Published Paper Details:

In today's world, data is deciding our social interactions, choices as well as playing an intrusive role in shaping the democratic polities. It has this incisive capability to alter the dynamics vis-a-vis states and citizens. For some time now, it has been referred to as the new oil as it is already handing significant benefits for organizations, employing analytics and artificial intelligence in their operations. The criticality of data has gained significant weight in economic, strategic as well as political terms. The US' 2016 presidential polls and the Brexit phenomena to a great extent were influenced adversely the by Cambridge Analytica saga. During President Donald Trump's tenure, he was quite vocal about the sensitive US data being illegally stolen by Chinese 5G networks on a grand scale. As regards the regulations mooted upon by the Indian side on data flows, the US side insists that the extant market constraints in the face of lingual differences as well as infrastructural lacunas hinder the tech companies in effectively penetrating the mass culture. They assert that a custom-made data protection architecture bodes ill for the future bilateral engagement projects as the cost of logistics will get increasingly high and erode market intimacy between the two natural partners. This paper seeks to shed light on the debates involved with the whole premise of data sovereignty, in the context of Indo-Us relations and the associated issues.