India: Privacy Protection

Data has become the currency of the digital economy, but with great value comes great vulnerability. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation set the global benchmark in 2018, underscoring that privacy is not merely a regulatory concern but a fundamental right in the age of information.

Data privacy compliance is becoming an important business responsibility in India. As organisations collect more customer, employee and user information, even a small process failure can create legal, operational and reputational consequences. The most common privacy compliance mistakes do not always arise from deliberate misconduct.

India’s welfare schemes touch the lives of hundreds of millions of citizens. When these citizens sign up for a government benefit, they hand over some form of personal information like their name, Aadhaar number, mobile number, bank account details and/or any other particulars. This data however, often leads into the hands of political parties. In the run up to the 2019 general elections, a Union Minister reportedly stated that “beneficiaries are present in every poor household, and their testimonies are our campaign”, describing welfare scheme beneficiaries as not just targets but a “new addition to our voter base” .