Centre to aid offshore e-commerce play:

Centre to aid offshore e-commerce play:

Context

• Centre plans to expand the footprint of the Indian e-commerce sector to tap potential markets outside the country, including Africa and Southeast Asia.

What is the significance of expanding the ecommerce industry?

• Among several factors, a conscious patronization of online commerce, and an emergence of retail as a dominant market segment have contributed to the unprecedented growth of ecommerce in India.
• The digital economy in the country is forecast to generate employment for about 30 million people by 2024-25, “which is double than the current scenario”.
• The policy is aimed to achieve the target of making India a trillion-dollar digital economy in the next seven years
• With increasing demand for online purchasing, more and more businesses are moving to e-store from brick and mortar stores.
• With the boom in internet usage and its convenience, ecommerce has a lot of potential to capture markets both domestic and overseas.

What are the factors catalyzing the ecommerce industry in India?

The three principal driving factors that seem to have contributed  to this growth in ecommerce sector of India are:

• Participation of niche companies in online trading
• Unmatched FDI (foreign direct investment)
• Uniform GST (Goods and Services Tax)

What are the two aspects for the expansion of e-commerce industry?

• • There will be two aspects to it — one will focus on expansion within India, and the other on global expansion.

The government is to tap overseas markets in the Southeast Asia, West Asia, SAARC and BRICS nations

• The e-commerce economy is currently pegged at $30 billion, and the government expects it to grow at $150 billion by 2024-25.

What are the other initiatives taken by the government?

The government is also working on a strategy to make India a hub for

• Data analytics
• Cloud computing
• Financial technology

What are the challenges to the expansion of the ecommerce industry?

• Shipping costs and tracking visibility
• Clarity in cross-border fees (Import duties and taxes)
• Reasonable product delivery times
• Data security.

How is the government working on the data protection draft bill?

• The Data Protection Act, the draft of which is likely to be ready by December 2017, will provide a policy framework on digital economy, including social media.
• The government will also ready a security framework for mobile devices and the mobile application ecosystem by March 2018.

What is Data Protection under the Indian legal system?

• The Indian constitution has provided the right to privacy under the scope of Article 21. Its interpretation is found insufficient to provide adequate protection to the data.
• In the year 2000, effort has been made by our legislature to embrace privacy issues relating to computer system under the purview of IT Act, 2000.
• This Act contains certain provisions which provide protection of stored data. In the year 2006, our legislature has also introduced a bill known as ‘The Personal Data Protection Bill’ so as to provide protection to the personal information of the person.

What is the significance of data protection bill?

• In the year 2006, our legislature has introduced a bill known as ‘The Personal Data Protection Bill’ to provide protection to the personal information of the person.
• The bill applies both to government as well as private enterprises engaged in data functions.
• Privacy has become an intensely discussed and debated topic, in this new era of digital age
• In order to remove obstacles from cross-border flow of data, the privacy of people and freedom should be maintained at all levels by processing the data equivalent in all participating states
• The new  Data Protection Act, the draft of which is likely to be ready by December 2017, will provide a policy framework on digital economy, including social media. The government will also ready a security framework for mobile devices and the mobile application ecosystem by March 2018