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India Pushes Back Against Tech ‘Colonization’ by Internet Giants

241 points by petethomas 8y ago

firasd 8y ago
As an Indian I'm not sure I endorse all this as 'anti-colonialism'. This is a bunch of government bureaucrats who want e.g. data to be stored in the country so they can access personal info more easily...
- cryptozeus 8y ago
  Yeh but isn’t that currently done by googles and Faceboos of the world ?
  - firasd 8y ago
    Right now if the government wants some information from Facebook they have to go through a whole process... if the info is duplicated on a server hosted by a subsidiary in India, we don't have strong protections where you can just send a questioning policeman away by saying, "get a warrant." In my view this is not just an 'India' thing, I'm kinda skeptical of the general anti-tech panic that's been brewing over the last couple years. I think the status quo is pretty good and don't want a bunch of government regulators from the US, Europe, China, India etc to be getting all up in Google's business telling them how to run Youtube.
    - eklavya 8y ago
      It’s like the whole prism thing never happened. Leave out US from all such discussions. They have everybody’s data.
      - firasd 8y ago
        We know the NSA sucks up a ton of internet traffic but what I'm referring to under the umbrella of tech debates is, for example, the wide availability of encryption (so random traffic cops can't unlock your phone), which is an ongoing debate in the US and also mentioned in this article about India.
    - IllogicalLogic 8y ago
      So, we just default to all data being siphoned into the US so it has a monopoly on PII (personal identifiable information)...? Seriously, no way any asian country should trust foreign countries, that very recently invaded/enslaved them, with their data. China, India, Russia, etc... all have domestic populations that need to flex their political muscle to achieve freedom in their respective countries, the west can't and won't save you unless there is big money involved (with that money will come foreign corruption)... Protip: Solve your problems locally, and reap the economic benefit of building your own Indian/Chinese Google... it isn't rocket science and the exercise will be good for your people.
    - cryptozeus 8y ago
      Sure because fb, google knows how to protect your data ..eh ! I agree with your general view point but no one side is right here. Solution is complicated
    - wtmt 8y ago
      > In my view this is not just an 'India' thing, I'm kinda skeptical of the general anti-tech panic that's been brewing over the last couple years. I think the status quo is pretty good and don't want a bunch of government regulators from the US, Europe, China, India etc to be getting all up in Google's business telling them how to run Youtube. Exactly. And I'd also rather we have end-to-end encryption being commonly available so that no options, except perhaps normal cellular telephony, can be trivially tapped by governments.
- stevemoonto 8y ago
  it is about economy. India missed the opportunity to make money compare to China where there are lots of home grown company by forcing outside not to penetrate their market
  - hourislate 8y ago
    They exported their best talent to innovate for other countries. The only way they can capture some of the wealth these innovations create is to force manufacturers to do it in country. Strange that they see no value in creating and more in manufacturing.
    - lotsofpulp 8y ago
      They see the value, everyone does. They're just not able to execute because it's a country made up of a dozen little countries that all want their share and more. To do the kind of manufacturing and industrialization China did in the time it did, you need a top down organization that does whatever is needed without having to waste time with people's "rights".
      - IllogicalLogic 8y ago
        True, people in the west expect every country is ready for free markets and freedom of speech from the get go...nope. Requires a certain level of development before freedom should be introduced. Especially post colonization, where colonial corruption agents are not fully removed from power in the systems in place.
        reaperducer 8y ago
        In your estimation, how long will it take for India's economy to no longer be influenced by British colonization? It's been 71 years so far. A hundred years? Five hundred years? Chinese jingoists are still moaning about what the Brits did in the 1800's and blame them for every bad thing that happens between Kowloon and Mongolia today. Will India also follow that path?
- xae342 8y ago
  I know Russia and Indonesia have laws for this reason you mention too.
- Eridrus 8y ago
  Colonialism is a loaded word, but if you look at India trying to force cell phone companies to manufacture in India I think there is a clear desire to drive economic development through policy. I don't really blame them either, China offers a pretty compelling example of what state intervention in the market can do.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    China requires non-Chinese auto manufacturers to buy Chinese batteries for their EVs, but Chinese auto manufacturers are free to buy superior Korean batteries for their vehicles. Make someone else bootstrap your industries. It's smart economic policy.
    - baybal2 8y ago
      Lets take a look at your claim in details. Indeed, batteries are not included in list of components that can be imported duty free to bonded customs zones, as they don't qualify for being "electronic components." But the situation is the same for all bulk commodities that have to be locally sourced. That is dictated by the initial purpose of free customs zones: give concessions on high value components, but for whatever Chinese industry was good at manufacturing back in nineties, give none. The companies wanting to make EVs, are completely free to establish companies outside of free customs zones if they don't want to pay double duty.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - toomuchtodo 8y ago
