The world’s most populous democracy is now also the world leader in Internet outages.India has imposed tons of Internet outages in other parts of the country in recent years, adding connectivity cuts in the disputed state of Kashmir for six months.
Home to more than 12 million people, the region has suffered enormously: unemployment has skyrocketed and more than $1 billion in economic losses have been attributed to the power outage. Internet speed limits and other restrictions remain active, making many online facilities virtually unusable and the path to recovery even more, especially the coronavirus pandemic.
For the September/October factor of MIT Technology Review, journalist and Sonia Falerio explains how India has become the global capital of Internet closure.This week, at Deep Tech, he joins our editor-in-chief, Gideon Lichfield, to talk about why negative reactions to a debatable citizenship bill have led the government to cut off online communications.
Check out the Deep Tech episodes here.
Gideon Lichfield: In August 2019, India imposed a general closure of communications in the volatile and debatable Kashmir region.
For six months, another 12 million people did not have the Internet or cable television, and for part of that period, they did not have a cell phone or landline. It was the longest internet blockade ever recorded in the democratic world. Even now, speed limits and other restrictions make many online virtually unusable.
In recent years, India has imposed tons of internet cuts in other parts of the country, only for hours, for months.The government says they are obligatory to maintain peace, especially in areas like Kashmir, where outbreaks of violence occur regularly.
But over time, closures have the Indian government’s selection tactic to suppress all kinds of political unrest.The world’s most populous democracy is now also the world leader in Internet courts, ahead of countries like Iran, Venezuela, and even China.
And those cuts not only silence dissent, but can destroy local economies.And, in the event of a pandemic, they can isolate others from important information.
Today I speak to the journalist and Sonia Faleiro.Su account of our newest factor, the techno-nationalism factor, explains why India has become the world capital of Internet cutting and what its population is worth paying for.
I am Gideon Lichfield, editor of MIT Technology Review and I am Deep Tech.
For example, Sonia in India has more and more Internet outages.And not just in Kashmir.In your account, you’re talking about a story that happened last December in Delhi, the capital.What was the explanation for this decision?
Sonia Faleiro: So the closure of Delhi to prevent other people from protesting.A gigantic anti-government demonstration planned for December 19 at Delhi’s Red Fort, a historic monument from which the Prime Minister historically faces a televised confrontation with the country on Independence Day: a demonstration opposed to a debatable citizenship bill that the government planned to introduce.
Anchor for CNN: A day of turmoil in India, once again, by this new debatable citizenship law that critics say discriminates against Muslims.In some areas, police used water cannons and also tear gas.
Police blocked the access roads and cut off cellular internet access outside Red Fort, where they intended to start the march.
Indian Demonstrator: I am here because this law – the Citizenship Amendment Act – absolutely unconstitutional, anti-people, arbitrary and contrary to the basic characteristics of the Indian constitution.
Sonia Faleiro: The bill promised to speed up Indian citizenship for persecuted teams in neighboring countries. It included other people of all the primary religions of South Asia: Hindu, Christianity, Jainism, everything but Islam. It is an obviously Islamophobic initiative to further alienate Muslims in India, and the protesters intended to draw attention to this point.
Gideon Lichfield: So why did the Indians attack the Muslims in this way?
Sonia Faleiro: So there are about two hundred million Muslims in India, it’s the largest minority.And India is a secular republic, but Narendra Modi, the prime minister, is a Hindu nationalist.She has been a member of an organization called The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which sells itself as a voluntary organization that seeks to raise the poor.is truly a paramilitary organization. And Modi has been a member of this organization since the age of eight.
The outlook for the RSS is influenced by European fascist movements, and the group’s leaders have brabably expressed their admiration for Hitler and have said things like, you know, Hindus can simply “take credit for the example of the Nazis” who showed “racial pride.”at its highest point “through the purge of the Jews of Germany.
Gideon Lichfield: So what would this citizenship law have been for Indian Muslims?
Sonia Faleiro: Basically, that means that; You know, a Muslim who can’t prove to be an Indian citizen, which is most likely not just for Muslims, but for many.Many Indians have no form of identification. They do not even have a birth certificate, therefore anyone who cannot prove that they are Indian can apply for citizenship through this new citizenship law, whoever is Christian, Hindu, Parsi or Jainist, but not Muslim.As a result, two hundred million Muslims are in danger of becoming stateless.What’s happening is that the government is setting up detention camps across the country.There are about 16, but what we know about some of those fields is that they are meant to be long-term.They have schools and hospitals and there’s probably no way for anyone who’s sent to one of those camps to leave.There’s no recourse for them.
Gideon Lichfield: So when other people came here in December to protest against the citizenship law in Delhi, I think the government shut down in giant portions of the city.Right?
Sonia Faleiro: That’s right.
Gideon Lichfield: For how long?
Sonia Faleiro: It wasn’t for long. Actually, it was for a few hours, but it was obviously done to prevent other people in a componenticular component of Delhi, east of Delhi, which has a predominantly Muslim population, from knowing what the hell is going on.act and mobilize. So the concept of government was, you know, that if they don’t know where to go, they probably don’t sign up for a protest.And then the giant numbers that were expected won’t come together.
