 Hello and let's talk about the ban on 59 Chinese apps including TikTok. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology released a statement on this yesterday evening. According to the government, this was a targeted move to ensure the safety and sovereignty of the Indian cyberspace. The ministry's statement said that it received complaints of certain apps and to quote them, stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users' data in an unauthorized manner to servers outside India. The ministry goes on to claim that this is a risk to the country's sovereignty and integrity before announcing the ban. Among the apps banned is TikTok, which reportedly has close to 120 million users in India. Some of the other apps such as Share It and UC browser also have over 100 million users as users as per media reports. But the larger quest is regarding the relevance of this move. In previous episodes, we have examined how the India-China economic relationship is quite deep and how jingoistic calls for boycott make no real sense. In fact, some of the giant tech firms which form part of our daily life and whose services provide us food and transport have Chinese investment, for instance. And of course, there's also the other question of whether this kind of gesture even serves any purpose in resolving disputes with China. One thing is certain, it did please certain sections of the media and hard-core supporters of the government who were struggling a bit at the confused response of the government to recent incidents on the line of actual control. We talked to journalists on India Chakravarty to get a sense of some of the economic implications of the ban. Thank you, thank you for joining us. So we see that 59 apps have been banned. There's been a lot of talk about where the government notification says it's about security, it's about data not being as the new data of millions of users not being safe. So what's your initial take on the move? Well, you know, of course, there should have been some move against many of these apps in any case because they're not secure. So it's not only a question of whether the Chinese government has access to this data. There is no reason for these companies to have access to our data in any case. Now, questions have been raised about TikTok, not only in India, but also in the West, because there is a sense that the data TikTok collects can be accessed by the Chinese government. I understand TikTok has been given a chance to explain its position. And they're probably meeting TikTok India's meeting ministry officials today, Indian government officials today to explain that they do not have never shared Indian data and they will not share Indian data even if they're asked to. But obviously the timing is essentially about sending a message. And in the absence of, you know, military options, other diplomatic options, these are these are the minimal messages that can be sent to be honest. And for the Modi government, this is a great message to send because it will be amplified by Godi media and turned into some sort of a surgical strike. We saw what happened on some channels last night. Right, right, right. On the other hand, it is true that nonetheless, the same argument can be made against almost all the other apps we use on a day-to-day basis. Google, Facebook, the same argument stands. Absolutely. In fact, Google, Facebook, there have been questions about Google's proximity to the American government, to American intelligence agencies. And this has not been raised by outsiders, but by Americans themselves and Facebook, etc. All this data is available and can be tapped by various governments. And who's going to stop them from tapping it? So this question can be raised for every single country. The question is that of course, whether strategically, geopolitically, who are you aligned with? In the, you know, it's increasingly moving from a unipolar world post 1989 back to a kind of bipolar world. It'll take some time. And probably none of the established developed countries or even developing countries are going to align with China. But there are, China has significant control influence in Africa. It has significant influence in the subcontinent today, especially Nepal, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. So it is ultimately a question of how you're going to make alliances. Whether, you know, now of the 59 apps, frankly, maybe I'm not an app user and the young people who use Android phones probably have more understanding of what these apps are. But other than TikTok, I'm not familiar with most of these apps, to be honest, right? There are other Chinese apps which have not been banned. There's a lot. There are many Indians app with heavy Chinese investment, which have not been banned. Okay, you could say that the data is not being controlled by China. But who knows? Who knows all this, right? So the something like TikTok, for instance, which is the most probably most famous of these apps has about, I think, 120 million active users in India right now. And 120 million active users, that's a huge number of active users. If you think about it, that is a 10%, 8, 9% of India's population. And it is essentially you, I don't know Prashant, have you ever been on TikTok in your life? I watched the videos, but obviously nothing, nothing. No, no, but on the app or the videos are forwarded outside. I've been tracking this app for the last few months, actually, to see its political content. Its political content is heavily right-wing. And it is a great app for pushing a lot of kind of ideas to the youth. It had a, it was used heavily during Kaur Yatra, during the Yodhya, you know, the Babri Masjid case, a lot of it was coming small videos about how it is important for Hindus to have the Mandir there and stuff like that. So it is a space where the lower middle class find a way to become famous in 10, 15 minutes, right? Not 10, 15 minutes, 10, 15 seconds, actually. So it's about a, and it is extremely popular amongst, I would say, those who are formerly literate, but actually cannot redirect. So it has a huge base. And it's very popular amongst people like me also. I love to watch those videos. But it is, it has 120 million users. And already, as soon as it was banned, I went on TikTok to see what is happening. And most popular TikTok artists were putting