Bharat’s Uphill Battle Against Digital Colonization

• Bharat’s dependence on foreign social media platforms makes the country vulnerable to social engineering and digital misinformation orchestrated by anti-Bharat forces.
• The Bhartiya government’s AI-driven socio-economic development relies on big tech collaborations, which risk citizens’ private data and make the country a target for digital colonization.
• The Bhartiya tech workforce has become more like sophisticated white-collar laborers than leaders of local innovation.
• The lack of indigenous digital infrastructure makes Bharat vulnerable to external interference in internal matters.
• For Bharat to build its own digital infrastructure, AI models must be based on Indic values, uninfluenced by Western narratives.

Editor’s note

This write-up is part of a two-part series on the need for Bharat to build its indigenous digital narrative and reduce its dependence on the Western big tech ecosystem. The first part of the series focused on exposing the mechanisms through which the big tech ecosystem has become a conduit for the widespread dissemination of anti-Bharat and anti-Hindu narratives. It also highlighted voices of resistance from within Bharat – entrepreneurs and AI startups who are contributing their bit to building the indigenous digital narrative.

Read Part 1

This article, the second in the series, will delve deeper into how big tech companies take advantage of the lack of proper regulatory framework to siphon off valuable personal data from Bhartiya citizens and use Bharat for profit-making experiments. The piece argues that if left unchecked, it could have a long-lasting detrimental impact on Bharat’s sovereignty and national security, making the country vulnerable to interference from various external forces.

Bharat relies heavily on mainstream social media in both private and public sectors. Consider this: all official Bhartiya government departments have accounts on X. International diplomacy is conducted through X posts from official handles, and these posts are often viewed as authentic, first-hand sources of news and information about the Bhartiya government and its politicians. Indeed, it’s no exaggeration to say that X has become an essential tool for the Bhartiya government to engage with the public and understand public opinion on important issues.

Shouldn’t the Bhartiya state find it concerning that a Western social media conglomerate wields so much power and influence in shaping public perception regarding its international politics and even global image?  Given that all mainstream social media platforms operate within a Eurocentric framework and are unlikely to prioritize Bharat’s national interests, shouldn’t the government focus on developing its indigenous social media platforms?

Rajiv Malhotra and Vijaya Viswanathan, in “Snakes in the Ganga: Breaking India 2.0”, alert us to the issue of corporatization of wokeism in America. They talk about the forceful imposition of Critical Race Theory (CRT) on America’s workplaces and attack on meritocracy as the management is expected to “adopt official policies formulated by the proponents of CRT”. They further argue that much like Critical Race Theory has influenced American workplaces, it has also become embedded in the algorithms that determine how messages and accounts are treated on social media. [1]

To put it simply, the woke theories from elite US academia that dominate American workplaces, educational institutions, and cultural spaces also impact social media platforms. The algorithms on these platforms are influenced by this woke narrative, deciding which posts are objectionable, which topics are important, and which should be silenced. This Western woke narrative shapes social media bias on all these issues.

Bharat is becoming a casualty in this process. Due to its heavy reliance on Western social media, it can no longer independently determine its most important political and social issues. Western social media platforms set the agenda, making the Bhartiya public and even political actors passive recipients.

Additionally, there’s the issue of social media platforms freely using the private data of Bhartiya citizens to develop sophisticated algorithms that know more about the people than the government does. At the root of this problem is the government’s uncritical embrace of the Western digital ecosystem as a “development partner.” The government fails to consider the larger repercussions of allowing Western big tech players unrestricted access without reasonable safeguards and restrictions.

The main areas of concern for Bharat vis-à-vis the big tech digital ecosystem, are:

• Over-dependence of the government’s initiatives like Digital Bharat on the big tech ecosystem.
• Lack of coordinated mechanisms to enable Bharat to develop its own data banks and not simply hand over valuable data of Bharatiya citizens to foreign companies.
• Lack of social media regulatory framework.
• Over-dependence on the Western digital ecosystem allows for various forms of internal interference, including social engineering, social unrest, panic, and influencing elections.
• This furthers Bharat’s digital colonization—a form of neocolonialism that imposes external narratives on the country and influences Bhartiyas to adopt Western-approved ways of thinking.

