Risk management goes far beyond theoretical models—it’s a mindset that must be embedded into our daily lives, across personal, professional, and societal contexts. While frameworks are useful, real learning comes from simulating near-life scenarios and building resilience against the unknown, as emphasized by Taleb’s “Black Swan.” In India, privacy risks are uniquely shaped by cultural norms where personal boundaries are often blurred. Without integrating privacy education into public awareness, compliance will remain superficial. True risk and privacy management require a shift in both mindset and societal behavior.
RISK MANAGEMENT is not just a standard or a framework or a model to be educated or trained on. True, the theory portion of RISK MANAGEMENT needs to be learnt though, systematically.
BIG RISKS don't get executed usually, in a known trajectory, no matter how much of planning were designed and implemented. RISK MANAGEMENT is a way of life, even from business, professional & personal perspective. It needs some near-life-like scenarios to be designed and included in training/education sessions that can populate into the minds of people, what to do, and what not to do, in different scenarios, besides the how, why, who, where, and which, added to it by extraordinary commitment to visualizing RISKS.
Here comes my thoughts on the effect of "BLACK SWAN", a thought-provoking book written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The book explores the impact of rare, unpredictable events—referred to as "Black Swans"—and how humans struggle to predict or properly understand them. Taleb argues that traditional risk management models fail to account for these extreme events and their consequences, emphasizing that we should embrace uncertainty and build resilience against unexpected disruptions rather than relying on predictive models. The book critiques overconfidence in forecasting and advocates for a more robust approach to risk that considers the unforeseen.
I recall the book, "THE REMEMBERED VILLAGE", a wonderful piece, containing a lot of real anecdotal experiences, written by a globally-known and respected Anthropologist, India produced, by name, late MN Srinivas. I don't need to nod to all he has said in that book. But I can neither deny its influence in me, in parts, very strongly. It has a lot of relevance to those who want to understand the challenges of PRIVACY COMPLIANCE in India.
In India, traditionally, PRIVACY has been considered as CONCEALING something surreptitiously, which is why even total strangers, standing in a public queue for buying something or availing some service, nonchalantly ask the person, standing just in front, "Are you married?", "Is your wife employed?", "How many children do you have?", "Are you living in own house or rented one?", so on and so forth. And the 'beauty' is that many people gladly offer the information sought for. We are too close to ensure our comfort of knowing what others do in their lives, exceptions apart. Changing the societal ecosystem is an arduous task in India, from PRIVACY COMPLIANCE RISKS' perspective.
Privacy compliance will remain as an audit agenda, and much less of real sincere and honest practice agenda, if public education does not include PRIVACY knowledge and practice. We have not imparted experience to our people, on many issues that matter for today's badly needed societal equilibrium. This is a crying need.
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