With a population of over 1.3 billion people, India is one of the most crowded countries in the world. At the same time, it also has one of the largest number of internet users in the world.
What this means, whenever the government decides to create blackouts in one or some of the country's regions, a large number of people and businesses will be affected.
And when that happens, large monetary loss should also happen.
According to a report from Top10VPN, India lost nearly $2.7 billion due to internet shutdowns in 2020.
In comparison, that number is larger than the combined total of the next 10 countries in the chart.
The report also showed that India also stayed offline for much longer than any other country, at 8,927 hours last year (with the report adding hours of simultaneous shutdowns at different places).
The biggest contributor, is Jammu and Kashmir.
Following the death of Hizbul Mujahideen militant commander Burhan Wani, India had suspended all internet service for numerous times. In 2017, the violence ridden state in northern India where both India and Pakistan claim as their own territory, was clashing on and off again.
Both India and Pakistan were in war over the dispute territory since they were partitioned in 1947.
High speed internet service in the region was suspended since the government scrapped Jammu and Kashmir's special status under Article 370 and it into two union territories - Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.
Despite internet in the region was restored, India wanted to only restore 4G In Jammu and Kashmir, only in areas with "low threshold for terrorist activities".
As a result, internet shutdown in Jammu and Kashmir which ran from August 2019 to March 2020, caused a loss of $5.3 billion in that region alone.
While it’s hard to calculate the exact number, what is certain is that, people in India, and most notably in Jammu and Kashmir, suffered major losses as a result of internet connectivity being blocked.
People in India not only face frequent blackouts, as the government also has certain filtering in place for censorship. To regulate, the government has been educating its citizens, blocking access to certain internet contents, also also removing contents from the internet at the request of content creators through court orders.
Top10VPN wrote that:
In Kashmir, authorities lifted restrictions in March 2020, seven months on from a controversial decision made by Prime Minister Nerendra Modi to strip India’s only Muslim-majority region of its autonomy. However, after the restrictions were lifted authorities continued to severely throttle internet speeds, with citizens only able to access 2G connections.
During the longest internet shutdown in a democracy, the arbitrary arrest of senior Kashmiri political leaders, lawyers, rights activist and students became widespread.
The restrictions have negatively impacted the distribution of medicine, businesses and schools.
