consultative meeting with the companies, Union Minister of Commerce and Industry and Railways Piyush Goyal said the government wanted to understand their concerns and take their suggestions towards building a robust data protection framework that will achieve the dual purpose of privacy and innovation and strengthen India’s position as a global tech leader with a focus on trust and innovation.

While the technology industry is concerned about the data storage requirements and processing related guidelines issued by the RBI, the e-commerce companies felt that the e-commerce draft policy was not adequately consultative.

RBI Deputy Governor B P Kanungo assured the industry representatives that the Reserve Bank of India will look into this. The RBI last year had mandated foreign payment firms to store their payments data only in India to allow supervision.

Goyal too assured that each and every concern of the e-commerce industry will be addressed. Though the consultations for the Data Protection Bill by MeitY was satisfactory, e-commerce players found that a lot of time had elapsed and the industry was not sure about the final shape of the bill. They wanted the bill to have more clarity around classification of data and the manner of cross border flow of data.

According to the minister, MeitY and the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) may deal with the concerns of companies who build products in India and store their data in the country and the bill must reflect this.

Nasscom emphasised the need for harmony across all policies of all ministries and RBI which deal with digital trade. The ministries of commerce and industry and MeitY and RBI will work in synergy towards realising the full use of digital technology together with trade and investment,assured Goyal.

Meanwhile, a PTI report citing sources said that the participants were inform-ed that if data generated in India is sent abroad for processing, it has to be brought back within 24 hours. "It was told that India will not allow multi-brand retailing by foreign companies and their e-retail firms can only be an agnostic platform. It was also informed that the government can incentivise IT and e-commerce firms to set up base in India," the sources said.

Companies that participated in the meeting include Reliance Jio Infocomm, Flipkart, Vishal Mega Mart, OLA, Makemytrip, Infibeam, Yatra, Snap-deal, Paytm, Infosys, Wipro, TechM, Quatrro, Cognizant, Genpact, e-bay, Facebook, Dell, Amazon, SAP, Google, Paypal, IBM, VISA, among others.