In 2025, even India’s street animals have a Social Media presence, and every vendor of the chai stall has a digital presence (talking from my university-renowned chaiwala- Sudhama ji). At the same time, billions of data points bounce off from smartphones, digital land records, and the cheeky community WhatsApp groups. In this limitless virtual wilderness, India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP) saunters onto the scene, just as GDPR once did for those regulation-loving Europeans. But should Indians rest peacefully with the DPDP’s protective vigilance, or stay awake at night for marauding data breaches?
Visualise a cat in a Delhi colony that receives its first smartphone. You upload a video of it meowing; your video goes viral with a million views, analytics, targeted ads, and data brokers knocking around, does the cat have rights? Doubt it. However, this improbable scenario highlights a fundamental problem: digital visibility is so pervasive in India that everything is saturated with data. Personal data is not only texts and selfies; it’s voice prints, location, and traces of behaviour. And yet, up until recently, regulation fell behind, and those AI created photos are also taking our data, sadly yes!
So, is the DPDP, GDPR’s Long-Lost Cousin?
Let’s get past the jargon, DPDP is India’s effort to corral personal data privacy after 2023. Similar to its European inspiration, the GDPR, it seeks to give the little guy (or buffalo, these days, courtesy of bestie ‘Trump’) ownership over their digital trail. However, unlike GDPR, the DPDP is a touch of a finicky vegetarian, extremely particular about what it consumes. It safeguards only digital personal data. Un-digitized data and paper records are in the clear or so it seems, not covered.
What GDPR Does (Very Briefly) vs. What DPDP Promises
First, the essentials, because legal geekiness is inevitable.
- Scope / Territorial Reach: Applies to all personal data (digital or paper) processed regarding people in the EU; applies even if processing occurs outside the EU.Applies to digital personal data (digital, or paper-based if subsequently digitised). Also extends extraterritorially when goods/services are being marketed in India. Special Data Categories are “special categories” like health, biometric, racial/ethnic origin, political opinions, etc., which enjoy higher protection. No special category designation in the ultimate Act; all data (digital personal data) is dealt with on an equal footing.
- Data Subject Rights, Extremely robust: access, rectification, erasure (“right to be forgotten”), restriction, data portability, objection, etc. India’s Act provides rights of access, correction, erasure, grievance redressal, and nomination (enabling a person to act on behalf of the principal in case they die or become incapacitated). But no express right of data portability, no robust provision for objecting to automated decisions.
- Government/Law Enforcement Exemptions: There are a few exemptions (e.g., public interest, national security), but these are often subject to oversight, judicial review, and transparency. DPDP has comparatively broad exemptions for government agencies, the police, public order, sovereignty, etc. Certain obligations and requirements are suspended or modified by government notices.
Rights, Wrongs, and Magical Missing Powers
GDPR, in all the fanfare that is to be expected of its EU roots, grants individuals a behemoth set of rights, data portability, immunity from robotic despots (automated decision-making), and the power to make their data poof away into nothing. DPDP? It provides some of these, but with less magic. Need your data to be wiped? Okay, in a few instances. Need to contest an algorithm determining whether you will receive a loan? Good luck—DPDP makes no such guarantee.
And where GDPR makes everyone play fair, governments included whereas DPDP allows India’s government organizations to bypass much of its regulations whenever “national security” or “public order” is involved. If that sounds like a privacy alibi, well, it is. GDPR is fixated on “special categories” (medical, biometrics, religious beliefs). India’s DPDP? One byte is (nearly) as good as another. Your doctor’s record and your pizza order receive comparable safeguarding, satire, but also fact.
GDPR believes adolescents can manage their data between 13 and 16 years old (subject to parental consent per country). DPDP, the overbearing parent, states no one under 18 can provide valid consent, so Indian teenagers may have mom’s approval to access any platform, not precisely the digital liberty some of us dream of, which I believe in my own estimation is quite correct, considering the Indian next generations using the platform.
Under GDPR, businesses have to panic-report significant data breaches within 72 hours. DPDP states: “Just report all breaches, large or small, to the Board and inform affected individuals, but when, precisely? The clock’s a tad imprecise.” A recipe for delayed outrage always.
Where DPDP Does Well (and Some Applause also required)
Since all is not doom and loophole jokes, there are positives to mention:
Grants legal rights to individuals (data principals) previously vague or nonexistent: the right to access, correction, erasure, and grievance redressal.In most instances, it requires consent; it insists that it be “clear affirmative action”. That is better than some uncertain past practices.It is contemporary, more in line with international standards, providing India with a framework rather than leaving things largely to sectoral regulations or no regulations.
Penalties are severe; the obligation to establish a Data Protection Board is a good thing.
Is DPDP Enough? (Yes, No, Maybe, Depends on What You Mean)
Let me do my think-outside-the-box hat, DPDP, on paper, gets India closer to the GDPR level than it otherwise would have been. It addresses gaps, it provides rights, it places obligations, and it establishes regulatory infrastructure. It’s a giant step forward compared to previous regimes.
It is not yet the case that India has as robust a shield as GDPR in all aspects. The exemptions, absence of special categories, and ambiguity of specific rules are genuine concerns. For most Indians, it will enhance privacy. But in corner cases, particularly when state agencies or influential companies are concerned, there will remain possibilities of excesses.
So, DPDP could be “GDPR-lite” in some ways; “GDPR-adequate” if some of its Rules and notifications are enforced; not yet “GDPR-fully-protective” across all situations and most upmark it is not in the region or country India.
What Needs Fixing (Recommendations)
The following are what I believe would assist, perhaps treating India’s digital cat population better:
- Define and secure sensitive / “special” data categories: Health, biometric, political, religious, etc. It must have higher safeguards.
- Limit government exceptions and make them transparent: Well-defined rules on when government may use them; oversight; reporting; judicial review.
- Improve right to portability & limit on damaging automated decisions: Individuals need to be able to take their data with them; profiling by computers should have safeguards in place.
- Clarity in Regulations / Notifications: Time limits for notice, withdrawal of consent; clear duties for data fiduciaries; transparency duties; how cross-border flows will function.
- Awareness & Access: Outreach programs, easy-to-use tools for users, and improved education. Even cows would maybe know “privacy settings” better than most users do.
- Strong, independent regulator / Data Protection Board: It has to be able to withstand undue political or bureaucratic interference; it has to have resources; enforce compliance, and ensure that investigations occur.
- Specific rules for AI/profiling/behaviour advertising: With data science progressing, profiling, inference, and algorithmic harms need to be addressed directly. Specially reuqired after seeing Ghibli world and saree trends.
Conclusion
Will the law shield the cat with a cell phone? Not at all. But it might provide that cat with some room to meow without being surveilled by twenty ad-nets.
What is essential now is vigilance. DPDP is not a GDPR copycat; it is a good start. India tries to herd its huge flock over the wild steppes of the Internet. Nevertheless, the fences are slightly patchy, and the night watchman averts his eyes whenever the government approaches to ring the doorbell. Until everyone, even the cats, are trained in their rights( which perhaps needs in India seeing supreme court decisions and our population retaliations).