        Were any of my claims not accurate?
        baybal2 8y ago
        Foreign companies can go outside of free customs zones and pay duties as every other Chinese company. That's the point.
- deleted 8y ago
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- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > As an Indian I'm not sure I endorse all this as 'anti-colonialism'. This is a bunch of government bureaucrats who want e.g. data to be stored in the country so they can access personal info more easily... As someone who's also Indian, and also remembers Indian pre-colonial and colonial history, I'm entirely on board with taking active measures to ensure we don't repeat the past. Yes, all governments have an incentive to spy on their citizens - just look at Australia or the US or the UK. But India has very legitimate reasons to oppose foreign control of its technological infrastructure. And unlike those other countries, India has also established a right to privacy.
  - throwaway6789 8y ago
    Same here. As another Indian who wants India to be self sustaining, its high time we start focusing on creating a organic growth environment for Indian companies.
- danbolt 8y ago
  I want to note that in Canada a lot of government data storage is required by law to be on Canadian soil. From what I understand this is to help mitigate a foreign actor from accessing your data (eg: a search warrant in the US could pull up photos of me from my Google Drive account). I can’t speak for what it’s like in India though, and I can understand how having data locally can be an avenue for corruption like you say.
wtmt 8y ago
> "As India sets the new rules of the game, it is seeking inspiration from China. Although India does not want to go as far as China, which has cut off its internet from the global one, officials admire Beijing’s tight control over citizens’ data and how it has nurtured homegrown internet giants like Alibaba and Baidu by limiting foreign competition. At the same time, regulators do not want to push out the American internet services that hundreds of millions of Indians depend on." This is the main point. The main reason the government wants data to be stored locally and is also looking at controlling companies is for surveillance. But unlike China, not all platforms have Indian created equivalents. Fortunately for the citizens of India, regardless of the state of surveillance in the U.S., the U.S. companies do fight a lot more against these controlling measures than any Indian born company ever would. Indian companies like Reliance Jio, which considers "data as the new oil" (the parent company, Reliance, was built on crude oil), and many others have had a thirst for more data for sometime now. [Incidentally, the logo of "Jio" is a mirror image of "Oil" in a certain font] > “There is a strong feeling in many quarters that the reason that India has not been able to develop a Tencent or Baidu or Alibaba is because we have not been nuanced in our policies.” This sounds kind of naïve. It's not because of data related policies that these haven't happened. > "Officials were furious after the Cambridge Analytica scandal this year revealed that Facebook had shared private information on 87 million users, including 560,000 Indians, with a political consulting firm that had sought to influence Indian elections." This is ironical, because the governments (both central and state governments) didn't even acknowledge issues or took responsibility or made a statement that data leaks from their own sites would be dealt with seriously. Their game is like this — "if we leak data, then it's not an issue, but if someone else is, then we will be outraged". It's just pseudo-nationalistic sentiment that the current central government has been fostering. A search for "Aadhaar data leaks" will show many such instances and the lack of a decent response from the governments. > "They also warned that India has fewer legal protections than the United States against government searches and data requests, so private data stored in the country could more easily end up in the hands of the police." This is very true. The central government has shown that it has very little interest in getting a good privacy law in place. The one recently released publicly has so many issues that concerned citizens have started https://saveourprivacy.in/ https://saveourprivacy.in/ . Please share this site with every Indian citizen you know. As an Indian citizen, my only hope is that foreign tech companies resist the crippling moves by the executive. The courts move very slowly, but they're the (mostly) dependable arm here.
Teknoman117 8y ago
So when India wants to limit the ability of foreign companies to undercut local prices, it's a good thing. When America wants to do the same we're suddenly the bad guys...
- adamson 8y ago
  I don’t think the article made a value judgement about price protections
  - Teknoman117 8y ago
    It didn't, it was more of a poke at New York Times. They have harsh language for any form of US protectionism whatsoever (some of their arguments are certainly justified mind you), but not a peep when talking about India.
    - IllogicalLogic 8y ago
      Its a good point, if you overlook the fact that the British destroying the Indian & Chinese economy (through war/invasion) created a vacuum for the US economy (British colony at the time) to flourish. So the US closing up trade at this point is immoral from a historical perspective and shows an obscene level of hypocrisy when compared to what it has promoted for the 50+ years post WW2. Never forget India was #1 in world GDP (for more than 1000 years) pre-invasion.
      - xigma 8y ago
