The opposition and the stakeholders such as the media and private businesses will raise their voices against the government trying to curtail their freedom on the pretext of privacy and data protection. However, given the low-education level among the vast majority of the Indian population, the idea of personal data protection and how the government might try to use it to tighten its grip on people and businesses is likely to raise fewer eyebrows notwithstanding the opposition’s resolve to challenge the issue.However, those who understand the matter know privacy and data protection is the next big thing after the Internet. Think of the cloud, artificial intelligence, analytics, and the metaverse – the technologies that’s disrupting and reshaping the world order have data at the core of it. The ownership and piracy of the data, and in turn privacy and protection, is going to be a serious issue, almost as serious as oil or water is today.In July 2020, Google CEO Sundar Pichai held a virtual meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and discussed a range of issues including privacy and data security. The 46-year-old tech icon of Indian origin believes that privacy is “one of the most important topics of our time.” He thinks the idea of privacy is personal and, therefore, people should be given clear and individual choices on how their data is going to be used.In this context, the fact that the government has the largest access to personal and non-personal data is irrefutable. Pichai says, “Work on privacy and security is never done.”Does that mean the government must take people into confidence on how it’s going to use personal and non-personal data? Shouldn’t the government bring all its agencies under the purview of evolving data protection and privacy laws?
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