In light with the growing importance of data protection and the white paper issued by the Ministry, Center for Knowledge Sovereignty, Bharat Niti and The Dialogue, with support from Microsoft, jointly delivered a one-day seminar titled “National Conference on Policy Framework for Data Protection in India”, on 22nd January 2018. Mirror Now was the Knowledge Partner and contributed to the discourse with their inputs and views. This was an unprecedented development as media was involved as a stakeholder right from the pre-policy consultation. The Conference was held at the Constitution Club of India and was attended by approximately 120 people, who belonged to academia, government, consultancy as well as private and public sector professionals.
The following objectives were fulfilled at the conference:
- Generate a policy and legal discourse on data protection
- Take conversation forward on a proposed data protection law
- Gather comments to the white paper from high-level stakeholders to provide comprehensive
suggestions to the ministry
The following broad themes were touched upon in the panel discussions that ensued lively debates
and discussion leading to pragmatic suggestions: - Definitions of personal data and sensitive personal data
- Jurisdiction and territorial scope of data protection laws
- Cross-border data flows and data localisation
- Exemptions to data protection law
- Notice and consent
- Big data challenge to privacy principles
- Processing of sensitive personal data
- Ensuring data quality
- New rights against discriminatory AI decisions, marketing, etc.
- Adopting a co-regulatory approach.
- Establishing deterrent consequences
In the report below, the discussions from the Conference have been summarised along with key
inputs from Microsoft, The Dialogue and other stakeholders who participated at the event.
