Indian Telcos Oppose Overseas Data Transfer

In the past we had dealt in detail about the provisions of the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022 that the government has brought and had placed for public consultation. Government had highlighted that citizen’s data was of prime importance while industry associations had described it as an industry-friendly one. 

However, two of the top three telecom companies of India have now opposed the proposal to allow transfer of personal data from the country to “trusted geographies.” Both Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel believe that such a move would be contrary to the position adopted by the nodal industry body – the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI). 

Joining hands with Airtel and Jio is Paytm, one of India’s oldest payment gateway and the trio has already communicated their stance to the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) through their apex body, says a report published today by the ET. It goes without saying that all the three named are members of IAMAI, which incidentally had supported the Bill. 

This goes against AtmaNirbharta

The telcos are of the view that any form of cross-border transfer of personal data from India went against the grain of self-reliance or AtmaNirbharta that the government is preaching and believes that government should instead mandate that all data from India must reside within the country itself. 

In fact, at the time of the new Personal Data Protection Bill being shared via public domains for discussions, experts were wary of the provision that mooted shifting data to “trusted geographies” where it was the government’s prerogative to prescribe the countries or territories where such information could be stored.  

This is what Google, Meta want, they say

Those in the know claim that the telcos were opposing such a move which had earlier been welcomed by the internet industry given that several big tech companies such as Google, Meta and Amazon were keen to dilute the data localization rules that the earlier versions of the said Data Protection Bill had contained. 

On their part, the telcos are taking pains to highlight the fact that such data transfer would render Indian law enforcement agencies toothless when it comes to accessing data of citizens in another country. In addition, such transfers could leave Indians potentially vulnerable in cases where their personal data gets compromised or misused overseas. 

In such a scenario, the chances of the Indian individual or company having a legal recourse to battle such misuse in a foreign country could be very limited. Similarly, Indian law enforcement agencies may find it tough to help such individuals as they may not have real time acces to such private data once it gets transferred overseas. 

There is also the question of potentially developing state-of-the-art data centers in India that would contribute to building India’s digital infrastructure. If the government okays such a proposal, why would Indian enterprises want to invest in expensive data centers locally, given that there would be little or no business case for doing so.