Current Affairs of 3 November 2026

How AI Training Models Could Compromise Privacy

Context

• While AI offers opportunities to improve productivity and innovation, its dependence on personal data raises serious concerns about privacy and individual autonomy.
• In 2017, the Supreme Court recognised the right to privacy as a fundamental right under Article 21 in the Justice S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India judgment.
• However, India's existing legal framework faces challenges in addressing emerging AI-related risks.
• The Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, requires further strengthening to balance technological progress with constitutional rights.

Privacy Coverage

• Evolution of India's Data Protection Framework

  • Before the DPDP Act, the primary framework governing personal information was the Information Technology Act, 2000, along with its 2011 Rules.
  • These provisions regulated sensitive personal data, including financial information, medical records, sexual orientation and biometric details.
  • Unauthorised disclosure attracted a maximum punishment of three years' imprisonment or a ₹5 lakh fine.
  • However, several categories, including caste, religion, political affiliations, browsing history and social media activities, lacked adequate protection.
  • Publicly available information and data scraped from social media were also largely outside its coverage.

• Limitations of the DPDP Act

  • The DPDP Act, 2023, and Rules notified in November 2025, establish a broader data protection framework.
  • However, the Act does not distinguish adequately between sensitive and non-sensitive personal data.
  • Passwords, biometric information and health records receive the same broad classification as names, marital status and shopping preferences.
  • Another major concern is the exclusion of certain publicly available information.
  • Technology companies such as Meta, Google and Amazon collect extensive user data, which can be utilised to train AI models.
  • Although publicly accessible, such information can become highly sensitive when aggregated and analysed.
  • Therefore, public accessibility should not imply unrestricted permission for commercial exploitation.
  • The framework must recognise that combining seemingly harmless information can expose individuals to significant privacy risks.

Training AI on Personal Data

• Risks of Data Memorisation and Extraction

  • AI models can sometimes memorise and reproduce information contained in their training datasets.
  • Research has demonstrated that carefully designed queries can extract personal information from supposedly anonymised datasets and help identify individuals.
  • AI can also infer sensitive attributes, including emotional conditions, behavioural patterns, mobility and personal relationships, from publicly available information.
  • Consequently, anonymisation alone cannot guarantee privacy because AI can establish connections between seemingly unrelated datasets.
  • This creates new challenges for conventional data protection

• Absence of Effective Consent Mechanisms

  • The DPDP Act does not comprehensively address the use of personal information for AI model training.
  • Its phased implementation delays several substantive provisions until May 2027, leaving individuals with limited protection during the transition.
  • Even after implementation, individuals may have no effective right to object to AI training using certain publicly available personal data.
  • In contrast, Meta provides users in the European Union with an opt-out mechanism for certain uses of their information in AI training.

• Right to Be Forgotten and Research Exemption

  • The DPDP Act recognises the right to erasure, but its application to information generated through AI-based inference remains unclear.
  • The Act also exempts certain processing activities undertaken for research, archival and statistical purposes.
  • Since companies may describe AI training as research to improve their services, uncertainty surrounding these exemptions could create opportunities to avoid data protection obligations.

The Way Forward

• Strengthening the DPDP Framework

  • India can address these shortcomings through targeted amendments, appropriate rules and judicial interpretation. Important measures include:
    • Extend DPDP protections to personal data used for AI training.
    • Introduce a meaningful right to object to the use of personal information in AI development.
    • Regulate publicly scraped data and protect information generated through AI-based inference.
    • Establish a separate sensitive personal datacategory with stricter processing requirements.
    • Strengthen the right to erasure by requiring organisations to disclose other entities holding individuals' data.
    • Clarify whether AI training qualifies for the research exemption and establish safeguards against misuse.

• Balancing Innovation and Constitutional Rights

  • Excessive regulation could discourage investment and restrict research, while inadequate safeguards could facilitate the exploitation of personal information.
  • India's large and diverse population offers considerable opportunities for AI development across businesses, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and non-profit organisations.
  • Banning personal data usage or its international transfer could also weaken
  • AI systems' ability to represent India's linguistic and demographic diversity, potentially increasing algorithmic bias and discrimination.
  • The objective should therefore be proportionate regulation that promotes innovation while ensuring transparency, accountability and individual control over personal information.

