By Mohit Hira
For those of us who grew up at a time when long-distance Telephone calls—or trunk calls —had to be booked in advance, we will vividly recall the piercingly irritating whistling and beeping of dial-up modems when the Internet first arrived. That stuttering transformation as India was reluctantly dragged out of the wired and papered communication era to instant money transfers, 10-minute deliveries, streaming movies and now AI, may seem like indulgent nostalgia. And yet, there is a need to chronicle the journey of a people whose methods of sharing information today would have appeared to be straight out of Star Trek only a few decades ago.
Consider this: in 1995, as VSNL launched India’s first public internet service, few could have predicted that, three decades later, a vegetable vendor in a remote village would be accepting digital payments from someone thousands of miles away via a QR code. Subimal Bhattacharjee’s The Digital Decades: Thirty Years of the Internet in India is not just a chronological record of this transformation; it is an exploration of how a nation of over 1.4 billion people “harnessed internet technology to revolutionise governance, empower citizens, and accelerate national development”.
This is where I doff my invisible hat to the author as he offers a granularly researched account of India’s Internet evolution from its nascent days to its current status as a global digital powerhouse. This book seems to target academics, students, and digital industry executives by blending policy analysis, technological milestones and socio-economic impacts. It structures India’s digital journey across 20 chapters (19 if you exclude the Conclusion), dividing it into key epochs starting with the first Internet connections in August 1995.
It covers Manmohan Singh’s liberalisation era’s tentative steps, the dotcom boom and subsequent bust, the mobile revolution, and government-led digital governance initiatives. Bhattacharjee highlights how policy shifts enabled this progression, culminating in the Digital India vision that has connected nearly 970 million internet users by 2025. Having been amidst Internet operations in various professional assignments myself, I have been both a witness and a victim of the vagaries that plagued the medium for the past two and a half decades. Perhaps that’s why I relate more to what the author captures than a younger reader might today.
Epochs of Change
A seasoned policy adviser and commentator himself, Subimal Bhattacharjee brings an interdisciplinary lens— blending mathematics, law, and data science—to explain how India transitioned from a passive consumer of technology to a global digital architect. He identifies inflection points that accelerated adoption—the 2008 iPhone and 3G launches —and redefined user experience, the 2016 Jio entry making data “cheaper than bottled water”, WhatsApp transforming communications, and Covid-19 compressing years of progress into months. These waves—policy waves, innovation waves, entrepreneurial waves —built expanding opportunities, from e-commerce surges to UPI’s billion-plus annual transactions.
His chapters on Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) are perhaps the most academically significant. He posits that India’s success was not merely a result of private innovation but of a unique India Stack model. By treating digital identity (Aadhaar) and payments (UPI) as public goods, India created a scalable ecosystem that bypassed the legacy hurdles of the West. In doing so, we transformed the Internet from a medium of mere communications and entertainment to an ingrained and irreplaceable way of commerce.
The narrative underscores governance revolutions, like Digital Public Infrastructure enabling real-time services and rural connectivity via BharatNet’s 6.92 lakh km of fibre. Academics will appreciate the forward-looking conclusion on AI’s role, where the Internet Age is giving way to the Age of AI, shifting from connecting people to information to linking intelligence to intention. Its analytical depth suits academics: Bhattacharjee examines non-linear progress, critiquing regulatory hurdles while celebrating entrepreneurial resilience. For students, the book’s chronological rigour provides a foundational text on India’s tech policy, weaving political and social threads without overwhelming jargon. Those working in the digital domain are likely to gain strategic insights into market disruptors relevant for navigating current AI and 5G landscapes.
While comprehensive, the book could have delved deeper into digital divides— significant rural-urban gaps persist despite BharatNet—offering data on inclusive strategies. No major biases appear, though; Bhattacharjee, a tech policy analyst, balances government achievements across regimes. If anything, he overlooks the glitches that plague government websites and apps which, frankly, are a national embarrassment.
His assessment of the market is clear: India is no longer just a destination for scaling global products; it is a laboratory for building them. The book provides a strategic roadmap for understanding how the “interconnected elements of a technology stack”—from data centres to rare earth materials— power the modern economy.
Having said that, I am left intrigued by two questions: what purpose does the author hope to serve other than this being a comprehensive reference book? And if it is just that, so be it. But then, would it not have been apt to add a detailed index at the end for those interested in the intricacies of India’s digital journey from fickle modems to instant commerce via the Internet? Perhaps Simon & Schuster will consider this for a subsequent edition.
Mohit Hira is co-founder, Myriad Communications, and venture partner at YourNest Capital Advisors
Disclaimer: The views expressed are the author’s own and do not reflect the official policy or position of Financial Express.