The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has initiated a proof of concept to understand the feasibility of creating a common database with family as the unit, the ministry said in the Lok Sabha on December 1. MeitY was responding to a question on whether the Indian government was considering developing a National Social Registry. It was a no from the ministry which cited government welfare schemes as the reason for a common database with family as the unit, by reasoning — Since a large number of government welfare programmes provide benefits to family as the unit, an accurate family database is considered important for administering such programmes. Various departments of State and Central Governments have been developing such databases for specific schemes like Public Distribution System (PDS), Housing, Healthcare etc (sic) — MeitY in Parliament The creation of more databases without proper data protection legislation raises questions on issues such as surveillance and privacy. The last publicly available draft of the Personal Data Protection Bill, exempts governments and its agencies from various provisions of the bill. The Joint Parliamentary Committee which was deliberating the bill for the last 2 years, is slated to submit its report in the ongoing Winter Session of the Parliament. Have taken measures for data security: MeitY MeitY in context to the proof of concept for the creation of a database with family as the unit said," ..(the government) has taken adequate measures to ensure integrity and security of data..." However, it did not…
