From Contagion to Coalition: Advancing Digital Rights in South Asia

The promise of widespread internet access in South Asia, reaching nearly 80% of the population, is overshadowed by a growing threat to digital rights. Governments across the region have intensified control and surveillance, enacting approximately 35 tech policy regulations. Though often justified by national security and privacy concerns, these regulations have been widely condemned for undermining fundamental rights and democratic principles. The region's grim record of 20,000 human rights court cases and 170 government-imposed internet shutdowns starkly illustrates this reality. Alarmingly, there has been a near-total absence of regional cooperation to counter this excessive state control.

To address these challenges, 12 digital rights organizations based in South Asia — which included Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST), Body and Data, and Bolo Bhi — convened in 2024 to share lessons to combat digital authoritarianism in the region, resulting in a report titled Digital Governance and Rights in South Asia and the Path Forward. Published in February by the Tech Global Institute, the report highlights how the lack of regional cooperation has led to a “contagion effect” wherein South Asian countries are “implicitly compelled to adopt governance frameworks and regulations set by dominant markets, primarily in Australia, Canada, the European Union (EU), and the United States.”

The authors also find evidence of regional contagion, as in the case of India and what has been termed the “Delhi Effect,” where policies like India’s Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and Aadhar card system have been exported to other countries like Nepal and Myanmar. Despite this, there is a pervasive lack of regional cooperation on tech policy in South Asia, and the report makes the case for developing a South Asia-focused digital rights network — one that enables regional collaboration to push back against state overreach and corporate exploitation.

This report summarizes the tech policy landscape in major South Asian countries — India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh — focusing on issues around digital governance and the lack of coordinated oversight. This piece highlights the report’s findings, particularly the shared challenges and potential solutions to build a more robust digital rights ecosystem in South Asia.

Thematic Overlaps

Despite differing national approaches to technology regulation, a few commonalities exist. Civil society opposition is often silenced, and pushing back against government policies carries significant risk. The report also finds that funding from international donors is divorced from the lived reality of local communities, and domestic policies suffer from an elite capture wherein “the priorities of the Global North dictate the regulatory direction of South Asia.” Here are five key challenges the report outlines:

• Techno-nationalism: Governments in South Asia seem to view technological capabilities as a signal of strength, providing an impetus to AI research and building sovereign digital public infrastructure in an attempt to be less dependent on Western nations. As a result, the report finds a lack of public consultation in formulating tech policy and a high concentration of power among elites, which “not only limits digital freedoms but also extends state influence into traditionally protected offline spaces.”
• Vague and Oppressive Laws: Governments in South Asia have passed sweeping laws that undermine digital rights under the guise of promoting “national security” and “public interest." For example, Sri Lanka’s Online Safety Act enables the takedown of content critical of the government to protect national security interests without prior legal precedent. Similar policies around content moderation as a tool for censorship exist in Pakistan and India.
• Executive Overreach: To ensure state control over technology, governments in South Asia create mechanisms to avoid accountability, like establishing regulatory agencies under the executive branch, which can then control the agenda and implementation of policy. This enables seemingly unilateral government actions like internet shutdowns and online policing with little to no judicial oversight. For example, Pakistan’s Punjab Defamation Act of 2024 gives government-appointed tribunals the power to “impose fines and disable social media accounts.”
• Identity-based Disenfranchisement: The report also notes how policies aimed at regulating technology or online speech disproportionately target ethnic minorities. Biased digital identification systems and algorithmic profiling of citizens by law enforcement have exacerbated discrimination and inequality.
• Civil Society Co-optation: Civil society organizations face enormous obstacles in their advocacy efforts in South Asia. Funding is lacking and often dependent on foreign donations, but recent USAID cuts have increased challenges for many CSOs. In fact, the state can also block foreign funding, as seen in India, which imposed a Foreign Contribution Regulation Act to freeze funding under the guise of addressing foreign influence. However, foreign funding can also come with strings attached and conflicting priorities that “prioritize diplomatic and geopolitical interests rather than local advocacy needs.” The report notes that CSOs must also grapple with government monitoring and surveillance, all of which prevent them from being an effective opposition to state control.

The authors demonstrate that technology policy in South Asia undermines digital rights via excessive government control, lack of civil society consultation, and a prevalence of policy frameworks from the Global North that do not account for the local context of South Asian countries. Nevertheless, some avenues exist to help promote digital rights and hold governments to account. The report lays out two key tools:

• Judicial Activism: In certain cases where governments exercised unconstitutional control over technology, the courts have stepped in. In India, for example, the courts are deliberating over the traceability provision of the IT rules, which, if implemented, would undermine encryption and enable surveillance. Even in Pakistan, the courts are hearing multiple legal challenges to laws around social media regulation. However, judicial independence in both countries has eroded over time due to political pressure, signaling broader challenges to democracy in South Asia that go beyond digital rights and technology policy.
• Self-Regulatory Approaches: A group of CSOs in Sri Lanka developed a community of practice, fostering accountability and a unified front against “misaligned donor agendas and state-imposed restrictions.” Such a model could be forged beyond one country, possibly including other South Asian nations that deal with similar struggles. The report recommends the creation of a South Asia-specific coalition on tech policy. This coalition must build transparency in digital governance, enable knowledge sharing between countries, and find alternative funding sources that do not excessively rely on Western foundations.

Conclusion

The trend toward digital authoritarianism in South Asia can and must be challenged. The report’s recommendation to form a South Asian Digital Rights Coalition could provide the necessary momentum to combat excessive government control and corporate overreach. This coalition, the report argues, can help diversify funding channels, improve transparency, strengthen advocacy networks, and chart context-specific policies in South Asia. Similar efforts are already underway. For instance, at this year’s RightsCon in Taiwan, civil society organizations from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka launched the Digital Accountability Initiative South Asia (DASCA). Such collaborative initiatives championing digital rights are crucial to ensure that tech policy in the region is associated with equity and accountability rather than repression and control.