Internet Democracy Project

With the establishment of the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) in 2014, India has taken an important measure towards strengthening its cybersecurity. But while the establishment of NCIIPC as such is a positive step forward, several shortcomings mark, however, its implementation. In this paper, I will first briefly outline the origin and development of NCIIPC and will then go on to critically examine three challenges or limitations in particular: NCIIPC’s command and control structure; fallacies in the framework that was used to rank sectors in order of criticality; and the absence of sector-specific guidelines and standard operating procedures (SoPs). As we will see, each of these contributes to important vulnerabilities remaining in India’s critical information infrastructure (CII).   More

India’s stances in global Internet governance debates have often been noted, and criticised, for their strong preference for multilateral models of engagement, as different from the multistakeholder approaches that are so well-established in the field. But where does this predilection towards multilateral engagement come from? This paper maps the economic, political and historical antecedents of India’s evolving position on global Internet governance as they are shaped by its concerns on cybersecurity, by its domestic context and by its overall influence on global events as they unfold. Through this analysis, the paper hopes to contribute to a greater understanding of both India’s cybersecurity concerns and of the ways in which India approaches global Internet governance as it has emerged as one possible venue to address these pressing issues.   More

If India has supported economic, social and cultural rights far more vocally at global fora than civil and political rights, this is a result of both domestic security compulsions and historical foreign policy positions. Internet rights advocates’ strategies will need to take into account India’s preoccupation with sovereignty and an improved international stature to gain the country’s full support. This article was co-authored by Anja Kovacs and Saikat Datta, and first published in Lettinga, Doutje and Lars van Troost (eds.) (2015), Shifting Power and Human Rights Diplomacy: India. Amsterdam: Amnesty International Netherlands.   More