Conclusion

• Although the DPDP Act, 2023, establishes an important foundation, gaps concerning sensitive information, publicly available data, AI training and inferred personal attributes require urgent attention.
• India must develop a rights-based and innovation-friendly AI governance framework that protects individuals without unnecessarily restricting technological advancement.
• Ultimately, technological progress must not undermine constitutional freedoms.
• Delaying privacy safeguards could weaken individual autonomy and public trust in an increasingly data-driven society.

How AI Training Models Could Compromise Privacy FAQs

Q1. Why is the right to privacy important in the age of AI?

Ans. The right to privacy protects individual autonomy and personal information from misuse through AI technologies.

Q2. What is the major limitation of the DPDP Act, 2023?

Ans. The Act does not adequately distinguish between sensitive and non-sensitive personal data or address AI training comprehensively.

Q3. How can AI threaten individual privacy?

Ans. AI can memorise, extract and infer sensitive personal information from training datasets and publicly available data.

Q4. What measures can strengthen data protection in India?

Ans. India should introduce stricter safeguards for sensitive data, regulate AI training and strengthen the right to object and erasure.

Q5. How can India balance AI innovation and privacy protection?

Ans. India should adopt proportionate, rights-based AI regulations that encourage innovation while protecting constitutional freedoms.

Source: The Hindu

Firecrackers: Festivity or fallout?

Context

• Festivals and celebrations are integral to India's cultural and religious identity.
• However, the widespread use of firecrackers contributes to severe air pollution, particularly in Delhi-NCR, threatening public health.
• The Supreme Court's October 12 suo motu proceedings on air pollution highlighted the need to balance religious freedom, environmental protection and public health.
• The Court cautioned against a blanket ban and emphasised public awareness, voluntary restraint and less-polluting alternatives.
• The central challenge is to preserve cultural traditions without compromising the fundamental right to clean air.

Constitutional Dimensions of Environmental Protection and Religious Freedom

• Right to Life and Clean Environment

  • Article 21 guarantees the right to life and personal liberty.
  • The Supreme Court has interpreted it to include the right to a healthy and pollution-free environment.
  • Environmental protection is further supported by:
    • Article 48A: Directs the State to protect and improve the environment and safeguard forests and wildlife.
    • Article 51A(g): Makes environmental protection a fundamental duty of every citizen.
  • Together, these provisions establish shared environmental responsibility between the government and citizens.

• Religious Freedom and Its Constitutional Limitations

  • Article 25 guarantees freedom of conscience and the right to profess, practise and propagate religion, subject to public order, morality and health.
  • Therefore, religious freedom cannot justify practices that expose others to unreasonable health risks.
  • Individual freedoms must be exercised without undermining the fundamental rights of fellow citizens.
  • The objective should be to reconcile cultural traditions with constitutional and environmental responsibilities, rather than treating them as competing interests.

Environmental Protection as a Collective Responsibility

• Stockholm Declaration, 1972

  • The Stockholm Declaration recognised the relationship between environmental quality and human well-being, establishing an important foundation for international environmental governance.

• Rio Declaration, 1992

  • The Rio Declaration established two important principles:
    • Precautionary Principle: Governments should take preventive action against serious environmental risks even when complete scientific certainty is unavailable.
    • Polluter-Pays Principle: Those responsible for pollution must bear the costs of preventing and addressing environmental damage.
  • Applied to firecracker regulation, these principles demand preventive measures against harmful emissions and accountability for manufacturers and sellers violating environmental standards.

International Approaches to Firecracker Regulation

• Singapore

  • Prohibits private firecracker use while permitting licensed professional displays.
  • Ireland and the United Kingdom: Restrict the sale of traditional firecrackers to the general public.

• Sweden:

  • Allows firecracker use only by trained individuals holding special permits.

• Germany

  • Restricts certain powerful firecrackers to authorised permit holders.
  • These examples demonstrate that regulated celebrations can preserve cultural enjoyment while reducing environmental and safety risks.
  • India can adapt such practices according to its cultural diversity, population density and enforcement capacity.

India's Way Forward: Balancing Celebration with Environmental Responsibility

• Promoting Scientifically Tested Alternatives

  • The government should encourage certified green crackers that satisfy prescribed emission and safety standards.
  • Independent verification is necessary to prevent misleading environmental claims.

• Strengthening Regulatory Enforcement

  • The Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM), pollution control boards and local authorities should strictly enforce standards governing the manufacture, storage, transportation and sale of firecrackers.
  • Violations must attract appropriate penalties.

