INSIGHT VORTEX

India is a digital nation now. Farmers check prices on phones. Shopkeepers take payment through a QR code. Students attend class on a screen. Voters learn about candidates through a video feed. Families share joys and fears through a chat app. This is a great achievement. It is also a great risk. Almost every digital road that Indians travel is owned by someone else. The feeds belong to foreign companies. The chat apps belong to foreign companies. The video platforms belong to foreign companies. The cloud servers and the AI models and the ad systems also belong to foreign companies. Their boards sit in other countries. Their laws come from other countries. Their loyalties follow profit and not the Indian citizen. This article makes a simple case. India must secure digital sovereignty. A nation that cannot control its own information space cannot fully control its own destiny. The case does not rest on fear alone. It rests on events. Some of these events are recent. Some are old but sti...

This essay makes a hard case against RaGa congress. It argues that the Indian National Congress used its long hold on power in ways that leave little to be proud of. This is the case that critics make. It is stated here in full and without softening. ii. Start with what the party did not build. The freedom struggle was won by millions of ordinary people and not by a party office. The Constitution was written by a Constituent Assembly of many voices led by B R Ambedkar and not by the Congress high command alone. The first elections were run by an independent Election Commission. The lasting parts of the republic belong to its citizens and its courts and its press. The Congress inherited them. It did not create them (Austin 1966 and Guha 2007). iii. Now look at what the party did with that inheritance. It dismissed an elected state government in 1959. It overruled the seniority of judges in 1973 and again in 1977. It suspended liberty in 1975 and jailed its critics without trial. It bent...