Prime Minister "gifted away" India's digital markets to Google, Facebook, Microsoft just for few hours of "glory"

By A Representative
A senior science activist has alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his meetings with the top brass of Facebook, Google and Microsoft, gifted away digital oceans for "a few hours of glory". Associated with the Delhi Science Forum, Prabir Purkayastha has said, Modi will be providing "last mile connectivity" to these giants, and the “bulk of expenditure in providing Internet backbone will be done by the government”.
An engineer and an expert in power, telecom and software sectors, Purkayastha says, all three giants will be allowed a “free ride on India’s Internet infrastructure”. Wanting it to be Internet to be a public utility, the Modi government, he adds, has decided for spend Rs 70,000 crore on National Optical Fibre network “for developing an internet backbone for the country on top of the existing infrastructure that BSNL and others."
“Google will use RailTel – a fibre optic network that Indian Railways has built -- for its wifi installations in the railway stations, giving it access to this very large, existing fibre optic infrastructure, for its own use as well”, Purkayastha says.
Insisting that this is what India would have to pay, Purkayastha says, “It was a huge ‘success’ for PM Modi”, but “what was missed is that Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are all interested in grabbing India's digital market.”
Purkayastha insists, it is time one knew what Edward Snowden, former CIA employee has revealed – “that Facebook, Google, Microsoft have been fully a part of the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Five-Eyes (US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) global spying network.”
“All these companies, along with telecom MNCs such as AT&T and Verizon, act as agents of the US intelligence agencies”, says Purkayastha, adding, “ They provide access to all their data, to be searched, sorted, and stored in data banks for the next 50 years, by the NSA of the US, the shadowy agency that Snowden outed.”
“So giving the US MNC's our data, is not only giving them a very important economic resource, it is also helping the US to monitor intimately all the current and future decision makers in the country”, the senior expert contends
Contrasting this with China, Purkayastha says, the Chinese “have kept Google, Facebook and others out of their market”, and the only three companies among the top 10 global IT companies that it has hired are are not from the US.”
He says, “China has done this by protecting their huge internal digital market, creating internet and mobile based businesses that rival, if not are more advanced, than their US counterparts. They are now expanding globally, particularly in those markets that are much more based on mobile based access to the internet.”
Commenting to Modi's visits Facebook headquarters, Purkayastha says, “By doing so, he also implicitly gave his seal of approval to Facebook, which reciprocated by allowing people to endorse Digital India on Facebook and change the colour of their Facebook page.”
Calling internet.org Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's “truncated Internet supervised by Facebook”, Purkayastha wonders, if Modi, by such high profile visit, was not vitiating the regulatory process, when “Facebook's internet.org is being examined by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the Department of Telecom and the Competition Commission of India for possibly violating India's telecom rules.”
Says Purkayastha, “Zuckerberg claims that he wants to connect the poor to the internet to lift them out of poverty. What Facebook's internet.org is proposing is that out of the nearly 1 billion websites in the world, the poor need to see only a few; and Facebook will decide what the poor should see.”

Comments

Anonymous said…

The ideas of author seems skewed.

October 07, 2015

From plagiarism to proxy exams: Galgotias and systemic failure in education

By Sandeep Pandey* Shock is being expressed at Galgotias University being found presenting a Chinese-made robotic dog and a South Korean-made soccer-playing drone as its own creations at the recently held India AI Impact Summit 2026, a global event in New Delhi. Earlier, a UGC-listed journal had published a paper from the university titled “Corona Virus Killed by Sound Vibrations Produced by Thali or Ghanti: A Potential Hypothesis,” which became the subject of widespread ridicule. Following the robotic dog controversy coming to light, the university has withdrawn the paper. These incidents are symptoms of deeper problems afflicting the Indian education system in general. Galgotias merely bit off more than it could chew.

Covishield controversy: How India ignored a warning voice during the pandemic

Dr Amitav Banerjee, MD * It is a matter of pride for us that a person of Indian origin, presently Director of National Institute of Health, USA, is poised to take over one of the most powerful roles in public health. Professor Jay Bhattacharya, an Indian origin physician and a health economist, from Stanford University, USA, will be assuming the appointment of acting head of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), USA. Bhattacharya would be leading two apex institutions in the field of public health which not only shape American health policies but act as bellwether globally.

The 'glass cliff' at Galgotias: How a university’s AI crisis became a gendered blame game

By Mohd. Ziyaullah Khan* “She was not aware of the technical origins of the product and in her enthusiasm of being on camera, gave factually incorrect information.” These were the words used in the official press release by Galgotias University following the controversy at the AI Impact Summit in Delhi. The statement came across as defensive, petty, and deeply insensitive.

Farewell to Saleem Samad: A life devoted to fearless journalism

By Nava Thakuria* Heartbreaking news arrived from Dhaka as the vibrant city lost one of its most active and committed citizens with the passing of journalist, author and progressive Bangladeshi national Saleem Samad. A gentleman who always had issues to discuss with anyone, anywhere and at any time, he passed away on 22 February 2026 while undergoing cancer treatment at Dhaka Medical College Hospital. He was 74.

Growth without justice: The politics of wealth and the economics of hunger

By Vikas Meshram* In modern history, few periods have displayed such a grotesque and contradictory picture of wealth as the present. On one side, a handful of individuals accumulate in a single year more wealth than the annual income of entire nations. On the other, nearly every fourth person in the world goes to bed hungry or half-fed.

From ancient wisdom to modern nationhood: The Indian story

By Syed Osman Sher South of the Himalayas lies a triangular stretch of land, spreading about 2,000 miles in each direction—a world of rare magic. It has fired the imagination of wanderers, settlers, raiders, traders, conquerors, and colonizers. They entered this country bringing with them new ethnicities, cultures, customs, religions, and languages.

Thali, COVID and academic credibility: All about the 2020 'pseudoscientific' Galgotias paper

By Jag Jivan The first page image of the paper "Corona Virus Killed by Sound Vibrations Produced by Thali or Ghanti: A Potential Hypothesis" published in the Journal of Molecular Pharmaceuticals and Regulatory Affairs , Vol. 2, Issue 2 (2020), has gone viral on social media in the wake of the controversy surrounding a Chinese robot presented by the Galgotias University as its original product at the just-concluded AI summit in Delhi . The resurfacing of the 2020 publication, authored by Dharmendra Kumar , Galgotias University, has reignited debate over academic standards and scientific credibility.

Conversion laws and national identity: A Jesuit response response to the Hindutva narrative

By Rajiv Shah A recent book, " Luminous Footprints: The Christian Impact on India ", authored by two Jesuit scholars, Dr. Lancy Lobo and Dr. Denzil Fernandes , seeks to counter the current dominant narrative on Indian Christians , which equates evangelisation with conversion, and education, health and the social services provided by Christians as meant to lure -- even force -- vulnerable sections into Christianity.

'Serious violation of international law': US pressure on Mexico to stop oil shipments to Cuba

By Vijay Prashad In January 2026, US President Donald Trump declared Cuba to be an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US security—a designation that allows the United States government to use sweeping economic restrictions traditionally reserved for national security adversaries. The US blockade against Cuba began in the 1960s, right after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 but has tightened over the years. Without any mandate from the United Nations Security Council—which permits sanctions under strict conditions—the United States has operated an illegal, unilateral blockade that tries to force countries from around the world to stop doing basic commerce with Cuba. The new restrictions focus on oil. The United States government has threatened tariffs and sanctions on any country that sells or transports oil to Cuba.

Search This Blog