BENGALURU: Former Union Information and Broadcasting Minister and current Lok Sabha Member Manish Tewari said that data protection regimes in India are non-existent. “This fundamental mindset that ‘I have nothing to hide’ is a very big impediment in creating public pressure which would ensure the right to privacy becomes substantive,” he said. Tewari was speaking in Bengaluru on Thursday, alongside former National Security Council Secretariat military advisor Lt Gen Prakash Menon, on his book ‘10 Flashpoints 20 Years: National Security Situations that Impacted India’.
Apart from data protection, both Tewari and Menon spoke on a number of issues pervading India. On the issue of nuclear weapons, especially in the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine war, Menon said the use of nuclear weapons was more psychological than physical.
“It has been said that in a nuclear war, nobody wins. So any use of nuclear weapons would not be intentional, rather accidental, which is the greater danger,” he said, citing the accidental firing of the BrahMos missile into Pakistan in March. He said it was time for both India and China to lead on a Global No First Use (GNFU) policy in terms of nuclear weapons.
Speaking on the book itself, Tewari said it was not aimed at servicemen, rather at his own colleagues in Parliament and legislature to sensitise them on the challenges the country faces. “We must use legislative powers to address some of these issues,” he said, mentioning that 37 of his Parliament questions on the 2020 India-China skirmishes had been rejected. Echoing this, Menon said, “The main aim of the book to educate Tewari’s contemporaries in Parliament and assemblies, I hope will be met sooner, rather than later.”