DPDP Act: One other sword of Damocles

Beneath the draft guidelines launched in January 2025, authorities can demand “any data” from knowledge fiduciaries for vaguely outlined functions equivalent to “sovereignty and integrity of India” or “safety of the State” with out informing affected residents.

This lack of transparency has alarmed digital rights organisations just like the IFF which warns that residents may very well be left “utterly in the dead of night” about how their knowledge is accessed and why. By imposing privateness rules on people and personal entities whereas exempting itself, the federal government seems to have weaponised the Act to evade accountability — reworking a elementary proper right into a software for secrecy.

Economist Jayati Ghosh raises one other important concern. If gathering and publishing knowledge will be deemed against the law, educational analysis too might develop into inconceivable to hold out.

A serious supply of concern is the Act’s obscure definition — or lack thereof — of the time period ‘knowledge fiduciary.’ This time period is central to the regulation’s enforcement, referring to entities that decide the aim and technique of processing private knowledge. Nevertheless, with out a exact definition, the government-appointed DPB has unchecked authority to designate anybody — a journalist, researcher, or activist — as an information fiduciary.

This ambiguity paves the best way for arbitrary enforcement. A social media person analysing public profiles or a whistleblower exposing leaked paperwork might instantly be subjected to stringent compliance necessities or hefty penalties, all on the discretion of a board that lacks independence from govt affect. As a substitute of defending privateness, there’s inherent danger of the Act changing into an instrument of management.

One other troubling side is the style wherein this regulation was enacted. The federal government had initially launched the Knowledge Safety Invoice, which confronted opposition in Parliament and was subsequently despatched to a Joint Parliamentary Committee for overview. Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, a member of the JPC, recollects, “We submitted 80 pages of suggestions for amendments, however the authorities discarded them solely.”