By Siddharth Manohar and Nikhil Pahwa We've submitted our comments to DPIIT in the public consultation on the draft of the National E-Commerce Policy. The draft was riddled with problems of lacking specificity and clarity of how to chart a path towards its stated vision. It states that the objective is to provide "a level playing field for all stakeholders", but in trying to do so the policy takes positions that would severely hamper the free flow of data and reduce competitiveness in the market. In our submission, we have attempted to argue for regulations that help maintain an open and free Internet as well as a competitive market, in line with our core mandate to help develop an open, fair and competitive digital ecosystem. Our full submission is available here. Key points from our submission: Data Localisation Draft policy's mandate to localise data is fundamentally opposed to the idea of an open and free Internet: Prohibiting the transfer of data collected from Indians outside the country will divide services and consumers based on location. The dangers posed by this decision outweigh the benefits, as companies will no longer be incentivised (or indeed able) to offer cutting edge digital services to Indian consumers. Indian companies would be unable to export any data based on processing within India, which would affect services being provided to customers outside India. Being unable to freely transfer data, Indian companies would also be forced to opt for local, more expensive options in cloud service providers. As…
