by B. R. GOWANI

recently, Rakesh Dalal filed a petition in the Indian Supreme Court

the reason?

one of the Hindu deity he wanted to pray to had lost his head, literally

he said the Vishnu idol was beheaded during Mughal invasions

(but knowledgeable people don’t think Muslims were involved)

Dalal didn’t say whether Lord Vishnu was alive or dead

he wasn’t brave enough like Nietzsche’s Madman who declared:

The Madman.—Have you ever heard of the madman who on a bright morning lighted a lantern and ran to the market-place calling out unceasingly: “I seek God! I seek God!”—As there were many people standing about who did not believe in God, he caused a great deal of amusement. Why! is he lost? said one. Has he strayed away like a child? said another. Or does he keep himself hidden? Is he afraid of us? Has he taken a sea-voyage? Has he emigrated?—the people cried out laughingly, all in a hubbub. The insane man jumped into their midst and transfixed them with his glances. “Where is God gone?” he called out. “I mean to tell you! We have killed him,—you and I! We are all his murderers! … God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! …

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom, The Project Gutenberg eBook, section 125.

he was hopeful that Lord Vishnu could be restored

Dalal asked India’s Supreme Court to repair Lord Vishnu’s idol

he complained that the British colonists in India didn’t do anything

nor did the governments in independent India do anything in 77 years

this, he said, violated worshipers’ basic rights to pray

Chief Justice of India (CJI) Bhushan Ramkrishna Gavai told Rakesh Dalal:

“Go and ask the deity itself to do something now. You say you are a staunch devotee of Lord Vishnu. So go and pray now. It’s an archaeological site and ASI [Archaeological Survey of India] needs to give permission etc. Sorry[.]”

CJI Gavai termed it as a “publicity interest litigation.”

He further added:

“In the meantime, if you are not averse to Shaivism, you can go and worship there… there is a very big linga of Shiva, one of the biggest in Khajuraho.”

in South Asia, of all sentiments, religious ones are the most fragile

they are like goods from a dollar store — easily breakable

there was criticism of Gavai for hurting people’s religious feelings

Gavai: had to issue a statement

“Someone told me the other day that the comments I made were mis-portrayed on social media. I respect all religions.”

“God is dead.” Solicitor General Tushar Mehta defended Gavai:

“We used to learn Newton’s law – for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Now with the advent of social media, we have a new rule – for every action, there is wrong and disproportionate social media overreaction.”

Mehta termed the controversy “unfortunate”

On Oct 4, 2025, Maharashtra Governor Acharya Devvrat launched a book

during the ceremony, the governor infused divinity in Modi:

“Where there is the need for a great man to bring change to a society, such people come there from a divine order … When such people come from a divine order, they carry the power to make the impossible possible. The decisions that Modi ji took in his life cannot be made by ordinary people.”

a free nugget of wisdom for Rakesh Dalal:

according to the Ganesha myth …

goddess Parvati created Ganesha out of clay for her protection ..

when Lord Shiva came to his wife Parvati, Ganesha stopped Shiva

Shiva beheaded Ganesha

but then he restored the head with the head of an elephant

Dalal could restore Lord Vishnu’s head with that of Lord Modi

Dalal could then open up temples devoted to Modi Bhagwan

Modi himself thinks he is the son of God

he could also sell the temple franchises to Modi’s followers …

there are hundreds of millions of them,

many of them are millionaires & billionaires

I promise, I won’t sue him for this brilliant idea

franchises make a lot of money in today’s world …

B. R. Gowani can e reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

THE AGA KHAN UNIVERSITY

‘The Valleys Our Ancestors Chose’?, a captivating documentary and part of the docuseries Voices from the Roof of the World?, has been honoured with the esteemed Mrinal Sen Golden Award for Best Direction in Documentary at the sixth South Asian Short Film Festival.

