“Yes..But” game indulged in by NGOs opposing PDPA

On 7th march 2020, Deccan Herald, Bangalore carried an article by the title “Data Protection or Surveillance”?. The online version of the article included a powerful video presentation from the Center of Internet and Society(CIS). Earlier in another article the CIS had also provided detailed comments on the PDPA 2019. (See here).

CIS has been in the forefront of many discussions where the inadequacies of the regulations of the Government have been brought to public notice and its contributions to the cause of “privacy” is well noted.

However, of late CIS has been advocating controversial issues as supporting Bitcoin, the “Currency of the Corruption” and now focused on the law on Privacy. CIS has raised many objections on PDPA 2019 and it appears that it will be happy of the Bill is deferred yet again and put into the oblivion.

If however the Government obliges, CIS could be the first off the block to criticise that the Government has ignored the commitment to the Supreme Court and has no intention in protecting the privacy of individuals. This attitude of “Damned if you do and damned if you don’t” is the typical attitude of some NGOs who can never agree on any positive movement forward. and always have an erudite argument why the proposal is not acceptable.

In Management we speak of a psychological game “Yes…But” propounded by Dr Eric Berne and CIS and some other NGOs have been indulging in while reflecting on the draft PDPA2019. We need to put such objections in its place and move on.

The objections of CIS on PDPA have been indicated in the following list

Executive Notification cannot abrogate fundamental rights
Exemptions under clause 35 donot comply with the legitimacy and proportionality test
Limited powers of Data Protection Authority in comparison with the Central Government
No Clarity on Data SandBox
The primacy of Harm in the bill ought to be reconsidered
Non Personal Data should be outside the scope of this Bill
Steps to greater de-centralization of power
Data Must be empowered to exercise responsive regulation
No clear road map for the implementation of the Bill
Lack of inter-operability
Legal uncertainty.

The research team of CIS has also brought to attention several other articles mentioned here which all add very valuable information to the discussion.

Each of these articles may need separate discussions and we shall try to comment on each of the above in course of time.

I would however try to point out that the Bill is presently in a fluid state and many of the concerns expressed can be addressed through notifications of the Government that would follow and the regulations that the DPA would release in time.

Hence some of the objections are premature.

Instead of pressing on the settling of all these concerns, it is better if CIS admits that it prefers the Privacy Bill to be dropped for the time being.

….To be Continued