Perspectives on the Srikrishna Committee's Bill and Report

August 06, 2018 (Last updated on August 15, 2018)

On July 27, 2018, the Committee of Experts under the Chairmanship of Justice B. N. Srikrishna released its report, A Free and Fair Digital Economy: Protecting Privacy, Empowering Indians, and the The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018.

This post contains a collection of research papers (marked in bold) and opinion pieces, divided into broad themes they address and then sorted by date, which comment on the proposed Bill and the accompanying report.

This list is in no way an endorsement of the opinion presented in the articles. I do not guarantee the piece's originality, accuracy or quality.

This list is incomplete and you can help list pieces I've missed. To contribute, please feel free to submit a pull request to my website, or alternatively contact me on Twitter. With your consent, your contributions will be acknowledged on this page.

General

Amba Kak, Jochai Ben-Avie and Naomi Shiffman Mozilla weighs in on India’s draft data protection bill , Mozilla Blog (28th July 2018)

Amber Sinha, Draft privacy bill and its loopholes, Mint (28th July 2018)

Rajeev Dubey, Srikrishna report: Too weak, too lenient and devoid of new ideas; accept Trai report on data protection, Business Today (29th July 2018)

Arghya Sengupta, A free & fair digital economy: Draft data protection bill asserts our sovereignty and safeguards citizens’ interests, Times of India (30th July 2018)

Amba Kak, Guarding information & privacy: Can India be an example as it takes the first step — starting with a Bill?, The Tribune (30th July 2018)

Sunil Abraham, Spreading unhappiness equally around, Business Standard (paywall, full text available on the CIS blog) (31st July 2018)

Apar Gupta, Draft of Data Protection Bill more an uneasy compromise than a clear commitment, Hindustan Times (31st July 2018)

Prashant Reddy T., One Data Protection Legislation and One Regulator for 1.3 Billion People?, The Wire (31st July 2018)

Gautam Bhatia and Raman Jit Singh Chima, The little done, the great un-done, The Indian Express (31st July 2018)

Apar Gupta and Ujwala Uppaluri, A fundamental error: The Srikrishna report on data protection misinterprets the Supreme Court’s right to privacy judgment, The Hindu (1st August 2018)

Prashant Reddy T, Data protection bill: The problem isn’t just the proposed law – it is also who will enforce it, Scroll (1st August 2018)

Sushil Kambampati, India's Proposed Data Protection Measures Don't Do Enough to Protect Data or Privacy, The Wire (3rd August 2018)

Damini Ghosh and Lalit Panda, India needs a robust data protection authority, Hindustan Times (7th August 2018)

Shankar Narayanan, Our privacy’s worth: A response to some criticism of the Srikrishna Committee report, The Hindu (7th August 2018)

Siddharth Vishwanath, Have a safety catch, not lock, The Economic Times (8th August 2018)

Nayantara Ranganathan, India’s data protection draft ignores key next-generation rights, Asia Times (9th August 2018)

Payaswini Upadhyay, Srikrishna Committee: The Good And The Not-So-Good In The Data Protection Committee’s Report, Bloomberg Quint (9th August 2018)

Gautam Bhatia, Gautam Bhatia dreams of genuine data protection in India, Mint (11th August 2018)

Vivan Sharan and Sidharth Deb, Reimagining fiduciaries in the digital economy, Mint (15th August 2018)

Consent and Control

Rahul Matthan, Complexity will be the privacy law’s undoing, Mint (30th July 2018)

Amba Kak, The sobering reality: Draft bill gives you new protections to control data about you but this control may be illusory, The Times of India (31st July 2018)

Arghya Sengupta, Why the Srikrishna Committee Rejected Ownership of Data in Favour of Fiduciary Duty, The Wire (2nd August 2018)

Gautam Bhatia, India needs to acknowledge the gaps in data protection and rights of children, Hindustan Times (10th August 2018)

Business, Big Data & Artificial Intelligence

Samraat Basu and Gargi Rohi, Transforming India into an AI leader, Mint (30th July 2018)

Vinay Kesari, What works and what hurts business in India’s new data protection bill, FactorDaily (31st July 2018)

Rahul Matthan, Balancing Big Data and privacy, Mint (1st August 2018)

Prashant Phillips, Personal Data Protection Bill: Why it may impose an unnecessary burden on India Inc, Firstpost (4th August 2018)

Rajrishi Singhal, Srikrishna committee exceeds its brief on data protection, Firstpost (6th August 2018)

State Power & Surveillance

Amba Kak, The Srikrishna committee’s data-protection bill does not do enough to hold the government accountable for use of personal data, Caravan Magazine (28th July 2018)

Vrinda Bhandari, Data Protection Bill: Missed Opportunity for Surveillance Reform, The Quint (28th July 2018)

Pukhraj Singh, All roads of data sovereignty lead to a dystopia, Writings of Pukhraj Singh (x-posted on Medianama and The Tribune) (28th July 2018)

Smitha Krishna Prasad, The draft data protection bill is a step forward – but nowhere close to what India needs, Scroll (29th July 2018)

Vrinda Bhandari and Renuka Sane, Data privacy: Too many hats for UIDAI, The Economic Times (30th July 2018)

Sunil Abraham, Lining up the data on the Srikrishna Privacy Draft Bill, The Economic Times (30th July 2018)

Madhav Khosla and Ananth Padmanabhan, Draft data protection bill pays little attention to the dangers of state power, The Print (30th July 2018)

Praavita, Can the Aadhaar Act and a Data Protection Act Coexist?, The Wire (30th July 2018)

Rahul Matthan, The Achilles heel of the draft personal data Bill, Mint (31st July 2018)

Rishab Bailey, Vrinda Bhandari, Smriti Parsheera and Faiza Rahman, Use of personal data by intelligence and law enforcement agencies, Macro/Finance Group, NIPFP (1st August 2018) [RP]

Data localisation

Prasanto K Roy, Too nationalist about digital economy, The Hindu BusinessLine (1st August 2018)

Madhulika Srikumar and Bedavyasa Mohanty, Data localisation is no solution, The Hindu (3rd August 2018)

Kritika Bhardwaj, Data localisation must go, it damages the global Internet, Hindustan Times (3rd August 2018)

Editorials/Explainers/Misc.

Rohan Venkataramakrishnan, Explainer: All you need to know about the Srikrishna panel’s draft data protection law, Scroll (28th July 2018)

ET Edit, Srikrishna data bill has serious flaws, The Economic Times (29th July 2018)

The Wire Analysis, The Good, Bad and Ugly on India's Template for How Your Data Will be Protected, The Wire (29th July 2018)

R. Jagannathan, Privacy Law: Despite Flaws, Srikrishna Report Is A Huge Advance For India, Swarajya (30th July 2018)

Livemint Edit, The data protection bill is far from a finished product, Mint (30th July 2018)

TOI Edit, Beyond consent: With personal data adding up to big data, ownership must rest with citizens, The Times of India (30th July 2018)

Pukhraj Singh, Deconstructing the dissent around the draft data privacy bill, Writings of Pukhraj Singh (30th July 2018)

The Hindu Edit, A good beginning: on draft data protection bill, The Hindu (31st July 2018)

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Shweta Mohandas for corrections.