Not Another Nationalisation!

Context: A regulator regime proposed by the Kris Gopalakrishnan Panel, that enables both government and businesses to acquire Non-Personal Data will discourage innovation in business.

Characteristics of the Non-Personal Data (NPD): as defined by the committee.

• NPD could be either factual data, or analysis, which has been stripped of any personal identifiers.
• Factual information will need to be made available for free.
• Value-added data may be available for a ‘fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory’ price.
• Large data businesses will mandatorily have to make data available to the government through ‘NPD Policy Switch’.

The rationale behind the NPD Regulatory Regime

• Need to disable the first-mover advantage: that leads to the establishment of walled gardens. 

• It would hamper innovation, given that, by definition, innovators are first-movers. 

• Unblocking the value of Data: Enforcing the sharing of data will unlock its value. 

• Restricting access to the collection of data by businesses hinders multiple usages of data.

Issues/ Concerns with NPD Regulatory Regime

• Discourage Competition: Firms depend on its ability to acquire data and use it to innovate exclusively.

• Hinders the growth of Unicorn businesses: Paytm, Zomato, Flipkart and Ola.

• Disincentivise investment in the technology ecosystem due to a decline in confidence and competition.
• Hurt Exits and destroys the value of the businesses.
• Will hamper data sovereignty: as a government, authority can force a company to give away its data to the government or a competitor.

India’s Position on Data: Rising Data Nationalisation -

• Refused to sign the G20 agreement: on free transfers of data across borders. 
• Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, and NPD report: place restrictions on data being sent beyond India’s boundaries.
• India has claimed that the sovereignty of a country needs to extend to the data of its citizens.

Way Forward

• Extend the principle of eminent domain to data sets and intellectual property.
• Create a technology-enabled data-sharing framework.
• Enable voluntary sharing of data rather than mandatorily sharing of data.

Conclusion: Restricting the open and competitive domain of the internet is more like a policy nationalization’ of data that will certainly restrict data sovereignty.