Need of the hour: Data Protection Law

Data is the new oil and startups are the leaky ships. These need to be plugged lest the internet economy gets polluted, and that can only be through a data protection law.

While the Data Protection Bill is being debated in Parliament, financial regulators including the Reserve Bank of India are framing their own rules on data storage, causing further problems for regulated tech companies in India.

Even if one player does not follow the guidelines the entire industry ends up suffering, Ram Rastogi, a former banker and currently a digital payments consultant, said at an industry event recently.