Opinion | Shutting down the internet is no longer an option
4 min read . Updated: 28 May 2019, 01:45 PM ISTAs digital adoption grows, safeguards are needed so that the internet isn’t switched on and off on a whim
The Digital India Report released by McKinsey Global Institute in March contains a wealth of interesting data about how digital technologies have impacted the Indian economy. With 560 million internet subscribers, India has more digital consumers than any other country in the world save China. Despite these high numbers, India’s Country Digital Adoption Index score is a lowly 32, making it the bottom ranked country among the 17 mature and emerging markets that McKinsey analysed (South Korea tops the list at 75 and China is at 47). That said, India is digitising faster than every country in the world with the exception of Indonesia, and since only 40% of its population has internet connectivity, it still has tremendous room to grow.
For most countries, the tipping point in digital adoption came when the cost of data dropped below 1% of average household income and smartphone penetration crossed 20%. For instance, when Brazil and China passed 20% penetration in 2012, it took them just four years to cross 52% and 71% penetration, respectively. According to McKinsey, the cost of data dropped below 1% of average Indian household income for the first time sometime in 2017, thanks in large part to the price war sparked off by the entry of Jio in the market. As a result, data consumption rose exponentially, increasing nearly four-fold in 2017 alone. Around the same time, the price of smartphones in India dropped from 25% of GDP per capita in 2007 to 8% in 2014, resulting in a consequent increase in smartphone penetration from 8% in 2014 to 26% in 2018.
As rapidly as the use of digital technologies has grown so far, it seems clear that India is poised to witness even greater acceleration. Over the last five years the gross merchandise value of e-commerce doubled, and along the way it has completely changed the way we shop. Over the past four years, utilisation of ride-hailing applications increased threefold and, in the process, fundamentally inverted notions of vehicle ownership and use.
Adoption is not limited to urban areas. Over the past decade, various digital platforms rolled out by the government have penetrated deep into the rural hinterland, thanks to increased telecom penetration and the coming together of key elements of digital infrastructure such as identity and payment technologies. In 2017 alone, approximately $5 billion worth of goods were traded on the Electronic National Agriculture Market (eNAM), representing nearly 2% of total crop sales. Electronic transfers of government benefits directly to the bank accounts of the intended recipients were 26 times higher in fiscal year 2018 than in 2014, and the total value of Aadhaar-based micro-ATM transactions increased over tenfold in the last two years.
Digital technology was once a luxury reserved for a privileged few. Today, it is ubiquitous. In urban areas, digital platforms have so insinuated themselves into our way of life that they are often a reliable substitute for existing infrastructure. In rural areas that until recently had little to no access to basic infrastructure, they have become the lifeline that connects places and people that the system used to previously ignore. We’ve reached a point where these technologies aren’t so much a nice-to-have, but an essential part of the infrastructure on which our national growth depends.
As exhaustive as the McKinsey Report is, there is one statistic it did not carry—the annual number of internet shutdowns in India. The government has long operated on the belief that in a national security emergency, if they shut down the internet in the affected area, it will prevent perpetrators of the incident from communicating with each other and tamp down on rumours that are often even more de-stabilising than the incident itself. Based on this philosophy it has freely and frequently ordered internet service providers to switch off internet access in various parts of the country. According to www.internetshutdown.in, since 2012 there have been a total of 315 internet shutdowns in India with the number of shutdowns doubling every year since 2014.
Why is this significant?
In the first place, it is important to keep this data in mind in order to temper any pride and excitement we might feel as we read the McKinsey Report. As well as we have done to build a digital infrastructure that reaches more people than ever before, we must remember that our government still retains the power to shut that infrastructure down without notice, and has been doing so with increasing frequency. When the internet was a luxury, shutdowns were just another inconvenience to be endured. Now that it is an essential element of the infrastructure of modern India, we can no longer afford to have it shut down with cavalier disregard for the consequences. The internet is now the sole means by which a large number of people access the money in their bank accounts and the markets through which they earn their livelihood. We simply cannot allow it to go down just because anti-national elements might be using it to message each other.
As the new government ponders its digital priorities over the next five years, there is little doubt that it will implement policies that make sure that the rate of digital adoption continues to grow. We can only hope that they simultaneously also implement safeguards to ensure that the internet can’t be switched on and off on a whim.
Rahul Matthan is a partner at Trilegal and author of ‘Privacy 3.0: Unlocking Our Data Driven Future’. His Twitter handle is @matthan