India is moving ahead on a long-delayed data protection rule, seeking to allow personal digital data to be transferred to some other countries for storage in a move that will come as a reprieve for global companies including Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Amazon.com Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook.
(Bloomberg) — India is moving ahead on a long-delayed data protection rule, seeking to allow personal digital data to be transferred to some other countries for storage in a move that will come as a reprieve for global companies including Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Amazon.com Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook.
The government will “notify such countries or territories outside India to which a data fiduciary may transfer personal data,” according to the draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill unveiled on Friday. The bill needs the approval of parliament before becoming law.
The key piece of legislation comes as digitization thrives in the country of 1.4 billion where usage of smartphones and apps is skyrocketing. Nations around the world are bringing in laws to allow users to control what personal data to share with whom, for what and how long.
The Digital Personal Data Protection Bill of 2022 requires consent before collecting personal data, and proposes stiff penalties of as much as 5 billion rupees ($61.2 million) on persons and companies that fail to prevent data breaches including accidentally disclosing, sharing, altering or destroying personal data. Companies are allowed to store the collected data for only specified periods.
The bill also proposes setting up of Data Protection Board of India that will monitor and determine non-compliance and impose penalty.
The data protection bill has been long in the framing after both global companies such as Meta and Alphabet as well as local startups said complying with data localization norms specified in an earlier version of the draft would be onerous.
–With assistance from Saritha Rai.
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