My unpublished letter to the WSJ Editor
Dear Editor:
Unfortunately, Newley Purnell's piece 'India Keeps Pulling the Plug on Its Digital Economy' has the 'global Internet shutdown' data without context or nuance.
India never had a country-wide Internet shutdown as part of government policy. All shutdowns have been localized, a significant majority in Jammu and Kashmir, where the government is fighting majoritarian Islamist terrorists. Of the 760 lifetime (77 in 2022) shutdowns, 424 were in Jammu and Kashmir.
Hence, despite bringing hardships to citizens, the population affected by these shutdowns has been numerically insignificant in terms of the overall population. For the context, India's population is 1.4 billion compared to Ukraine's 43 million - roughly 3%. China doesn't ever figure in this data.
It will be helpful to provide useful context to the news.