Data when thought as a resource is immediately reduced to be an economic resource. We need to shift from this resource metaphor . This reductive thinking of data as a revenue generating asset actually forgets other ways data lends its value to us. Data as resource leads to data colonization with Big Tech benefiting Big Business by monopolising their control over data. To combat this data colonialism, we in India have to include the good of the data producing subject in what we call data sovereignty. This means we have the challenge to assert the people sovereignty over the data that they produce. The agency of the data subject has to be given priority in our data governance. Today no government can govern without data. Data does assist us to produce what Michel Foucault called governmentality . Governmentality is a way of controlling large groups of people. The demands of administration like health, employment, traffic , travel as well as security issues require the governments to turn to data to serve its people.

Globally there are two ways data is being managed by Governments. The first one is led by the US that allows data flows across boundaries without much intervention of the Government. It benefits the Big Tech and Big Business to continue their innovations in the Silicon Valley and grow economically. The second model comes from the European Union that has modified US approach by bringing regulations to protect citizen and consumers. The second model is embraced by BRICKS countries and Nations from the Global south that lay emphasis on the data sovereignty and reject data colonization. But there are issues with the second model too. It can set an authoritarian internet powered by technologies of surveillance and claim that it is set up for the good of its citizens as we may notice as happening in China. What we need maybe is democratic data regulation wherein the data subject or the citizen participates in what is made of his or her data by the state. But because Big Powers like US, European Union and China have stakes in data regulation, the data regulatory landscape is fragmentary. There is another issue attached to this regulatory problem. All most all stakeholders approach data as a resource that can be extracted, polished, valued , bought and sold in different ways.

In India, our Personal Data Protection Act is based on the centralisation of power and is said to be heavily tilting towards the policy of China. India has an opportunity to provide the world another way of managing data without anxiety of it being used against its security concerns. Maybe we have to invest in finding and alternate governing model to regulate the data produced by our citizens. We in India are still working with the metaphor that says data is a resource which immediately sees its economic potencies. Although our Government at different times has expressed it desire to monetize citizens’ data but gave it up when it faced citizens privacy issues. Approaching data as a resource models data colonization and puncture data sovereignty that is prized by our government so dearly. It follows the terra nullius principle of the colonizers that said that land owned by no one has to be taken and ‘exploited’ by the colonial Government. Similarly data colonization is controlling and profiting from peoples data. Hence, we have an important question for those that speak for data sovereignty : Whose Sovereignty is it ? Why is it not on the side data producers.

Data sovereignty is understood as first of all operating at the level of the State. This is statist notion of data sovereignty. State claims power of data that is generated within its boundaries. But it being centralised there is no place for the citizens to know the way their data is being used. This exclusion of the citizen is justified by the assumption that Government is a representative of the citizen. Thus, Government is both an economic and technocratic actor for its passive citizens and seeks only market solutions as regards the issues of data of its citizens. This is why we need to debunk the metaphor which thinks of data as a resource. Data is not simply given. It is produced by citizens who are deeply embedded in a culture and socio-eco-political as well as religious life. This is why it has to be captured, cleansed, quantified , valued and put to use. Data is profoundly bodily. As a resource it is disembodied and weaponised to attack or manipulate the embodied life of an individual. We need to turn to embodied metaphors of data. Finger prints, foot prints etc., bring us to these embodied nature of data. Data is a social bridge and hence have to be primarily used to build social relations and social life and not amplify social inequalities. Data has a human face. It has a social, political, and economic life. Hence, social, economic and political dimension of data cannot be forgotten. Decolonizing of our colonial mind set is a way forward to decolonize data. We have the challenge to invent a decolonial models of data governance . Our data sovereignty does not just have to give us better public welfare and stronger national security but has to protect the privacy and good of individual data producing citizens . Hence, how data is manged and used for public good have to include transparency and checks and balances and ways of addressing issues of justice.