“You may say that you want to be forgotten but the state does not want to forget you.” This chilling argument for dominance over every Indian’s life was rejected six years ago, in August 2017, by the Supreme Court of India in the first Puttaswamy decision. The Court reaffirmed the fundamental right to privacy while requiring the Union Government to introduce a data protection law in Parliament, “as per this judgment”. Instead, in 2023, the country has now got the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, or the Data Act. Its provisions, according to Amrita Johri and Anjali Bhardwaj (who are associated with the National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information and the Satark Nagrik Sangathan), “threaten the very foundations of transparency and accountability”. And Professor Subhasis Banerjee (Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Delhi), says it “facilitates data collection and processing by the government and private entities rather than… data protection”.
Making Indians stand in line
But why did the Data Act take this shape?
