The Politics and Pride of India’s Digital Self-Reliance

The recent announcement by India’s Union Minister of Home Amit Shah on X (formerly Twitter) about his switch to Zoho Mail wasn’t just any ordinary administrative update. It was more of an act of resistance and pride in the face of imperious decisions taken by the US administration recently. Home Minister Shah was not alone in this initiative, several other Ministers, such as IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal voiced similar opinions.

This initiative, by the Indian Ministers, falls in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for Atmanirbhar Bharat, as was clear during his 12th consecutive Independence Day speech from the Red Fort. The word ‘self-reliance’ or ‘self-reliant’ was mentioned 20 times during the Prime Minister’s Independence Day speech, while he used the word ‘Swadeshi’ 2 times. The number of times PM Modi used these words was in stark contrast to his previous Independence Day Speeches, where these words found little to no mentions (self-reliance/self-reliant were used 5 times during his 2024 I-Day Speech, while in 2023 it wasn’t used at all).

The notable increase in the number of mentions of these words clarifies the seriousness of this government’s objective of achieving self-reliance. During his 103-minute-long address to the nation (his longest ever from the ramparts of Red Fort), Prime Minister emphasised that a self-reliant Bharat is the bedrock of a Viksit Bharat and the call of Swadeshi should never come from a place of desperation but of strength. In the same speech, he had exhorted the countrymen, youth especially, about building our own social media and or any other platform where we are still dependent on others.

Founded in 1996 by Sridhar Vembu and Tony Thomas as AdventNet, it changed its name to Zoho Corporation in 2009. Simply put, the Chennai-headquartered Zoho is a software company that mainly provides business organisations with an ecosystem of business tools for their streamlined functioning. It offers everything from email to document editing to finance and HR. Arattai, an instant messaging application that has recently become the talk of the town, is also a product of Zoho. Though launched in 2021, Arattai (which means banter in the Tamil language) recently got the required impetus thanks to the Indian government’s push for self-reliance in every domain of an individual’s life. As per the report published by the Market Intelligence firm Sensor Tower, till August, its downloads were even less than 10,000. But recently, its downloads have witnessed a sharp surge, crossing the 7 million mark.

Additionally, on October 3, the Union Ministry of Education, through an order, encouraged the officials to use the Zoho Suite. It added that this is in alignment with the Indian government’s broader vision of building a self-reliant ecosystem in technology, hardware, and software solutions.

In light of the recent push by the Indian Government, Arattai is being touted as a home-grown challenger to Meta-owned WhatsApp, which has more than 500 million users in the country. For some Indians, Arattai came as a beacon of hope, a pride and an assertion of digital sovereignty. Using a homegrown swadeshi product, which they think is capable of taking on foreign tech giants, is their way of contributing to the Prime Minister’s vision of Self-reliance. Especially after the recent tensions with the US over Trade, the call for Swadeshi has become even more profound. Because for an ordinary citizen, it is not just about signing in on a new messaging platform, it’s something way bigger than that. For them, it’s a step towards Atmanirbhar Bharat.

On expected lines, there was a section within the society that started ridiculing these sentiments by terming the platform as a primitive & obsolete version of global platforms. Though some of the observations, like the absence of End-to-End encryption in text messages and others may not be unfounded. But this in no way should imply that India is incapable of building such platforms that have the potential to take on global giants. In fact, India has proved its mettle in the digital landscape by pioneering platforms such as UPI, which has completely transformed the way transactions are done. It has won praise worldwide and has set a benchmark even for the developed nations.

Such criticism not only brings down the morale of the users at large but also kills the aspirations of the innovators who want to experiment and create. Every single innovation or platform begins with an imperfect version of itself, it becomes better by revisions, feedback and support. If we continue to ridicule and dismiss homegrown initiatives prematurely, then it might discourage an entire generation of innovators and entrepreneurs from taking bold steps in the future. Rather, we should be the ones providing constructive criticism, feedback on how they can improve, because then only we will be able to turn the potential into real progress and move forward to attain self-reliance. No nation can become self-reliant overnight, it needs decades of relentless efforts from every section of society and this is what India also requires. It is a process that requires steadfast belief, resilience and a conducive ecosystem to create and experiment.

The recent rise in tension with the US has surprisingly stirred up the debate of Swadeshi among the ordinary Indians. Be it his claims about the imaginary mediation during Operation Sindoor or the comments by his commerce secretary Edward Lutnick predicting that India will soon apologise and negotiate the Trade deal with the US, nothing has gone unnoticed. All of this has triggered a sense of national pride and realisation that the dependency on others can tremendously weaken the negotiating power of the country. And when people see the Ministers leading the way to adopt homegrown alternatives, it not only provides visibility but also credibility as well. Such initiatives send a clear message to all that India’s technological future will not be in the hands of people sitting abroad but will be built at home.

This is exactly what was reflected in Home Minister Shah’s recent announcement, where he ended the post with the phrase ‘thank you for your attention to this matter’, a phrase that is often used by US President Trump on his social media platform Truth.