• Increasing Public Awareness

  • Environmental protection requires behavioural change alongside legal restrictions.
  • Awareness campaigns should educate citizens about the health consequences of firecracker emissions and encourage voluntary restraint.
  • Schools, religious institutions and community organisations can promote environmentally responsible celebrations.

• Ensuring Proportionate Regulation

  • Restrictions should be based on scientific evidence, public-health requirements and practical enforcement considerations.
  • Authorities must avoid arbitrary measures while ensuring that religious practices do not undermine the right to life and clean air.

• Promoting Collective Responsibility

  • Citizens must recognise environmental protection as a shared obligation.
  • Reduced firecracker consumption, responsible celebrations and support for sustainable alternatives can collectively minimise pollution.

Conclusion

• The debate over firecracker restrictions reflects the constitutional challenge of balancing individual freedoms with collective welfare.
• Religious freedom, cultural traditions and environmental protection must coexist within the constitutional framework.
• Effective regulation, scientific alternatives, public awareness and citizen participation can make celebrations more sustainable.
• Ultimately, protecting the right to celebrate must never compromise another person's right to breathe clean air.
• A meaningful celebration should leave behind memories of happiness, not a legacy of pollution.

Firecrackers: Festivity or fallout? FAQs

Q1. What constitutional provision guarantees the right to a clean environment?

Ans. Article 21 guarantees the right to life, which includes the right to a healthy and pollution-free environment.

Q2. What does Article 25 provide?

Ans. Article 25 guarantees freedom of conscience and the right to practise and propagate religion, subject to public order, morality and health.

Q3. What are the two important principles of the Rio Declaration, 1992?

Ans. The Rio Declaration recognises the Precautionary Principle and the Polluter-Pays Principle.

Q4. What approach has Singapore adopted towards firecrackers?

Ans. Singapore prohibits private firecracker use but permits licensed professional fireworks displays.

Q5. What should be India's approach to balancing celebrations and environmental protection?

Ans. India should adopt proportionate regulations, promote certified green crackers, strengthen enforcement and encourage public awareness and voluntary restraint.

Source: The Hindu

Jan Vishwas 2.0 - Building Trust-Based Regulation for High-Wage Job Creation

Context

• India’s remarkable achievement in mass democracy has not translated into mass prosperity. The regulatory cholesterol—the lack of transparency, consistency and trust in law enforcement—prevents entrepreneurs from combining land, labour and capital to generate productive, innovative and high-wage jobs.
• Following the decriminalisation of thousands of offences under the Jan Vishwas initiative, India must undertake three further reforms -
  • Siddhant (principles of trust),
  • Sangreh (a single source of legislative truth) and
  • Ashwasan (certainty of enforceable obligations).

The Economic Imperative - From Employment to High-Wage Jobs

• The challenge of mass prosperity:

  • India ranks 128th globally in per-capita GDP, despite its remarkable democratic achievements.
  • The problem is not the absolute scarcity of land, labour or capital, but their inefficient utilisation.
  • Nearly one-third of India's workforce remains trapped in employed poverty.
  • India's equity and debt-to-GDP ratios are broadly comparable to sustainable global benchmarks.
  • The central challenge is not merely creating jobs, but creating productive employment that pays higher wages.

• The India-China economic divergence:

  • China's per-capita GDP is approximately five times India's, despite the two economies being comparable in 1991.
  • The difference is not necessarily attributable to superior intelligence or work ethic, but to the institutional environment that enables enterprises to grow, innovate and compete globally.
  • Regulatory cholesterol discourages formalisation and traps workers in informal wage employment and low-productivity self-employment.

Siddhant - Establishing the Philosophy of Trust-Based Regulation:

• Six toxic regulatory mindsets:

  • Prior approval: Activities are prohibited until explicitly permitted, restricting entrepreneurial freedom.
  • Enforcing the unenforceable: Regulations are imposed without assessing the state's actual enforcement capacity.
  • Process as punishment: Excessive procedural requirements penalise even compliant citizens and businesses.
  • Compliance and instrument blind spot: Regulators focus on more than 25 categories of non-legislative administrative instruments instead of examining the overall legislative framework.
  • Writing laws for edge cases: Exceptional instances are used to justify restrictions on entire sectors, such as using drunk driving to argue against automobiles.
  • Excessive criminalisation: Imprisonment becomes ineffective when cases are rarely filed or prosecution is delayed.

