The dependence of people on the Internet in India has increased tremendously in the last decade. Most people now need more than 1GB of data to spend their day. But it turns out that despite all this (read this 5G stand still) India is number one in terms of internet shutdowns. At least the latest update is so informative! According to reports, since the first shutdown of internet services in 2016, this problem has repeatedly occurred in the country, even causing financial losses of tens of thousands of crores of rupees.
Note that in March of this year, Access Now and Keep It On coalition brought this internet shutdown issue to the fore in their report. Now, Netloss has said in a report that in the first half of 2023, there has been a loss of $1.9 billion i.e. around Rs 15,590 crore due to internet shutdowns in India. The states of Manipur and Punjab are reported to have the most internet shutdowns during that time of the year. Not only this, but based on the report of Nettles, it can be said that due to the shutdown of the internet in the country, there has been a loss of about 118 million dollars (about 968 crore rupees) in terms of foreign investment and because of this, more than 21 thousand people have lost their jobs in the last six months.
Why is the Internet shut down?
Internet shutdown in the country is not a result of any network problem. The central or state government shuts down the internet to maintain peace, prevent the spread of misinformation or hate propaganda, and for cyber security reasons. Although it seems that this will reduce the damage, in reality it is not. Because the current internet shutdown is economically devastating.
India breaks internet shutdown record
According to the report, India leads the world in terms of internet shutdowns in the last six months. But this problem is not today. In the last year 2021, the internet was shut down 84 times in this country. At that time, a total of 1,157 hours of internet downtime resulted in a loss of 582.8 million i.e. around 4,300 crore rupees. On the other hand, 5.9 crore people were also affected due to internet shutdown. It should be noted that in the wake of the farmers’ movement in the year, the internet was closed for a long time in the capital New Delhi. Again in 2022, there were 49 internet shutdowns in Jammu and Kashmir alone, while Rajasthan experienced 12 internet shutdowns during the year. Our West Bengal is also at number three in this list – there were 7 internet shutdowns last year.
