India's revised data protection bill 'promising, clear': Meta's Nick Clegg

'Real process of openness' and listening to feedback in preparing legislation, he says

The Indian government’s revised bill on data protection is a “promising turn of events", said Meta’s global affairs president Nick Clegg on Wednesday in the first reaction by a big technology company to the legislation.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology earlier this month released a revised draft of the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022 after discarding a previous version more than three months ago. The new legislation eases the legal mandate for data localisation mandate, which had alarmed many big multinational technology companies.

The internet works on the idea that data flows openly across borders. “In broad terms, it seems to me that the Indian government has done some really thoughtful work in terms of the revised draft. It’s a clear, cogent piece of draft legislation. I want to congratulate everyone who has worked on it,” said Clegg at a public event in Delhi during his visit to India this week.

As per the new draft legislation, the central government would "after an assessment of such factors as it may consider necessary", notify a list of countries or territories outside India to which the transfer of personal data will be allowed. The Facebook executive said that India is entirely entitled to expect a principle of reciprocity on cross-border data flows around the world.

“It seems to me that there has been a real process of openness, people have listened to feedback and that has been enshrined in the new text,” said Clegg, a former deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom. He joined Facebook in October 2018 after almost two decades in public life.

“(The draft) remits a huge amount of details to execution. It’s not exactly how I would write legislation, but of course, it is not written to please the West-coast American platforms.”

After four years of deliberations, the government on August 3 withdrew the Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill, 2019, and replaced it with a new version providing what it said is a "comprehensive framework" and ‘contemporary digital privacy laws.’ The draft is open for public consultation until December 17, while the final version is expected to be tabled in the Budget Session of Parliament next year. The 24-page document seeks to provide a legal framework for collecting and processing personal digital data in India.

Clegg said India, the USA, and the European Union were “the three great techno-democracies in the world” who could broadly align on the principles to underpin the governance of the internet that would be transformative.  

“The balance we are trying to strike in this evolving debate is to ensure that governments around the world are entitled to discharge their holy legitimate interest on issues like privacy, content, licensing, accountability and transparency. But try and do so in a way, which preserves ingenuity and innovation which requires the continued protection of open data flows.”