While PM Narendra Modi was busy in a whirlwind two-day US West Coast trip followed by visits to some of the world’s biggest technology companies like Google, hoping to convince them to bring jobs to India, here Kashmir was totally paralysed because of internet ban imposed on Sep 25, 2015.
Kashmir suffered great loss due to the three-day internet ban imposed to maintain law and order in the valley. As many as 2,500 telecom towers were affected, an industry group said, but authorities were bringing them back online gradually as police tightened security.
The Subscribers of six major firms were affected by the internet disruptions. State-owned BSNL, Airtel, Aircel, Vodafone, Idea, and Reliance Communications suffered a great loss.
The ban on internet services which included broadband for the first time had a massive impact on overall business and tourism sector in Kashmir.
The online market like tour & travel services and hotels incurred heavy losses while trucks carrying goods to Kashmir remained stranded at Lakhanpur toll plaza for want of online bills necessary for importing stocks to Kashmir.
Chairman of Kashmir Economic Alliance, Muhammad Yaseen Khan, termed the decision to ban internet as “part of PDP-BJP government’s agenda of destruction.”
One industry source estimated losses to the telecom operators at as much as 800 million rupees ($13 million) a month if the outages persist. The impact on local businesses could be far higher.
“We are suffering huge losses,” said Mohammad Yasin Tuman, Managing Director of Mascot Travels in Srinagar, whose internet has been down for two days, stopping him from checking emails and making hotel bookings. “It is like a paralytic attack.”
“We Kashmiri’s can bear monetary loss but not the emotional loss. They won’t be able to understand this. For the first time in last decade we could not see our son’s face on Eid,” A caller to Big92.7 FM