out videos immediately and saying, follow me on Instagram. So they, of course, if you, as far as I understand, if you have the app already on your phone, it's not disappearing. It's not available for new downloads. So TikTok as a company had hope to get about 100 crore in revenue in the July to September, which is from the latest report that I read, the July to September quarter in 2020. It is not a huge amount for TikTok, the overall company, but its most active downloads are in India. Its revenues are mostly US and China driven. So the question is that, will TikTok be affected badly by this? Yes, in terms of its popularity, but not immediately in terms of revenue. So it's not really what many, I mean, I'm seeing many newspaper reports saying that it's really going to hit Chinese companies hard. It is going to affect a few Chinese companies. But is India a great revenue space? I don't think so. Is it going to affect advertising for some Indian companies? Many Indian companies have actually used TikTok for advertising. You have these advertisements and also product placements. TikTok influencers, viral TikTok stars, often use their space to produce, so place product. So here's a platform that is going now. The question is how important is this? Obviously, it is, it is virtually, you know, it's nothing. Now, the question is, can the Indian government really follow it up with certain other moves to, in the economy? We have discussed this in the past. It's very difficult given India's dependence in various sectors in terms of input. You know, you will see people saying boycott, I threw out my Chinese product and I bought this Indian product, not knowing that the Indian product is actually made in China. It's just the brand which is made in India. Or at least 60, 70% of what's inside is actually made in China, because China sells 25% of all inputs in the world. So it's not that easy. Is China going to be affected dramatically by the disappearance of TikTok? I am one of those, without being a conspiracy theorist, who does believe that all apps like these are security issues, right? That security issue could be a national security issue. It could be a personal privacy issue. And as you rightly pointed out, it's not only about Chinese apps. That's true for all apps that are coming out of the US. So in this context, also, there's a lot of talk about, say, this is going to benefit the local economy in terms of certain companies, which might rise to take its place. But does that look really like a possibility? I think there are a few Indian social media companies which have some kind of traction. I've really forgotten the names of them. I downloaded one of them to check it. It's very boring. It's a meme sharing platform. You need significant amount of bandwidth and server space to host so much video. It's not that easy to provide that space. But yes, I think the biggest, which is very clear, the advantage is to Instagram. I don't know who owns Instagram. It's either Facebook or Facebook, right? So the immediate advantage is actually face Instagram, because you go to TikTok right now. Every TikTok artist is saying, you can watch me on Instagram. Right. You can watch. There's a guy called something Oye Indori, who does these pranks on the road. And I watch him. I don't have a TikTok account, but it comes up on my homepage all the time, probably because I watch it the most. And I saw Oye Indori saying that, please go to my Instagram account immediately. Many people, one guy said, I have 1.7 million TikTok followers. At least one lack of them, please follow me on Instagram. Instagram is definitely going to be the immediate gain. Now, I'm not that familiar with Instagram, whether that becomes the same space or not. I don't know. That's the point. So I don't think Indian companies are going to gain. Unless there's a huge patriotic search, where people say, I'm going to use this Indian app. And, you know, that those things last for a short time. I remember case of Ramaniam, who was, I think Defense Secretary at one time, and he was I used to work with him in Times of India. He was, he was a consulting editor in Times of India as well. He told us about how when he was in Japan, his people, Japanese people would line up to buy very expensive Japanese goods, but not by foreign goods, which were cheaper and better. So it depends on, you know, there are moments of extreme nationalism, jingoism, when people will move towards that. But you know, if the experience is not the same, it's not going to last for that long. So I don't know whether Indian companies are going to gain from it. Maybe there will be a bit of a push for which Indian companies and Indian company, think of ATM, think of, you know, Flipkart, think of all these companies, think of all the apps that we use. Most of them have foreign investments. Most of them have Chinese investment, which is Alibaba, Tencent and, you know, the big VCs, which operate. So nothing seems to have been done to those. Exactly. So ultimately, it's mainly, what do you call an instance, like you said, in some ways, more of a symbolic instance, a bit of jingoism, which has just been amplified by the media considerably. Exactly. If the media, if the media were, you know, if you think about it, Chomsky's, you know, manufacturing of consent was written decades ago. So in the US, the media has been to a certain extent, compliant, right? And whenever it comes to issues of internal security, or even with the government. So the question is, maybe we built up an idea of a media which never existed. I don't know. But the current media, the current mainstream media, the current media, which in India, which has money to push its message forward, that media is completely a government arm. It's an arm of the state. It's an ideological state apparatus of the most extreme kind that one can see. So in that sense, I would say that it is not that difficult to build up a temporary jingoistic sense. Because, you know, I saw on WhatsApp, one of my relatives said that I have thrown away my Oppo phone and I'm buying some Samsung made in India. So, which is not in made in India, as we know. Thank you so much for talking to us. Thank you. That's all we have in this episode. Let's talk to you back tomorrow with major news developments from across the country. Until then, keep watching NewsClick.