Director Tazeen Bari’s film gives an eye-opening and touching perspective into the lives of the Kalasha community, an indigenous group residing in the valleys at the foothills of the Hindu

Kush Mountains in Pakistan. Living on the

frontlines of climate change, the film captures how the remaining people of the Kalasha community come face-to-face with the devastating impacts of severe unusual weather conditions. The catastrophic floods in Pakistan in 2015 wreaked havoc on infrastructure, livestock, fields, homes, and livelihoods of thousands, including the Kalasha community, posing an existential threat to Pakistan’s smallest indigenous group. ‘The Valleys Our Ancestors Chose’ documents the community’s annual harvest festival, providing a profound exploration of their resilience and determination in the aftermath of historic floods that devastated much of Pakistan.

Expressing her gratitude for the award, Tazeen said, “I am deeply honoured and grateful for the recognition. This film is a testament to the strength and resilience of the Kalasha community and their unwavering spirit in the face of climate change. Together, we hope to amplify the voices of marginalized communities and contribute to a more sustainable and inclusive future.”

“The record-breaking floods of 2010 and 2022 in Pakistan were two of the most devastating natural disasters that caused widespread damage and displacement. These floods were a warning to South and Central Asia that climate change is a serious and present threat to the region. We need to work together to prepare for the challenges of global warming, by developing innovative local solutions and capacity to support local governments and civil society for relief efforts.” said AKU President Dr Sulaiman Shahabuddin.

Voices from the Roof of the World is a joint initiative of the Aga Khan Development Network agencies: Aga Khan University, Aga Khan Agency for Habitat, Aga Khan Foundation, and the University of Central Asia. The docuseries aims to highlight the challenges faced by communities due to climate change, and local solutions adapted to tackle adversities.  The series aims to create awareness around global warming and inspire government, business and civil society leaders to work on reversing the region’s ecological destruction and conserve nature and wildlife.

‘Shepherds of Naar’, another documentary of the series Voices from the Roof of the World also gained recognition at the festival with the Satyajit Ray Golden Award for Best Documentary.

The Aga Khan University for more (Thanks to a reader.)

by BRIAN PAUL BASSANIO

(For more information on Kalasha people, see Wikipedia.)

Kalasha hymns are the living archives. To hear them is to witness a culture resisting disappearance

In the valleys of the Hindu Kush Mountains in northern Pakistan, the Kalasha tribe resides. Music is an indispensable pillar of their identity, serving as the primary repository of their unwritten history, religious beliefs, and social norms. Hymns are not decoration around their prayer; they are prayer. Their melodies are not secular art but a form of spiritual knowledge, with its own liturgy, purity laws, and prohibitions. It is theology in practice, a living liturgy encoded in melody and rhythm rather than in scripture.

I discovered their liturgical traditions at a workshop called Sur Sajday Ke Roop Hazaar. Among the participants was Imran Kabir, a Kalasha polymath, teacher, writer, and heritage bearer. I explored their music, festivals, and rituals in “The Kalasha Audio-Visual Archive” by Elizabeth Mela-Athanasopoulou and during my conversations with Imran.

The text-based liturgical music traditions in South Asia thrived within major religious civilisations, backed by states and institutions. Kalasha has no canonised scripture. Their chants are their text. The people exist at the margins of a modern Islamic nation-state, where their musical rituals are sometimes tolerated, sometimes commodified, and often threatened.
A journalistic piece, “The Last of the Kalasha,” highlights the existential threats to their cultural practices. They are the smallest minority group in Pakistan, estimated to be in the low thousands. The community experiences pressures such as converting to Islam, attacks on cultural sites, damage to altars and monuments, land encroachment, and socio-political marginalisation. Each passing year, their sound grows thinner. To understand their music today is to listen closely for both what is sung and what risks falling silent.

Gayatri Spivak’s theory of subalternity throws light on their musical marginality. Songs are voices without amplification, audible in valleys but mediated, distorted, or silenced in national discourse. Spivak’s concept of epistemic violence explains how theology in hymns is erased when it is classified as “folklore” or a “tourist attraction.” Representation by outsiders becomes silencing.

