Jeff Bezos’ Amazon runs a huge business in India and a little change in the company could impact the customers and the economy of India big time.
Amazon representatives in India had to appear before the Indian Parliamentary panel to review India’s privacy bill, on Friday.
An Indian lawmaker alleged that Amazon had refused to appear before the Indian Parliamentary Panel and this could lead to a great impact on their business in India. Amazon immediately took the opportunity to clarify, when a company’s representative stepped up and stated that it was all a misunderstanding and that the company had not refused to appear before the panel.
The head of the Indian parliamentary panel who is reviewing India’s Personal Data Protection Bill, Meenakshi Lekhi commented on Amazon’s refusal saying that if a big company like Amazon refuses to appear before the panel to review the Bill on October 28th, this could lead to coercive actions against the e-commerce company.
The Indian Parliamentary Panel is known to keep discussions and meets with all technology companies in India; it is a part of their deliberation. According to tech industry executives, the new Personal Data Protection Bill could impact the foreign tech companies a little over the edge as they would have to completely change their means of data storage.
However, Amazon having a huge business in India, if decides not to appear before the panel on 28th October. It could lead to some serious coercive action against the tech company, said Meenakshi Lekhi.
On the other hand, when Amazon was asked to comment on Lekhi’s remarks, the company representative said that they would definitely engage with the Panel’s reviewing and that the refusal must have been a misunderstanding which they will soon clarify to the Panel themselves.
Amazon’s statement read that because of the COVID-19 situation, the company’s experts were having great difficulty to fly down to India because of the travel restrictions imposed in many countries. The misunderstanding involves the travelling inability of Amazon’s experts that were to appear before the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) due to the on-going Pandemic must have been misconstrued.
According to a lawmaker on the panel, other tech giants such as Facebook, Twitter and Google have either already appeared or are yet to appear before the Indian Parliamentary Panel to review the bill. Digital Payment’s platform –Paytm is yet to appear on October 29th.
India’s have been revolutionising digitally and the government is drafting various regulations and policies for tech sector. Experts say that these changes could affect the investment plans of foreign tech companies as they would have to change their data storage methods altogether.
The government of India is also planning to revise a new policy of e-commerce companies in India to regulate the storage of non-personal data of customers.