        > Its a good point, if you overlook the fact that the British destroying the Indian & Chinese economy (through war/invasion) created a vacuum for the US economy (British colony at the time) to flourish. You're making some sort of moral argument, but the argument against protectionism isn't moral. Protectionism is stupid from an economic perspective, no matter if India or the U.S. does it. If there's a moral argument to be made, it's against protectionism: It denies citizens to partake in free trade and therefore makes them poorer. What's in it for India if everyone has to use the (inevitably crappier) Indian version of Google, Facebook or Amazon? It's not like anybody outside of India is going to want to use that stuff, so it doesn't bring in foreign capital. It'll just reallocate local tech talent to a domestic market that is less profitable than the international market. It makes no sense. That's exactly why people need to bring in emotions and hot words like "colonialism": To make a psychologically powerful (but irrational) case. It might just work. > Never forget India was #1 in world GDP (for more than 1000 years) pre-invasion. I'd be skeptical about estimates on GDP dating to 1000 A.D., but if there's anything to learn here it's that you should probably spend some of that GDP on defense, lest you get invaded by tiny-old Britain.
jopsen 8y ago
> .. trying to establish strong data protections ... as Europe did, while giving the government the right to obtain private information as it sees fit... Data protections like the EU did may sound good. But it took the EU years to develop the framework, another 4 years before into effect, and even more time before it's fully adopted. India doesn't exactly have a record for graceful administration (thinking of the currency debacle). And if you do this with less elegance than what the EU did.. you risk creating a huge (expensive) mess.. Tech platforms bring a lot of value. By enabling commerce and many local enterprises. Trying to move too fast could have very bad consequences. Even the slow stuff the EU did, was somewhat of a mess.. And then let's not even get started on the mess access to private information without a warrant would bring.. I hope they move slow make something with less negative side effects than what the EU did. Then this could be good.
sseth 8y ago
This is such a poorly researched article. In the beginning it quotes a railway official saying enough of foreign influence. The Indian railways on the other hand is working closely with Google to deliver free wifi in nearly 400 stations. Google has even formed a susidiary to do this - Google Station. There may be data protection and privacy requirements which come in - but that is not about colonization. A lot of the awareness on privacy is coming as more and more Indians come in touch with the internet and start wrestling with these issues. More importantly, it is the widespread use of Aadhar, a biometric unique identification system by the government which has also triggered the supreme court to look at data privacy issues. Surely a journalist worth their salt would mention this. Rather than any push back against tech colonization, i would argue that what we are seeing is a greater awareness on the part of government and citizens about the need for data privacy, as well as concern around misuse of social media. And it will extend to local and global players, obviously.
- deleted 8y ago
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nilsocket 8y ago
I also see Indian government recently requested British government for soft reparations. i.e., to identify the fact that British have completely exploited India in terms of their finance. They also said, when British ruled India, they killed nearly millions of people on purpose and their exploitation of Indian work-force. This is also raising an awareness among some of Indian population. They were in plan of rewriting their history books, about their world's first University, astrology mathematics, Vedic sciences, medical sciences ... The list goes on. Obviously India contributing more than 27% of GDP for more than thousand years and there achievements in mathematics, Number system, trigonometry,calculus, algebra and Invention of surgery... There open-trade system, and being a free culture, they used to have places for debate, and everybody can worship which ever God they want, if one doesn't like any God, you can create one and pray. There used to be a lot of competition for admissions to Indian universities from all over the world. And ofcourse yoga, mediation, home for Hinduism, Buddhism,... They're Vedic knowledge was extraordinary.
- nilsocket 8y ago
  Here is an [article](https://www.stephen-knapp.com/greatness_of_ancient_india%27s_developments.htm https://www.stephen-knapp.com/greatness_of_ancient_india%27s...) about some of India's ancient greatness.
- int_19h 8y ago
  > They were in plan of rewriting their history books, about their world's first University, astrology mathematics, Vedic sciences, medical sciences ... The list goes on. Indeed. For some more examples: https://www.altnews.in/bjp-science-ganeshas-plastic-surgery-yoga-can-cure-cancer/ https://www.altnews.in/bjp-science-ganeshas-plastic-surgery-...
  - nilsocket 8y ago
    That seems to be to much, but what I have pointed out was mostly facts. Indeed one can dig up the Greek ancient writings where they write, too much of gold is being sent to India because of their fine textiles. Let's talk of basic common sense, when people colombus discovered (if they consider it that way), America he called the native people as red-Indians, it's not that colombus was searching for America, but he indeed sailed to find India.
chewz 8y ago
> “As a country, we have to all grow up and say that, you know, enough of this,” Vinit Goenka, a railways official who works on technology policy for India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party, said at a conference last week. So did India had already fixed it's railroads and now is taking on the internet?
rajekas 8y ago
