4th time in a row, India at helm of countries with maximum internet shutdowns
India faced 106 shutdowns in total out of which 85 occurred in J&K alone.
As per a report released by tech policy think tank ‘Access now’ India finds itself as the country with the most internet blackouts in 2021, a rare feat that the country has been seeing continuously for the past 4 years owing to various reasons such as maintaining law and order while also keeping an untoward protest in check and in certain instances to prevent some form of online forgery from happening.
In toto India saw at least 106 shutdowns in 2021 which were less than in 2020 when the nation faced it at least 109 times. The total number of shutdowns in 2020 accounted for 70 percent of the total shutdowns that took place in the entire world.
Besides India, the other countries with maximum internet shutdowns were Myanmar which had to undergo blockade at least 15 times while Sudan and Iran found themselves in a similar situation in at least five such cases.
The report mentioned that the most number of shutdowns were implemented by the governments of the Asia-Pacific region comprising of at least 129 internet shutdowns in countries like India, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, Indonesia and Pakistan.
The report went on to state, “India is also among at least 18 countries that imposed mobile internet blackouts during protests, including an attempt made to suppress the full-fledged farmers’ protests. India also stopped the internet at least 4 times to avoid cheating in exams.”
These stats however do not consider the fact whether the shutdown was across the country or was limited to certain areas. As for India, residents of Jammu and Kashmir had to do away with the internet at least 85 times since the state still has major security concerns.
While the internet restrictions in India improved as compared to the previous year, the world total of internet shutdowns which stood at 155 times in 2020 increased to 182 times in 2021 as per the report.