Navigating Big Tech Collaboration: The Pitfalls

The Bhartiya government announced the IndiaAI Mission in March 2024, emphasizing that under the new initiative, the country will focus on building AI computing infrastructure. [2]

The government approved over Rs 10,300 crore (around 1.3 billion USD) for the Mission to support a number of initiatives such as Compute Capacity, Datasets Platform, Innovation Centers, Application Development, Startup Financing, Future Skills, and Safe & Trusted AI. The government plans to implement this program through a public-private partnership. The Innovation Centre will focus on research and development for AI models, especially indigenous Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) and domain-specific models. [3]

Bharat’s AI vision is guided by the National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence, finalized in 2018. The policy document, prepared by Niti Aayog, outlines the roadmap for developing Bharat’s AI infrastructure. It highlights key areas such as Healthcare, Agriculture, Education, Smart Cities and Infrastructure, and Smart Mobility and Transportation.

However, the strategy also reveals that these projects will be implemented in partnership with Western technology conglomerates. [4] For example, the Niti Aayog document talks about collaboration with Microsoft to develop and implement AI apps for the agricultural sector:

Microsoft, in collaboration with ICRISAT, developed an AI Sowing App powered by Microsoft Cortana Intelligence Suite, including Machine Learning and Power BI. The app sends sowing advisories to participating farmers on the optimal date to sow. The best part – the farmers don’t need to install any sensors in their fields to incur any capital expenditure. All they needed was a feature phone capable of receiving text messages. The advisories contained essential information, including the optimal sowing date, soil test-based fertilizer application, farm yard manure application, seed treatment, optimum sowing depth, and more. In tandem with the app, a personalized village advisory dashboard provided important insights into soil health, recommended fertilizer, and seven-day weather forecasts. In 2017, the program was expanded to touch more than 3,000 farmers across the states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka during the Kharif crop cycle (rainy season) for a host of crops, including groundnut, ragi, maize, rice, and cotton, among others. The increase in yield ranged from 10% to 30% across crops. [5]

Similar collaborations exist for the application of AI to the healthcare sector:

Niti Aayog is working with Microsoft and Forus Health to roll out a technology for early detection of diabetic retinopathy as a pilot project. 3NNethra, developed by Forus Health, is a portable device that can screen for common eye problem. Integrating AI capabilities to this device using Microsoft’s retinal imaging APIs enables operators of the 3Nethra device to get AI-powered insights even when they are working at eye checkup camps in remote areas with nil or intermittent connectivity to the cloud. The resultant technology solution also solves quality issues with image capture and systems checks in place to evaluate the usability of the image captured. [6]

There is nothing fundamentally wrong in collaborating with big tech to apply AI across Bharat’s diverse sectors. However, these collaborations should prioritize Bharat’s national interests. Given the invasive nature of AI technologies and the global dominance of big tech, achieving this balance may be challenging.

Experts argue that Western tech conglomerates exploit loopholes in Bharat’s data security regulations to access a wide range of sensitive and confidential data, which could be used against Bharat in various ways if needed.

To the uninitiated, all this might sound like a conspiracy theory. But that’s how colonization enterprise works. In the first phase of colonialism, colonizers used direct and overtly oppressive tactics to suppress and silence the native populations. In the second phase, neocolonialism, the tactics became more subtle and sophisticated. Even after Bharat gained independence and established its own political system, colonialism reemerged through the propagation of the perceived superiority of the English language and the denigration of Bhartiya languages, traditions, and culture. Neocolonialism in Bharat also spread through anti-Indic narratives in academia, media, popular culture, and organized syndicates. Now, we are witnessing a third phase of colonialism: digital colonization, where former imperialists consolidate their global dominance by capturing data from the populations of former colonies.

