Geopolitics of India’s Data Protection

India’s data protection policy lays emphasis to the Right to Privacy and sovereignty of its citizens. The first data protection bill proposed in 2018 provided a definitive structure to the various aspects of data management. It is based on the European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This policy concerns data localisation, i.e., the legal requirement for data to be stored within national borders. A country’s policies regarding data greatly impact the technology sectors which possess a majority of the data. This first bill incorporated stringent measures regarding data localisation which required companies to mirror the data and store a copy in India. After receiving criticism, the revised bill passed in 2019 removed the data mirroring requirement.