It's true that India wants to build its own surveillance state. Every rational great power wannabe will want to do so, just as every great power wannabe has wanted a nuclear arsenal. Seems like table stakes in that rat race. And who can blame anyone for doing so - it would be stupid to let data with security implications to go through American companies with a potential backdoor after Snowden and Wikileaks, just as it would be stupid to be caught without nuclear weapons after Iraq and North Korea. I am not as worried about the ease with which Indian citizen's privacy will be violated if these laws pass - systems such as Aadhar are far greater threats to our privacy and those come with the full force of the law and have support from every government in power, whether NDA or UPA or some third alliance. Plus, I would want foreign companies collecting data about Indian citizens to be accountable to the Indian public. The Bhopal tragedy is a good example of what happens when a foreign company isn't accountable to Indians in any manner whatsoever. Of course, one might doubt whether Indian efforts to secure our data will withstand NSA or Chinese efforts to crack them, but we won't know until we try!
mark_l_watson 8y ago
I probably have a minority opinion here, but I think countries should as much as possible have their own tech stacks. There are many ways to do this: home grown web platforms, customized versions of Chromebooks, open source software, etc. To me one of the pleasures of the world is different cultures, ethnicities, food, local politics, etc. I don’t want a “homogenized world” in which everything seems the same in different countries.
- housingpost 8y ago
  Completely agree with this. For some reason there's some knee-jerk reaction to digital independence. I feel like having centralized services like Google and Facebook has managed to to remove a lot of the cultural experience when looking up things in various European countries.
- bacon_waffle 8y ago
  While I can relate to the desire to visit exotic parts of the world (or digital space), the important consideration is well being of the people who live there. Of course homogeneity is not what we want, and not just because it's boring for visitors. But, I don't think that encouraging people in a different country/region/community (especially a smaller one) to roll their own tools is helpful either. There is so much work involved in creating and maintaining all this stuff - and the resources required are often in short supply. It seems much better if we can all leverage off each other to make better things, to be shared with the wider community. I think the issue is more about preserving the right amount of local control over tech used locally, rather than building that tech locally from local tools.
pankajdoharey 8y ago
Misleading article, there are local startups everywhere. But no one in India is going to get rid of google, twitter , instagram , whatsapp or facebook, not simply because there are no alternatives but also because, we are living in a winners take all economy. Amazon is a fast growing ecommerce giant in India, infact India is their fastest growing market so much so that Amazon gives its Amazon prime service for as low as $20 per yr.
davidp670 8y ago
I'm surprised there isn't more of this from other countries like China
walrus01 8y ago
The Indian government has a long and well documented track record of cluelessly attempting to censor and regulate the global internet, to serve domestic special interests and religious fundamentalists and right wingers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India
naiveai 8y ago
This whole thing is such a phenomenally stupid idea in nearly every way. Foreign companies have had longer to develop and are superior in nearly every single way. Why supress them? The data protection laws are a good idea, though I suspect corruption and surveillance, which the Indian gov wants to keep, will largely nullify any and all benefits of such laws.
- matheusmoreira 8y ago
  > Why supress them? Because they don't answer to the country's government. US-based internet companies answer to the US government only. This is an implication of nearly every site's terms of service. For example, Y Combinator's says you can't post illegal stuff and even mentions the US directly. The implication is "don't get us in trouble here in the US -- we couldn't care less what's legal or illegal in your country." Not very respectful of their sovereignty. Obviously, indian authorities hold nearly zero power over these companies. They can't enforce indian laws on US citizens. It's not like they can show up at their doorstep and arrest people for failing to comply with a court order or something. Their only law enforcement weapon is to block the site, preventing them from reaching indians at all. That's why having local alternatives is extremely valuable.
manish_gill 8y ago
"Colonization" is a heavily loaded word and it's frankly, immature from NYT to use it. Data Protection Regulations (in the same vein as GDPR) are a good thing for consumers. As someone who is concerned about user and data privacy, I like these developments. What's anti-colonial about it other than just a catchy headline?
phobosdeimos 8y ago
China has a tech industry that is on par with Silicon Valley. India doesn't. They are on the right track, America is going off the deep end and can no longer be relied upon as a trustworthy and sane ally. The EU is desperately trying to get away from that sinking ship but you can't undo 70 years of geopolitical and economic reality easily.
- amadeuspagel 8y ago
  Can you name one chinese software company that is as internationally successful as SoundCloud or SAP?
  - z3phyr 8y ago
    Tencent? Kingdee?
    - splintercell 8y ago
      What are their business models? What do they do?
  - throwawayperson 8y ago
    Tik Tok
niceperson 8y ago
This just means APPAMAwhatever aren't paying the government enough $$$
omarforgotpwd 8y ago
"We don't want your foreign investment! We'll spend our own money building up our economy thank you very much!"

