India’s Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, seeks to balance individual privacy with the realities of a rapidly expanding digital economy. Section 36 of the Act empowers the State to require the Data Protection Board (DPB), a data fiduciary or a data intermediary to furnish information. This, however, is not an instrument of unchecked State power. Rather, it is the enforcement mechanism that makes privacy rights meaningful in practice — providing a suraksha kawach (security armour) for citizens.