Goenka said, “Today we are on the edge of fourth Industrial revolution and our country is capable of doing anything. It is the time of artificial intelligence, so the book talks about how much data is generated in the world and what happens to it. Based on your behavioural habits and how you use the data, you are used as products by these companies. So, we have to understand what is data and how it is colonised by people. Data colonisation helps big players use your data, so somebody is sitting out there and checking your data, so be aware. We cannot allow any type of data used by anyone else. Our data should remain within our country. This is the start of data evolution and we should start a movement of safeguarding our country’s data.”
The book is the outcome of four years of interactions between Goenka, four retired Lieutenant Generals - V.M. Patil, D.B. Shekatkar, Vinod Bhatia and Vinod Khandare - former Additional Sectretary (RAW) Jayadeva Ranade and Bharat Panchal, SVP and Head (Risk Management) at National Payments Corporation of India.
Thus, addressing concerns over Data Privacy and Data Protection "is the need of the hour" as Data Colonisation looms.
"A few years ago, this was not looked at as a threat but today, with the growing importance of data in the growing economy, the concept of storage data within the local boundaries has taken significance," says the book, helmed by Vinit Goenka, a Governing Council member of the Centre for Railway Information Systems and former National Co-Convenor of the BJP''s IT Cell and former Staffing Partner, IBM.
At one stage in our interview with Goenka that lasted over two hours, we asked him a pointed question: ‘Who helped whom more, Facebook or the BJP?’
He smiled and said: ‘That’s a difficult question. I wonder whether the BJP helped Facebook more than Facebook helped the BJP. You could say, we helped each other.’