India’s government follows Bangladesh’s in policing social media

MUSHTAQ AHMED, a Bangladeshi writer, knew the risk he was taking. To attack his government’s handling of covid-19, not least by likening the health minister to a cockroach, as he did on Facebook last spring, was to challenge the Digital Security Act. Passed in 2018 by the thin-skinned regime of Sheikh Hasina Wajed, now in her fourth term as prime minister, the law penalises such vague crimes as “creating confusion” and “tarnishing the image of the country”.  Mr Ahmed was one of some 450 people arrested under the law last year. Even so, the 54-year-old did not, presumably, expect to languish behind bars without trial for nine months, be denied bail six times and ultimately die in a prison hospital, as he did on February 25th.

On the same day, in neighbouring India, the government rolled out new guidelines for social media, video-streaming and digital publishing with reassuring patter about pride in Indian journalism and “soft touch oversight”. Rather than a draconian law, broad in scope and heavy on punishment, the official government gazette merely recorded the “exercise of the powers conferred by sub-section (1), clauses (z) and (zg) of sub-section (2) of section 87 of the Information Technology Act, 2000”.

Yet India’s new rules conceal sharp teeth and a long reach. They make messaging services and social-...