We the Indians often forget our own history but remember the colonial history. This is true as much of the story of Indian independence as the story of India’ journey to the era of Privacy Protection and Data Protection.
Today most of us recognize as the “Republic Day” when the Constitution was adopted in 1950 and we remember January 28 as the International Privacy Day.
We must recognize that the “Right to Privacy” which was upheld as the fundamental right by the Supreme Court of India on 24th August 2021 is extracted out of the Right to Life and Liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution. The Supreme Court did not pass a new law recognizing the right to privacy. It just re-iterated that the right is already there and we did not know it. (Remember the Advertisement of Amazon Pay!).
Hence January 26 should be rightfully recognized as the Indian Privacy Day though the International Privacy Day is celebrated on January 28. This will at least establish that India did not wake up to Privacy only after GDPR but had recognized the concept at the beginning of our democratic life itself.
If however we want to celebrate the concept of “Data Protection” or “Information Privacy”, perhaps October 17, 2000 (Date when ITA 2000 was notified) is the right day . On this day Electronic documents got legal recognition and the recognition that Privacy protection extends to protection of personal information came with the passage of the Information Technology Act 2000.
On this day, we started recognising that personal information in electronic form needs to be secured for protecting the privacy of an individual. The law stated that failure could result in penalties under Section 43, imposed by the Adjudicating officer who is the regulatory authority.
Again since the focus of ITA 2000 was more on Cyber Crimes, we did not recognize it as a Data Protection Law.
Even when the amendments were passed in 2008 and made effective on 27th October 2009 with the introduction of Section 43A and 72A, we failed to recognize that the Data Protection Act had become operative in India.
We even missed the 11th April 2011 when more detailed “Reasonable Security Practice” under Section 43A was released containing a summary of what we recognize today as DPA 2021 did we realize that India’s Data Protection day had arrived.
But it is never late to realize the truth. Just as it took us 75 years to realize that Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose has a legitimate claim to be called the first Prime Minister of India, January 26 has the claim to be called the Indian Privacy Day and 17th October has the claim to be called the first Data Protection Day of India.
Hopefully this truth will start sinking in with the professionals now.
Naavi
