Ah! The subtle art of overreach. Calculating. Quiet. Amidst all the brouhaha, sliding unnoticeably through until it’s revealed. That, in a nutshell, would be the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) in the year 2018; a year when little can (or should) surprise you anymore.
Since its inception, for twenty-one years, Trai has limited itself to the telecom business. Ambling. Regulating. Putting out recommendations. Until July this year, when it decided it wanted more. The body put out its data privacy recommendations to the Department of Telecom (DoT). By referring to mobile devices and applications as faucets to the telecom pipes, it overreached to control whatever faucets do.