Data colonialism and sovereignty: Re-visiting colonial logic in the digital age

The spawning of data centres across India, with States such as Maharashtra, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh taking the lead, is being projected as a milestone towards data localisation and, by extension, data sovereignty.

Given the ubiquity of data and its deep penetration into social, political and economic life, the ways in which it is generated, processed and stored assumes critical importance. Data is neither innocuous nor neutral; its misuse for profiling, financial fraud and surveillance, to name just a few, is well documented.

India's efforts towards data localisation are, therefore, understandable. However, the discourse surrounding the issue tends to overlook the material realities of digital infrastructure. Data centres require vast tracts of land, enormous quantities of water and energy, and frequently result in displacement and environmental degradation. These material costs raise a broader question: does the pursuit of digital sovereignty reproduce older structures of extraction in a new technological form?

The relationship between technological advancement, capitalist expansion and colonial power has long shaped global history. Across industrial revolutions, technology has often strengthened the reach of dominant powers. The Fourth Industrial Revolution, also known as Industry 4.0, has renewed this debate by creating striking similarities between historical colonialism and the contemporary digital economy. Artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, cloud computing and large-scale data systems have transformed how power is exercised, raising concerns about extraction, control and inequality.

Big Tech companies, especially those commonly grouped as GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook/Meta, Amazon and Microsoft) now occupy a central position in the digital world. Their platforms shape communication, commerce, information flows and user behaviour. At the same time, the infrastructure that supports AI and digital expansion depends on massive supply chains, high computation power and non-renewable natural resources. Data centres consume electricity and freshwater, while AI hardware production requires energy-intensive manufacturing and critical minerals. These burdens arguably are not distributed evenly; many environmental and material costs fall disproportionately on the Global South. In that sense, the digital economy can reproduce older patterns of extraction even while presenting itself as innovative and efficient.

The concept of data colonialism, as articulated by Nick Couldry and Ulises A Mejias in their essay Data Colonialism: Rethinking Big Data's Relation to the Contemporary Subject, provides a useful framework for understanding this transition and its political economy. According to Couldry and Mejias, data colonialism is founded upon "data relations", a novel configuration of social relations through which human experience is continuously appropriated, transformed into data and commodified. They argue that within this emerging social order, "social life all over the globe becomes an 'open' resource for extraction that is somehow 'just there' for capital." Thus, much like historical colonialism normalised the appropriation of land, labour and natural resources, data colonialism “combines the predatory extractive practices of historical colonialism with the abstract quantification methods of computing.”

With the wave of decolonisation that swept across Asia, Africa and other parts of the world during the 1940s and the decades that followed, it was widely believed that colonialism had come to an end. In reality, however, colonialism did not disappear; it merely transformed. As Edward Said observes in Culture and Imperialism,

"In our time, direct colonialism has largely ended; imperialism...lingers where it has always been, in a kind of general cultural sphere as well as in specific political, ideological, economic, and social practices."

One of the most striking contemporary manifestations of this transformation is the rise of Big Tech. In the digital economy, data is not merely extracted or harvested; it has become the primary source of wealth accumulation, while citizens are increasingly reduced to data subjects. Despite the growing prominence of decolonial scholarship, the phenomenon of data colonialism has not been confronted with the urgency or force required to restrain the relentless expansion of Big Tech.

Mejias and Couldry interrogate this political economy in their book Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back. They employ the "Four Xs" framework - explore, expand, exploit and exterminate - to explain the logic of colonial power. Applied to the digital age, this framework illustrates how technology corporations explore digital life, expand their reach across social and economic domains, exploit users' data for economic gain and undermine alternative systems of autonomy. Likewise, Shoshana Zuboff, through her theory of surveillance capitalism, demonstrates how personal data is transformed into a source of corporate profit by enabling behavioural prediction and modification.

Big Tech has become a powerful force in shaping public life. The promise of efficiency, profit and developmentalism have captured the imagination of governments and citizens alike. However, when this promise is interrogated, in light of global experience, it falls like a house of cards. Karen Hao, in her monumental work Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s Open AI, shows how unregulated Big Tech has destroyed and exploited the invisible labour and environmental resources of countries such as Chile and Kenya.

Big Tech corporations dominate digital markets, control data flows and influence what people see, buy and believe. Their scale and reach have made them central actors in the global economy, while their platforms shape everyday communication and social behaviour. This concentration of power raises serious questions about privacy, competition, accountability and democratic governance.

The issue is not technology per se; but the structure of digital power. Digital tools can support development, public services and innovation. Yet, when a small number of corporations control the infrastructure, data and modes of access they operate through, they gain influence that can resemble older forms of domination. In this sense, the digital economy may reproduce inequality even while appearing modern and efficient.

The growing role of AI adds another layer to this concern. AI systems depend on large volumes of data, substantial computing power and extensive global supply chains. Their operation also requires access to energy, water and rare minerals. These dependencies make it important to consider the economic and environmental implications of digital expansion. For countries in the Global South, including India, the challenge is to ensure that the benefits of technological progress are not accompanied by disproportionate ecological costs.

India faces a significant policy challenge in regulating an increasingly complex digital ecosystem. Initiatives such as data localisation, which seek to strengthen digital sovereignty and reduce dependence on foreign technology companies, come from the real desire to protect country’s digital sovereignty. Sovereignty, after all, cannot be understood merely in terms of where data is stored. It must also account for the legal, social and environmental consequences of the infrastructure that sustains the digital economy. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025 and the proposed Digital India Act, 2023 are heartfelt steps in  the right direction. However, they are also in nascent stage and still evolving into their full potential, especially when it comes to the areas such as cybersecurity, AI governance, algorithmic transparency and platform accountability.

At this juncture, what India really needs is a framework that moves beyond crisis-driven amendment toward comprehensive and anticipatory governance. Drawing upon international best practices that are well suited to India's context - particularly the principles embodied in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) - can provide valuable guidance rather than a rigid blueprint. This will foster and nurture public confidence in upcoming data centres in India, unlike other developing nations, which have exploited labour and its resources for the benefit of Big Tech.

The principles encapsulated in GDPR serve as a reminder that India can and should develop a robust regulatory framework tailored to its unique and evolving needs - one that protects privacy, ensures accountability and fosters public confidence in the digital ecosystem. Hopefully, a system will emerge that would not just be rules-oriented, but an earnest promise to the people of the India that privacy cannot be undermined and will be protected. Institutions ignoring or bypassing the regulatory framework shall be held accountable as India makes strides in digital ecosystem and finds its own way forward.

The shift from old colonisation to new digital dependence reflects a deeper change in the way power is constitutes and exercised. Where empires once extracted land and labour, digital corporations now extract data, attention and behavioural patterns. The language and form are different, but the underlying logic of asymmetry and control remains familiar, if not similar.  In this situation, the task for India is to ensure that digital progress strengthens sovereignty and public welfare rather than creating a new form of dependence. This is why regulation, institutional safeguards and a self-reliant digital ecosystem are essential in case of India. A balanced approach can allow innovation to flourish while ensuring that technology serves citizens and keeps their fundamental rights at the centre of governance, not the other way around.

Jaasir Ashraf Mir is a Senior Prosecuting Officer for the Government of Jammu and Kashmir.