In Focus Podcast | Should privacy be a tradable right?

India is a poor country, but it is ‘data-rich’. The dominant consensus today holds that data – including personal data — should be exploited for economic growth. Is it possible that this consensus is wrong?

One outcome of this consensus is the ‘consent regime’, which paves the way for monetisation of personal data. You tick a box to give your ‘consent’ and that’s it, so far as your privacy is concerned – it’s now a tradable commodity. But is it ok to have markets for privacy? Or, is it similar to having markets for organs, or for blood donation, or for child labour?

A new scholarly paper titled, ‘Data and Privacy: Putting markets in (their) place’ uses the economic concept of “noxious markets” to question whether privacy should be a tradeable commodity at all. What if it isn’t something that should be traded?

Guest: Reetika Khera, Professor of Economics at IIT, Delhi

Host: G Sampath, Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu

Shot by Jude Weston & Almas Mohammad

Producer and editor: Jude Weston

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