New data protection law to straddle individual rights, innovation: Vaishnaw

Indigenously developed 5G, 4G telecom technology stack will be rolled out in the country this year

India will attempt to draw up a template for individual rights while giving innovation a leg-up through its proposed digital personal data protection law, Minister for Communications, Electronics & Information Technology (IT) Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Monday.

Vaishnaw, however, said it would not be easy to implement since every step taken may be detrimental to the other side.

“The world has been following the General Data Protection Regulation approach to the right to privacy and protection of personal data. It is robust across multiple economies over many years. But it has a huge push-back on innovation,” said Vaishnaw, at the opening session of the Business 20 (B20) India Inception meet organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry in Gandhinagar.

The IT ministry has interacted with multiple stakeholders regarding the data protection Bill after releasing it in November last year. The latest version of the Bill was released after the 2019 version was scrapped, in line with the recommendation of a standing committee of Parliament.

The privacy law seeks to enforce Indian citizens’ right to privacy as a fundamental right. The draft Bill provides a legal framework for collecting and processing personal digital data in India.

The minister further said that the indigenously-developed 5G and 4G telecommunications (telecom) technology (tech) stack would be rolled out this year. The platform would be offered to the world from next year.

Only five countries in the world right now have end-to-end 4G and 5G telecom tech stacks. However, with public-private partnerships, India has developed its home-grown tech that has been tested to handle 10 million simultaneous calls.  

“Our private-public partnership approach has given us a solution where the core was developed, invested by the public sector, public funds, and everything else sitting on it comes from private partners. We will be rolling out end-to-end 4G and 5G stacks on 50,000-70,000 towers and sites this year. We will be offering the technology for exports next year,” said Vaishnaw.

He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a different approach that sees India build a digital ecosystem, and divest of any Big Tech monopoly.

“I foresee that in five-six years hence. India’s example will be cited the world over,” he observed.