AI Summit: Tharoor bats for open data regulatory framework with strong privacy protection

New Delhi: Asserting that open data can be genuinely transformative, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Friday batted for a credible regulatory framework for it and asserted that strong anonymisation and privacy protection must be ensured so that transparency does not come at the cost of individual rights.

He said the task is not to choose between openness and control but to design systems that honour both, and asserted that India, alongside its partners, has the opportunity to help define the rules of a fairer digital order, rather than submit to subaltern status under a new extractive ‘Digital Raj’.

Speaking at a session at the India AI Impact Summit titled 'Exploring a Regulatory Framework for Open Data', Tharoor stressed that openness alone is not a panacea, as without safeguards, openness may devolve into tokenism.

"We all know open data can be genuinely transformative. We have seen how making government data publicly accessible can strengthen democratic accountability – whether it is citizens tracking public spending, researchers analysing welfare delivery, or civil society organisations flagging gaps in implementation,” Tharoor said.

India's own open government data platform has been used to track welfare coverage and expose leakages in implementation that might have otherwise remained invisible, he said.

“But the value of open data extends beyond transparency alone. When the United States chose to release meteorological data freely, they did more than increase transparency – they laid the groundwork for entire private ecosystems in weather forecasting, logistics, insurance, and risk assessment.

“What began as public infrastructure became the foundation for commercial and technological growth. Its importance becomes even clearer in times of crisis," he said.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, openly shared health data and public dashboards enabled faster responses, improved coordination across agencies, and supported more informed public debate, Tharoor pointed out.

"Across these examples, the lesson is consistent – when data is treated as shared infrastructure rather than as a guarded asset, it lowers barriers, improves decision-making, and enables societies, particularly in the developing world, to turn information into durable capacity,” he said.

And yet, openness alone is not a panacea as open data, if poorly structured, can generate new vulnerabilities even as it promises transparency, Tharoor said.

"Without safeguards, openness may devolve into tokenism – data sets released without context, quality control, or enforceable standards or worse, into asymmetrical extraction. There is a trilemma of digital governance: digital ascendancy, digital capitulation, and digital sovereignty.

"Today, most of the world’s large Cloud servers and advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems are owned and operated by a small number of technology companies based primarily in the United States and parts of Europe. This is digital ascendancy," he said.

If countries do not invest in their own digital infrastructure and regulatory capacity, the benefits of open data can accrue disproportionately outside their jurisdiction, he argued.

"One-sided concessions on digital taxation and digital trade are a form of data capitulation: Indonesia and Malaysia have succumbed in their trade agreements with the US. We must not," he asserted.

Tharoor said the issue is not cross-border data flows per se, as digital cooperation depends on them.

The concern is whether openness is reciprocal and capacity-enhancing, or whether it systematically positions some countries as suppliers of raw data while others capture downstream gains in AI, advanced analytics, and platform governance, the Thiruvananthapuram MP said.

The answer, therefore, is not to retreat from openness, but to shape it deliberately. If openness without strategy creates imbalance, openness with guardrails can create resilience, he said.

"A credible regulatory framework for open data must begin with clarity of purpose: why is this data being released, for whom, and under what safeguards? It must ensure strong anonymisation and privacy protections so that transparency does not come at the cost of individual rights," Tharoor said.

The European Union (EU) has demonstrated how strong regulatory architecture, through instruments such as data protection and digital market rules, can shape global standards, Tharoor said.

"India, by contrast, has shown how digital public infrastructure can scale inclusion at the population level. India is putting innovation ahead of regulation. These are not competing models; they are complementary experiments in digital governance, and increasingly, the Global South is not merely observing this evolution, it is participating in it," he added.

India’s experience with India Stack illustrates what this participation can look like, he said.

"By building interoperable layers – digital identity through Aadhaar, real-time payments through UPI, document exchange through DigiLocker – India has created a public digital backbone that supports innovation while remaining accessible and adaptable. Crucially, this architecture has been offered as a template for other developing countries seeking scalable and affordable digital solutions," Tharoor said.

In doing so, India has reframed digital infrastructure not as proprietary leverage, but as a developmental public good, he added.

India is not approaching the digital future as a passive market; it is shaping it as an architect, Tharoor said.