India and Issues in Global Governance with Reference to Internet Governance

Abstract

The unique characteristics of the Internet—its openness, its global interconnectedness, its decentralized nature and the interrelationships among the layers that comprise it—have made it remarkably resistant to traditional tools of state governance. India is among such state actors which prefer a model of governance in which national governments serve as essential gatekeepers to global institutions, and Inter-Governmental Organizations (IGOs) remain the key venue for negotiations on complex problems like Internet. However, the role of international organizations, considered so far as settled sites of global governance, is faced with the task of navigating through a range of competing interests, namely governmental sensitivities regarding security and sovereignty, the commercial interests of private corporations (like the US-based ICANN) as also the concerns of civil society and user groups across the world. The 2005 World Summit on the Information Society witnessed a divisive debate about appropriate models—some privileging the place of intergovernmental bodies, while others promoting the role of non-governmental stakeholders—for regulating the Internet and the domain names system. Notwithstanding inconsistencies, India joined other emerging countries both in 2011 and 2014 negotiations to support creation of a suitable mechanism within the UN system. At the latter event in Sao Paulo, India outlined its detailed considerations for creating an intergovernmental body that would be committed to both the primacy of state sovereignty and to developing the capacities of the disadvantaged developing countries. The Western critics, nevertheless, have found it paradoxical that despite being a democratic and open society, India prefers government-led multilateral, rather than multi-stakeholder, approach to Internet governance.