How Advaita Ashrama collects, uses, shares, and protects personal data on the Jago Yuva, Jago Bharat platform — with particular care for the data of students, most of whom are minors.
Last updated 31 August 2026
This policy explains how Advaita Ashrama, Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math (“Advaita Ashrama”, “we”, “us”) handles personal data on the Jago Yuva, Jago Bharat platform. For the personal data processed through the Platform, Advaita Ashrama acts as the Data Fiduciary under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (the DPDP Act) and carries the duties that role entails.
The Platform is used by institutions. It concerns two groups of people: the school Coordinators who hold accounts, and the students whose details institutions add to their roster. Students do not hold accounts and do not interact with the Platform directly.
The Platform also has verified field operators: District Resource Persons (DRPs) and State Points of Contact (SPOCs). Their access is authorised by the JYJB Team before it takes effect and is never self-asserted. Each has statewide access within their assigned State or Union Territory; a DRP’s recorded primary district is informational. The Platform also has National Observers: a verified, nationwide, read-only oversight role authorised by the JYJB Team. An Observer views aggregate participation and the school directory with coordinator email and phone hidden, and cannot open a school’s console or change any record. Authorised Platform administrators have nationwide access.
We collect only what the Programme needs:
Most participants are under 18 and are children under the DPDP Act. Processing a child’s personal data requires the verifiable consent of a parent or lawful guardian. On this Platform that consent is obtained by the institution, which warrants that it holds it (see below). We do not use children’s data for tracking, behavioural monitoring, or targeted advertising, and we minimise what we collect about them.
Consent is captured at the point of data entry, not afterwards. No student record is stored until the institution makes an explicit, non-pre-ticked attestation. The Platform presents this checkpoint at three points, and this section sets out in full what each attestation means.
Before any student is saved — whether added individually or by bulk upload — the institution confirms that it has informed the participating students and their parents/guardians about the Programme, and that it holds the parents’/guardians’ permission to share the student’s details for Programme coordination, judging, and records. Only the data needed to run the Programme is stored: name, class, roll number, email, and the categories the student takes part in.
Because Advaita Ashrama runs the Programme jointly with its partners, the permission the institution holds must extend to sharing the student’s details with Advaita Ashrama and the Ministry of Culture, Government of India, and the Centre for Cultural Resources and Training (CCRT), for Programme coordination, judging, recognition, issuing the joint participation certificates, records, and documentation — and, for submitted entries, to receiving, retaining, displaying, and publishing the entry for Programme purposes.
For students named in a submitted entry, the institution additionally confirms it holds permission to share the parent’s/guardian’s contact details with Advaita Ashrama and the Ministry of Culture, used only to contact the family about the child’s entry. These guardian contacts are held only for named students.
We use personal data only for the Programme’s purposes:
We do not use personal data for purposes incompatible with these, and we never use it to profile or advertise to children.
Roster and guardian personal data is stored in India (our database provider’s Mumbai region). Student submission uploads (files, images, and videos) are stored with our object-storage provider (Cloudflare R2), which does not guarantee an India storage region and may store them outside India, under appropriate safeguards. Some other processing or hosting infrastructure may also operate from outside India; where that happens, the data is protected by appropriate contractual and technical safeguards. Data is encrypted in transit (TLS) and at rest, access is restricted server-side to the authenticated institution on a least-privilege basis, and card data is never stored by us. More detail is on the Security & Data Protection page.
We retain personal data to operate the Programme, issue the joint participation certificates, maintain Programme records, and archive or showcase recognised entries. We do not commit to a fixed retention period. An institution, parent, or guardian may ask us to correct or delete a student’s data at any time (see below).
We do not set an automatic expiry for attributable school-change history or internal access records. We retain those records for accountability, security, and Programme administration, subject to applicable law and valid correction or erasure requests.
Subject to the DPDP Act, data principals have rights to access a summary of their personal data, to correct or complete it, to have it erased, and to grievance redressal. For students, who are minors, these rights are exercised through the institution or the parent/guardian. To make a request, write to our Grievance Officer at jagoyuva@advaitaashrama.org. We verify that a request comes from, or is authorised by, the relevant institution or guardian before acting on it.
We may update this policy from time to time. The current version and its “Last updated” date are always shown on this page.
For any privacy question, or to exercise a right or raise a grievance, contact our Grievance Officer: