Is India heading towards Digital Colonialism?

A constant in history is that technology gives its wielder power. The British learned to channel heat into steam and steam into ships. With those ships distance collapsed and trade accelerated. India was dazzled by this machinery. It suddenly found itself trading with the world at unprecedented scale and with a regularity never seen before. British steam was dependable, predictable, and quietly seductive.

This dependency soon turned extractive. The British dictated what to grow, who could trade, and who would profit. Leveraging technology, they rewired India’s economic and social order to maximise their own interests. In the end, technology turned the trader into the coloniser.

Today, there is an uncanny resemblance to India’s colonial arc. The West has extended its technological lead through its command of silicon chips and digital infrastructure. Once again, Western technologies dazzle India through their phones, platforms, and apps. They bring connectivity, predictability, and convenience. India, once seduced by the ship, is now seduced by the chip.

The Company Raj controlled trade routes, leased ports, and dictated markets. Today’s platforms control digital routes, cloud infrastructure, and app stores. They, too, are driven by profit. And once again, India imports, depends, and adapts to foreign technological evolution.

The logical eventuality is a form of digital colonialism, where technologies are leveraged to maximise extraction. One could argue that the colonial arc need not repeat itself, and that those who wield frontier technologies today will restrain themselves and never press their advantage. But such restraint requires a level of self-denial even ascetics aspire to. Power is intoxicating, and it fuels the temptation to extend influence, extract value, shape preferences, and dominate markets. To hope for benevolence without examining realistic possibilities does not reduce the temptation; it amplifies it.

For a society to truly wield technology, many elements must align. Families must nurture curiosity instead of rote learning. Education must personalise rather than standardise and rank. Society must reward risk rather than punish failure. Institutions must build trust and support ambition. Research must be driven by self-belief and national purpose.

Yet India’s colonial reflex still shapes educational priorities, institutional behaviour, and social aspirations. These reflexes are the residue of a cultural engineering project that once made Indian society easier to administer and more willing to serve external interests. They stand in direct contrast to the instincts of a society that innovates and pushes the frontier.

The consequences are visible. Our educational excellence is measured by how quickly talent leaves. Our institutions have been digitised, but not rebuilt for a technological age. Our entrepreneurship thrives in optimisation and services, not in frontier technologies. Our research ecosystem struggles to generate meaningful contributions. And our society still aspires to climb colonial ladders instead of imagining a future of its own.

Predictably, we import most of what we consume, from chips to cloud to platforms. And we celebrate it. When global tech giants announce data-centre projects in India, we applaud as though this signals technological progress, when in reality it deepens dependency while adding little to India’s own ability to create.

These investments may raise our digital ceiling, but on foreign terms. The same companies we celebrate have, in difficult moments, blocked services to Indian organisations, reminding us where power ultimately sits. Yet we continue to rely on them, learning little and building even less. Other nations recognise the strategic danger of such dependency and are deliberately creating their own chips, AI models, and digital ecosystems. They understand that sovereignty cannot be outsourced.

We reassure ourselves with legislative control, but much of it is symbolic. The belief that hosting data centres on Indian soil implies data control reflects outdated, physical-world thinking. Control rests entirely on an operator’s transparency and goodwill.

Further, even if data is stored in India, the value lies not in the data itself but in the behavioural patterns extracted from it. These insights are already being harvested to understand us and shape us in ways no legislation currently anticipates. We are legible and mouldable while legislation, at best, negotiates the terms of our dependency.

Our only leverage appears to be market size, and we celebrate this gravitational pull as if it guarantees relevance. But a market that is fully legible, easy to shape, and controlled by external powers is also a market ripe for exploitation. We are already exposed. Will we allow the colonial cycle to continue, or reclaim authorship before dependence hardens into destiny? India must choose whether it will merely adapt to technology or create it.