241 points by petethomas 8y ago

As an Indian I'm not sure I endorse all this as 'anti-colonialism'. This is a bunch of government bureaucrats who want e.g. data to be stored in the country so they can access personal info more easily...

cryptozeus 8y ago
Yeh but isn’t that currently done by googles and Faceboos of the world ?
- firasd 8y ago
  Right now if the government wants some information from Facebook they have to go through a whole process... if the info is duplicated on a server hosted by a subsidiary in India, we don't have strong protections where you can just send a questioning policeman away by saying, "get a warrant." In my view this is not just an 'India' thing, I'm kinda skeptical of the general anti-tech panic that's been brewing over the last couple years. I think the status quo is pretty good and don't want a bunch of government regulators from the US, Europe, China, India etc to be getting all up in Google's business telling them how to run Youtube.
  - eklavya 8y ago
    It’s like the whole prism thing never happened. Leave out US from all such discussions. They have everybody’s data.
    - firasd 8y ago
      We know the NSA sucks up a ton of internet traffic but what I'm referring to under the umbrella of tech debates is, for example, the wide availability of encryption (so random traffic cops can't unlock your phone), which is an ongoing debate in the US and also mentioned in this article about India.
  - IllogicalLogic 8y ago
    So, we just default to all data being siphoned into the US so it has a monopoly on PII (personal identifiable information)...? Seriously, no way any asian country should trust foreign countries, that very recently invaded/enslaved them, with their data. China, India, Russia, etc... all have domestic populations that need to flex their political muscle to achieve freedom in their respective countries, the west can't and won't save you unless there is big money involved (with that money will come foreign corruption)... Protip: Solve your problems locally, and reap the economic benefit of building your own Indian/Chinese Google... it isn't rocket science and the exercise will be good for your people.
  - cryptozeus 8y ago
    Sure because fb, google knows how to protect your data ..eh ! I agree with your general view point but no one side is right here. Solution is complicated
  - wtmt 8y ago
    > In my view this is not just an 'India' thing, I'm kinda skeptical of the general anti-tech panic that's been brewing over the last couple years. I think the status quo is pretty good and don't want a bunch of government regulators from the US, Europe, China, India etc to be getting all up in Google's business telling them how to run Youtube. Exactly. And I'd also rather we have end-to-end encryption being commonly available so that no options, except perhaps normal cellular telephony, can be trivially tapped by governments.
stevemoonto 8y ago
it is about economy. India missed the opportunity to make money compare to China where there are lots of home grown company by forcing outside not to penetrate their market
- hourislate 8y ago
  They exported their best talent to innovate for other countries. The only way they can capture some of the wealth these innovations create is to force manufacturers to do it in country. Strange that they see no value in creating and more in manufacturing.
  - lotsofpulp 8y ago
    They see the value, everyone does. They're just not able to execute because it's a country made up of a dozen little countries that all want their share and more. To do the kind of manufacturing and industrialization China did in the time it did, you need a top down organization that does whatever is needed without having to waste time with people's "rights".
    - IllogicalLogic 8y ago
      True, people in the west expect every country is ready for free markets and freedom of speech from the get go...nope. Requires a certain level of development before freedom should be introduced. Especially post colonization, where colonial corruption agents are not fully removed from power in the systems in place.
      - reaperducer 8y ago
        In your estimation, how long will it take for India's economy to no longer be influenced by British colonization? It's been 71 years so far. A hundred years? Five hundred years? Chinese jingoists are still moaning about what the Brits did in the 1800's and blame them for every bad thing that happens between Kowloon and Mongolia today. Will India also follow that path?
xae342 8y ago
I know Russia and Indonesia have laws for this reason you mention too.
Eridrus 8y ago
Colonialism is a loaded word, but if you look at India trying to force cell phone companies to manufacture in India I think there is a clear desire to drive economic development through policy. I don't really blame them either, China offers a pretty compelling example of what state intervention in the market can do.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  China requires non-Chinese auto manufacturers to buy Chinese batteries for their EVs, but Chinese auto manufacturers are free to buy superior Korean batteries for their vehicles. Make someone else bootstrap your industries. It's smart economic policy.
  - baybal2 8y ago
    Lets take a look at your claim in details. Indeed, batteries are not included in list of components that can be imported duty free to bonded customs zones, as they don't qualify for being "electronic components." But the situation is the same for all bulk commodities that have to be locally sourced. That is dictated by the initial purpose of free customs zones: give concessions on high value components, but for whatever Chinese industry was good at manufacturing back in nineties, give none. The companies wanting to make EVs, are completely free to establish companies outside of free customs zones if they don't want to pay double duty.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      Were any of my claims not accurate?
      - baybal2 8y ago
        Foreign companies can go outside of free customs zones and pay duties as every other Chinese company. That's the point.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
chimeracoder 8y ago
> As an Indian I'm not sure I endorse all this as 'anti-colonialism'. This is a bunch of government bureaucrats who want e.g. data to be stored in the country so they can access personal info more easily... As someone who's also Indian, and also remembers Indian pre-colonial and colonial history, I'm entirely on board with taking active measures to ensure we don't repeat the past. Yes, all governments have an incentive to spy on their citizens - just look at Australia or the US or the UK. But India has very legitimate reasons to oppose foreign control of its technological infrastructure. And unlike those other countries, India has also established a right to privacy.
- throwaway6789 8y ago
  Same here. As another Indian who wants India to be self sustaining, its high time we start focusing on creating a organic growth environment for Indian companies.
danbolt 8y ago
I want to note that in Canada a lot of government data storage is required by law to be on Canadian soil. From what I understand this is to help mitigate a foreign actor from accessing your data (eg: a search warrant in the US could pull up photos of me from my Google Drive account). I can’t speak for what it’s like in India though, and I can understand how having data locally can be an avenue for corruption like you say.

