[AMG Power]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Why are we assuming that size of market capitalization more important than our Parliament.Please, this is a genuine question.

And here is a genuine answer: Because the Parliamentary committee consists of

Originally Posted by Anjadekar

a smug group of Motabhai’s stooges.

Any JPC cannot have the halo that you seem to have conferred on them when its constituents include members that have vested interests that are more than just plain obvious nor any of the credentials expected of them. Let's not mention about them being voted to power etc etc - that alone doesn't make them qualified.

Amazon seems to think so too, and wouldn't care two hoots if they lost their entire India business.

[DigitalOne]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Amazon refuses to appear before Joint Parliament Committee to answer questions on Data Protection

A rather East India Company-esque approach on the face of it.

With all due respect, I think the thread title and the starting post are needlessly dramatic. The facts are much more mundane. Let me explain:

(Disclaimer: I am not associated with any of the companies mentioned below except as a common user).

India does not have a Data Protection & Privacy law, similar to the EU GDPR. The government introduced a new DPP Bill in the parliament in 2019. This new bill being highly technical in nature has been referred to a Parliament committee for detailed consultations.

To refer to a parliamentary committee/panel for detailed consultations with subject matter experts, industry, other stakeholders etc is a normal practice for crucial laws. (OT, In recent years, the government has forgotten this practice for several other laws and laws have been thrust upon by brute majority force without proper consultation ).

Source

Facebook India’s policy head Ankhi Das on Friday appeared before the Joint Committee of Parliament that is examining the draft Data Protection Bill. However, e-commerce giant Amazon declined to depose before the panel on October 28, stating that its “subjects experts” cannot take the risk of traveling from the U.S. during the coronavirus pandemic.

Bottomline: The parliamentary panel is NOT investigating Amazon on any data privacy breaches or malpractices. This is a consultative parliament panel. I think the term JPC being used loosely gives the inference that some wrong doing has happened.

Amazon is just one of the companies being called as a subject matter expert as they have massive amounts of personal data; Others being called this week are Google, Twitter, Paytm, and Facebook.

What is likely to happen? At max, this is a PR disaster for Amazon; lots of people thinking Amazon is under investigation. They have been given a chance to appear before the panel again on 28th, which they will grab. They also get the chance to influence the law (not a bad thing; this is what is supposed to happen).

ps - On a thread, which is rightly emphasizes on the parliament and its processes, there are other posts which calls MPs as the "stooges" (sic) of a businessman. Welcome to the Twitterization of Team-bhp .

[v1p3r]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

. Question - So should a company decide on whether it will attend or spurn a JPC request based on political views & voting preferences? Give a straight yes or no answer. Think about it. We are dealing with a much bigger issue than anyone' s political inclinations.

I don't think there is any indication that Amazon has 'boycotted' this JPC because of any political inclinations.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

This JPC is no better or worse than a hundred others set up by either the NDA or the UPA.

To my knowledge, there have been less than 10 JPCs in the history of independent India.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

More likely to be right to do what? Telling the JPC of the worlds largest democracy to shove it?

Apologies. That should have read 'more likely to be in the right than is being portrayed in the media'.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Do we know if the Parliament JPC expressly stated no TV, come in person? Do we know if Amazon requested for a TV meeting and was spurned?

Do we know they didn't? You and I are both relying on the same media stories, or so I would think. I certainly haven't seen the JPC summons, so I cannot comment on the provisions and the dates. Amazon has expressly said that they cannot have their executives travel due to restrictions (imposed largely by GoI).

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Facebook sent their India CEO. What stopped Amazon from doing the same?

Maybe he/she wasn't in India? Again, this is conjecture on my part, at least.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Do you think the media you quote could in some sophisticated subtle way be influenced by Jeff Bezos and his team? Ambani is no saint and JB is his equal in the dirty tricks department of media management. So let's not be naïve about Bezos either. Think about it.

I am well aware of this. However, it is naive to think that JB exercises the same influence on Indian media as RIL does. The last I remember, RIL and its promoters control at least 5 Indian media houses through debt or equity. And I'm not even counting the influence they exert remotely through lapdogs that bark on TV non-stop. JB had his private parts and messages exposed in the US national media - that's a free press - while you would be very hard pressed to find any mention of the Aston crash in Indian media.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

If they cannot work here within the Constitution they are welcome to pack their bags and go. Why are we assuming that size of market capitalization more important than our Parliament. Please, this is a genuine question.

