Data Governance in the EU and in India: Some Observations

This article explores the increasingly fraught space of data governance in the context of Big Tech exceptionalisms, Big Tech and State entanglements and geopolitics. It focuses on the attempts to regulate Big Tech in the EU and in India. It explores these data contestations by dealing with (a) the attempts to establish a global tax regime based on the valuation of digital transactions under the aegis of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and India’s Equalisation Levy and (b) the practice of data governance in the EU in the light of attempts by the US government in particular to redraw the terms of data governance. Attempts to democratize the platform economy both in the EU and India have achieved mixed results. This is to a large extent the result of Big Tech lobbying and increasing investments in the expansion of Big Tech’s global footprint.