wtmt 8y ago

> "As India sets the new rules of the game, it is seeking inspiration from China. Although India does not want to go as far as China, which has cut off its internet from the global one, officials admire Beijing’s tight control over citizens’ data and how it has nurtured homegrown internet giants like Alibaba and Baidu by limiting foreign competition. At the same time, regulators do not want to push out the American internet services that hundreds of millions of Indians depend on." This is the main point. The main reason the government wants data to be stored locally and is also looking at controlling companies is for surveillance. But unlike China, not all platforms have Indian created equivalents. Fortunately for the citizens of India, regardless of the state of surveillance in the U.S., the U.S. companies do fight a lot more against these controlling measures than any Indian born company ever would. Indian companies like Reliance Jio, which considers "data as the new oil" (the parent company, Reliance, was built on crude oil), and many others have had a thirst for more data for sometime now. [Incidentally, the logo of "Jio" is a mirror image of "Oil" in a certain font] > “There is a strong feeling in many quarters that the reason that India has not been able to develop a Tencent or Baidu or Alibaba is because we have not been nuanced in our policies.” This sounds kind of naïve. It's not because of data related policies that these haven't happened. > "Officials were furious after the Cambridge Analytica scandal this year revealed that Facebook had shared private information on 87 million users, including 560,000 Indians, with a political consulting firm that had sought to influence Indian elections." This is ironical, because the governments (both central and state governments) didn't even acknowledge issues or took responsibility or made a statement that data leaks from their own sites would be dealt with seriously. Their game is like this — "if we leak data, then it's not an issue, but if someone else is, then we will be outraged". It's just pseudo-nationalistic sentiment that the current central government has been fostering. A search for "Aadhaar data leaks" will show many such instances and the lack of a decent response from the governments. > "They also warned that India has fewer legal protections than the United States against government searches and data requests, so private data stored in the country could more easily end up in the hands of the police." This is very true. The central government has shown that it has very little interest in getting a good privacy law in place. The one recently released publicly has so many issues that concerned citizens have started https://saveourprivacy.in/ https://saveourprivacy.in/ . Please share this site with every Indian citizen you know. As an Indian citizen, my only hope is that foreign tech companies resist the crippling moves by the executive. The courts move very slowly, but they're the (mostly) dependable arm here.

Teknoman117 8y ago

So when India wants to limit the ability of foreign companies to undercut local prices, it's a good thing. When America wants to do the same we're suddenly the bad guys...

adamson 8y ago
I don’t think the article made a value judgement about price protections
- Teknoman117 8y ago
  It didn't, it was more of a poke at New York Times. They have harsh language for any form of US protectionism whatsoever (some of their arguments are certainly justified mind you), but not a peep when talking about India.
  - IllogicalLogic 8y ago
    Its a good point, if you overlook the fact that the British destroying the Indian & Chinese economy (through war/invasion) created a vacuum for the US economy (British colony at the time) to flourish. So the US closing up trade at this point is immoral from a historical perspective and shows an obscene level of hypocrisy when compared to what it has promoted for the 50+ years post WW2. Never forget India was #1 in world GDP (for more than 1000 years) pre-invasion.
    - xigma 8y ago
      > Its a good point, if you overlook the fact that the British destroying the Indian & Chinese economy (through war/invasion) created a vacuum for the US economy (British colony at the time) to flourish. You're making some sort of moral argument, but the argument against protectionism isn't moral. Protectionism is stupid from an economic perspective, no matter if India or the U.S. does it. If there's a moral argument to be made, it's against protectionism: It denies citizens to partake in free trade and therefore makes them poorer. What's in it for India if everyone has to use the (inevitably crappier) Indian version of Google, Facebook or Amazon? It's not like anybody outside of India is going to want to use that stuff, so it doesn't bring in foreign capital. It'll just reallocate local tech talent to a domestic market that is less profitable than the international market. It makes no sense. That's exactly why people need to bring in emotions and hot words like "colonialism": To make a psychologically powerful (but irrational) case. It might just work. > Never forget India was #1 in world GDP (for more than 1000 years) pre-invasion. I'd be skeptical about estimates on GDP dating to 1000 A.D., but if there's anything to learn here it's that you should probably spend some of that GDP on defense, lest you get invaded by tiny-old Britain.