They live in three remote valleys: Bumboret, Rumbur, and Birir, in Chitral, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Their language, Kalashamun, and religious traditions set them apart from the neighbouring populations. It comprises about ten major tribes, each with approximately 90 families. Worshippers sing in the morning and evening to welcome and bid farewell to the Lord.

The tribal priest leads a ritual chant “Achambi” on the seventh day when a child is born. This welcomes the child into the community and invokes blessings. Mourners gather to sing lamentation hymns that express both grief and reverence. One of the famous hymns sung during funerals is “Kanaa Bhum,” which tells the story of how a human called “Kanaa” caused the first human death. At weddings, people sing joyful songs. Some share tales of love, while others celebrate tribal traditions. Songs of victory commemorate triumphs over natural disasters or historic conflicts.

The Express Tribune for more

WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE

This webinar examines the historical relationship between Nazism, big business, and the working class—a discussion with urgent contemporary relevance.

Moderated by David North, chairperson of the International Editorial Board of the WSWS, the discussion involves three distinguished historians: David Abraham, Professor Emeritus of Law at the University of Miami and author of The Collapse of the Weimar Republic: Political Economy and Crisis; Jacques Pauwels, Canadian historian and author of Big Business and Hitler; and Mario Kessler, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam, Germany, whose scholarship focuses on the German Communist Party and European labor movements. Also participating is Christoph Vandreier, chairman of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei in Germany.

On October 16, 2025, the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) hosted a webinar examining the historical relationship between Nazism, big business and the working class—a discussion with urgent contemporary relevance. 

The discussion was chaired by David North, chairperson of the International Editorial Board of the WSWS and of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States. He was joined by three distinguished historians: David Abraham, professor emeritus of law at the University of Miami and author of The Collapse of the Weimar Republic: Political Economy and Crisis; Jacques Pauwels, Canadian historian and author of Big Business and Hitler; and Mario Kessler, senior fellow at the Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam, Germany, whose scholarship focuses on the German Communist Party and European labor movements.

The webinar opened with North recounting the vicious academic campaign that destroyed Abraham’s career as a historian in the 1980s. After publishing his Marxist analysis of how conflicts within German capitalism facilitated Hitler’s rise, Abraham faced attacks from conservative historians Gerald Feldman and Henry Ashby Turner, who accused him of fraud. Abraham explained that the attack stemmed from “ideological animus, personal pique, and intellectual know-nothingism.”

In the discussion, Jacques Pauwels attacked the claim that Hitler’s rise was accidental or unconnected to capitalist interests. “Hitler’s so-called capture of power was merely a transfer or surrender of power,” he stated. “Without the financial and other support of industry and finance, in other words, big business, the rest of the German power elite, Hitler could never have risen to supremacy.” Pauwels described fascism as “the stick of capitalism, not to be used at all times, but certainly always ready behind the door.”

Mario Kessler addressed Hitler’s mobilization of the middle classes while preventing their left-wing radicalization toward socialism. He noted that the Nazi Party “never succeeded in making consistent inroads into the working class” and “never achieved an absolute majority of the votes” in any Weimar election. Hitler’s function was to “collect the votes of the unemployed people, the resentment of all who considered themselves losers of what was called the system.” Kessler stressed that “before Hitler and the German fascists could annihilate the Jews, they had to destroy the German and European labor movement.”

Pauwels demolished the myth that Hitler improved workers’ living conditions, documenting how “the German workers’ real wages fell dramatically under Nazi rule while corporate profits soared.” He revealed that work accidents and illnesses increased from 930,000 cases in 1933 to 2.2 million in 1939, calling Nazi policy “a high profit, low wage kind of policy.” The first concentration camp at Dachau was established not primarily for Jews but because “regular prisons were full of political prisoners, mostly social democrats and communists.”