I agree. If you don't want to work within the confines of the law, don't work at all. I think you are confusing my interpretation of a POV based on law and experience, with my beliefs.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Conjecture? Maybe true. If journalists are saying this then they do not know how a JPC works. A JPC is a slow moving organism. The agenda and schedule has to be set weeks and sometimes months in advance to accommodate MPs and Parliament sessions. If you are asked to depose you get a letter with the questions and the opportunity to seek clarifications and time to prepare your answers. The schedule to ask Amazon to depose would have been taken 6 weeks earlier at a minimum. A JPC is not a Ministry where an executive order can be shot off in a day.

Yes, conjencture. Not from journalists - I am conjecturing this myself. The FG/RIL deal has been on for far longer than six weeks. The ROFR and negative list have been sighted many months ago. Setting this up is one of the bases that RIL is covering.

Let us not elevate JPCs to some unwarranted pedestal. If you look at the history of JPCs in India, their recommendations were either rejected outright by Parliament or opposition, or diluted down to nearly useless. A close family friend headed one such JPC, and his biggest accomplishment was ensuring that everyone involved, directly or in the shadows, emerged unscathed. JPCs function much like the rest of the government - a lot of drama, some nationalism invoked, and not much in the way of real governance.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Let the two nasty giants fight it out.

Yes! I'm genuinely excited to see what happens here! Kishore Biyani probably isn't though.

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

Let me explain:

Thank you. This is a very useful post.

[ABHI_1512]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

The sanctity of a JPC vis-a-vis an organization/company operating in this country cannot be determined by your (or mine or the CEOs) political leanings. Question - So should a company decide on whether it will attend or spurn a JPC request based on political views & voting preferences? Give a straight yes or no answer. Think about it. We are dealing with a much bigger issue than anyone' s political inclinations. This JPC is no better or worse than a hundred others set up by either the NDA or the UPA.

Of course not, anyone’s political leaning doesn’t interfere and doesn’t give anyone the right to spurn requests of a JPC. The parliament of a country is the supreme authority of a country which is beyond any doubt.

Amazon or for that matter anyone, is answerable to any authority mandated by the parliament and that’s absolute. As much as someone like or dislike, they are functioning in a sovereign and a democratic country and they have to abide by the rules set by the laws of the country.

What I don’t like is the composition and structure of the JPC and this has nothing to do with my political leanings and I also know that, my liking or disliking doesn’t make the JPC a less important one. Any call by a JPC has to answered by any organisation, period.

Oh by the way, one more thing here- no matter what the JPC states, it’s always the government in power to accept or reject the findings of the JPC. Previous findings of many JPC’s were either diluted or rejected or kept in a abeyance without any action, so there !!

Examples- JPC finding’s after the Ketan Parekh scam were diluted to large extents. JPC finding’s of the soft drink pesticide issue were accepted but never implemented totally. And more recently, the JPC finding’s of the NRC related issues, well, nothing actually !!

[Anjadekar]

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

On a thread, which is rightly emphasizes on the parliament and its processes, there are other posts which calls MPs as the "stooges" (sic) of a businessman. Welcome to the Twitterization of Team-bhp .

Thank you for your insightful post, @DigitalOne. I didn't mean to derail this conversation with my comment, which was an attempt at humour. I do stand by my rather uncharitable view of those concerned though!

I greatly appreciate the quality of the discussions on Team-BHP and have learnt a lot from @V.Narayan's posts (though I don't necessarily agree with his take on this issue) and, on this thread in particular, from your comment and those of @v1p3r.

[AMG Power]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Question - So should a company decide on whether it will attend or spurn a JPC request based on political views & voting preferences? Give a straight yes or no answer.

Here's your straight answer - Yes.

If you don't care about doing business in any country, you can tell everyone in that country, not just the JPC - to shove it. And as long as you haven't broken any law you will get away with it. Amazon hasn't broken any law that requires a JPC intervention.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Think about it. We are dealing with a much bigger issue than anyone' s political inclinations.

Yes, that is one of the fall outs of having stooges in JPC's. People in the stature of Jeff Bezos will increasingly start rejecting JPC demands. So correct the composition of JPC's, give credit to companies for their ability to think and do business instead of playing politics and you'll probably be a bit more successful in getting them to attend a JPC call instead of just trying to pulling rank by saying that it's the highest body in the land!