jopsen 8y ago

> .. trying to establish strong data protections ... as Europe did, while giving the government the right to obtain private information as it sees fit... Data protections like the EU did may sound good. But it took the EU years to develop the framework, another 4 years before into effect, and even more time before it's fully adopted. India doesn't exactly have a record for graceful administration (thinking of the currency debacle). And if you do this with less elegance than what the EU did.. you risk creating a huge (expensive) mess.. Tech platforms bring a lot of value. By enabling commerce and many local enterprises. Trying to move too fast could have very bad consequences. Even the slow stuff the EU did, was somewhat of a mess.. And then let's not even get started on the mess access to private information without a warrant would bring.. I hope they move slow make something with less negative side effects than what the EU did. Then this could be good.

sseth 8y ago

This is such a poorly researched article. In the beginning it quotes a railway official saying enough of foreign influence. The Indian railways on the other hand is working closely with Google to deliver free wifi in nearly 400 stations. Google has even formed a susidiary to do this - Google Station. There may be data protection and privacy requirements which come in - but that is not about colonization. A lot of the awareness on privacy is coming as more and more Indians come in touch with the internet and start wrestling with these issues. More importantly, it is the widespread use of Aadhar, a biometric unique identification system by the government which has also triggered the supreme court to look at data privacy issues. Surely a journalist worth their salt would mention this. Rather than any push back against tech colonization, i would argue that what we are seeing is a greater awareness on the part of government and citizens about the need for data privacy, as well as concern around misuse of social media. And it will extend to local and global players, obviously.

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nilsocket 8y ago

I also see Indian government recently requested British government for soft reparations. i.e., to identify the fact that British have completely exploited India in terms of their finance. They also said, when British ruled India, they killed nearly millions of people on purpose and their exploitation of Indian work-force. This is also raising an awareness among some of Indian population. They were in plan of rewriting their history books, about their world's first University, astrology mathematics, Vedic sciences, medical sciences ... The list goes on. Obviously India contributing more than 27% of GDP for more than thousand years and there achievements in mathematics, Number system, trigonometry,calculus, algebra and Invention of surgery... There open-trade system, and being a free culture, they used to have places for debate, and everybody can worship which ever God they want, if one doesn't like any God, you can create one and pray. There used to be a lot of competition for admissions to Indian universities from all over the world. And ofcourse yoga, mediation, home for Hinduism, Buddhism,... They're Vedic knowledge was extraordinary.

nilsocket 8y ago
Here is an [article](https://www.stephen-knapp.com/greatness_of_ancient_india%27s_developments.htm https://www.stephen-knapp.com/greatness_of_ancient_india%27s...) about some of India's ancient greatness.
int_19h 8y ago
> They were in plan of rewriting their history books, about their world's first University, astrology mathematics, Vedic sciences, medical sciences ... The list goes on. Indeed. For some more examples: https://www.altnews.in/bjp-science-ganeshas-plastic-surgery-yoga-can-cure-cancer/ https://www.altnews.in/bjp-science-ganeshas-plastic-surgery-...
- nilsocket 8y ago
  That seems to be to much, but what I have pointed out was mostly facts. Indeed one can dig up the Greek ancient writings where they write, too much of gold is being sent to India because of their fine textiles. Let's talk of basic common sense, when people colombus discovered (if they consider it that way), America he called the native people as red-Indians, it's not that colombus was searching for America, but he indeed sailed to find India.

chewz 8y ago

> “As a country, we have to all grow up and say that, you know, enough of this,” Vinit Goenka, a railways official who works on technology policy for India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party, said at a conference last week. So did India had already fixed it's railroads and now is taking on the internet?

