The Agriculture & Cooperation (A&C) Department, Government of Telangana issued the Draft Agricultural Data Management Policy, 2022 (“Draft Policy”). Issued in July 2022, the draft policy is set to be taken into consideration after August 06, 2022. The Telangana Government, through this draft policy, aims to streamline and codify the processes, responsibilities, norms, and practices relating to the management of agricultural data for the overall benefit of all the stakeholders, principally the farmers. On the bright side, it includes several provisions that establish strengthened user consent, internationally recognised principles of purpose limitation as well as data minimisation. However, the grass is not so green on the other side. Inter alia, ambiguous phrasing, absence of a state-level data protection law, perverse monetisation incentives, and undefined anonymisation standards raise several key concerns regarding privacy and security of data. Read our comments on the draft policy here, wherein we have, in a detailed clause-by-clause analysis, listed our concerns, comments and suggestions, in the format prescribed by the state government.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://internetfreedom.in/telanganas-agriculture-data-management-policy-the-good-bad-and-ugly/