Gideon Lichfield: The longest internet outage in India occurred in Kashmir, about six months, which ended in January, but even since then, Internet speeds have been reduced to 2G, which is, you know, a very, very low speed.Would you like to be in Kashmir with communications that so drastically cut off a pandemic?
Sonia Faleiro: It was surreal, you know? My phone stopped working as soon as I arrived in Srinagar, so I landed in Srinagar, I looked at my telephone and it was like, you know, a paperweight, it wasn’t me anymore because the Internet was off, but so were the telephones.and, as I later discovered, cable channels were too.
Gideon Lichfield: So there’s no TV, is there nothing?
Sonia Faleiro: There was nothing. It was like being a black hole, there was no way of knowing what was going on, not even in the city, let alone inside, in the rest of the country, so it was dystopian, it was deeply disturbing and, you know, the effect was very transparent on people’s faces.
Gideon Lichfield: What has been the effect on Kashmir’s economy?
Sonia Faleiro: Kashmir had a physically powerful economy. You know there is a thriving tourist industry, a thriving cottage industry, a mythical location for its beauty. So other people come from all over the world to stop over in Kashmir, to go skiing. And at the time of the blackout, the poverty rate was less than half the national average of 22%. The economy is more physically powerful than many states in India.
But of course, the force cut destroyed everything because virtually all industries have the Internet; for example, in the first 4 months the economy suffered losses of more than $1 billion and to date, about 500,000 more people have lost their jobs.
CNA News Presenter: The Supreme Court of India ordered the government to repair the Internet in Kashmir, ruling that communications prevention is unconstitutional.
NDTV News Presenter: Broadband Internet will be restored to Kashmir Valley establishments after more than five months of disruption.The process, which will take position in stages, will begin today.However, social networking sites, including news websites, will remain completely prohibited..
Gideon Lichfield: So for about six months, the people of Kashmir have been living with the pandemic and they still have very little connectivity. And how did he do that to them?
Sonia Faleiro: Then, in January, when the courts told the government they had to lift the Internet ban, the government responded by giving access to others, as you point out, at 2G speeds.And the other thing they did after that was essentially firewalls on the maximum of the Internet.They gave others access to some three hundred internet sites called “whitelisting.”You know, the internet sites they thought were for other people.
Secondly, we see that the pandemic is taking root and spreading in Kashmir, which, like many other Indian states, does not have a solid fitness system and no one knew how to protect itself.Nobody knew what it was, and, you know, that data was constantly evolving.
One of the doctors I spoke to in Srinagar is, he’s a urologist named Omar Saleem Akthar and he works at a public hospital in Srinagar, he told me he couldn’t even download medical guidelines, so he asked his friends who out of state to pick up the prints and return them so he knew what he was up against.
Omar Salim Akthar: Think of it as if the radio is lost in the sea.
And then, when the pandemic hit in February, we all heard it on TV.There was very little data coming from the Internet because it is very slow.
And there were doctors who were literally awake all night looking to download a few megabytes of knowledge about how suspicious COVID-19 patients are controlled and how the amenities are secured.
It was incredibly complicated in this state, as a result, knowledge about COVID-19 is constantly changing.It’s an evolving disease and we want normal updates and many of those updates come in the form of videos, in the form of webinars.And you can’t access it when you have a 2G speed Internet connection.This leaves us hungry for new ways and forms that would possibly be obsolete the moment we get it.
Sonia Faleiro: Worse, a government-sponsored online fitness formula that provided flexible insurance to Indians living below the poverty line would no longer be available after the internet closes.
Omar Salim Akthar: I had a cancer patient who hadn’t gained chemotherapy, many dialysis patients were late on dialysis schedule or had to pay out of pocket and that hurt me.
I feel powerless. Impotent, desperate, discouraged, all kinds of feelings of unhappiness in the English language that you can imagine, but more than anything, I was angry because I felt that, you know, it wasn’t necessary.
Sonia Faleiro: Omar says that he saw a humanitarian crisis unfolding temporarily in front of him in Kashmir and knew that anything had to be done.
Omar Salim Akthar: I think it would be a smart concept that probably doesn’t get the message, and I just need you to know how to raise that point and say, “Okay, you know, we don’t have phones.There are no landlines. There’s no reason.There’s no way to communicate. We don’t have the Internet.but it might be valuable to restore the Internet to ‘fitness facilities’ so that other people who have internet for their fitness care can come and, you know, this care.
Sonia Falerio: Created some posters on printing paper and took his message to the local press colony, where many Kashmir media have offices.
Omar Salim Akthar: And I sat there for about five minutes and I think some hounds asked me some questions and about five minutes later a policeman came, took me in a jeep and took me to prison.
When I was in jail, I was lucky to have met the officer overseeing this police station.And he heard what he was saying and said that “you shouldn’t do this and please stop by and don’t do it again.”
