India cuts internet for 27M people amid search for fugitive | Hacker News Reader

India cuts internet for 27M people amid search for fugitive

washingtonpost.com

35 pointsthunderbong10 comments

India is also one of the few notable states that prohibit most satellite services so you couldn't get around this by using those either. Even bringing a sat phone as a tourist can get you in serious trouble. Only Inmarsat is allowed as far as I remember.

How far are we allowed to go in search for cure?

Until the cure becomes worse than the disease.

In this case, the cure is much worse than thr disease

The fugitive is the leader of the Khalistan-independance movement, eventho the majority lies in Pakistan. Yet, they want to secede from India. There are numerous reports he's terrorist being financed by Pakistan. I hope India adopts doesn't go easy on these terrorists.

https://archive.ph/T1ogx

And the country uses internet for banking. I am imagining a bank run due to cutting off the internet.

Not sure what to make of that statement, but the majority of people and shops prefer cash. Yes we have instant payment apps, but shops hate them. Also banking is not exclusively online, But, cutting off access is still bad.

Not sure which shops, in what okay of the country you are talking about.

I am a resident of a small metro called. Bengaluru, where almost every shop run by a person who is under the age of 50 accepts UPI.

If I don't have exact change, my local bodega owner tells me to just UPI Maadi. (Ofcourse, it is anecdotal, and on occasion I have had to rustle up cash to pay the rare shopkeeper who doesn't have UPI yet).

I mean, come on, you are in the tech hub of India and very likely most of the shops you go to are located in richer areas or areas with a higher number of tech people. I don't know about how popular UPI is in India but your anecdote doesn't really say how it is like in the rest of India.

Why the lie? Bengaluru is a small metro? An year ago was in Hyderabad also Delhi and many shop keepers and auto guys refused PayTM/PhonePe. Small businesses don't like cash in accounts, since many of them run on daily loans, and daily loan vendors generally don't like paying taxes on that amount so they only take cash. And those business owners need cash to pay back. There are a lot of other hurdles, which I don't want to post because it's off-topic. But no The adoption isn't a majority. And cash is still king.

That was supposed to be a sarcastic understatement, but it appears to have fallen flat.

At any rate, let me relate my experience living a reasonably ordinary day: 6 AM buy milk from nandini parlour near the park, payment using UPI 7AM take bus to college/work: payment via UPI (as i have a digital bus pass) 8AM morning coffee at cafe: payment UPI 12 PM lunch, also UPI 6 PM groceries for the night/breakfast, payment UPI, at a small roadside vendor.

I do concede that my life is rather privileged, and the areas i go around in are not very high rent.

This year, when i went on a trip to coastal Karnataka, i used all of ~700 INR in the form of cash, ~5% of my trip budget for 4. Of that 700, only 200 went towards paying vendors. The rest went towards donations in temples.

The areas i travelled to however, were not the very touristy places, but rather more ordinary places, with reasonable hotels.

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