Zoho sparks questions about India’s path to ‘digital sovereignty’
About 12 lakh email addresses of Union government employees have over the past year migrated from the systems of the National Informatics Centre – the government’s information technology department – to a platform owned by private technology firm Zoho.
Union Minister Amit Shah also said that he will switch to using a Zoho email address for his work related to the Bharatiya Janata Party. Other party leaders joined in.
This confirmation came days after the Union education ministry on October 3 issued an order prodding officials to use Zoho Suite, a productivity applications platform such as Microsoft Office, citing the government’s “pursuit of building a self-reliant ecosystem in technology”.
The circular said that by embracing Zoho’s indigenous tools, “we take a bold step in the Swadeshi movement...and secure our data for a self-reliant future”.
Union Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had in September said on social media that Zoho Office Suite’s capabilities were “phenomenal” and that he will start using the product at the earliest.
An unidentified official told The Hindu that the suite was activated to ensure that employees do not use open source applications to create word documents and spreadsheets. The suite was already available but not many employees were using it, the official said.
The migration of government email addresses to the systems of a private entity was questioned by critics on social...
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