The comments come amid a debate over balancing user protections with support for the fast booming digital economy
Reliance chief Mukesh Ambani Friday urged PM Narendra Modi to take steps to end increasing data colonisation by global corporations, saying Indians should own and control their own data.
Speaking at the 9th Vibrant Gujarat Summit, Ambani drew parallels to Mahatma Gandhi's movement against political colonisation to call for a revolution against data colonisation.
"Data is the new oil. And data is the new wealth. India's data must be controlled and owned by Indian people, and not by corporates, especially global corporations," the Reliance chairman said.
The comments come amid a debate over balancing user protections with support for the fast booming digital economy.
"Today, we have to collectively launch a new movement against data colonisation. For India to succeed in this data-driven revolution, we will have to migrate the control and ownership of Indian data back to India - in other words, Indian wealth back to every Indian," he said.
The government wants companies doing business in India to store all customer data locally. The RBI in April 2018 ordered companies to store the "the entire data relating to payment systems operated by them.. in a system only in India" so as to ensure "unfettered supervisory access" for "better monitoring".
The government is considering a draft data security law that requires data centres for all companies be physically located within India. Also under consideration is an e-commerce policy that requires the storage of customer data in the country.
The draft data privacy bill recommends restrictions on the transfer and storage of information by global giants from Facebook to Google.
An e-commerce policy last month tightened rules to disallow foreign-owned online retailers from pushing merchants to sell exclusively through their platforms. It also barred them from selling products via companies in which they own equity.
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