rajekas 8y ago

It's true that India wants to build its own surveillance state. Every rational great power wannabe will want to do so, just as every great power wannabe has wanted a nuclear arsenal. Seems like table stakes in that rat race. And who can blame anyone for doing so - it would be stupid to let data with security implications to go through American companies with a potential backdoor after Snowden and Wikileaks, just as it would be stupid to be caught without nuclear weapons after Iraq and North Korea. I am not as worried about the ease with which Indian citizen's privacy will be violated if these laws pass - systems such as Aadhar are far greater threats to our privacy and those come with the full force of the law and have support from every government in power, whether NDA or UPA or some third alliance. Plus, I would want foreign companies collecting data about Indian citizens to be accountable to the Indian public. The Bhopal tragedy is a good example of what happens when a foreign company isn't accountable to Indians in any manner whatsoever. Of course, one might doubt whether Indian efforts to secure our data will withstand NSA or Chinese efforts to crack them, but we won't know until we try!

mark_l_watson 8y ago

I probably have a minority opinion here, but I think countries should as much as possible have their own tech stacks. There are many ways to do this: home grown web platforms, customized versions of Chromebooks, open source software, etc. To me one of the pleasures of the world is different cultures, ethnicities, food, local politics, etc. I don’t want a “homogenized world” in which everything seems the same in different countries.

housingpost 8y ago
Completely agree with this. For some reason there's some knee-jerk reaction to digital independence. I feel like having centralized services like Google and Facebook has managed to to remove a lot of the cultural experience when looking up things in various European countries.
bacon_waffle 8y ago
While I can relate to the desire to visit exotic parts of the world (or digital space), the important consideration is well being of the people who live there. Of course homogeneity is not what we want, and not just because it's boring for visitors. But, I don't think that encouraging people in a different country/region/community (especially a smaller one) to roll their own tools is helpful either. There is so much work involved in creating and maintaining all this stuff - and the resources required are often in short supply. It seems much better if we can all leverage off each other to make better things, to be shared with the wider community. I think the issue is more about preserving the right amount of local control over tech used locally, rather than building that tech locally from local tools.

pankajdoharey 8y ago

Misleading article, there are local startups everywhere. But no one in India is going to get rid of google, twitter , instagram , whatsapp or facebook, not simply because there are no alternatives but also because, we are living in a winners take all economy. Amazon is a fast growing ecommerce giant in India, infact India is their fastest growing market so much so that Amazon gives its Amazon prime service for as low as $20 per yr.

davidp670 8y ago

I'm surprised there isn't more of this from other countries like China

walrus01 8y ago

The Indian government has a long and well documented track record of cluelessly attempting to censor and regulate the global internet, to serve domestic special interests and religious fundamentalists and right wingers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India

naiveai 8y ago

This whole thing is such a phenomenally stupid idea in nearly every way. Foreign companies have had longer to develop and are superior in nearly every single way. Why supress them? The data protection laws are a good idea, though I suspect corruption and surveillance, which the Indian gov wants to keep, will largely nullify any and all benefits of such laws.

matheusmoreira 8y ago
> Why supress them? Because they don't answer to the country's government. US-based internet companies answer to the US government only. This is an implication of nearly every site's terms of service. For example, Y Combinator's says you can't post illegal stuff and even mentions the US directly. The implication is "don't get us in trouble here in the US -- we couldn't care less what's legal or illegal in your country." Not very respectful of their sovereignty. Obviously, indian authorities hold nearly zero power over these companies. They can't enforce indian laws on US citizens. It's not like they can show up at their doorstep and arrest people for failing to comply with a court order or something. Their only law enforcement weapon is to block the site, preventing them from reaching indians at all. That's why having local alternatives is extremely valuable.

manish_gill 8y ago

"Colonization" is a heavily loaded word and it's frankly, immature from NYT to use it. Data Protection Regulations (in the same vein as GDPR) are a good thing for consumers. As someone who is concerned about user and data privacy, I like these developments. What's anti-colonial about it other than just a catchy headline?

phobosdeimos 8y ago

China has a tech industry that is on par with Silicon Valley. India doesn't. They are on the right track, America is going off the deep end and can no longer be relied upon as a trustworthy and sane ally. The EU is desperately trying to get away from that sinking ship but you can't undo 70 years of geopolitical and economic reality easily.

amadeuspagel 8y ago
Can you name one chinese software company that is as internationally successful as SoundCloud or SAP?
- z3phyr 8y ago
  Tencent? Kingdee?
  - splintercell 8y ago
    What are their business models? What do they do?
- throwawayperson 8y ago
  Tik Tok

niceperson 8y ago

This just means APPAMAwhatever aren't paying the government enough $$$

omarforgotpwd 8y ago

"We don't want your foreign investment! We'll spend our own money building up our economy thank you very much!"