DailyPost 2866
PRIVACY- DIGITAL GOVERNANCE FOR CITIZENS CAN WAIT…
Privacy is at the core of digital governance and the quality of digital life and well being the citizens can enjoy. In India it is lip service, when you are through with everything other governance tasks, privacy would remain waiting for you to be officially revisited. The decimation of privacy has been the main battle won by IT behemoths and the underlings, even before the battle had started for the impacted. This meant having real and real time data in abundance free to be commercially exploited to the hilt, to create trillion dollar companies and now propelled by AI, it knows no end. India does not seem to be in a hurry.
The gold standard of privacy law came into full force in 2018, having been passed in 2016, known as the General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR. It replaced the previous 1995 directive. This explains both the vintage and necessity of data protection. This is an all EU law. Though we did not have the legacy of a privacy law tuned to anything digital, yet somewhere around the same time, Right to Privacy was upheld to be a fundamental right under Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the constitution of India. This was 2017. This landmark unanimous decision was delivered in Justice K.S.Puttaswamy (Retd.) & Anr. vs. Union of India & Ors. also known as the Right to Privacy verdict, was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of India.
From 2017 that is when the Right to Privacy was granted to us by the landmark judgement, it is yet to be exercised by the citizens of India. The headlines seem to have a tone of a conquest won, “India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act rules set for public consultation in August. What an achievement in 7 years, which has witnessed the worst data enabled digital privacy churning ever. Let’s have the journey right to understand what value it carries to the law makers, legislature and the executive of this country. First and foremost it started because of the Supreme Court judgement and not of their making.
Justice BN Srikrishna Committee on Data Protection was appointed in July 2017 to examine data protection issues and draft a data protection law. A report and its report and draft bill was submitted to the ministry in July 2018. The effort and the content of the proposed law was laudable. The Ministry of Electronics & IT sought feedback on the draft bill in Aug 2018 and was finally approved on Dec 4, 2019. The bill was referred to JPC in Dec 2019 and the committee submitted its report in Dec 2021. The bill was withdrawn in Aug 2022. Four years down the line, in 2022 the government released a new draft. In Aug 2023, the Digital Data Protection Bill 2023 was introduced and passed by both houses of Parliament. And now the rules, with lots of grey areas. When will the right to privacy really see the light of the day and in what shape? The paralytic attack of timelessness has gripped law itself.
IS PARLIAMENT ALSO A BYSTANDER TO THE CREATION OF OUR LAWS?
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.