It is well known to us about our freedom struggle against British in the past. Now the colonisation has again started but this time it has quite different form. It is digital colonisation. Digital colonisation refers to owning other sovereign country data and not keeping data in the operating country. For example Amazon keeps Indian customer data in US and not in India. This is Digital colonialism.
Is it a threat to a sovereign country? Definitely, yes!
With the development of technology, mobile phone has become much cheaper than past. This has created huge market for social media sites, e-commerce companies and many such companies which operates worldwide. They continuously keep a check on our browsing and show us similar things. This affects our mind and those companies succeed in their objective.
Today all these type of major companies belong to either US or china. For example Google, facebook, xiaomi, Ali baba etc. Their government can do anything sitting in their own country. They can affect election results, economy of other countries.
India is strictly against data sharing. India boycotted meeting chaired by japan aimed for data sharing at G20 summit in osaka. RBI has strict guidelines for banking apps to keep data in India otherwise they will not be allowed for business. This policy has also put India in dilema to sign Regional comprehensive economic partnership(RCEP) free trade agreement.
India- US relationship has also worsen because of this as US does not want to go for data localisation as this will add extra cost to them. Recently India asked APPLE for sharing location data of Unnao rape accused BJP MLA. If data would have been in our territory then case would not have been put on halt. Government of India has drafted data localisation bill and soon will put on the parliament table. This shows the seriousness of India towards this issue.
We do not want to be colonised again as it affects us in worst way and Government of India is doing its best to bring its citizens data back to India.
amit kumar 