29/01/2019 - Indian Economy

IAS Parliament 6 years

KEY POINTS

· The Indian delegation has observed that India would not like to be part of any ‘plurilateral talks’ (talks decided by a powerful club of countries) as it believed that such initiatives strike at the very root of multilateralism.

· India, with its immense reserves of data, is still to come to grips with its impact on the real economy and it is unclear about the management of privacy and security considerations, unlike General data protection regulation of EU.

· The RBI’s recent policy mandating data localisation, which makes it compulsory for all companies to store data related to Indians in local servers, would also be challenged if India participates in the e-commerce negotiations.

· Moreover, e-commerce remains a highly assymetrical space, with a few dominant entries having the potential to distort a level playing field. Even the definition and meaning of e-commerce varies from one country to the other.

· The latest e-commerce rules are a ham-handed exercise in regulatory overreach. They list out arbitrary curbs on exclusive product deals as well as deep discounts. India needs to arrive at a sense of balance in its own e-commerce policy, before entering the global arena.

· India’s decision to stay away from the e-commerce talks at the WTO will also give its argument of not engaging in negotiations on e-commerce at the on-going RCEP.

· Thus, India has to devise a comprehensive framework on data protection both at domestic level and international level before entering into WTO negotiations on e-commerce.