GDPR And Its Impact on Indian Companies

 

Author: Ridhima Singh,  Allahabad University

Introduction

Personal Data refers to any personal information related to an identified person or identifiable people such as name, location, identification numbers, and many factors if misused can cause a breach in social security of the people. For any country, the personal information of the citizens is an asset to the country so it's the duty of the government to safeguard that data and provide proper regulations and protection laws for it.

Data Protection refers to laws related to the privacy of individuals from getting corrupted or misused. It makes sure that there is stabilized use of personal information of the person for business purposes without causing damage to the privacy.

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)

The GDPR is the law that was formulated by the European Parliament on April 14, 2016, and came into force on May 25, 2018. The main focus was to safeguard individuals' personal data from being hacked or misused. It provides the individual's right to control their personal data in an effective manner. These laws are basically applicable to European companies and another country dealing with European companies will have to comply with the same laws. The reason was no one can process or disseminate the personal data of European individuals.

Through GDPR implications in companies, the customer should have knowledge of how the organization is using their data in a simple and understandable way. 

GDPR Impact On Indian Companies 

GDPR has a wide impact on different sectors of industries: Service, Automobile Industry, IT Industry, Finance Industry, Manufacturing Industry, etc. The European country has a larger marketplace in terms of BPO, ITeS, and Manufacturing Industries thus Indian companies tend to invest and reach out to the European companies for better market reach, globally.

Indian Companies can either be controllers or processors of data of the EU, thus it's really necessary that GDPR POLICY should be followed strictly by the Indian Companies while dealing with personal data of the EU. Any Indian Company not following the GDPR requirements shall be penalized with either 20 million EUR or 4% of the global turnover (higher among the both shall be considered).

The  Indian Companies have to comply with GDPR though it's not mandatory if we are not dealing with the EU still, on a global level  India has trade bodies and regimes with Europe like in NASSCOM  thus maintaining a proper legal framework and protecting EU  privacy companies must follow GDPR.

INDIAN GOVERNMENT STEPS IN LIEU OF DATA PROTECTION 

The Supreme Court of India declared the RIGHT TO PRIVACY as a Fundamental Right under Article 21, in the year 2017. An Indian citizen has got the constitutional right to maintain their security that if it gets breached anyone can file suit under Article 32 of the constitution. As every citizen surfs digitally through various sites on a daily basis, they by default leave some of their personal details on those sites which can be further misused. Thus, the violation of any person’s privacy will have a major effect on wrongdoers.

In India Data Protection of the citizens is currently governed by IT ACT 2000( Information Technology Act, 2000). The act makes sure that no one's personal information such as name, location, bank details, etc; should be misused by anyone.

In 2018 Justice Shri Krishna  Committee made the first draft known as the PERSONAL DATA PROTECTION BILL. The bill combined features of both GDPR and Indian IT ACT 2000 making 112 sections which were further revised in 2019. The bill's main purpose is to prevent misuse and breach of a person's privacy. This bill has not been legalized yet, it's been under review in  Parliament.

CONCLUSION

Data Protection is an important aspect to be looked at. More strict laws should be made to safeguard the privacy of a person and prevent it from being breached. As it’s really important that every citizen should feel safe in the society they are living in.