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By:

Sagari Gupta

24 March 2026 at 7:46:04 pm

India’s Digital Footprint Is No Longer a Choice

India’s digital economy has made personal data unavoidable. The harder task is ensuring that citizens retain meaningful control over the trails they leave behind. In August this year, the Unified Payments Interface processed about 24.5 billion transactions worth nearly Rs. 29.8 lakh crore, according to data from the National Payments Corporation of India. Aadhaar’s authentication system recorded more than 17,759 crore transactions in FY2025-26, according to UIDAI’s dashboard. Behind these...

India’s Digital Footprint Is No Longer a Choice

India’s digital economy has made personal data unavoidable. The harder task is ensuring that citizens retain meaningful control over the trails they leave behind. In August this year, the Unified Payments Interface processed about 24.5 billion transactions worth nearly Rs. 29.8 lakh crore, according to data from the National Payments Corporation of India. Aadhaar’s authentication system recorded more than 17,759 crore transactions in FY2025-26, according to UIDAI’s dashboard. Behind these numbers sits a question Indian policy has yet to answer clearly: what happens to the data these systems generate, and who controls it? The most pressing privacy question in India today is not what people choose to post online. It is what they are required to leave behind to take part in everyday life. A UPI payment leaves a transaction trail. A loan application generates financial records. A food-delivery order records your address and buying habits. A cab ride shows where you work and when you travel. A social-media post adds something more personal: what you think, like, fear or believe. Individually, these fragments look harmless. Together, they can describe a remarkably detailed version of a person’s life. Orwellian Society This is not digital technology invading a society that was once offline. It is a society in which digital systems have become part of ordinary economic life. For a software professional, deleting social media may be an inconvenience. For a domestic worker paid through a bank account, a student applying for a scholarship or a pensioner completing an identity check, opting out is not a workable choice. Consider an ordinary Saturday. You check the weather, search for a medicine, order groceries, pay through UPI, book a cab and make an online purchase. No single action tells a complete story. Together, they reveal your location, spending patterns, household composition, health concerns and daily routine. Artificial intelligence changes what this data means, because machine systems are increasingly good at connecting fragments that once sat in separate databases. The concern is not that an AI system knows what you searched for once. It is that automated systems can identify patterns across millions of ordinary interactions that, taken individually, meant little. The problem is also one of asymmetry. The individual usually sees only the service being offered; the organisation sees the accumulated information behind it. A single transaction may be trivial, but millions of such transactions can become commercially or administratively valuable when linked and analysed. That makes data different from many other commodities. Once information has been copied, combined or used to build a profile, the original individual may have little visibility into its subsequent journey. The question is therefore not simply who collected the data, but who can combine it, infer from it and act upon those inferences. The public debate on AI scraping is often too simple. Not every online interaction is pulled into an AI model, and not every company holds every piece of a person’s digital life. Collection depends on the platform, its policies, its technical architecture and the applicable law. But the gap is real: the capacity to analyse vast volumes of information is growing faster than most people’s understanding of where their information goes. A PwC India survey found that 56 percent of consumers did not know their rights over personal data, while 70 percent said privacy policies were difficult to understand. When a person does not understand what they are agreeing to, consent risks becoming a formality rather than a genuine choice. There is also a distinction between privacy and secrecy. A person may have nothing embarrassing to hide and still reasonably object to a detailed record of their movements, purchases and associations being assembled without meaningful control. Privacy is less about having something to conceal than about retaining a degree of agency over one’s own life. A Right on Paper The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 gives individuals rights to correct and erase personal data, subject to the conditions and exceptions set out in the law. The government notified the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules in November 2025, with provisions coming into force in phases. On paper, this changes the relationship between citizens and the organisations that hold their data. In practice, most people do not think in terms of “Data Principal” or “Data Fiduciary” when an app asks for access to their information. They think about whether the app will still work if they say no. That is the test that decides whether a data-protection law functions on the ground. A small retailer selling online may not fully understand the compliance requirements. An elderly customer faces a long privacy notice before completing a routine transaction. A young user accepts an app’s terms because refusing means losing access to a service that friends or employers already use. A right that exists on paper does not guarantee a person’s ability to exercise it. The ability to protect personal data is not distributed evenly. A high-income professional can pay for privacy-focused software, encrypted communication and legal advice. Someone on a smaller income uses whichever free application is available. The same divide applies to time. A person who understands technology can adjust permissions and request deletion. A person working two jobs may accept an app’s terms because reading a 30-page privacy notice at 11 p.m. is hardly realistic. This produces an uneven outcome. The people with the strongest ability to protect their data are often the same people with the clearest sense of what is being collected. Those with fewer resources tend to generate more data while having less power to question how it is used. This is why treating “going offline” as the solution has limited use in India. Cash does not cover every digital transaction. A basic phone does not replace every digital service. Deleting a social-media account does not erase bank or government records. Refusing every digital platform carries its own economic cost, particularly for people who depend on digital payments for income. The realistic goal is not disappearance. It is control. India’s digital economy should not be measured only by payment volumes or platform reach. It should also be measured by whether people understand the exchange taking place underneath that convenience. Regulators should track whether a person can find out what a service holds about them, correct inaccurate information, delete data that is no longer necessary and withdraw consent without clicking through several layers of settings. The sharper test is what happens when data collected for one purpose becomes useful for another. Rising Stakes The stakes will rise as India’s digital infrastructure becomes more deeply embedded in public services, finance and commerce. The country has built impressive systems for moving money and verifying identity; the next challenge is to build equally credible systems for limiting what can be inferred from the information those systems generate. The next phase of India’s privacy debate should move past the idea of digital disappearance, because most people have no practical way to leave the systems through which they earn, pay, borrow, travel, study and access public services. The more useful task is making those systems answerable to the people whose lives they record. The measure of digital freedom is not whether a citizen leaves no trace. It is whether they have a say over where that trace leads. (The writer is an independent public policy researcher. Views personal.)

