The Bharath Digital Infrastructure Association (B-DIA), formed last month with 14 home-grown cloud operators and digital infrastructure players, has reportedly called on the government to treat strategic data as a “national asset” on par with oil, power, and defence, and to curb foreign control over its storage.
The association has sought mandatory hosting of all government and public sector applications on sovereign clouds, backed by product linked incentive (PLI)-like incentives for Indian cloud service providers (CSPs) to expand domestic capacity. It has shared its proposals with the prime minister’s office, Ministry of Finance, and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
Key recommendations include removing references to open government data from free trade agreements, rejecting “source code surrender” clauses, imposing a sovereign data value tax on foreign communication service providers (CSPs) and software as-a-service (SaaS) operators, and mandating India-controlled encryption and internet protocols to prevent backdoor access.
B-DIA has also pressed for mandatory government-backed data backups, physical audits, and source code access from foreign vendors in sovereign sectors. While the Digital Personal Data Protection Act safeguards user privacy, the body argued it does not provide tools for taxing digital consumption or controlling cross-border data flows, leaving foreign SaaS, artificial intelligence (AI), and cloud platforms outside Indian jurisdiction.
Warning of strategic risk, B-DIA noted that 90 per cent of India’s cloud infrastructure market is dominated by foreign hyperscalers, who monetise Indian data via offshore-governed virtual private clouds. It estimates that 66 per cent of government cloud data is hosted with foreign CSPs, contrary to policy intent. With the association’s launch, interest from domestic players seeking to join the initiative is rising.
