By Partho Sen
Aah, pornography. An ever-flowering source of lust management for all, whilst simultaneously being a hot topic in discussions regarding moral controversy. Like it or not, it has always been part of our culture in some way or the other for millennia.
But, in recent times, the Indian government has been trying to put in a failing effort to clamp down on the viewing of pornographic material in our country, which is one giant leap beyond trying to simply halt its production and distribution on national premises. This step, or rather misstep, has not aided in reducing its viewability at all, and the average consumption, both amongst minors and adults, has been steadily increasing.
So why has this been such a catastrophic, and economic, failure?
Viewing ‘legally produced’ porn in one’s private quarters is not illegal in India. But the government, in their commendable pursuit of reducing the rate of sex crimes and children’s exposure to such content, banned a bulk number of such websites (using somewhat of a legal grey area), once in 2015, and then in 2018. The latter is still in place, and as of 2021, more than 3500 porn sites have been banned.
In doing so, the government has suffered major Sunk Costs considering that
1. According to a survey by a rather world-renowned porn site, India held the status of being the 3rdlargest global consumer of their content in 2018, a while after the ban had been set in motion. This clearly indicates a
less-than-favourable Cost-Benefit ratio, even though the marginal cost of banning websites is rather small (ISPs take only a few hours to selectively ban hundreds of websites).
2. As a Negative Externality of this ban, more and more people have begun using easily accessible, free or paid, VPNs and proxy servers to bypass filters and
access content, legal or not, while being completely anonymous to the authorities. Pedophiles use such services to merrily continue their activities. Furthermore, no reasonable statistical correlation between the rate of occurrence of sex crimes and consuming porn has been observed as of yet.
3. As of 2020, 26.6% of the population (approx. 361M) is at or below 14 years of age. Combined with the advent of online school, the fact that 63% of urban youth consume porn largely through their smartphones, and a 61% jump in
smartphone owning students in rural areas in the last two years, efforts of reducing children’s exposure to such material have been to no avail.
Now, the cost of outrightly banning VPNs is very high relative to the benefit and brutally infringes upon Indian citizens’ Right to Privacy in a totalitarian manner. Yet, with respect to the third point above, the Cost-Benefit ratio can be improved.
After slapping a ban on all forms of free proxy services, the government can incentivize a small number of major VPN providers to lower their service charges and address the needs of the Indian population, thus restricting the ‘independent’ beneficiaries to only bank account holders and transactors. Furthermore, a national VPN requiring age identification prior to access can be adopted, as well as educating the population about the misuse of the service. This would mean that minors, or children below a certain group, would require a ‘guardian’ to access them.
Although a cheap economic measure at best, it significantly worsens the Cost-Benefit ratio of ‘independent’ minors covertly accessing porn through VPNs, and somewhat alleviates the government’s Sunk Costs in the short run.
PS. These suggestions are purely Govt-centric, and for their short term economic benefit with respect to their pre-existing actions (such as banning porn sites on the grounds of something as immensely vague as ‘morality and decency’). Ergo, it is by no means the right solution for India as a country.
By Partho Sen
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