Balancing Privacy and Competition: Evaluating the Competitive Effects of India’s Data Protection Bill

Abstract Data protection and competition law are perhaps two of the most enmeshed legal arenas in the contemporary data-driven world. This essay ingresses into this intersection, appraising the competitive implications of India’s Data Protection Bill, 2022 through key arenas of conflict such as jurisdictional tussles, data portability, the remedy of mandatory data sharing, and compliance costs. Although the intersection of privacy and competition law has been discussed in Indian scholarship, an analysis of the competitive implications of the Data Protection Bill has been absent. This is precisely the gap that this piece aims to fill, by appraising the host of new implications of the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill (DPDPB) on Indian competition and providing a framework to evaluate various competition concerns such as jurisdiction, compliance, and data sharing of any subsequent data protection bill in India. It does this by first analyzing the extent to which competitive concerns can be addressed in the Indian data protection system. With this premise, it secondly considers the question of jurisdictional primacy between the Competition Commission and the Data Protection Board, arguing for the primacy of the Competition Commission. Thirdly, it discusses the questions of data portability, mandatory data sharing and compliance costs in the DPDBP which could affect India’s competition, critically discussing the trade-offs and suggesting potential solutions. The goal of the piece is to critically examine the implications of the 2022 version of the bill to suggest ways forward for its future iterations in India.