For a long time, there has been a set of vested interests in India who have been opposing the “Data Localization” concept. They succeeded in diluting PDPB 2018 to PDPB 2019/DPA2021 and removed the need for a copy of non sensitive personal data being retained in India.
One of the arguments that Naavi.org had placed is the potential positive impact of the data localization on the business of creating new data centres and data centre professionals.
The argument based on the law enforcement needs was easy to understand but the objections raised in the form of “No facilities exist in India”, “There is a shortage of professionals” etc continue to make rounds in the sponsored media.
However, it appears that the trend is slowly changing and now we are seeing a series of stories which try to highlight the economic benefits in the Data Center domain though it is yet to be linked to the DPA 2021 as an expected benefit.
Today’s article in economic times titled “Infra status to data centers may spur Rs 700-720 billion investments over 5-10 years”
Money Control reports “How Data centres could spur a wave of investments in infrastructure”that the demand for data centres will spur the growth in real estate as well as power sectors.
Mint in its article “Data Centre boom to spur talent race” says,.. “India’s data centre boom is expected to generate thousands of jobs and fuel a race for talent in the years ahead, in a repeat of the talent hunt now playing out in the country’s information technologies services sector”.
The sudden spurt of the many articles indicate that a powerful sponsor has joined the race of data centres in India which has woken up all the journalists to write about data centres.
Is it the Jio? or Google? or Microsoft? or Tatas?…. or a new entity?… We should know soon.
But it appears that the resistance to data localization in DPA 2021 is likely to now decrease since one part of the industry would significantly benefit from the Act.
Naavi
