Digital access should be understood as public infrastructure, S. Krishnan, Secretary, MeitY said at the National Human Rights Commission’s Open House Discussion on ‘Access to Social Media by Children’ on 18th March 2026, according to a government press release, saying that the government understands the social concerns and the sense of urgency, and has been trying to ensure the digital space is more regulated.
This is important because the framing of digital access as public infrastructure is not a neutral description: public infrastructure in India (telecom, roads, electricity) is subject to state licensing, access controls, and monitoring, and applying the same logic to digital access would essentially provide a basis for prioritising content restrictions, mandatory platform licensing, and surveillance measures. This framing marks a shift from constitutional understanding that positions speech as the primary imperative, platforms as carriers of speech, and reasonable restrictions are secondary to the fundamental right to free speech.
Digital access is not public infrastructure: it’s an enabler of our fundamental rights.
Rights > Restrictions.
I’d like to remind Secretary Krishnan of Justice Bose’s dissent in (ironically and unrelated) S. Krishnan and others vs The State of Madras, which Gopal Sankaranarayanan read out while arguing for freedoms in Shreya Singhal of Union of India. Secretary Krishanan didn’t hold his important post during the Shreya Singhal hearings, and Vaishnav wasn’t the IT Minister, but it would serve them both well to read that judgement (alongwith Article 19 of the Indian Constitution), given that their ministry is currently systematically undoing it.
Here’s what Justice Bose had said:
“Look past the mere verbiage of the words and penetrate deep into the heart and spirit of the Constitution. What sort of State are we intended to be ? Have we not here been given a way of life, the right to individual freedom, the utmost the State can confer in that respect consistent with its own safety ?”
“How can it be doubted that the stress throughout is on the freedoms conferred and that the limitations placed on them are but regrettable necessities?“
When an infrastructure for censorship is being put into place, to use enablers of speech to disable it, and access is being positioned as “public infrastructure”, controlled by the state, we have reason to worry.
Actually, the whimsical way in which MEITY keeps amending the IT Rules, by ignoring rights based concerns, with short consultation deadlines, short implementation deadlines, expanding the scope of compliance to cover clarifications, advisories, directions, SOP’s, or guidelines, the number of ministries and departments that takedowns are being expanded to, the opacity of how takedown orders are issued (in Shreya Singhal, Justice Nariman wrote that if the user is identifiable, they should be given a hearing), and speeding up of, and the undoing of 79(a) protections by the Supreme Court with the Sahyog Portal, the reduction in timeline for takedowns such that every order seems like an emergency order, and the scale at which censorship is now visibly increasing, we should already be worried: for speech, our freedoms and our democracy.
There is something unreasonable about the restrictions and the infrastructure for restrictions that are being put into place.
At this rate there will be no need for age gating children’s access to the Internet because this nanny state will leave it fit only for children.
