ICRIER, in collaboration with the SKOCH Group, organised a panel discussion titled “Data Governance at Crossroads” on January 11, 2020 at New Delhi. This discussion was a part of the Public Policy Forum and Public Policy LitFest at the 63rd SKOCH Summit. The session was chaired by Rajat Kathuria, Director & CE, ICRIER. The panellists for the session were Gulshan Rai, Former National Cyber Security Co-ordinator & Distinguished Fellow, SKOCH Development Foundation, Shyamal Ghosh, Chairman, Telecom Export Promotion Council (TEPC), Rahul Sharma, Founder, The Perspective, Anita Gurumurthy, Executive Director, IT For Change, Saranya Gopinath, Co-Founder, Digital India Collective for Empowerment (DICE) & Research Fellow, Bharat Inclusion, Mudit Kapoor, Associate Professor of Economics, Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) and Udbhav Tiwari, Advisor, Public Policy, Mozilla. In his opening remarks, Dr Kathuria highlighted three different facets of personal data namely a ‘valuable asset’ capable of being monetised by private companies, a ‘public good’ that can be leveraged for wide-spread social and economic benefits or a ‘toxin’ that has the potential for misuse for commercial gains. He stated that the co-existence of all three facets have raised policy questions related to anti-trust conduct, inequality, privacy, data security and surveillance. The panellists presented their views on different issues of data governance. Dr Gulshan Rai highlighted the issue of India’s critical internet infrastructure and emphasized the heterogeneity across hardware and software comprising India’s data economy and its increasing vulnerability. Ms Anita Gurumurthy focused on the need to treat data as a knowledge common and underlined the importance of treating different types of data differently. Dr Mudit Kapoor pointed out the risks of data monopolisation and spoke about the ethics of collecting data from uninformed individuals. He also highlighted the inadequacy of existing institutions to deal with these policy questions. Ms Saranya Gopinath focused on the API marketplace and its regulations. She presented her views on the weaponisation of private data and the challenges of compliance. Mr Rahul Sharma explained the need for careful regulation of data as it is a critical input to many sectors of the economy and Mr Udbhav Tiwari suggested the need for an independent law that would create checks and balances in sharing and usage of data and minimising discriminatory practices. In his concluding remarks, Dr Shyamal Ghosh spoke about the evolution of policy concerns in the telecom sector and India’s emerging digital economy.