IT Rules, 2021 have helped in swifter redressal of user grievances: Report

The Dialogue and Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) have launched a joint report on ‘IT Rules, 2021: A Regulatory Impact Assessment Study with Recommendations to Boost the Creative Economy’. The study highlights that the grievance redressal process envisaged under the IT Rules has made publishers more accountable, and there is a need to raise greater awareness regarding this self-regulatory mechanism to ensure its optimum use by the people. Leading policy experts and industry representatives highlighted that the IT Rules, 2021 have helped in swifter redressal of user grievances on Online Curated Content (OCC) platforms.

In two years since the enactment of the IT Rules, 2021, this primary impact assessment study is based on the inputs from the OCC Publishers as well as legal, policy and academic experts. The study was conducted in two volumes with 103 inputs overall, out of which 33 inputs are specifically for the Volume 2 of the report that focuses on OCC Publishers. The findings of the study show that other than certain principle level concerns, the Rules have been implemented well by the OCC Publishers and the compliance process has been seamless. Moreover, the mechanism has ensured greater accountability from the publishers towards user concerns.

The research also shows that several times disjunct guidelines by different authorities and creation of divergent grievance redressal channels under multiple state bodies leads to regulatory uncertainties. To address this problem, it is important to build greater awareness about the grievance redressal mechanism under the IT Rules for OCC platforms and instruct all authorities to direct the grievances received to this Self-Regulatory channel.

Kazim Rizvi, Founding Director, The Dialogue, emphasised that “this research is extremely timely and provides crucial scholarship for the upcoming Digital India Act. Over the last one decade, India’s content regulation space has progressed rapidly and the IT Rules, 2021 marked a significant milestone in the Platform Regulation ecosystem. The ongoing deliberations for the new IT Act provide an important opportunity to address new aspects through greater research and multi stakeholder dialogues which will ensure that our policies continue to remain rights enabling as well as innovation friendly.”