{"id":58691,"date":"2023-09-25T14:01:41","date_gmt":"2023-09-25T05:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/sep\/25\/a-tool-of-political-control-how-india-became-the-world-leader-in-internet-blackouts"},"modified":"2023-09-25T14:01:41","modified_gmt":"2023-09-25T05:01:41","slug":"a-tool-of-political-control-how-india-became-the-world-leader-in-internet-blackouts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=58691","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A tool of political control\u2019: how India became the world leader in internet blackouts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For the past five years India has shut down the internet more times than any other country affecting over 120 million people<\/p>\n<p>Bryan Akoijam had spent years building up his entertainment company in India\u2019s north-eastern state of Manipur. Between his thriving YouTube channel, which attracted 9m views a month, as well as running a local cinema and promoting regional films, he had brought on over a dozen staff. Business, he says, was good. That was, until 3 May, when the internet in the state was suddenly and unilaterally cut off.<\/p>\n<p>On Saturday, Manipur\u2019s mobile internet was finally turned back on after over 140 days. But for those such as Akoijam, the consequences of an almost five month blackout have been devastating.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/sep\/25\/a-tool-of-political-control-how-india-became-the-world-leader-in-internet-blackouts\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the past five years India has shut down the internet more times than any other country affecting over 120 million peopleBryan Akoijam had spent years building up his entertainment company in India\u2019s north-eastern state of Manipur. Between his thriv&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1847,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[458,62,351,433,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-censorship","category-india","category-internet","category-narendra-modi","category-south-and-central-asia"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1847"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58691"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58692,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58691\/revisions\/58692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}