WSWS for more

Human Rights Council

Fifty-ninth session

16 June–11 July 2025

Agenda item 7: Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories

FROM ECONOMY OF OCCUPATION TO ECONOMY OF GENOCIDE

Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967*, **

Summary

This report investigates the corporate machinery sustaining Israel’s settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territory. While political leaders and governments shirk their obligations, far too many corporate entities have profited from Israel’s economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now, genocide. The complicity exposed by this report is just the tip of the iceberg; ending it will not happen without holding the private sector accountable, including its executives. International law recognizes varying degrees of responsibility – each requiring scrutiny and accountability, particularly in this case, where a people’s self-determination and very existence are at stake. This is a necessary step to end the genocide and dismantle the global system that has allowed it.

I. Introduction

1. Colonial endeavours and their associated genocides have historically been driven and enabled by the corporate sector.^[1] Commercial interests have contributed to the dispossession of Indigenous people and lands^[2] – a mode of domination known as “colonial racial capitalism”.^[3] The same is true of Israeli colonization of Palestinian lands,^[4] its expansion into the occupied Palestinian territory and its institutionalization of a regime of settler-colonial apartheid.^[5] After denying Palestinian self-determination for decades, Israel is now imperilling the very existence of the Palestinian people in Palestine.
2. The role of corporate entities in sustaining Israel’s illegal occupation and ongoing genocidal campaign in Gaza is the subject of this investigation, which focuses on how corporate interests underpin Israeli settler-colonial the twofold logic of displacement and replacement aimed at dispossessing and erasing Palestinians from their lands. It discusses corporate entities in various sectors: arms manufacturers, tech firms, building and construction companies, extractive and service industries, banks, pension funds, insurers, universities and charities. These entities enable the denial of self-determination and other structural violations in the occupied Palestinian territory, including occupation, annexation and crimes of apartheid and genocide, as well as a long list of ancillary crimes and human rights violations, from discrimination, wanton destruction, forced displacement and pillage, to extrajudicial killing and starvation.
3. Had proper human rights due diligence been undertaken, corporate entities would have long ago disengaged from Israeli occupation. Instead, post-October 2023, corporate actors have contributed to the acceleration of the displacement-replacement process throughout the military campaign that has pulverized Gaza and displaced the largest number of Palestinians in the West Bank since 1967.^[6]
4. While it is impossible to fully capture the scale and extent of decades of corporate connivance in the exploitation of the occupied Palestinian territory, this report exposes the integration of the economies of settler-colonial occupation and genocide. It calls for accountability for corporate entities and their executives at both domestic and international levels: commercial endeavours enabling and profiting from the obliteration of innocent people’s lives must cease. Corporate entities must refuse to be complicit in human rights violations and international crimes or be held to account.

II. Methodology

1. “Corporate entities” in this report refers to business enterprises, multinational corporations, for-profit and not-for-profit entities, whether private, public or State-owned.^[7] Corporate responsibility applies regardless of the size, sector, operational context, ownership and structure of the entity.^[8]
2. The report builds on extensive literature, especially by civil society^[9] and by the Working Group on Business and Human Rights, on how Israel has created and maintained its own economy through the occupation, and a captive economy for the Palestinians.
3. It also builds upon and situates within the broader matrix of Israel’s unlawful occupation, the database established by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), pursuant to Human Rights Council resolutions 31/36 and 53/25. The “UN Database” lists only business enterprises that have “directly and indirectly enabled, facilitated and profited from the construction and growth of the settlements”.^[10]
4. The Special Rapporteur developed a database of 1000 corporate entities from the unprecedented 200+ submissions received, following her call for input when preparing this investigation.^[11] This helped map how corporate entities worldwide have been implicated in human rights violations and international crimes in the occupied Palestinian territory. Over 45 entities named in the report have been duly informed of the facts that led the Special Rapporteur to formulate a series of allegations: 15 replied. The complex web of corporate structures – and the often obscured links between parents and subsidiaries, franchises, joint ventures, licencees, etc. – implicates many more. The investigation behind this report demonstrates the lengths to which corporations will go to conceal their complicity.^[12]
5. The report is complemented by an annex presenting the relevant legal framework.

