Currently, in India, regulations pertaining to technology are being made in a disjointed manner under different routes, such as legislation, subordinate rules by the executive, and delegated regulation through sectoral regulators and ministries. This multiplicity in regulations and rules without synergy would cause various problems at the receiving end, like confusion, repetition, over-regulation, compliance burden etc. Besides, vague interpretations of the provisions under these also risk sub-optimal approaches to standard-setting, regulatory arbitrage and rely on discretion rather than a uniform application of the law.
As the PDP Bill (JPC has suggested a new version titled Data Protection Bill, 2021) provides a contour to set up a Data Protection Authority (DPA) that will protect the interest of data principle, formulate rules, functions, penalties and boundaries for data fiduciary and processor, supervise compliance to the bill (Act once enacted), and perform an adjudicatory role in matters of privacy. We believe this future regulator must be done through greater regulatory synergy, and responsive policymaking. To effectuate this, in this paper, we map the possible clashing scopes and provisions prone to multiple interpretations within various data regulations in India. By doing this, we identify emerging challenges towards harmonising digital laws in India and suggest means and strategies that would aid the future DPA in building synergy.
Identifying three major matters of contention, the paper (a) discusses the regulatory conflict issue by mapping various clashing scopes and provisions prone to multiple interpretations within data regulations in India and suggests mitigation strategies for the same, (b) discusses the problem of ad-hoc rule-making and suggest ways to move towards responsible rule-making, and (c) finally mapping multiple grievance management systems in place of one, the paper proposes a calibrated grievance management system.
Authored by: Kamesh Shekar, Senior Research Associate
Edited By : Kriti Singh
Designed By : Diksha Kumari
