A US advocacy group is seeking ties with India on pending technology regulations

The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), the world’s leading technology advocate representing U.S. technology giants such as Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), Meta (NASDAQ: META), Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), said it looks forward to working on pending regulations with a new team at India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

India’s largest election in human history concluded a seven-stage voting process from April 19 to June 1 in which approximately 970 million registered voters participated. On June 4, the results of the election of 543 members of the lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, were announced. Newly elected lawmakers unanimously elected Narendra Modi as prime minister for a rare third term, extending his 10-year rule by another five years. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is set to form the government for the third consecutive term after swearing-in ceremony June 9.

“ITI looks forward to working with the new team at the IT Ministry. There are several pending bills and regulations that will require the attention of the incoming government, such as enacting the Digital Personal Data Protection Act and finalizing the Digital India Bill, which we worked on with the previous government,” Kumardeep Banerjee, country director, ITI, said in a statement.

“ITI continues to support a consultative, agile and globally harmonized approach to regulation, supporting innovation and development of the ICT (information and communications technology) sector in India and around the world. We will continue to engage with the new government in the same spirit,” Banerjee added.

The bill, which was supposed to be ready before this year’s general elections, has been postponed for further discussion and is now to be dealt with by the new government.

Why is this important?

India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA), introduced last year, aims to establish a comprehensive framework that will give Indians greater control over their data and impose stricter obligations on companies that use it. This bill is expected to have a significant impact on global companies in the way they process personal data in India and transfer data to and from other countries. Given India’s status as the world’s most populous country and an emerging technology power, this will have an impact on most of the world’s technology companies.

“The Digital Personal Data Protection Act is world-class legislation,” Rajeev Chandrasekhar, former minister of state for electronics and information technology, said in August last year.

“Looking back to 2010, when I was an MP, I introduced the Private Members’ Bill in Parliament, asking for privacy to be recognized as a fundamental right. Unfortunately, the government at that time did not believe that this debate was necessary. Essentially, the personal data of the country’s citizens was available for exploitation,” noted Chandrasekhar.

“With 830 million Indians using the internet, and by 2025-2026 it will be 1.2 billion Indians, we are the most connected country in the world. We deserve to set our own standards in all future technology conversations, rather than borrowing anything from the EU or the US,” added Chandrasekhar.

At the same time, the Digital India Act 2023 is expected to replace the twenty-year-old Indian Information Technology Act, 2000 (IT Act) and aims to address the challenges and opportunities presented by the development of the Internet and new technologies.

“The Internet, devices and information technologies have empowered citizens. However, they have also created challenges in terms of harm to users, ambiguities regarding user rights, security, safety of women and children, organized information wars, radicalization and spread of hate speech, disinformation and fake news, unfair trade practices, etc. MeitY stated in its application.

“This law creates a new regime. We will provide companies and industries with a transition period. With the passage of this law, the era of abuse, the era of exploitation, the era of believing that Indian citizens have no rights ends,” Chandrasekhar said.

If a citizen’s data is breached, all they need to do is visit the website, provide details to the Data Protection Board, and the latter will launch an investigation, imposing fines on the offending platforms. However, Chandrasekhar said the penalties would be punitive in nature, which would encourage platforms to be accountable.

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