Rajiv Malhotra draws attention to the historical parallels of this phenomenon:

One is reminded of the eighteenth-century Indian elites that collaborated with the British, exposing Indian culture’s weak links and helping them map the country’s vulnerabilities. The British colonizers gave birth to Indology to study Indians, build psychological models of individual and social behavior, and establish policies for dealing with different segments of society. In today’s jargon, we could say that Indology served the purpose of surveillance to compile big data and build models. After the Second World War (1939-1945), this role was passed on to the US, which started the academic discipline of South-Asia Studies and took the social-psychological mapping exercise to new heights. The new digital technologies are the latest evolution in this enterprise. [7]

How Big Tech Exploits Bhartiya Data

Bhartiyas are addicted to social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X. Without regulations to protect their data, these social media giants have free rein to mine their sensitive personal data.

The European Union protects its citizens through the robust General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Enacted in 2018 by the EU, it imposes obligations on organizations worldwide that target or collect data related to people in the EU. The regulation enforces strict fines for violations of its security and privacy standards, with penalties running into tens of millions of euros. It clearly defines specific circumstances under which businesses are permitted to process the data of EU citizens. [8]

In the US, data privacy laws have historically been laxer compared to the EU, relying on subjective interpretations for privacy protections. However, since 2023, the US has begun reworking its data protection laws to align more closely with the EU’s GDPR framework. [9]

In a significant breakthrough, Bharat passed the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA) in August 2023. An article by the Bharat-based publication ‘Bar and Bench’ compares Bharat’s new data protection act to the EU’s regulations. It notes that while there are similarities between the two, the DPDPA falls short in several areas, including the scope of personal data and cross-border data transfer.

Regarding cross-border data transfer, the article says, “Since the DPDPA is not yet in force, no out-and-out transfer mechanisms under the much-awaited official procedural rules and regulations have been notified by the Bhartiya government. At present, the Act equips the transfer of personal data to every single country in the world unless the Central Government, through notification, imposes such restriction forbidding the data transfer to such notified countries. However, the GDPR enforces stringent data transfer rules. The first rule being execution of transfer impact assessment (TIA) in order to ensure an adequate level of protection of personal data in a third country. Additionally, all the general corporate rules and international cooperation mechanisms shall be binding on the entity situated in the third country with the onus to include the standard contractual clauses as applied to EU for data protection”. [10]

Since the new law hasn’t been implemented yet, its impact remains to be seen. Meanwhile, AI systems controlled by big tech have unrestricted access to the raw data of Bhartiya citizens. These systems process this data to develop psychological profiles of the Bhartiya population. This sophisticated psychological mapping can be used against the country in psychological operations and PR campaigns to influence public opinion and even elections.

Experts say the biggest concern is the government’s willingness to hand over valuable citizen data to foreign companies. These companies claim to be conducting research, but their real motive is to access data on specific segments of the population.

In his book “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power: 5 Battlegrounds,” Rajiv Malhotra discusses the 2018 Harvard project “Mapping the Kumbh Mela,” where several foreign research agencies were invited to gather data. Malhotra writes that he extensively researched the Harvard project to uncover their data acquisition strategy, which was disguised as public health research for Bharat’s benefit. He warned the Bhartiya government that Harvard aimed to collect socio-demographic, DNA, and psychological data from nearly one million Bhartiya across the country. Malhotra also met the UP chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, to present his findings, suggesting that Bharat should rely on its own research organizations for such studies.

Nevertheless, the Harvard project went ahead as planned, and, to the best of his knowledge, no intellectual property agreement was formally signed to establish that the data belongs to Bharat, and there wasn’t any provision for the authorities to get a copy of the data, says the author.[11]

Collaborations with foreign organizations and institutions often involve trade-offs, and in this case, it is the valuable and confidential data of Bhartiya citizens. Social science research, especially ethnographic and sociological research, relies on collecting data from populations and making generalizations often influenced by colonial biases. Therefore, Bharat needs to establish a framework to regulate foreign access to their citizens’ data. When such collaborations occur, stringent agreements should ensure Bharat retains ownership of the collected data.

