By 2026, India’s digital economy is expected to be worth $1 trillion. Data protection bill paving the way?India is one of the fastest-growing digital economies in the world. While there have been numerous talks about a $1 trillion digital economy we need to first understand what a digital economy entails. A digital economy is one that is reliant on the usage of digital technologies, infrastructure, services and Data. The inclusion of digital technologies has changed the nature of infrastructure required to support related services and processes. carrying a criminal penalty of up to 10 years of imprisonment. The digital data protection bill adopts the 7 principles of data economy that revolve around minimizing data collection, purpose limitation of personal data, ensuring the accuracy of datacollected, limiting storage, safeguarding personal data, and fixing the accountability of Data Fiduciaries. But as the digital economy and digital financial services develop, they also carry the risks that are traditionally associated with new digital technologies. A digital economy entails the cross-border flow of data, data storage, and usage of data for analytics by businesses. As such, policies to govern health records, educational records, and protocol-based sharing of financial data are required. In addition, the government needs to invest heavily in digital infrastructure to protect public data that can be used by organisations with resilient data privacy and security safeguards. The development of the digital public infrastructure will create the required environment for industry-led innovation. A stable regulatory environment that can leverage the digital economy will realise India’s economic potential. If the safeguards are non-existent or those in place are inadequate to protect personal data, it will lead to a loss of faith in the digital economy. It is only by creating a rugged, stable, reliable, and transparent regulatory framework that we can create an enabling environment for the boom of the digital economy
.This article was originally published by Times of India.
