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[Link] State Intervention in the Development of Digital India

Sidharth Chopra and I write about the role of the State in shaping how eCommerce and communications via new technologies operate:

Controlling people or ideas or goods is no longer as easy as it once was. That does not mean that control is not required: we know all too well that people can organise themselves into a lynch mob using modern technology just as easily as they can organise themselves into a friendly neighbourhood yoga club. Technology tends to be agnostic to the motivations of its users, and once it is publicly available, to try to suppress its use is a fool’s errand. 
[....] 
This is not a question of one’s political affiliations but a question of what one wants the structure of the state to look like. The modern nation-state has, since its inception, been geared to control flows of people, ideas, goods, and capital. Technology challenges state control. Nonetheless, if the aim is to facilitate the emergence of Digital India, we would do well to focus on arresting the potential problems technology creates without erecting regulatory barriers which would hamper the development of technology and the progress attendant to it.

The entire article was published at Bar and Bench [update] and republished by Medianama.