On Monday, the Narendra Modi government banned 59 mobile applications that have its origin in China citing the reason for protecting the data and privacy of the people of India. This comes in the wake of the military face-off between India and China along the eastern Ladakh region.
For safety, security, defense, sovereignty and integrity of India and in order to protect the data of the people of India, the Government of India banned these applications. This has been long requested by the social media users after the Chinese military had a face-off with the Indian military killing 20 Indian soldiers.
Looks like the move has taken a political turn after Law, Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad called it a ‘digital strike’. In a rally in West Bengal, he said,
“For security and sovereignty of India, for countrymen’s digital security and privacy we have banned 59 apps, including Tik Tok. India knows how to look in the eyes of those eyeing our borders and to protect countrymen, Indian can even do a digital strike.”
Tik Tok Reportedly To Use 45,000 Crore
The 59 Chinese applications include the hugely popular content creating app Tik Tok, UC browser, Helo, Likee, CamScanner, Vivo Video, Mi Video Call, Clash of Kings along with the e-commerce platforms like Club Factory and Shein. The Information Technology Ministry said that it had received many complaints from various sources and also had received reports of the misuse of some of the applications that would steal and surreptitiously transmitting users data in an unauthorized manner to servers that have locations outside India. The IT Ministry issued a statement which read,
“The compilation of these data, its mining and profiling by elements hostile to national security and defense of India, which ultimately impinges upon the sovereignty and integrity of India, is a matter of very deep and immediate concern which requires emergency measures.”
The move by the Indian government to ban 59 Chinese applications including the video-sharing application Tik Tok is likely to cause huge financial losses to all the companies. The most hit among the 59 applications is Tik Tok. The parent company of Tik Tok – ByteDance – is expected to incur a loss of more than 45,000 crores i.e. 6 billion dollars. As per a report from China’s state-run media house Global times, ByteDance can lose up to 45,000 crores after the Indian government decided to ban TikTok, Helo, and other Chinese applications.
Source: Free Press Journal
