(a) whether the Government has drawn up a clear roadmap to exploit the benefits of the digital economy while safeguarding the interests of all stakeholders;
(b) if so, the details thereof; and
(c) the details of the initiatives taken by the Government on the country’s e-Commerce Policy to tackle cross border data flows?
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THE MINISTER OF COMMERCE & INDUSTRY
(SHRI PIYUSH GOYAL)
(a) to (c): A Statement is laid on the Table of the House.
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STATEMENT REFERRED IN REPLY TO LOK SABHA STARRED QUESTION NO. 41 FOR ANSWER ON 5th FEBRUARY, 2020
(a) to (c): Yes Sir, the Government of India launched the Digital India programme in July 2015 to transform India into a knowledge-based economy and digitally empowered society. It has mobilised Ministries and Departments to launch schemes and projects to ensure Digital Inclusion of all. A Report by Ministry of Electronics and Information technology (MeitY) titled, “India’s Trillion Dollar Digital Opportunity” outlines the measures that will help India to optimally harness digital technologies in the core economic and social sectors. This document recognizes opportunity created for enabling India to realise a Trillion Dollar Digital Opportunity, for economic value add. The potential of a trillion dollars digital value add to the economy is to be achieved by creation of sectoral public digital platforms and aggressively adopt emerging technologies for their respective initiative. These, coupled with growth in electronics manufacturing, shall lead to the target of 1 trillion dollar economic value add through digital interventions by 2025.
The Government has also recently introduced National Policy on Electronics (NPE) and National Policy on Software Products (NPSP) in 2019 for the growing digital economy.
Further, a draft National e-commerce policy has also been prepared to create a facilitative regulatory environment for growth of e-commerce sector in India and to leverage access to data such that data of Indians can be used for the growth of digital economy in India. Consultations with concerned stakeholders is ongoing with an aim to finalise a policy which is holistic and takes into account concerns of all stakeholders of the growing digital ecosystem.
More recently, the Personal Data Protection Bill, currently under review with the Joint Parliamentary Committee seeks to establish a strong and robust Data Protection framework for India and a Data Protection Authority for regulating the privacy of Personal Data and empowering the citizens with rights relating to their personal data. Further, on issues relating to non-personal data, MeitY has constituted a committee of experts to deliberate on the Data Governance Framework.
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