III. Legal context

1. The law governing corporate responsibility has deep roots in the historic relationship between violent dispossession and private power, and the legacy of corporate collusion with settler-colonialism and racial segregation.^[13]
2. Early charter companies, granted broad State-like powers, gradually evolved into private “limited liability” corporations as intercolonial trade grew vital to European economies.^[14] Colonial powers continued to rely on these relationships to outsource, obscure and avoid accountability for the dispossession and enslavement of Indigenous peoples and the expropriation of their resources.^[15] Corporations have not only inherited the benefits of this legal veil of separation, but have also emerged as shapers of international law.^[16]
3. Today, some corporate conglomerates exceed the GDP of sovereign States.^[17] Sometimes wielding more power – political, economic and discursive – than States themselves, corporations enjoy increasing recognition as rights-holders, with still insufficient corresponding obligations. The asymmetry of immense power without sufficiently justiciable accountability exposes a fundamental global governance gap.
4. Corporations and their home States – primarily Global Minority States – continue to exploit structural inequalities rooted in colonial dispossession.^[18] Meanwhile, weaker regulatory systems in formerly colonized States, and development and investment imperatives mean corporations often evade accountability.^[19]
5. Nevertheless, important precedents exist. The post-Holocaust Industrialists’ Trials laid the groundwork for recognizing the international criminal responsibility of corporate executives for participation in international crimes.^[20] By addressing corporate complicity in apartheid, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission helped shape corporate responsibility for human rights violations.^[21] Increasing domestic and international litigation signal a growing trend toward corporate accountability.^[22]
6. The case of Palestine further tests international standards.

United Nations for more

by HAFIZ RASHID

Stephen Miller’s wife went on Piers Morgan’s show, and tried to call the other guests racist for attacking her.

“SICK Terrorist Sympathizer!” Randy Fine Wants Mamdani DEPORTED | With Katie Miller & Cenk Uygur

Katie Miller, the wife of Trump adviser Stephen Miller, appeared on Piers Morgan’s YouTube show and melted down after other panelists challenged her lies. 

Miller, a former administration staffer herself, was part of a panel that included left-wing commentator Cenk Uygur, fitness influencer Jillian Michaels, and Palestinian American analyst Omar Baddar to discuss New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s comments on Islamophobia in the U.S. But upon having her lies called out, Miller attacked the other panelists, particularly Uygur, and accused them of antisemitism. 

“Why is it that every time someone wants to criticize Mamdani, it immediately comes back to the Jews and the anti-Israel movement instead of actually talking about his viewpoints?” Miller asked, her voice raised. 

“Nobody said Jews. You just said it. You always do that. We say Israel, you say Jews. We say Israel as a government. Please don’t make it about Jewish Americans,” Uygur responded, explaining that he believes that Israel should be a safe haven for Jewish people within its 1967 borders, without seizing the West Bank from the Palestinians. 

“You’re totally lying—it’s very normal for a Miller to be completely and utterly lying,” Uygur added, saying to Miller, “You and your husband are supposed to be working for America. Not for Israel. I think you’re betraying this country.” 

This set Miller off. 

“Quite frankly, I’m really sick and tired of this racist bigoted rhetoric that can comes from people like you against my husband, against my family, and my children. I am raising Jewish children in this country—” Miller shot back, before Uygur said incredulously, “Who brought your children into this? What a weirdo.” 

Stephen Miller’s wife, Katie Miller — now desperate for media attention — absolutely implodes on Piers Morgan’s show.

Humiliating. pic.twitter.com/EsTcwRNEYl— Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) October 29, 2025

Miller even stooped to threatening Uygur’s immigration status, telling him to “check his citizenship application.”  

New Republic for more

by BEN BURGIS

Zohran Mamdani’s historic mayoral victory marks a new chapter for democratic socialism in America. Like Bernie Sanders before him, he’s shown that relentless focus on a unifying message of economic justice can win against establishment sabotage.