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

More likely to be right to do what? Telling the JPC of the worlds largest democracy to shove it?

You said it! That's the way they should do this.

And we shouldn't keep harping about being the largest democracy - it's like being the boss and telling everyone "I'm the boss" when no one else cares whether you are the boss.

[PPS]

Originally Posted by SideView

Any reason why most companies are taking arbitration in international countries/courts rather than Indian courts? ( atleast the publicised ones)If companies (with their legal army) have lost faith in Indian judiciary I wonder how we common folks can hope for any sort of justice.

The parties concerned must have decided Singapore as the seat of Arbitration. Supervisory role of Indian Courts + inordinate delay in disposal of cases is among a few of the reasons why some companies prefer taking arbitration outside India.

[avishar]

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

With all due respect, I think the thread title and the starting post are needlessly dramatic. The facts are much more mundane. Let me explain:

The only sensible comment in this thread. So much melodrama and projecting going on here.

It's a JPC which has been setup to work with companies who are handling huge amounts of data to present to them what the government is proposing and also take their views.

These companies have been very vocal about the draft version of this Bill, so it the government is giving them the oppurtunity to flesh out their issues with the bill. This is not court hearing. And it is not a witchhunt set up by "Motabhai" and his "stooges". The commitee also has Derek O'Brien and Jairam Ramesh, not exactly Motabhai's biggest fans, are they?

“Instead of the officials travelling from abroad, a team of Amazon experts who are based in India, would meet the committee in person and make the presentation,” said an industry source. “Actually, it was Amazon which had voluntarily offered to provide its insights way back in February 2020, long before the companies were told to share their views.”

Experts said the parliament committee wants to examine all the stakeholders including Amazon, Facebook and Google to get their perspective about personal data protection issues. These big service providers are data intermediaries and are dealing, handling and processing humongous volumes of data. Experts said the government could take a very “serious note” about Amazon not appearing before the committee as it is "not powerless” and can actually recommend action to be taken.

Top officials at social media giant Facebook have made a detailed presentation before JPC on the Personal Data Protection Bill, according to the sources. India is the biggest user base for Facebook with around 328 million users while its WhatsApp messaging app has 400 million users in India, also the world’s highest. People in the know said that officials from companies such as Google, Twitter and digital payments firm Paytm are also expected to make the presentations during the last week of this month."


The reason also why Amazon's presence, their views and discussion with them is important has less to do about ecommerce but more about their cloud services (AWS). Amazon's AWS also acts as a service partner for many governments across the world including in India too. India's cloud services market is the fastest growing in the world and it has become a hotly contested battleground between Amazon, Microsoft and Google. However, they are all foreign companies who are very cagey about divulging about how and where they host their data and the rights over that data. It is a sector which is highly unregulated but is handling payments data, personal data, profiling data etc.

Amazon is the market leader in cloud services in India.

Amazon nearly doubled its revenue from its cloud and data biz India

One of Amazon’s biggest customers in the country is the government and several of its departments. Marquee government initiatives such as Digital India, Skill India and the Smart Cities Mission are all powered by AWS, with the company offering hosting, analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning services.

Therefore, it is imperative that these companies meet with the government to discuss things out. I do not think that Amazon is avoiding this committee, it is probably a genuine logistical problem for them. If it is so, it should not be hyped up so much and Amazon can work out someway to meet later. However, there is no option for anyone to weasel out of this. The laws to figure out how data protection and data localization would work in India is very important and hold a lot of strategic importance too.

[SilentEngine]

Originally Posted by avishar

The reason also why Amazon's presence, their views and discussion with them is important has less to do about ecommerce but more about their cloud services (AWS).

Thanks for putting some context in to this. I feel the thread title unnecessarily show Amazon in bad light.

[Dry Ice]

Originally Posted by avishar

Therefore, it is imperative that these companies meet with the government to discuss things out. I do not think that Amazon is avoiding this committee, it is probably a genuine logistical problem for them. If it is so, it should not be hyped up so much and Amazon can work out someway to meet later. However, there is no option for anyone to weasel out of this. The laws to figure out how data protection and data localization would work in India is very important and hold a lot of strategic importance too.

I haven't followed the whole discussion and what the JPC is doing, but it sounds like it will be similar to what GDPR did for companies operating in EU.