The Captain MI Desperately Didn’t Need

Writer: Waleed Hussain
Waleed Hussain
Apr 19
3 min read

Ah, the IPL 2026 season – where Mumbai Indians, five-time champions and eternal blue-blooded royalty, have decided to cosplay as a mid-table struggler. And leading this glorious downward spiral? None other than Hardik Pandya, the man who swapped Gujarat’s trophy cabinet for Mumbai’s hot seat and somehow turned “five-time winners” into “one-win wonders.” Four losses in a row. Ninth on the points table. Negative NRR that looks like it was calculated by a depressed accountant. If this is leadership, I’d hate to see what incompetence looks like.


Let’s start with the on-field comedy show, because Hardik’s tactical genius has been nothing short of performance art. Take the recent seven-wicket thrashing by Punjab Kings at the Wankhede – defending 195, no less. Hardik’s masterclass included opening the bowling with the struggling Deepak Chahar instead of, you know, Jasprit Bumrah. Why use your best bowler when you can watch the opposition feast? Then, in a move of pure tactical brilliance, he promoted himself up the order ahead of the in-form Sherfane Rutherford, who got all of five balls to twiddle his thumbs. Rutherford had been smashing it; Hardik managed 14 off 12. The crowd didn’t even get to boo properly before it was over. 


Or rewind to the 18-run loss to Royal Challengers Bengaluru, where RCB piled on 240. Hardik’s response? Bowl two overs of Bumrah in the powerplay (because nothing says “control the game” like wasting your death-over specialist early) and then feed spin from both ends to Rajat Patidar – the guy who eats spinners for breakfast. Former India spinner R Ashwin called it “very strange tactics.” Translation: even your opponents’ legends are face-palming. Against Rajasthan Royals, another 27-run defeat, Hardik blamed the bowlers post-match. Classic captain move – throw everyone else under the bus while your own figures read like a bad joke. 


His personal contribution? In four games this season, the all-rounder who once terrified death bowlers has looked about as threatening as a wet dhokla. Expensive with the ball, underwhelming with the bat, and somehow still convinced he’s the guy to drag MI to a sixth title. The team has stars – Rohit Sharma still firing in patches, Suryakumar Yadav, Bumrah – yet they chase games instead of dictating them. One win against KKR (where Hardik did chip in) and then radio silence. Four straight Ls. The only thing growing faster than the deficit is the list of ex-players queuing up to say “take a break from captaincy.” Manoj Tiwary, Sadagoppan Ramesh – they’re not wrong. Hardik the player is elite; Hardik the captain is… well, mediocre at best. 


Soap Opera

Now, the behind-the-scenes soap opera is where the real sarcasm writes itself. Remember when MI was the franchise with the unbreakable dressing-room culture? Under Rohit, even on off days, the vibe was “we’ll figure it out over a meal.” Under Hardik? Visible frustration. Bumrah openly disagreeing on field placements during the PBKS game – the star pacer looking like he’d rather bowl to anyone else. Post-loss huddles where Hardik stares into the void muttering, “I have nothing to say at the moment.” The locker room reportedly heavy with mood swings that seem to radiate straight from the skipper. Reddit threads and fan forums are lit with tales of ego and bad energy seeping into the squad. Rohit gets emotional tributes from Hardik himself, yet the team plays like it’s carrying the weight of one man’s captaincy experiment. 


Look, no one doubts Hardik’s passion or his World Cup pedigree. The man can still hit sixes that rattle the soul. But captaining MI isn’t about individual flair or post-match soundbites about “tough decisions” and “learning.” It’s about reading the game, trusting your best players, and not letting frustration turn a champion squad into a confidence-free zone. Four losses don’t lie. The points table doesn’t lie. And the growing chorus of critics isn’t trolling – it’s stating the obvious.


Mumbai Indians didn’t trade for Hardik Pandya to watch their legacy unravel in slow motion. They brought him in to win. Right now, he’s proving he’s not the man for the job. Time for a reality check, skipper – or at least a break from the armband before the IPL 2026 obituary is written in full. The five-time champs deserve better than this tragicomedy. And honestly, so does Hardik. 


(The writer is a senior journalist based in Mumbai. Views personal.)

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