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US Senators Urge India To Soften Data Localization Stance (reuters.com)
Two U.S. senators have called on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to soften India's stance on data localization, warning that measures requiring it represent "key trade barriers" between the two nations. From a report: In a letter to Modi dated Friday and seen by Reuters, U.S. Senators John Cornyn and Mark Warner -- co-chairs of the Senate's India caucus that comprises over 30 senators -- urged India to instead adopt a "light touch" regulatory framework that would allow data to flow freely across borders. The letter comes as relations between Washington and New Delhi are strained over multiple issues, including an Indo-Russian defense contract, India's new tariffs on electronics and other items, and its moves to buy oil from Iran despite upcoming U.S. sanctions.
Global payments companies including Mastercard, Visa and American Express have been lobbying India's finance ministry and the Reserve Bank of India to relax proposed rules that require all payment data on domestic transactions in India be stored inside the country by October 15. The letter is most likely a last-ditch effort after the RBI told officials at top payment firms this week that the central bank would implement, in full, its data localization directive without extending the deadline, or allowing data to be stored both offshore as well as locally -- a practice known as data mirroring. "We see this (data localization) as a fundamental issue to the further development of digital trade and one that is crucial to our economic partnership," the U.S. senators said in the letter that has not been previously reported.
Global payments companies including Mastercard, Visa and American Express have been lobbying India's finance ministry and the Reserve Bank of India to relax proposed rules that require all payment data on domestic transactions in India be stored inside the country by October 15. The letter is most likely a last-ditch effort after the RBI told officials at top payment firms this week that the central bank would implement, in full, its data localization directive without extending the deadline, or allowing data to be stored both offshore as well as locally -- a practice known as data mirroring. "We see this (data localization) as a fundamental issue to the further development of digital trade and one that is crucial to our economic partnership," the U.S. senators said in the letter that has not been previously reported.
How about India demand reciprocity for FATCA and just start auditing any US financial institutions suspected of holding suspected Indian citizens' financial records? Yes, it's about money. But it's also about foreign institutions and governments digging around in the records of its citizens.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm somehow not surprised that as an American, you would get that exactly backwards. The end of that program would mean the best students India just spent time and money educating will no longer have the option of taking all that government-paid expertise and leaving India for the United States with it.
So yes, by all means threaten to cancel the H-1B program...then watch Indian officials laugh in your face and invite you to kiss their ass.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Stupidity is thinking a bank wouldn't have an Indian record of a local deposit, and Indian record of a transfer out (optionally with a set of currency exchanges), an American record if a transfer in and finally an American record of a local withdrawal. It's called double entry book keeping and people who aren't stupid already expect banks to be doing something similar.
US companies won't be kicked out of anywhere. The world absolutely requires the gigantic US market to sell to. Without it, the global economy would collapse. Even without this, the US is able to use measures from sanctions to bombings to enforce the global rules based liberal order. India would quickly cave to any serious pressure. The neoconservatives in the US government like it this way.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!