According to experts, the main problem lies in Bharat’s data assets being mostly raw and unorganized and the absence of a systematic effort to address the problem:

Most leaders are fully aware that India has big data unique to its immense diversity of genetics, culture, and natural resources. However, most of India’s big data assets are sitting in raw, unorganized form and not integrated; disconnected ministries have jurisdictions over the silos. Such fragmented data is sometimes being siphoned off by foreign entities that understand its value more than the Indian authorities do…. Until India’s data assets are properly appreciated and organized into an industry with regulations, there remains a state of disarray in which start-ups do not have large-scale data sets across multiple sectors for training their neural networks. Therefore, Indian AI projects often end up using US and European datasets for their development. But those datasets are biased by the demography of the West which is significantly different from Indian demography. The AI systems trained on foreign data incorporate Eurocentric biases; this is harmful in culturally sensitive applications in health, employment, social justice, and finance. [12]

Desi Tech Force: Innovators or White-Collar Coolies?

Bharat’s National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence identifies the lack of AI expertise, training opportunities, and skilled manpower as significant challenges to AI adoption in the country. The strategy document also points out the limited academic research initiatives on AI, restricted to a few academic institutions. Additionally, it notes that the private sector’s contribution to AI research in Bharat has been marginal. [13]

The strategy document also notes that most of Bharat’s STEM graduates take jobs centered on routine IT development. Among the small percentage who choose to focus on AI research, the majority prefer to apply their expertise in “greener pastures” abroad:

India produced a whooping 2.6 million STEM graduates in 2016, second only to China and more than 4 times the graduates produced by the USA, thus producing the requisite talent pool to drive innovation in emerging technologies. Disappointingly, though, an overwhelming majority of this talent pool is focused on routine IT development and not so much on research and innovation. Exacerbating the problem further, a majority of the small population focused on research almost always prefers to pursue advanced degrees (Masters or PhD degrees) to subsequently apply their expertise abroad. [14]

The Strategy document acknowledges that although leading IT companies like Wipro, Infosys, and TCS are at the forefront of implementing advanced technology solutions, their contribution to research has been limited. This raises an important question: Is Bharat’s tech workforce largely content with being seen as a sophisticated, high-end clerical workforce rather than fostering real technological innovation? One obvious argument is that Bharat is still a developing country, and the priority for many educated individuals is to secure gainful employment and improve their families’ financial status. Consequently, most Bhartiyas cannot afford to focus on cutting-edge research at the expense of financial security.

Aside from financial and lifestyle reasons, experts argue that a lack of purposeful patriotism and the government’s failure to connect youth with a grand narrative combining Bharat’s civilizational and cultural heritage with its growth story could be why Bhartiya STEM graduates prefer working in Silicon Valley or elsewhere in the West rather than staying in Bharat. This points to a lack of cohesive national consciousness and a strong sense of pride in their national identity.

Rajiv Malhotra points out[15] that Bharat’s telecom and IT revolution has been pioneered majorly by Western firms. Even though Bhartiya engineers played a significant role in fostering this revolution, the truth remains that they have been simply renting out their brains to Western companies that own the intellectual property. Thus, Bharat’s technology sector hasn’t really benefited from the phenomenal work done by most Bhartiya engineers. He further contrasts Bharat’s model with China’s; while the Bhartiya model focused on short-term gains through phenomena like outsourcing, China focused on investing in cutting-edge technologies, got serious about R & D, and hired the world’s best talent to work for Chinese tech companies, he argues.