AWS, GCP, Azure all have data centers in India and it's probably only going to increase. So it's definitely not a surprise for them, and probably something they are prepared for. AWS also has this basic page describing the DC in India are compliant with local data protection laws as of date - https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/india-data-protection


Interesting weeks ahead. I hope our legislators take a holistic view and not just stop at "payment" related data.

[Sutripta]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Amazon refuses to appear before Joint Parliament Committee to answer questions on Data Protection

On the face of it - beyond preposterous.

Amazon is no saint. But it is also not stupid. I think it would be best to wait for more details rather than rushing to judgement.

Sutripta

[Vishal.R]

Updates,

Business Standard : Data Protection Bill: Amazon to appear before joint parliamentary committee

Business Today : Amazon offers written submission to joint parliament panel; says inability to appear misconstrued

Originally Posted by AMG Power

And here is a genuine answer: Because the Parliamentary committee consists of

Would request to go through the complete list of members.Joint Committee on the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

India does not have a Data Protection & Privacy law, similar to the EU GDPR. The government introduced a new DPP Bill in the parliament in 2019....

Amazon is just one of the companies being called as a subject matter expert as they have massive amounts of personal data; Others being called this week are Google, Twitter, Paytm, and Facebook....

PS - On a thread, which is rightly emphasizes on the parliament and its processes, there are other posts which calls MPs as the "stooges" (sic) of a businessman. Welcome to the Twitterization of Team-bhp .

Originally Posted by avishar

It's a JPC which has been setup to work with companies who are handling huge amounts of data to present to them what the government is proposing and also take their views.

These companies have been very vocal about the draft version of this Bill, so it the government is giving them the oppurtunity to flesh out their issues with the bill. This is not a witchhunt set up by "Motabhai" and his "stooges". The committee also has Derek O'Brien and Jairam Ramesh, not exactly Motabhai's biggest fans, are they?

The reason also why Amazon's presence, their views and discussion with them is important has less to do about ecommerce but more about their cloud services (AWS). Amazon's AWS also acts as a service partner for many governments across the world including in India too. India's cloud services market is the fastest growing in the world and it has become a hotly contested battleground between Amazon, Microsoft and Google. However, they are all foreign companies who are very cagey about divulging about how and where they host their data and the rights over that data. It is a sector which is highly unregulated but is handling payments data, personal data, profiling data etc.

Amazon is the market leader in cloud services in India.

However, there is no option for anyone to weasel out of this. The laws to figure out how data protection and data localization would work in India is very important and hold a lot of strategic importance too.

Originally Posted by Dry Ice

I haven't followed the whole discussion and what the JPC is doing, but it sounds like it will be similar to what GDPR did for companies operating in EU.

AWS, GCP, Azure all have data centers in India and it's probably only going to increase. So it's definitely not a surprise for them, and probably something they are prepared for.

Originally Posted by Vishal.R

Updates,

Business Standard : Data Protection Bill: Amazon to appear before joint parliamentary committee

Business Today : Amazon offers written submission to joint parliament panel; says inability to appear misconstrued

Would request to go through the complete list of members.Joint Committee on the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019

Thank you for adding facts and balanced perspectives. It is a pity that some members colour their posts with their personal political inclinations without a drop of data and mixing up AWS with retail e-commerce and Future group etc. Maybe I belong to an outdated generation. But I can't get my head around writing vituperative posts while being too scared to put your name on it.

In my view Amazon have shown arrogance and two left feet with the way they went about this. Can you think how Tata's or Kotak Mahindra Bank or HDFC would conduct themselves in a similar situation. The question at the table is that if a JPC calls you, you go or at least find a viable alternative. You don't play cute no matter what your revenue.

[Sebring]

Amazon strikes! Future-Reliance deal put on hold.
https://www.ndtv.com/business/amazon...n-hold-2315677

[Cessna182]

At this moment, Amazon probably knows that India needs it more than it needs India. Lakhs of people are employed by its logistics arms. Lakhs more are suppliers.
The deep discounting has decimated local sellers. Most products you see are just overpriced China imports. Try finding even a spoon that's made in India. I grew up in an India where we even had appliances like microwaves and washing machines that were made largely in India. Today, it is tough to find even a spoon or a plate.
Also, most reviews are fake these days and I have learnt this the hard way by wasting money on products that turned out to be poor quality copies with fake reviews.
Honestly, I would be glad if a company like Reliance or Tata or Future group brings dynamism in the market again. Tired of their monopoly and arrogance.