This is nothing special to India or "evil" countries that like to censor/surveil their interwebs. Also, Indian politicians care far more about grift than they d

This is nothing special to India or "evil" countries that like to censor/surveil their interwebs. Also, Indian politicians care far more about grift than they do surveillance (though they do also like surveillance.) We're talking about a country where one party tried to buy an election by distributing free color televisions: https://www.google.com/search?q=india+free+color+tvs+election https://www.google.com/search?q=india+free+color+tvs+electio... Many countries (the US included) regulate/license even receive-only satellite devices. It's not for surveillance or censorship reasons, it's for interference prevention reasons. If they didn't regulate ground stations, space would be a wild wild west of people beaming whatever frequencies, at whatever signal strengths, they wanted. Bit of history/trivia: many cell phones used to not support GLONASS satellite fixes within US territories because first telecom companies "forgot" to file the necessary paperwork with the FCC to get GPS chips in phones licensed for GLONASS reception. Then when they did, the FCC sat on the paperwork for no particularly good reason. Used to be you could enjoy a GPS/GLONASS/Galileo satellite position fix on a cross-atlantic flight and watch as your fix dropped to just GPS the second you crossed into US territory.