Malhotra further says that while China concentrated on developing its indigenous AI applications based on its civilizational and cultural narrative, Bharat just uncritically walked on the path laid out by the Western big tech ecosystem. He also blames “India’s newly minted billionaires” for the country’s inability to mobilize its tech workforce for homegrown innovation. Even though these billionaires built massive personal fortunes, they failed to reinvest a portion of these earnings into developing longer-term world-class intellectual property, says the author:

Imagine if Indian tech giants had invested 10% to 25% of their profits towards the research and development of strategic intellectual property, as opposed to simply selling cheap labor to foreign clients. Imagine if Indian government planners had understood that maximizing the short-term generation of foreign exchange would precipitate the present crisis in which India is dependent on the US and China for critical technologies.[16]

Therefore, the Bhartiya tech workforce is at a strange crossroads: They are contributing their expertise to Western AI products that could be used to digitally colonize Bharat! This creates a vicious cycle that can only be broken if the Bhartiya government takes concrete measures to retain its tech workforce and foster AI research within the country. It’s crucial that Bhartiya companies lead most of this research, focusing on developing models relevant to the Bhartiya ethos. Simplistic and uncritical collaboration with Western tech companies is not the solution.

Unmasking Digital Manipulations

It may sound dystopian, but the powerful ecosystem of big tech is mentally enslaving Bhartiya. Companies like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and X use sophisticated AI algorithms to not only dictate what issues Bhartiyas should think about but also how they should think about them.

Social media algorithms determine which hashtags should get more prominence and which ones should be underplayed. The netizens in Bharat recently started the “All Eyes On Reasi” trend on social media following the June 9, 2023, Jammu terror attack in which at least 9 Hindu pilgrims were killed and 40 injured. Similar to the “All Eyes on Rafah” trend in the context of the Israel-Palestine conflict, “All Eyes on Reasi” went viral on social media.

However, some users reported experiencing issues sharing the hashtag on Instagram, leading to accusations of selective censorship by the platform. This controversy sparked the #UninstallInstagram trend on social media, as netizens criticized the platform for its perceived hypocrisy and attack on freedom of speech. [17]

Bharat’s 2024 general elections saw unprecedented levels of digital misinformation. Deepfakes of Bhartiya politicians, putting controversial words in their mouths (literally), became common. An investigation by Global Witness and Access Now reportedly found that Google-owned YouTube approved over 40 advertisements containing false information about elections in Bharat, obstructing voters. These false ads aimed at voter suppression, fanning communal tensions, and attacking the electoral process. One ad falsely claimed that people did not need ID to vote, while another claimed women could vote via text message. [18]

A recent article by the FirstPost critiques Western interference in the 2024 elections, connecting the dots regarding the unholy nexus of Western media, academia, and think tanks. The article highlights how these entities leverage the digital ecosystem to amplify misinformation during the country’s general elections:

This hydra-headed, globe-spanning, anti-India narrative takes many forms. It could be uninformed rants or supercilious commentary by opinion writers or members of academia based abroad, slanted reports that cherry-pick data or indulge in circuitous references to push a certain viewpoint, or it could be bot networks and social media influencers activated and/or contracted to fulfill vested interests. All these efforts have their root in one cause: the ostensible hatred of one man, Narendra Modi, who keeps winning elections, defying all their efforts and expectations. [19]

The Road Ahead

 The bottom line is that it’s critical for Bharat to develop its own digital ecosystem and ensure it is rooted in an Indic narrative. If Bharat’s AI ecosystem merely replicates and reinforces the Western narrative, it serves no purpose. The country must develop an AI ecosystem informed by Bhartiya sensibilities, aiming to undo the anti-Bharat and anti-Hindu biases present in current AI algorithms.

To achieve this, it is essential to involve social scientists, philosophers, linguists, and a diverse group of scholars grounded in the Vedic academic tradition. While Bhartiya tech companies handle the technology aspect of structuring indigenous AI models, Vedic scholars should oversee the narrative aspect. ‘Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power’ [20] offers innovative suggestions for developing a Vedic paradigm of social sciences that can also be applied to AI models. Incorporating these ideas can help create an AI ecosystem that truly reflects and respects Bharat’s unique cultural and intellectual heritage.

