The government on Friday extended the deadline for submission of feedback on the draft e-commerce policy by three weeks to March 31 following demands by some companies for a separate policy on data with easier sharing norms.
At a stakeholder consultation with the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), e-commerce companies sought a broad policy that favours both traders and buyers as well as retail trade and banking.
“No one was against data localisation, but they asked for limited sharing of their consumers’ data,” a senior government official said.
Representatives from Amazon, Snapdeal, Microsoft, MakeMyTrip, Reliance Industries Ltd. and eBay attended the meeting, along with trade bodies and industry associations including CII, FICCI and CAIT. Google, Facebook and Walmart did not participate in the deliberations.
The department floated the draft e-commerce policy on February 23 in which it proposed regulating cross-border data flows, locating computing facilities within the country to ensure job creation and setting up a dedicated data authority for issues related to sharing of community data. It asserted that the data generated in the country is a national asset and citizens and the government have a sovereign right over it.
According to people present in the meeting, Microsoft raised concerns over the restrictions on cross-border data flows, saying that it works with startups in India developing AI products, the datasets for which are stored in centres abroad.
By restricting the flow of data to third parties, India’s innovative AI startups could be hurt, the company’s representative said.
Global e-commerce player Amazon explained that since offline and online retail are merged today, the government shouldn’t only focus on restricting the sale of counterfeit products online because these would get pushed offline, achieving no real result for brands and customers.
The company asked the government to come up with ways to boost exports by small manufacturers in India and expressed its interest in sourcing products from India for the world.
“Companies suggested that there should be no difference between physical stores and e-commerce stores. They also want us to rope in more post offices,” the government official added.
However, no concerns were raised about the India-US trade talks or the likely impact of the proposed policy on American companies.
“The policy is in national interest. No such concerns were raised,” the official added.
Local Circles, an online community platform, suggested the government split the policy into two – one from DPIIT and the other headed by the ministry of electronics and information technology.
“We have suggested to DPIIT that the e-commerce policy be split into an e-commerce policy and a business data policy and the business data should cover all businesses including telecom, banks and retail trade,” said Sachin Taparia, founder of LocalCircles.
Emphasising that the intellectual property of companies was in the aggregated data, Taparia said no one should be forced to share this.
“Moreover, there must be restriction on when the government can ask for data from companies, permitting it only in law and order investigation situation, but not otherwise,” he added.
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