None of it worked. The months of smears. The months of sabotage from the Democratic establishment. The absurd accusations of antisemitism. The even more absurd insinuations that Zohran Mamdani is a secret Islamic fundamentalist plotting to impose Sharia law on the Big Apple.

Voters saw through all of it. They were persuaded by his message of turning the page on billionaire-backed policies and making New York City more affordable for the working class. And they handed him a decisive victory.

This momentous victory wouldn’t have happened if Bernie Sanders hadn’t laid the groundwork during his two historic runs for president, giving birth to the revitalized, millennial-led democratic socialist movement out of which Zohran comes. Bernie, too, began his political career as a local mayor, and he seems to see much of himself in Mamdani.

After the mayoral primary, when the election would have been all but over if the rules of normal politics had been followed (instead of former governor Andrew Cuomo throwing the “vote blue no matter who” rulebook out the window and running as an independent), Sanders emerged as Mamdani’s most outspoken supporter on the national stage.

Of course, all of the democratic socialist elected officials who have won office in recent years are, in a sense, following in Bernie’s footsteps. Members of the congressional “Squad,” for example, support universalist economic redistribution and embrace the “democratic socialist” label Bernie dusted off in his first run for president, just two years before the first of the “Berniecrats” were elected.

But Zohran is Bernie’s heir in particular ways. First, he is, to a unique extent, a product of the post-Bernie “millennial left.” He was deeply involved in its main organization, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), for years before he ran for office.

In high-profile races, DSA branches have often supported candidates with roots entirely outside the group. But Mamdani is a product of New York City DSA (NYC-DSA) and the broader culture of New York City socialism. This even led to a tedious mini-scandal during the campaign about his history of advocating for “socializing the means of production,” revealing the strong influence of the organization’s political philosophy on his development. (Critics seem completely unaware of how many major cities in liberal capitalist nations have been successfully governed by political parties that had such socialization as the long-term horizon of their politics.)

The second sense in which Zohran is Sanders’s heir is even more interesting.

One of Bernie’s greatest strengths as a left-wing communicator has always been that, while he unapologetically holds straight-down-the-line progressive positions on social policy issues, he’s relentlessly focused on broadly appealing calls for universalist economic redistribution. Wake him up in the middle of the night, and the first words out of his mouth might well be, “This is the only major country on earth that doesn’t guarantee health care as a right.”

Jacobin for more

by YUVAL ABRAHAM

To secure the lucrative Project Nimbus contract, the tech giants agreed to disregard their own terms of service and sidestep legal orders by tipping Israel off if a foreign court demands its data, a joint investigation reveals.

In 2021, Google and Amazon signed a $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government to provide it with advanced cloud computing and AI services — tools that were used during Israel’s two-year onslaught on the Gaza Strip. Details of the lucrative contract, known as Project Nimbus, were kept under wraps. 

But an investigation by +972 Magazine, Local Call, and The Guardian can now reveal that Google and Amazon submitted to highly unorthodox “controls” that Israel inserted into the deal, in anticipation of legal challenges over its use of the technology in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

Leaked Israeli Finance Ministry documents obtained by The Guardian — including a finalized version of the contract — and sources familiar with the negotiations reveal two stringent demands that Israel imposed on the tech giants as part of the deal. The first prohibits Google and Amazon from restricting how Israel uses their products, even if this use breaches their terms of service. The second obliges the companies to secretly notify Israel if a foreign court orders them to hand over the country’s data stored on their cloud platforms, effectively sidestepping their legal obligations. 

Running for an initial seven years with the possibility of extension, Project Nimbus was designed to enable Israel to transfer vast quantities of data belonging to its government agencies, security services, and military units onto the two companies’ cloud servers: Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform. But even two years before October 7, Israeli officials drafting the contract had already anticipated the potential for legal cases to be brought against Google and Amazon regarding the use of their technology in the occupied territories.

