Eric Schmidt tells India to stop policing internet, focus on innovation

Google chairman Eric Schmidt has told India that it needs to stop censoring the web and instead make innovation a priority.

In an editorial for the Times of India, Schmidt says that the government needs to focus its efforts away from trying to censor the likes of Google, Facebook and Twitter and instead focus on how innovation can help local businesses in the country.

Google has confirmed that Schmidt is in India as he prepares to speak at The Guardian’s Big Tent Activate India event in New Delhi on 21 March.

His comments address, in particular, the fact that the government tried to censor social networks for posting content that was offensive to Indian culture in early 2012. Later that year, it went after Twitter over what it saw as a refusal to block inflammatory messages in the volatile North Western part of the country.

According to Schmidt, India may just have this one chance to do something proactive with the surge in the world’s online population the country is expected to provide.

Almost one billion of [the world’s new internet users in the next ten years] will come online in India. They will have different needs from people online today and expect different things from the internet. Now is the moment for India to decide what kind of internet it wants for them: an open internet that benefits all or a highly regulated one that inhibits innovation.

The past 10 years show that the safest economic, social and political bet is on openness. Where there is a free and open Web, where there is unbridled technological progress, where information can be disseminated and consumed freely, society flourishes.

By keeping the internet open, he says, India will be able to build on the innovations it already has — like Kanaja, an encyclopedic portal devoted to compiling all the cultural resources in Kannada — which make the internet a richer place.

The most striking Indian internet innovations won’t come from big institutions or companies moving online, however. They will come from Indians solving local problems. We know that India’s internet infrastructure allows Indian engineers to solve the problems of small businesses in other countries. If India plays its cards right, we’ll soon see Indian engineers and Indian small businesses tackling Indian problems first, then exporting the solutions that work best.

This kind of openness, tied with a healthy attitude toward innovation, could see serious growth in the Indian economy. As he did on his visit to North Korea, Schmidt says that a freer internet also has massive benefits for society:

India could reap a huge dividend from the internet’s growth — the same one other countries have realized, or are about to. In all the places I’ve traveled to, I’ve yet to see a country whose situation worsened with the arrival of the internet.