From Colombo to Dhaka to Kathmandu, the fire and fury of the young generation has upended governments and shaken entrenched systems. India, by contrast, has so far avoided such an eruption, but as noted economist and former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan warned, the country is not totally immune. In his book, Breaking the Mould, Rajan made the startling observation that the youth in India were jobless and were “entranced” by cheap mobile videos. When THE WEEK asked him to elaborate, he described a mutiny in the making.
“Things will start to blow up at some point. [There is] frustration [among the youth which] looks for immediate cause and sort of boils over. What we are seeing right now are small mutinies. Manipur, tussle over reservations, etc. These are examples of the way in which they come out in our country.” The recent outbreak of violence in Ladakh could be another case in point.
Rajan may have been prophetic in this theory, though the “mutiny” has spared India till now, even as it has ravaged, step by step, India’s neighbours—Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in recent years and Nepal, a month ago—where it led to existing systems and authorities being toppled. In Pakistan, the simmering discontent of the young may have been stifled for now, but it has never really been stamped out.
India’s size and complexity may make a mutiny less likely, but there are lessons. A few recent measures suggest the authorities discount the youth as a category, ignoring a generation living a digital-first reality.
Delhi-based communications professional Saurabh Ahuja (name changed), who first started betting on multiple real-money gaming apps during Covid, calls it an “addiction”, one of the arguments the government made while banning them. “I have also seen my friends getting into serious problems, such as going to third-party apps and lenders for money. They ended up running away from people and hiding because they were left with no money to return,” he says.
Yet, the ban did not turn out to be a good deal.
“After the ban, we started looking for alternatives, and would find similar-sounding platforms, making it difficult to figure out which one was authentic,” says Ahuja. “I once started betting on a platform only to realise after two months that it was inauthentic. It is not that online betting is no longer happening, but now there are greater chances of our details ending up with the wrong people. When certain platforms were legal, at least we knew our data was safe.”
Among the reasons the government has given for its action are addiction, financial ruin, mental health issues and suicides. But does the move have any long-term positive impact?
“The ban offers immediate protection and may save lives in the short term, but it cannot be the sole solution. Addiction is driven by deeper psychological needs such as escapism, thrill-seeking or loneliness. Unless these are addressed through education, early intervention and accessible therapy, the problem risks resurfacing in other, often unregulated, spaces,” says Dr Shweta Sharma, a Gurugram-based clinical psychologist. “Addiction does not simply disappear when access is blocked; it often seeks new outlets. Many users may migrate to unsafe, unregulated platforms, which could expose them to greater risks,” she says.
In July, the government also blocked 25 OTT platforms, such as ALTBalaji and Ullu, for alleged obscene, vulgar and sexually explicit content. While the platforms ended up losing business, does the government deciding what people can and cannot watch solve any problems?
“Censorship can feel like a double-edged sword. Restricting sexually explicit content helps protect children and those who may be easily influenced, which is a clear psychological benefit. Blanket bans, however, risk stifling creative freedom and even suppressing educational or healthy exploration of sexuality,” says Sharma. “Over-regulation may also push curious viewers, especially adolescents, towards unsafe, underground sources that provide distorted or harmful material.”
Kazim Rizvi, founding director of the Delhi-based public policy think tank The Dialogue, says regulations are not evolving with how society is changing when it comes to consuming content. “This is not an internet regulation problem. This is not at all an IT Act problem. And this is not an OTT problem. This is a larger philosophical question about us as a society. And the government’s role, which is to govern and protect the people—at what stage should they step in? And how much should they intervene?”
For the government, the answer seemingly is, “all the time”. While it remained in the realm of books and films mainly in the 1970s and 80s with an overreaching censor board and a puritan state broadcaster, the chaotic turn India took post-liberalisation—satellite channels, the influx of international brands and lifestyle saw authorities getting further restrictive, rather than becoming more liberal. Suddenly, it was not just ideas of revolution coming in through books or “evils of western immorality” that one needed to be worried about, but anything from cultural values to religious beliefs suddenly became fair game.
The inflection point was the advent of the internet. With all its promises of no censorship and free self-expression, the digital medium eventually became a platform that governments now find the easiest to control—it can be turned on or off just like a tap. And as almost every aspect of life moved online, from work to entertainment to banking and even socialising, the iron grip governments have over broadband access has turned into a veritable leash, which they have happily tightened and loosened with abandon. Data indicates that India ranks among the highest globally in the maximum exercise of internet blockades. If frequent blockages of the internet in disturbed areas like Kashmir and Manipur are not enough, the farmers’ agitation a few years ago saw internet networks being jammed on government orders even within the national capital.
And over the years, banning websites, apps, OTT platforms or any new mode of innovation has become easy state policy. Remember the RBI and the bureaucracy trying to obliterate the rising popularity of cryptocurrency a few years ago? It took repeated Supreme Court interventions asking for a clearer policy instead of an “obsolete” approach, even if India has a curiously dichotomous stand on crypto now—not legal tender but a “virtual digital asset”, taxed in the highest bracket if you dare trade them, thereby killing the whole business premise.
Or take TikTok, the wildly popular short video social media site. Banned citing national security reasons after the India-China clash in Ladakh in 2020, rumours are that it may make a comeback after the recent thaw in relations. The company already has a functional office in Gurugram. If that is the case, it will be a case of an arbitrary ban followed by an equally arbitrary revocation.
The loser in the whole cycle of bans and restrictions on any new business or way of life is India itself, and the edge it could have had in these rapidly evolving technologies. In an era where India is already playing catch-up with the US and China in technology, such decisions have real-world costs.
While it is hard to pin a cost to how much India’s R&D prowess in these areas will regress, the loss of capital itself is an eye-opener. In RMG (real money gaming) alone, tax revenue losses have been estimated at Rs20,000 crore. But there are bigger costs. The shutting down of India-side operations of big RMG brands also means thousands of jobs lost and capital fleeing abroad. Such moves also paint India’s image as an unreliable destination for investors.
Of course, this does not mean that the government should step back and permit a free-for-all reign. “The government has a role to play in the promotion of positive content. But it should stay away from dictating what is right and what is wrong for the people,” says Rizvi, adding, “The fact that so many Indians are accessing digital platforms, dating apps, playing RMG and watching adult content—it all shows that people are looking to consume such content. Indians are not what we were 50 years ago. We are fast learners. And with every generation, the comfort and accessibility are evolving. We sometimes go too strongly on morality and preserving cultural values, not realising that Indians may have moved on from that relic of post-independent India and the recently liberalised India to where India is today in 2025.”
So what would be an ideal way out? Open conversations with all stakeholders, so that all sides of the issue are addressed by the government before it comes to an informed decision, unlike what has happened in many cases recently. As Rizvi puts it, “If we were to have a policy as a nation, I think it is important to bring teachers, parents, kids, students and youth into these conversations. Unfortunately, they are not being represented as stakeholders. But they are the ones who consume it.”
Raghuram Rajan’s warning from more than a year ago, although it was in a different context, still holds true: “We have to be very careful. If we do not address this problem before many more join in, it will turn into a demographic curse.”