One scenario that particularly concerned officials was if the companies were ordered by a court in one of their countries of operation to hand over Israel’s data to police, prosecutors, or security agencies to assist with an investigation — if, for example, Israel’s use of their products were linked to human rights abuses against Palestinians. 

The CLOUD Act (2018) allows American law enforcement agencies to compel U.S.-based cloud providers to hand over data, even if it is stored on servers abroad; in the European Union, due diligence laws can require companies to identify and address human rights violations in their global supply chains, and courts may intervene if these obligations are not met.

Crucially, companies receiving an order to hand over data are often gagged by the court or law enforcement agency from disclosing details of the request to the affected customer. To address this perceived vulnerability, the documents reveal, Israeli officials demanded a clause in the contract requiring the companies to covertly warn Israel if ever they were forced to surrender its data but were prohibited by law from revealing this fact.

According to The Guardian, this signaling is carried out through a secret code — part of an arrangement that would become known as the “winking mechanism,” but referred to in the contract as “special compensation” — by which the companies are obliged to send the Israeli government four-digit payments in Israeli shekels (NIS) corresponding to the relevant country’s international dialing code followed by zeros. 

For example, if Google or Amazon were compelled to share data with U.S. authorities (dialing code +1) and were barred from revealing that action by a U.S. court, they would transfer NIS 1,000 to Israel. If a similar request were to occur in Italy (dialing code +39), they would instead send NIS 3,900. The contract states that these payments must be made “within 24 hours of the information being transferred.”

972Mag for more

by SUSHANT KUMAR

If we are serious about “Digital India,” it must be our digital India, not a data colony wrapped in tricolour branding.

Across the world, the AI story is turning into one of anxiety – layoffs, restructuring, shrinking human roles. Every other week, Big Tech firms announce massive layoffs – Amazon is set to cut 30,000 jobs, owing mainly to efficiencies gained from AI, while Meta has cut around 600 roles from its superintelligence team. Back in June 2025, Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy openly admitted that generative AI will “reduce” corporate headcount as automation scales.

But here in India, the same technology is being packaged as our next big leap forward. The irony is hard to miss. In a country still struggling for labour-intensive growth and equitable jobs, we’re celebrating automation as salvation.

The mirage of Google’s AI hub in Vizag

When Google announced its AI Hub in Visakhapatnam earlier this October, the press releases were drenched in optimism – “empowering India’s future,” “driving innovation,” “AI for Bharat.” Yet beneath that glow lies a more familiar script: a pattern of extraction and dependency that the Global South has seen for centuries.

Scholars Nick Couldry and Ulises Mejias call it data colonialism – the extraction of human life as digital raw material for profit. India’s new AI hubs risk becoming exactly that: vast data pipelines feeding Big Tech’s global models. The data of Indian citizens, institutions, and public systems will power algorithms refined and monetised elsewhere. The profits and patents will stay in the global North.

We’re told this is a partnership. But when the chips, servers, and cloud infrastructure are all imported, when the very code is written elsewhere, what kind of sovereignty is that? It feels uncomfortably close to the old colonial pattern: resources flowing outward, decision-making flowing upward.

Digital sovereignty or digital dependence?

The government’s rhetoric of “AI for Bharat” and “digital sovereignty” sounds bold, but the structural reality undercuts it. India still imports almost all high-end semiconductor hardware and relies on foreign cloud services for its data storage. Public sector digitization projects often run on private corporate clouds and opaque procurement contracts. Data governance frameworks remain weak, with limited public oversight.

So, while we speak of independence, we remain tethered to the architectures of foreign firms. What we’re building is not sovereignty, it is dependence dressed up in nationalist language.

The hidden environmental costs

AI hubs also come with physical costs rarely discussed in the hype. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), global data centres consumed about 415 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2024 – around 1.5% of total global demand – and could reach 945 TWh by 2030. The World Economic Forum estimates a 1 MW data centre can consume up to 25.5 million litres of water annually just for cooling, while global water use from data infrastructure could cross a trillion litres by 2030.

The Wire for more