Sonia Falerio: As a doctor, online instructor, and father of young children, Internet connectivity is a must for Omar, so she did what she would do with the money: she chose to install a fiber-optic broadband Internet connection at home.
Omar Salim Akthar: My son and daughter now have high-speed Internet access, while other people who are less lucky than me and who didn’t have this money still have 2G Internet access in moderation, and this is also affected from time to time.. My point here is that in the era of the pandemic, a virtual divide was created between the haves and those who don’t.
The Internet was used as an update platform 20, 15, 10 years ago, the rich, the poor, all have access to the same Internet, the same information, and now we have created a virtual gap where the poor, because they can broadband connections are limited to low-speed Internet, which prevents students from accessing educational materials.
While those who are rich and have high-speed Internet connections, which are high-speed, now have access to this educational curtain and more are known educational opportunities.And this effect will last for years and years in the future.
Gideon Lichfield: So, India is a democracy, but more and more those internet cuts are becoming more and more.There have been dozens of them every year in the last two or three years.How do you legally justify the closure of phones and the Internet for millions of people?People?
Sonia Faleiro: Yes, so when the Indian government imposes a blackout, it invokes a law called the Indian Telegraph Act of 1885.
Gideon Lichfield: Is it a law that goes back to the British?
Sonia Faleiro: Absolument, Absolument, created by the British, they discovered that it was a very useful tool to provoke uprisings in the colonial era, later the governments of India used it as an excuse to intervene, you know, politicians and opposition journalists, because it gives the federal and state government the right to close all communications, adding the Internet more recently , if you believe that doing so protects public protection or in the event of a public emergency. In 2017, the law was amended to explain that it legalizes the temporary suspension of telecommunications services.
Now there are primary challenges with the law, on the one hand, you know, that doesn’t define public protection or public emergency, so the government can say that everything is a public emergency, we can say that, for example, a giant collector of other people is a factor of public protection because other people can get hurt.The other challenge is that it does not restrict the duration of a closure.So, you know, in the case of the Delhi closure, for example, it lasted in Kashmir, the closure lasted six months.
Gideon Lichfield: As he writes in history, India began using those closures as a way to suppress the spread of WhatsApp rumors that were causing murder.It turns out to be a genuine misinformation challenge in India.Why would I do that?
Sonia Faleiro: Yes.So for years, you know, India was on the bend.So, for example, before 2016, I couldn’t even stream Netflix without interruption.Internet installations were very expensive and the Internet was thought to be inaccessible through many other people in India.The competition of the well-off and educated. But all that was replaced in 2016.What happened then was that India’s richest man, billionaire Mukesh Ambani, introduced his Telecom operation, which he called Jio.
Then, because of the very small value of a SIM card, Jio will be offered new subscribers to lose 4G data.It will be offered for a limited time, but it is amazing.Suddenly, high-speed Internet available to everyone. At that time everyone had a cell phone, they are ubiquitous in Inde.Il there are 468 million, but now the same cell phone users, whether vegetable sellers, bus drivers or academics, also had high-speed Internet access and Jio temporarily obtained two hundred million subscribers.
The next herbal step was, therefore, a war that was worthwhile and the burden of knowledge was reduced to the equivalent of perhaps a few cents.Basically, the cheapest in the world. So they had that sudden access, you know, there wasn’t a transition period.You’re talking about other people, a lot of other people, who didn’t have computers, about laptops.You know, they didn’t have computer skills. They didn’t have the internet coming and then, all of a sudden, they all open up to them in an impressive way and don’t know what to believe.
Gideon Lichfield: So other people are exposed to a lot of new data online and there’s no genuine way to know what’s true and what’s wrong?
Sonia Faleiro: Yes, absolutely. So for example, at the start of the pandemic, you know, other people were getting fitness recommendations from WhatsApp telling them to avoid ice cream and meat, and instead sit in the sun or gargle with hot salt water if they need to avoid. contract. And since this data came to them through WhatsApp, they believed it and followed this false recommendation. So, you know, the lack of data literacy has incredibly damaging consequences in India.
Gideon Lichfield: So what is the Indian government doing to stop the spread of fake news?
Sonia Faleiro: You know, after it became clear that other people were following WhatsApp’s medical recommendation and putting them at risk, not only themselves, but everyone around them, which is a specific fear in India because other people live, you know, have less life and live in giant families united – the government issued an opinion.
But the fact is, Modi’s government is not driven by science.Members of his Bharatiya Janata party advised cow urine and cow manure as imaginable remedies for coronavirus.In general, fake news in India, as around the world, favors populist leaders.Therefore, Modi’s government does not have a genuine motivation to prevent it.
Gideon Lichfield: That’s it for this episode of Deep Tech.This is a podcast reserved for MIT Technology Review subscribers, to bring to life the problems our hounds are thinking about and writing.
You can Sonia Faleiro’s article “Blind Spot” in the September factor of the magazine.
Deep Tech is written and produced through Anthony Green and edited through Jennifer Strong and Michael Reilly.I’m Gideon Lichfield.