Internet Shut Downs

Today, as oxygen is to humans, internet is to _________, whatever you can fill this blank with, perhaps everything, like I am able to share my thought because of internet. So why thwart people from such an essential vitality. Done for reasonable things like stopping the spread of rumors to curb violence is accepted but if to stop aspirants from cheating in an exam, or to censor some political campaign we resort to such solutions, its absolutely ridiculous.

Where Estonia, conceptualized internet access as a fundamental human right back in 2000s, only last year was it petitioned in Kerala that access to internet should be declared as a fundamental human right.

India has still been fighting issues like random internet shut downs and as per records India had the highest number of internet shut downs in 2016 which costed it approximately 6000 Cr. This is just another example of how we ignore intangible costs as a result of illogical regulations and internet blackouts. And surprisingly Saudi Arabia is below us. If a blog has something sensitive about masses, in India the blog gets deleted but in Saudi Arabia the blogger gets deleted !!!

Coming to numbers, from 2012 to 2014 India had just 7 internet shut downs which manifolded to 37 in the succeeding 2 years, even the GDP doesn't show such progressive growth, because perhaps we have a lot of shut downs. As mentioned above internet shut downs imply huge costs, in terms of business, trade, security and many more. We have strict stated situations and circumstances under which the government can impose shut downs, but that checklist would never allow them to implement one.

In Kashmir last year internet services were inactivate for around 100 days, let me put this in perspective, 100 days essentially means you would miss whole season of GOT, and infact its release trailer, the teaser everything, now I guess this issue( GOT) is severe and got to be addressed promptly!!!

We as victims should raise our voice against the undue benefit these people take of our silent acceptance. Let the government be aware that people are aware of such incidents, because as an individual we can tolerate a warning sign our screen flashes, but these internet shut down days and infact some hours can be lethal for companies and other macro users.

Looking forward for positive responses to accompany me take a step forward to eradicate these problems.