Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023: A Balancing Act between Digital Sovereignty and Individual Rights in India’s Data Governance
Author : Unnati Pandey and Dr. Babita Verma
Abstract :
The ‘Digital Personal Data Protection’ (DPDP) Act, 2023 is India’s first comprehensive ‘Digital privacy law’ that establishes a framework for processing digital personal data, safeguarding individual’s rights to privacy as a fundamental right under article 21 (Right to life and personal liberty) while enabling lawful use of their data. The act applies to digital data within India and data processed outside India for goods and services provided to Indian residents. This article evaluates the DPDP Act against the constitutional standard established in Puttaswamy that is the triple test of legality, necessity, proportionality and combines this doctrinal analysis with original survey data from 87 respondents in Delhi-NCR to check the balance between the digital sovereignty and individual rights.
The analysis finds that the act passes the legality requirement and partially meets the necessity requirement for provisions governing private data fiduciaries, the broad executive exemption under Section 17(2) for state instrumentalities fails to satisfy the proportionality test. The empirical findings reveal a significant gap between citizens stated privacy concerns (93% consider data privacy “extremely important”) and their actual understanding of the law (only 7% report a strong understanding), alongside low public trust in the government as a data custodian (12.3%) relative to demand for symmetric accountability standards (87.8% favor equal standards for state and private entities).
This article concludes that the DPDP Act is not balanced. It acts as shield against the Private entities and sieve against the state and also suggest some policy recommendations that are judicial oversight and independence of board, narrowing the exemption under section 12 and improve public digital literacy as a constitutional obligation.
Keywords :
Digital Personal Data Protection, Data Sovereignty, Data security, Proportionality Test, Individual Rights, Right to privacy.
