India nukes Telegram from orbit to save NEET exams: collateral damage anyone?
In a display of digital heavy-handedness that would make a sledgehammer blush, Google has nuked Telegram from the Play Store in India. Apparently, banning a whole app is easier than securing a few medical exam papers.
The Indian government decided that if you can't stop the leaks, just delete the messenger. Google officially pulled the Telegram app from the Play Store, and Apple is expected to follow suit shortly. This digital quarantine is part of a desperate attempt to prevent cheating during the NEET medical entrance exams, which have been plagued by massive scandals and public outcry.
The crackdown escalated when the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology ordered a week-long block, which predictably failed to stop the flow of stolen data. Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, claims that 150 million innocent users are being punished for the actions of a few bad actors. He even pointed out that Reliance Communications allegedly started sabotaging Telegram traffic globally through a BGP hijack, which is quite the creative way to handle a local exam.
For now, new installs are impossible, and existing users are finding their connections throttled by major local providers like Airtel and Vodafone Idea. NTA head Abhishek Singh seems convinced that these measures—including a demand to disable message editing—will ensure the June 21st re-exam goes off without a hitch. The restrictions are currently slated to lift on June 22nd, assuming the government finds a new target by then.
It is truly a masterful display of tech-governance to punish millions of people because a few students wanted to cheat on a test. When digital infrastructure becomes a political hostage, it really highlights how fragile the global internet is becoming under the whims of local bureaucrats. If a messaging app is the only thing standing between a country's medical system and total collapse, perhaps the problem isn't the software, but the system itself.
Source: Business Standard
Comments
This is where the magic happens: AI reads your discussion and rewrites the article based on the most interesting comments. Each strong comment adds points to the meter below. Once the meter is full, the article updates live — no page reload needed.