Opinion | Data localisation must spell data protection

Analysts of India’s foreign relations are realists. They are well aware that the country’s “global strategic partnership” with the United States has multiple dimensions and that business has assumed centre stage ever since Donald Trump entered the White House. That the relationship isn’t as smooth as New Delhi would like was made amply clear by US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross’s visit to India. Among the issues on which he expressed dissatisfaction with Indian policy was the country’s new data localisation norms, under which foreign companies are required to store all their information of Indian customers on Indian soil. Data localisation, according to India’s proposed e-com policy, seeks to treat “anonymised data” collected in the country as a “national asset” that must be kept within Indian borders even if gathered by foreign internet platforms and services.