New Delhi: India has lost more money in six months of 2023 from internet suspensions than it did in the whole of 2022, Business Standard has reported, after studying data from the global tracker Top10VPN.
In 2023, India lost $ 255.2 million by June. It had lost $184.3 million in 2022.
The news comes as Access Now, in a mid-year report on internet shutdowns identifies India as one of the “worst offenders”. India has topped Access Now’s yearly count of internet shutdowns across the world for five straight years.
Along with Russia, Ethiopia and Iran, the Access Now report notes, India is among offenders who have doubled down on already punishing and extensive shutdowns. The Top10VPN estimates show that India is third in terms of financial losses and just after Ethiopia and Myanmar.
“Although many of these shutdowns continue to be implemented at a local or even neighbourhood level in response to religious anniversaries, protests, and communal violence, authorities have also imposed sweeping state-wide shutdowns and extended shutdowns across the entire country,” Access Now says.
As of May 19, the report records that 13 states in India have imposed a total of 33 shutdowns already. The Business Standard report quoting Top10VPN notes that as of June 18, India had had 2,353 hours of shutdown affecting “43.2 million users in India.”
Also Read: Mapping the Rising Internet Shutdowns in India Since 2016
It also notes that shutdowns during exams in Rajasthan, a state-wide police search for Amritpal Singh in Punjab, and a still ongoing closure in Manipur, as many as tens of millions of people had to go without the internet for days to weeks.
In Manipur, the ban has been extended to June 20, amidst ethnic violence that started on May 3 and is ongoing in various places. Internet has been shut in the state for a month and a half now.
In a report titled No Internet Means No Work, No Pay, No Food, the the Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) found that internet shutdowns in India are often unwarranted, unaccounted for and deny basic rights to those poor and marginalised people that the Digital India project ironically seeks to uplift.