“Data colonisation” is as bad as previous forms of colonisation and India’s data must be controlled and owned by Indians, richest Indian Mukesh Ambani said amid a raging debate on data localisation.
Data of an individual or business belongs to them and not to corporates who could use it to monetise from them, a PTI report quoted Ambani, who is chairman of energy-to-telecom conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd, as saying.
“In this new world, data is the new oil. And data is the new wealth. India’s data must be controlled and owned by Indian people and not by corporates, especially global corporations,” he reportedly said while addressing at the Republic Summit.
Throwing his weight behind Indian authorities seeking companies to store data locally, he reportedly said the Supreme Court has mandated that data privacy is sacrosanct.
“Therefore, for India to succeed in this data-driven revolution, necessary steps will have to be taken to migrate the control and ownership of Indian data back to India – in other words, Indian wealth back to India,” he was quoted as saying. “Data colonisation is as bad as the previous forms of colonisation.”
Data freedom, he said, is as precious as the freedom won in 1947.
The government wants companies doing business in India to store all customer data locally. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in April ordered companies to store the “the entire data relating to payment systems operated by them… in a system only in India” so as to ensure “unfettered supervisory access” for “better monitoring,” reported PTI
Companies like Google had complained about the six-month deadline, the report said.
The government too is considering a draft data-security law that requires data centres for all companies be physically located within India. Also under consideration is an e-commerce policy that requires the storage of customer data in India, it added.
“Fundamentally, I am a big believer in the power of all of us together rather than a power of few. I think that will differentiate China and India in the long-run. My belief is that a decentralised empowered world where everybody being equal is better off than where few people are in power. That is true for data world,” he reportedly said.