Digital India Act Targets Anonymised Data Tapped By Big Tech: Rajeev Chandrasekhar — BQ Exclusive

The upcoming Digital India Act seeks to create a future-ready framework for the digital ecosystem of a country that’s home to the highest number of internet users outside of China.

The union minister said the time has come for users to stake claim to their anonymised data—personal data that has been converted into non-personal data for commercial use by a platform.

“Under consultation is the ownership of anonymised data: Does it rest with the user or the country? This is a problem area globally, and we want to plug this gap,” he said.

“The digital economy globally is worth trillions of dollars…where the Big Tech companies consume data with no oversight,” Chandrasekhar said. “It is our responsibility and duty to put the brakes on access to data…and Big Tech should share this value created with the citizen as well as the state.”

The Digital India Act will seek to bring some equity, equitability and order in the consumption of data, he said. The standards of anonymised data will be decided by the government under the India Data Management Office, he said.

Chandrasekhar also wants intellectual property created using data generated by Indians to be made in India. “Which is why, we have created this India Datasafe Program, wherein there will be crores of datasets. Only Indian startups and researchers will get access to this anonymised data.”