Overview
- Congress Rajya Sabha MP Neeraj Dangi used the House’s Zero Hour to urge a home-grown search engine and a government white paper on digital sovereignty.
- He warned that reliance on Google and Microsoft creates digital choke points that could let sanctions or tensions cut off services like YouTube, Gmail or Android updates.
- He said foreign companies process most data on 1.4 billion Indians, which he argued heightens privacy and cybersecurity risk.
- He cited China, Russia, France, South Korea, the Czech Republic and Vietnam as places where domestic search engines lead home markets.
- He also pressed for a roadmap to build search, cloud and software within India, and no government commitment has been reported.