Book 1: Is India Being Colonised Again?
Published on 14th January 2026
Book 2: Towards Digital Swaraj
Forthcoming soon
Digital Colonialism or Digital Swaraj ?
India’s relationship with technology is entering a decisive phase. As artificial intelligence, platforms, and data-driven systems reshape economies and societies, questions of innovation, dependence, and agency have become impossible to ignore. These books examines India’s innovation arc across past, present, and future, situating today’s digital transformation within longer historical and structural patterns.
Rather than treating technology as a neutral tool or innovation as a purely technical challenge, these books approach both as systems of power. They ask how earlier technological asymmetries enabled colonial domination, how similar dependencies are forming in the digital era, and what it would take for India to move from adoption to genuine technological sovereignty. The argument unfolds across the two books, moving from historical diagnosis, to capability frameworks, to forward-looking strategy.
Book 1
Is India Being Colonised Again?
How Technology & Behavioural Engineering Still Build Empires
India’s colonial experience was shaped not by conquest alone, but by technology adoption under deep innovation asymmetry. The British arrived as a trading company, controlling ships, ports, and trade routes while India adopted the technologies that enabled commerce without controlling their design or direction. This imbalance gradually reshaped markets, incentives, and identity, ultimately enabling colonisation. This section draws a modern parallel, examining how today’s digital adoption, driven by asymmetries in chips, platforms, data, and AI models, risks recreating similar structures of dependence, and asks whether history may be repeating itself in digital form.
Book 2
Digital Swraj
The Digital Swaraj Framework
Technological sovereignty does not rest on isolated innovations or breakthroughs, but on multiple micro and macro layers evolving together. This framework examines how innovation emerges from aligned ecosystems spanning infrastructure, institutions, social mindset, and innovation capability. By exploring each layer in depth, this section revisits where colonial thinking continues to shape choices, and what India must consciously outgrow to build durable, self-directed technological capability.
India’s route to Digital Swaraj
This section integrates the earlier parts to explore India’s strategic options. It examines which technological pathways remain open, which are structurally blocked, and where real leverage still exists. It then analyses viable strategies and the escape-velocity thresholds India must reach while the window of opportunity remains open.