India needs to be more mindful in regulating non-personal data

This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.In September 2019, the Indian Government formed a committee chaired by Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan to look at the regulation for non-personal data. The committee recently came out with a governance framework, comments to which can be submitted by August 13.As far as I can tell, the committee is one of the first efforts in the world to exclusively look at non-personal data, which itself is a vast term. Non-personal data refers to the universe minus personal data. This can include a company’s financials, information on a country’s infrastructure projects, traffic data and so on. Besides, unlike the mandate to regulate personal data, where the goal is to put more power in the hands of the users, the committee is tasked exclusively with unlocking the value of non-personal data.