Page 132 - From Bombay to Bollywoord The Making of a Global Media Industri

Dot-Coms and the Making of an Overseas Territory >> 119

While VSNL controlled the gateways for international connectivity and
remained the sole service provider for Internet access in India until 1998,
the government and the Department of Telecommunications were under
constant pressure from other state-regulated bodies like the NIC, industry
leaders in the software sector, and even political leaders like the Chief Min-
11
ister of Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu. Following a highly publi-
cized ninety-minute discussion held as part of an “IT India” convention in
1996, during which VSNL was criticized for poor services, tariff structure,
and practices designed to extend its monopoly, the government set up a
committee to examine various aspects of privatization of Internet services.
The recommendations of the Jalan Committee were announced in Novem-
ber 1997 and by November 1998, the BJP-led government announced that
licenses for private sector Internet Service Providers (ISPs) would be issued
and that private ISPs would be allowed to bring in foreign equity up to 49
12
percent. In another policy decision made in 1999, the government cleared
guidelines for setting up private gateways for connectivity, thus breaking up
13
VSNL’s monopoly on international gateway connectivity as well. These pol-
icy changes paved the way for the entry of private ISPs such as Satyam Info-
way, Dishnet, and Bharti-BT (British Telecom), and led to a gradual increase
in the number of Internet users in India.
Sundaram contends that this phase of cyberculture in India, defined by
state-controlled networks such as NICNET and VSNL, engendered a neo-
nationalist and elite “cyberpublic” comprised of citizens who routinely
embarked on journeys beyond the national “Border.” He suggests that this
process of deterritorialization marks an important phase in the redefinition
of the nationalist imaginary—journeys through cyberspace were not only
an opportunity for thousands of Indians to encounter the West, but also to
rethink the spatial and temporal boundaries of the nation. Situating this shift
in imagination in relation to macrostructural changes during the early 1990s
in favor of free market economic reforms and the subsequent reconfigura-
tion of the framework for governance and national development, Sundaram
also points out that this elite cyberpublic had two sides to it. On the one
hand, elite Indians were in a position to “travel” beyond the old “national-
ist grid” that was defined in terms of physical territory. At the same time,
“Indian” cyberculture was also being defined by the “creation of a naturalized
space of ‘India’ on the Web, initiated largely by Indians in the diaspora.” 14
Thus, in this new nationalist imagination, the Non-Resident Indian was no
longer obliged to return “home”—s/he could be at home in cyberspace.
While Sundaram’s analysis helps us understand how virtual journeys com-
plicated the borders of national identity and notions of citizenship, it does