We all have seen the increasing tension between India and
China for the past few weeks. Hashtags trending on twitter, soldiers marching
towards LAC, all these are giving us an adrenaline rush!
Personalities like Sonam Wangchuk have urged us to boycott
software and hardware having their roots in China.
Now the question arises, Why this sudden ban on Chinese
apps?
There can be various reasons for such a decision.
Physical war can cost us a lot of damage at
present. We can't afford such losses now. A war between two nuclear power
holding nations could lead to the death of thousands of common people and
soldiers. India can suffer a huge economic crisis because its economy is comparatively weaker than that of China
So this could be made to give a message to
China about their aggressive strategies.
2. China could start a cyber-war with India using
these apps as weapons.
59 apps including the most popular
ones like- TikTok, Xender, Helo, Wechat, UC Browser, Shareit have been banned
to counter the threat posed by these apps to the country's " sovereignty
and security". The govt. said these applications are engaged in activities
"prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defense of India, the
security of state and public order". The ban has been imposed under 69A of
the IT act. These apps can hack user's devices including govt. servers and
databases to bring down the security and uniformity of the country.
3. . Data theft. These apps have been found to store
user’s data without permission and transfer them to their headquarters in
China. This can be a serious issue. Take for example; your bank account number
or passwords which were stored in your cellphone are accessed by a third party!
These are the main reasons we can think of that could have
led to such a decision.
IS THIS BAN
PERMANENT?
No! This is not a permanent ban. Associates of the google
play store have said that they were asked by the Indian govt. to temporarily
block access of particular apps in their app store.
Also if these apps succeed to meet the norms of the Indian
laws they might be permitted to access Indian servers once again.
IMPACT.
The impacts are significant. India is the top traffic
provider of TikTok in the world with 611 million downloads.
We all have used Xender and Shareit. Haven’t we?
Now imagine all the smartphone users of the 2nd
most populous country stop using these apps! There would be a huge decrease in
the traffic as well as revenue generation from these apps!
As a response, Indian organisations could be banned from
doing business in China by the Chinese govt.
At worse it could lead to a trade war. If a trade war takes
place it will not be very favourable for India because the majority of the
pharmaceutical and electronic imports are from China.
WHAT COULD BE DONE?
There's no reason to feel low because there are a lot of
substitutes for those apps in the play store. Even if the alternatives are not
as good as the banned ones, don’t worry! Developers are at work to bring out
the best. Necessity is the mother of all inventions!
A lot of America based software and our Indian apps are
coming on the way. Use them, give feedback, and help them to be better.
A request to you all, please support your local
organisations.
VIEWPOINT.
It is the right decision from the govt. to ban these apps
even temporarily. Although it could have been done earlier but better late than
never. A country's security should never be compromised at any cost. We want
peace but if there's aggression from the opposite side we shouldn’t sit
quietly.
A trade war is not expected, if the developers of these apps
meet the requirements of the IT ministry, it will be a wise decision to bring
them back. But they need to ensure user data would not be transferred to China
without permission, all the data should be kept within India and most
importantly they wouldn’t share Indian users’ data with the Chinese govt. or
the intelligence department.
From the Indian perspective, I would expect that the Indian
govt. will make it easier for startup app developing companies to gain the
market, provide them security and easy loans if required. The govt. should also
promote and encourage software developed in India by having official accounts
in those platforms.
