Data Protection

How Long Is Too Long? India’s Proposal to Retain Health Data Needs A Relook

In November 2021, the National Health Authority (NHA), the nodal agency concerned with rolling out the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) programme, released a...

How Data Protected Policies Can Ensure Migrant Workers’ Welfare

The need of the hour is to create a policy that protects both data and citizens while effectively provisioning services.

Who Needs Consent Anyway? The JPC’s Suggestions Worryingly Expand the Scope of Processing Non-Consensual...

With the Parliamentary Committee's draft Data Protection Bill (DPB), not only can individuals' data be used without their consent (non-consensual), but data that the...
open data government legislation

To Unlock the Potential of Open Government Data, India Needs New, Comprehensive Legislation

Almost a decade after the launch of India’s Open [Government] Data initiative, the program remains constrained and has not lived up to its potential. Its deficiencies stem largely from the discretionary nature of the nation’s Open Data policy.

The Story of CoWIN: How A Vaccination Strategy for Digital India Failed to Bridge...

Why was a wholly digital platform like CoWIN—one that is largely accessible to the technology-owning elite—used for mass vaccine registration?

Making a Case for a ‘Goldilocks’ Regulation of the Ed-Tech Sector

As per a 2020 report by the Omidyar Network, the K-12 ed-tech-addressable market in India is projected to be worth $1.7 billion (USD) by...

The Rise of Emotiveillance? Emotion AI and Ed-tech in India

A famous (and controversial) experiment in 1976 by Ekman and Friesen tried to study the facial expressions of individuals in response to certain stimuli....

The Non-Personal Data Report: Kya Karein Kya Na Karein, Ye Kaisi Mushkil Hay

In the first instalment of this two-part series on the Non-Personal Data Report (NPD), we examined the competition concerns that emanate from NPD and...

The Non-Personal Data Report: Do We Really Need Another Data Regulator?

This article is the first instalment of a two-part series by Mohit Chawdhry of Esya Centre on the new government-led regulatory framework proposed in...

Group Privacy and Data Trusts: A New Frontier for Data Governance?

In the past few years, it has become common knowledge that Big Tech companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon rely on the exploitation of...