The DPDP regulations are almost complete:
The DPDP Act, 2023 was passed by Parliament last year following multiple drafts of the law that underwent several discussions over the course of more than five years.
According to a senior IT Ministry official, the Center is nearing completion on the much-anticipated and important data protection regulations and will shortly make the ancillary laws available for public comment. The regulations are essential to putting the Digital Personal Data Act—passed by Parliament last year—into effect.
“One of our main priorities is to release the rules. Well in advance of the Lok Sabha elections, in December of last year, we had begun work on the regulations. The rules are currently being drafted at an advanced stage, and consultations will soon start. Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told reporters on Saturday, “We won’t rush through with it. He did not specify when the data protection regulations would be made available.
Vaishnaw has been given the additional responsibility of leading the Information and Broadcasting ministry in addition to keeping the ministries of IT and Railways in the recently established coalition government of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
The DPDP regulations are almost complete: The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 was passed by Parliament last year following multiple drafts of the law that underwent several discussions over the course of more than five years.
The law has been passed, but it hasn’t yet been put into effect. There are still at least 25 rules that need to be developed in order to operationalize the law. The law has generated controversy since it gives the government and its agencies significant exemptions and relatively lax standards for the private sector.
Two major, long-standing demands of the industry have also been met by the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023: enabling concessions on children’s consent age and greatly simplifying cross-border data flows, as previously reported by The Indian Express. An important shortcoming of previous versions was that the sector, particularly smaller enterprises, viewed them as overly dependent on compliance.
The law establishes guidelines for entities to obtain consent before collecting personal data about individuals, but it also gives the government and commercial organizations some latitude for “legitimate uses.”
We still have the same general legislative framework for the tech industry, which includes the Digital India Act (which replaced the Information Technology Act of 2000), the Telecom Act, and a privacy law, according to Vaishnaw.
Regarding the electronics manufacturing sector, Vaishnaw stated that the government’s next major initiative will be to support the growth of a regional ecosystem for component development while simultaneously expanding the sector overall.
After approving four projects in the field—two of which are slated to come up in Gujarat—the government’s $10 billion semiconductor manufacturing incentive fund is almost completely depleted. The proposals include a $11 billion foundry by the Tata Group and a packaging plant by US-based Micron Technology. The federal government will cover 50% of the capital expenditures required to establish these factories under the terms of the project.
The previous Union Cabinet approved the Rs 10,000 crore IndiaAI Mission just before the elections. This mission needs to be operationalized. Under the plan, among other things, the government would set aside money to subsidize private businesses wishing to establish AI computer capacity in the nation. Despite being merely a blueprint, the permission may encourage investments in this field, with private businesses establishing data centers across the nation and startups being granted access to test and develop their generative AI models.
Ashwini Vaishnaw:
Mumbai: According to Ashwini Vaishnaw, minister of electronics and information technology (MeitY), the government is “in very advanced stages” of developing the regulations for the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act and would shortly begin consulting with the business on the matter.
We’ll cover as much ground as we can. We like a consultative process and won’t rush anything. In order to facilitate the deployment in a digital format, we are concurrently developing a digital by-design platform,” Vaishnaw stated.