• India must develop a grand narrative of its culture and civilization; this grand narrative should guide the indigenously developed AI models.
• This grand narrative wouldn’t involve a simplistic glorification of the past but rather a critical reimagining of the past and its imaginative and innovative application to the modern context.
• The decolonization of Bharat’s social sciences should focus on using the Vedic concepts of Purushartha (the four pursuits of life) as a lens to examine Bharatiya society instead of using Western sociology.
• The four pursuits of life to be adopted, as defined by the Vedic concept of Purushartha, are Dharma (the metaphysical and ethical foundation for knowledge and action), Artha (the pursuit of material well-being, encompassing wealth and economic infrastructure), Kama (the pursuit of desire, sensory gratifications, pleasures, and aesthetics), and Moksha (liberation in the ultimate sense).
• In the context of constructing a new paradigm of Vedic social sciences, Artha could be translated into Economics and Geopolitics, Kama into disciplines like Psychology, Dharma into Ethics and Metaphysics, and Moksha into liberation.

Citations

[1]  Snakes in the Ganga: Breaking India 2.0 by Rajiv Malhotra and Vijaya Viswanathan, Ch 1. Dismantling the United States of America p.55-56

[2] We will have AI models designed and built in India: Rajeev Chandrasekhar – Hindustan Times; https://www.hindustantimes.com/technology/we-will-have-ai-models-designed-and-built-in-india-rajeev-chandrasekhar-101710151920398.html

[3] Press Information Bureau (pib.gov.in); https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2012375#:~:text=Aligned%20with%20the%20broader%20vision,across%20all%20strata%20of%20society.

[4] National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence (niti.gov.in); https://www.niti.gov.in/sites/default/files/2023-03/National-Strategy-for-Artificial-Intelligence.pdf

[5] Ibid. p.33-34

[6] Ibid. p. 29

[7]  Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power by Rajiv Malhotra, Ch 8. Digital Colonization, p. 215

[8] What is GDPR, the EU’s new data protection law? – GDPR.eu; https://gdpr.eu/what-is-gdpr/

[9] U.S. data privacy laws to enter new era in 2023 | Reuters; https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/us-data-privacy-laws-enter-new-era-2023-2023-01-12/

[10] The juxtaposition of Indian and European Union data protection laws (barandbench.com); https://www.barandbench.com/columns/the-juxtaposition-of-data-protection-laws-an-indian-and-european-union-perspective

[11]  Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power by Rajiv Malhotra, Ch 8. Digital Colonization, p. 216-217.

[12] Ibid. p. 213

[13] National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence (niti.gov.in); https://www.niti.gov.in/sites/default/files/2023-03/National-Strategy-for-Artificial-Intelligence.pdf  p. 46-47.

[14] Ibid. p. 50

[15]  Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power: 5 Battlegrounds by Rajiv Malhotra, Ch 7. Technological Dependence, p. 197

[16]  Ibid. p. 201

[17] Uninstall Instagram Trends After All Eyes On Reasi Hashtag Gets Hidden; Netizens Question Freedom Of Speech (jagran.com); https://english.jagran.com/viral/uninstall-instagram-trends-after-all-eyes-on-reasi-hashtag-gets-hidden-netizens-question-freedom-of-speech-vaishno-devi-attack-10166346

[18] Did YouTube green-lit ads with disinformation on Indian elections? – Firstpost; https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/youtube-ads-disinformation-indian-elections-2024-lok-sabha-polls-13756120.html

[19] How deep was Western interference in the 2024 elections? Enough smoke that warrants a thorough probe – Firstpost; https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/how-deep-was-western-interference-in-2024-elections-enough-smoke-that-warrants-a-thorough-probe-13778354.html

[20]  Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power by Rajiv Malhotra: 5 Battlegrounds, Ch 9. Psychological Hijacking, p. 227-229).