India’s Privacy Data Protection Bill, which is going through multiple stakeholder considerations, will be passed soon.

“Things are still under deliberation, as the government is steadfast in its belief that data should be easy and affordable to access,” said Neeta Verma, Director General (DG), National Informatics Center (NIC), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeITY) who was addressing W.Media’s South Asia Cloud and Data Center Summit.

Legislation on data protection has gathered pace in India since the Supreme Court ruled privacy as a fundamental right in 2018. Subsequently, Justice B N Srikrishna, was tasked to come up with a draft of the Data Protection Bill.

The draft now is with the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC), who will eventually pass it into a law. While Dr Verma did not specify a timeline on when it will come into effect, she said that the government is deliberating all aspects, across all stakeholders, into this Bill.

With the onset of COVID-19, coupled with other likely accelerators such as 5G launch later this year, data consumption is growing at a humongous pace in countries like India. India with its 564 million internet user base is one of the most lucrative markets for internet-enabled services. For the same India needs to have the mix of physical infrastructure as well as laws that safeguard data protection for individuals and corporations, stated Dr. Verma.

Along with a policy on data (which has been referred to JPC for approval), the Indian government has also floated the framework for a data center policy, which after feedback, will be made into a law. “Data center should be accorded infrastructure status- like railways or roads and data center parks should be allowed to come up,” said Dr. Verma.

According infrastructure status, helps in attracting long-term capital from large pension funds as well as Private Equity companies, which is needed for building out a data center infrastructure in India. The government’s draft of a national Data Centre (DC) policy, focuses on simplifying existing rules, indigenous manufacturing and giving it “infrastructure” status could see big ticket investments.

Data center parks will help companies to co-locate their IT infrastructure in places which have reliable power, connectivity, amongst other factors.

Incentivisation schemes are also in the offing, stated Dr. Verma. India has a large talent pool, broadband connectivity, as well as geographically is one of the best places for becoming a global hub of data centers. “We have seen fast adoption fo cloud within government with 12,000 apps under the umbrella,”she said.

Some examples of government cloud services in India includes MyGov, e-hospitals, e-way bills, the government’s e-procurement system, Swachh Bharat mission, amongst others.

Dr. Verma is of that nowadays, data centers need to be viewed through a different lens. ‘We need to look at efficiencies in data centers in an environmentally sustainable manner-from managing power for cooling requirements to energy consumption. Data canter with managed services offers a great opportunity for India.