India needs regulatory reforms to protect its citizens against data fraud and misuse of data by unscrupulous elements, the United Nations Resident Coordinator in India Yuri Afanasiev said on Wednesday, PTI reported. He said the current protocols for data transfer have raised questions on how this data will be stored and accessed by the government and private entities.
“Recent breaches only heighten these fears [of how the government and private entities would use the data],” Afanasiev said at the a conclave on financial inclusion organised by the UN in New Delhi. “These concerns warrant regulatory reforms that protect against fraud and misuse, especially for those [people] with low financial and digital literacy.” The UN official said that India must allow for privacy in transactions while also enabling governments and other entities to access data.
Afanasiev also said that the government’s Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana still needed to address some challenges. “Despite the push from the Indian government, as many as six crore people still don’t have bank accounts. Remote areas still don’t have a mobile phone service or 3G/4G data networks.”
Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had earlier on Wednesday said that the number of zero-balance accounts in the country had reduced from 77% to 20% after the introduction of the Jan Dhan Yojana. Jaitley claimed that 99.99% of households now have at least one bank account.
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