• A new regulatory philosophy:

  • Jan Vishwas must institutionalise -
    • Freedom: Presume that citizens and enterprises should be free to act.
    • Necessity: Regulate only when a genuine public purpose requires intervention.
    • Proportionality: Ensure that regulatory burdens and penalties are proportionate to the harm addressed.
  • This requires intellectual, institutional and behavioural transformation among India's civil servants, numbering over 30 million.

Sangreh - A Single Source of Legislative Truth

• The state's duty to make law knowable:

  • The principle of Ignorantia juris non excusat means that ignorance of law is no excuse.
  • However, this principle presupposes that the government makes laws accessible, understandable and publicly available.
  • Secret, scattered or unpublished obligations undermine the legitimacy of the rule of law.

• Judicial recognition of legal accessibility:

  • Harla v. State of Rajasthan (1952): Secret laws cannot bind citizens who have no knowledge of them.
  • K. Srinivasan v. State of Karnataka (1987): Laws must be made reasonably knowable to those they govern.
  • Viraj Impex v. Union of India (2019): Laws become operative only after proper publication and public notice.

• Global best practices - Centralised legal repositories:

  • US: Has Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations.
  • UK: legislation.gov.uk.
  • European Union: EUR-Lex.
  • Singapore: Statutes Online.
  • Australia: Federal Register of Legislation.

• Sangreh as India's legal digital public infrastructure (DPI):

  • Sangreh must become the authoritative, searchable and machine-readable national platform for legal rights and obligations.
  • Its architecture would involve -
    • Institutional integration: Consolidating existing legal repositories, including physical gazettes, the e-Gazette and India Code.
    • Legal standardisation: Developing a common legal language, syntax and architecture through initiatives such as Bharat Niti Lipi.
    • Technological integration: Establishing a unified, open and API-enabled platform through DPI protocols.
  • Ministries and State governments may maintain their official repositories, while Sangreh aggregates and indexes them into a unified national view.

Ashwasan - Guaranteeing Certainty of Obligations:

• Beyond a digital repository:

  • Earlier attempts to create a single source of legal truth faced multiple challenges -
    • Fragmented institutional authority.
    • Weak technological capacity and poor design.
    • Lack of sustained political and administrative attention.
    • Resistance arising from institutional interests.
  • However, the fundamental problem was the absence of a guarantee that obligations not listed in the repository would not be enforced.

• Transparency of Rules Act (TORA):

  • The proposed law would require every enforceable legal obligation—whether arising from an Act, rule or administrative instrument—to be published on Sangreh.
  • This would ensure -
    • Legal certainty: Citizens and businesses know their compliance obligations.
    • Predictability: Enterprises can plan investments and expansion with confidence.
    • Administrative credibility: Governments become more accountable.
    • Reduced corruption: Hidden rules and discretionary enforcement become harder to sustain.
  • Sangreh would thus evolve from a repository into a legally guaranteed source of enforceable obligations.

Way Forward - Reconciliation of Liberty and the Rule of Law:

• Both (Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and the Indian Constitution) advance the idea that democratic governments should expand human freedom rather than unnecessarily constrain it.
  • Adam Smith emphasised liberty, competition and the rule of law as foundations of enterprise and prosperity.
  • The Constitution derives legitimate governmental authority from the consent of the governed.
• The three interventions of Jan Vishwas reconcile these traditions by making regulation transparent, proportionate and predictable.

Conclusion:

• Together, these reforms can promote formalisation, improve labour productivity, encourage investment and create high-wage employment.
• By replacing regulatory discretion with transparent and predictable governance, India can convert its democratic strength into mass prosperity.

Jan Vishwas 2.0 FAQs

Q1. How regulatory cholesterol affects India's employment generation?

Ans. Opaque regulation that discourages formalisation, restricts entrepreneurship and limits the creation of high-wage jobs.

Q2. What are the three pillars of the proposed Jan Vishwas 2.0 reforms?

Ans. Siddhant establishes trust, Sangreh ensures legal accessibility, and Ashwasan guarantees certainty.

Q3. How can Sangreh strengthen the rule of law in India?

Ans. By providing a unified, searchable and machine-readable repository of all legal rights and obligations.

Q4. What is the significance of the proposed Transparency of Rules Act (TORA)?

Ans. It would require every enforceable legal obligation to be published on Sangreh, ensuring legal certainty.

Q5. How can trust-based regulation contribute to India's mass prosperity?

Ans. It can promote formalisation, encourage investment and innovation, improve labour productivity, etc.

Source: IE