India’s crippling data rules may hit its global analytics dreams

India may lose the opportunity to emerge as a global hub for data analytics if the proposal to weaken legal safeguards given to technology intermediaries, including cloud companies, are finalised, Microsoft India managing director Anant Maheshwari said.
Many in the technology industry have raised concerns over the amendments that India has proposed to the Information Technology Act’s Intermediary Guidelines, covering law enforcement cooperation on data, takedown requests and traceability of messages. Even though the rules are targeted at social media platforms, the government has included all technology intermediaries including cloud firms under their scope.
If proposals such as making intermediaries subject to orders issued by state or central governments without any judicial overview are implemented, they have warned, that would hurt the county’s efforts to attract investments in emerging areas like data analytics.