India has the sovereign right to use its data for the welfare of its people and the idea of free trade doesn’t necessarily justify the idea of a free flow of data, commerce and industry ministry Piyush Goyal argued in his speech last week at the G-20 trade ministers’ meeting in Japan.
The minister was channelling a mantra that almost every government around the world has taken to heart – data is an asset. This also explains why they are getting more concerned about its security. The European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE) calculates that in the decade to 2016, the number of significant ‘data localisation’ measures in the world’s large economies increased almost threefold – from 31 to 84. Source
