Privacy in India: Need for a national level study

 June 30, 2005 

India is becoming a leader in Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), increasing amounts of personal data from other countries are flowing into India. The Indian outsourcing industry currently employs over 900,000 people and is expected to employ 2 million people by 2008 [6]. The BPO organizations are expected to protect the personal information of the customers. Different incidents [3] of breaches on the protection have made government and the BPO industry to consider various measures to avoid such breaches in the future. There is a demanding need for Indian organizations and government to look at data protection aspects for keeping the business and economic growth intact.

 Privacy is multi-faceted; it is a combination of social, cultural, ethical, legal and technological aspects. “Privacy is not an absolute. It is contextual and subjective... valuation [the consequences] will depend significantly on who [individual] is making  it...” [2, pp. 199]. Every individual consumer of the BPO Industry would expect different levels of privacy from the employees who handle personal data. But we have seen in the recent past situations where employees or systems have given away the personal information of customers to third parties without prior consent. So other countries providing BPO business to India expect the Indian government and BPO organizations to take measures for data protection. 

Many steps are being taken to solve this data protection issue in India. One of the solutions is modifying IT ACT 2002 [1]; this would address the legal aspect of the issue. But we need to also think about other factors. While there are many factors that go into determining whether data can be adequately protected, one area which needs focus is the awareness and attitude towards privacy of the Indian employees who handle personal data. One way of understanding the attitudes and awareness is through surveys or user studies. Such user studies have been of great help to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Congress in the US in framing the system for protecting the private information of the public. We feel a study of statistically representing samples in India could help in providing better and sustainable solutions.

Privacy in india: Attitudes and awareness.(Kumaraguru, P., and Cranor) [4]  presents such a study; even though they did not have a statistical sample, they were able to show large differences in the user attitudes between India and in the US. Major portion of the BPO business comes from the US, where people have high concern regarding privacy. [4] shows that subjects in India have high level of trust on organizations and the government. Studies have shown that trust is inversely proportional to the privacy concern [5]. This might be a reason for lower level of privacy concern in India. Since there are differences in privacy concerns it would not be a feasible solution to implement directly the privacy solutions or policies from the US or the European Union. 

Surveys can help to develop policy debates in India both on a governmental level and within institutions such as corporations and universities.  These kinds of surveys conducted by Dr. Alan Westin have influenced governmental policies, organizational policy decisions and technological solutions [5]. So a survey across different BPO organizations in different states with statistical representation of Indian employees would help in understanding the user's attitudes and awareness. This understanding would help the organizations and government in designing better privacy laws. This would also help them in providing suitable and sustainable solutions.

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© Ponnurangam K (PK). for Naavi's portal. All rights reserved with the author.

PhD, Student at School of Computer Science,

Carnegie Mellon University, USA.

Contact at: ponguru@cs.cmu.edu

 References:

[1]. Economic Times. IT Act review panel to submit report. Retrieved June 28, 2005,

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1152691.cms.

[2]. Etzioni, A. The Limits of Privacy. Basic Books., April 2000.

[3]. Harvey, O., and Reporter, S. O. Your life for sale. Retrieved June

28, 2005, http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2005280724,,00.html.

[4]. Kumaraguru, P., and Cranor, L. Privacy in india: Attitudes and

awareness.  In Proceedings of the 2005 Workshop on Privacy Enhancing

Technologies (PET2005) (30 May - 1 June 2005), Lecture Notes in Computer

Science. Springer Verlag.http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~ponguru/PET_2005.pdf

[5]. Privacy, and Business, A. Privacy surveys. Retrieved June 28, 2005,

http://www.pandab.org/surveys.html.

[6]. Rebecca, F. India's Outsourcing Boom. Chief Executive. Retrieved June 28, 2005,

http://www.chiefexecutive.net/depts/outsourcing/198.htm. March 2004 Vol. 198.

[Ed: Views expressed herein are the vies of the author only]