Following a landmark Supreme Court decision that affirmed a constitutional right to privacy, India's Parliament passed the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP Act) in August 2023. Although a commendable first step in establishing legislative authority on the use of personal data, the DPDP Act also grants the State undue discretionary power to use data as they see fit, and does not provide an effective enough mechanism to place checks on this power. Volume XLVII staff editor Sravya Rallapalli argues that in doing so, the DPDP Act undermines itself by opening the potential for privacy violations — the very opposite of what the Act is designed to do.
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