Because heaven forbid the masses have Internet access that their government doesn't have the means to censor or surveil.
Many countries (the US included) regulate/license even receive-only satellite devices.
It's not for surveillance or censorship reasons, it's for interference prevention reasons. If they didn't regulate ground stations, space would be a wild wild west of people beaming whatever frequencies, at whatever signal strengths, they wanted.
Bit of history/trivia: many cell phones used to not support GLONASS satellite fixes within US territories because first telecom companies "forgot" to file the necessary paperwork with the FCC to get GPS chips in phones licensed for GLONASS reception. Then when they did, the FCC sat on the paperwork for no particularly good reason.
Used to be you could enjoy a GPS/GLONASS/Galileo satellite position fix on a cross-atlantic flight and watch as your fix dropped to just GPS the second you crossed into US territory.
What they Indian government is upset about is that they don't also get a chance to implement surveillance over their own people.
That, and bribes. They want their fair share.
If Sri Lanka also doesn't allow ground stations, that would make it pretty hard to cover southern India.
Even when there's orbital routing, there's likely capacity limits.
If Pakistan doesn't block ground stations, it may be a good solution for people in Jammu and Kashmir to get around the frequent government telecommunications shutdowns; assuming lax enforcement.
[1] https://m.economictimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/tmc-cla...
You can access a website without that website being somehow licensed to “operate” in your country. You should be able to talk to Starlink equipment (which is in space and outside of India’s jurisdiction) without them being licensed in India.
A) Starlink will have lots of Indian ground infrastructure once approved
B) Starlink will be highly compliant with nation state laws
C) Starlink will comply with filtering requests made by nation states when the revenue is lucrative enough
but this is a moot argument, Elon is interested in funding Mars missions, he will comply with Indian censorship/regulations because there’s no profit without their blessing.
Developed countries play the free market game as long as they are the mercantilist in the room.