Nanda Rajiv supervised by Dr. Aakansha Natani received her Master of Science – Dual Degree in Computing and Human Sciences (CHD). Here’s a summary of her research work on Cross-Border Data Flows in the Global Digital Economy: Structural Dependencies and Indias Domestic Discourse

This study seeks to examine India’s position within the global data economy, using three analytical approaches. First, it assesses the extent to which dependency theory and world systems theory, originally developed to analyse colonial and post-colonial economic relationships, may provide a useful lens for understanding relationships between actors in the contemporary global digital economy, with data as a central resource. Within this framework, it characterises the ‘core’, ‘periphery’, and ‘semi-periphery’ of the data economy, and identifies attributes that would place India within the semi-periphery. This ‘middle’ position is examined further by exploring India’s regulatory approach to cross-border data flows, as reflected in its domestic legislation and international trade negotiations. The study characterises this as a ‘quasi-localisation’ approach, placing onus on the Government of India to flexibly decide the kinds of data, recipient countries, and transferring entities involved in permitted data transfers. Hence, in such a context, it would be useful to analyse the government’s priorities over time with respect to India’s domestic and international positions in the digital landscape. Thus, the study finally traces how the Government of India’s discourse around the digital economy has evolved over the period 2015 to 2025 within official government communications, and what this may indicate about the priorities and orientation of domestic digital policy. The study finds that the global data economy appears to exhibit characteristics broadly consistent with a core-semiperiphery-periphery framework, in which a small number of actors capture a disproportionate share of economic value from global data flows. Countries that exemplify the core are capable of exerting a significant degree of structural control over other actors through technical, regulatory, and policy standards, and are able to retain most of the value generated in the landscape. Countries positioned as semi-peripheral actors exhibit growing domestic technological capabilities and a degree of strategic positioning in trade and regulatory negotiations, while remaining dependent on core actors for key aspects of digital infrastructure. Some countries that may be analysed to be peripheral actors, are dependent on core countries for fundamental infrastructure through various mechanisms. Through this study, India is evaluated to occupy a place in the semi-periphery of the global data economy. India’s domestic data governance approach is characterised in this study as one of ‘quasi-localisation’, which is consistent with its ‘middle’ semi-peripheral position globally. This characterisation was made observing India’s position as neither one of strict data localisation nor of complete support for the free flow of data, but rather a strategically ambiguous intermediate stance that preserves substantial discretionary power for the Government of India. This characterisation draws on an analysis of successive versions of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) draft bills, the DPDP Act 2023, and the DPDP Rules 2025, as well as India’s strategic participation in international trade negotiations and agreements with digital trade provisions. The question of discretionary power to the Government of India lends itself to a consideration of the evolving priorities of the government over time, for which this study undertakes a computational text analysis of 8,532 Press Information Bureau press releases, selected from a total corpus of 1,33,902 collected over the period 2015 to 2025. The time period starts from the year of the launch of the Digital India Mission, and concludes in the year of the release of the DPDP Rules, and hence provides a broad overview of various developments in India’s digital landscape. The analysis finds that certain subthemes consistently dominated government communications throughout the period, namely those concerned with national tech missions, while privacy and data flows related discourse has remained considerably smaller in volume, albeit growing from 2022 onward. The largest volume of discourse happens at the scale of the ‘nation’, with the ‘local’ and ‘international’ scales seeing a smaller amount of activity. A small number of ministries, principally the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, dominate across subthemes and scale frames, however the presence of other ministries points to a growing impact of the digital landscape on India’s overall governance and its discourse. Overall, the study locates India as a semi-peripheral actor in the global data economy, characterising its domestic data governance approach as a ‘quasi-localisation’ approach, and identifies themes of growth and development as dominant within the domestic governance discourse. 

June 2026