At the same time that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is inviting digital companies to India, India's dispute with Twitter is escalating: Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad accused the Americans of deliberately disregarding the country's new information technology rules.

Meanwhile, Modi gave the virtual opening speech at VivaTech in Paris, one of the major technology conferences: He used 1.18 billion mobile phones and 775 million Internet users in India to attract investors thanks to “talent, market, capital, an ecosystem and its culture of openness” attract from abroad.

Christoph Hein

Business correspondent for South Asia / Pacific based in Singapore.

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    The strict rules were announced at the end of February and came into force at the end of May.

    They are used to force Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter or Signal to remove individual posts.

    They also have to disclose their originators if the greatest democracy on earth demands this.

    The services are vigorously defending themselves against this.

    Report against Twitter

    In addition, the companies have to hire employees in India to ensure that the companies follow the rules. As early as June 5, the ministry wrote to Twitter and threatened with "undesirable consequences" if the service did not adhere to the orders. Twitter rowed back: "A provisional chief compliance officer has been hired and details will be shared directly with the ministry shortly."

    Civil rights activists pointed out that only courts are allowed to judge whether companies like Twitter have forfeited their position as "protected intermediaries" between broadcasters and the public and would then have to face criminal consequences. The first thing the police in the state of Uttar Pradesh have filed against Twitter is a video in which the beard of an elderly Muslim is forcibly cut off in public.

    Users assumed it was one of the numerous attacks by Hindus on Muslims.

    The police said it was a personal argument and that the attackers belonged to both religions.

    Shakuntala Banaji, a professor at the London School of Economics, said the new rules signaled the Modi's government's intention to “control all political activism.

    Those who challenge the state and its officials or the Hindu movement will be branded as traders in fake news, and even more than today will be jailed on false charges, "Banaji said, referring to the Hindu nationalists who back Modi .