Primus Partners, one of India’s leading strategy consultancies, announced the launch of Policy Square today, in association with Businessworld.
Policy Square, an initiative by Primus Partners, is a monthly expert interview series wherein key constituents of the public-policy ecosystem – senior policy-makers, civil society members, business executives etc. – will be interviewed on critical issues and policies of national importance and explore their impact on the country and industry at large.
The motivation for the Policy-Square series emerges from Primus Partners’ rich policy-regulatory knowledge and experience of delivering projects across multiple sectors, with an aim to leverage this knowledge to create a platform to table in-depth discourse.
Conversations on Policy Square will touch upon policies-regulations and priorities of critical importance for India’s economic, societal and developmental agenda.
The maiden episode of Policy-Square, released today on Primus Partners YouTube channel, hosted a rich conversation on the Personal Data Protection Bill with Dr. Amar Patnaik, Member of Parliament, and an influential member of the Joint Committee of Parliament which was deliberating on the Bill.
Dr. Patnaik during the Policy-Square interview, interacting with Mr. Nilaya Varma, CEO Primus Partners and Mr. Ruhail Amin, Senior Editor Business World, touched upon diverse subjects around the Data Protection Bill, including Dr. Patnaik’s viewpoints on Data–ownership, foreseen implementation challenges of the bill, foreseen benefits of data-localization, and on the overall deliberations of the Committee.
Link to the full interview:
Highlights from Dr. Amar Patnaik’s Policy-Square interview on the Personal Data Protection Bill:
On the essence of Ownership of data:
Dr. Patnaik stated that a key benefit of the Data Protection Bill is that for the first time the data-gatherers, collectors/processors would be under an obligation to respect the privacy of the citizens, and not consider themselves as the owners of the data. He stated categorically that it is the citizen who is the owner of the data.
On Non-personal data and sharing non-personal data with the Government:
Dr. Patnaik stated that while NPD-sharing by organizations with the Government has been provisioned in the bill, the commercials of data-sharing is not clear right now.
Dr. Patnaik said that in an ideal scenario, because the companies are investing time and resources in data collection, it seems plausible that the Government may explore contractual data sharing which involves commercials to compensate for acquiring such data from companies.
However, these commercials of data-sharing are not clear right now and maybe tackled in future policy discussions.
On the governance of the bill:
Dr. Patnaik spoke extensively on the need for state-level data protection authorities, in lack of which the implementation of the bill will likely become a significant challenge.
Dr. Patnaik stated that state-level data protection authorities will enable state governments and states’ citizens to easily engage with their state’s data regulator and seek support, approvals and exemptions as they see fit.
Dr. Patnaik further stated that the state governments of Karnataka and Maharashtra were in support of state-level data protection authorities.
Data Localization:
Speaking on Data localization and going beyond the usual headlines, Dr. Patnaik stressed the fact that it is critical for India to realize the data potential of the country considering our population of 1.3 billion.
He said that Data localization, in the long run, can make India one of the world’s biggest data markets and a data capital of the world.
Data localization will fillip the data-storage ecosystem in India, developing new data storage capabilities and may even help bring down data-storage costs – this can attract foreign companies to store their data in India due to improved technologies and costs.
