Across Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, control over the digital sphere is concentrating in the executive. This edition finds it happening through three channels at once: obligations imposed by ministries rather than legislatures, as in India’s successive IT Rules amendments; courts brought under political influence, as in through Pakistan’s 26th and 27th constitutional amendments; and digital identity and service platforms that the state alone designs, runs, and makes compulsory. Shutdowns remain the bluntest instrument with South Asia accounting for 91 of the 313 recorded worldwide in 2025.
Two things complicate that picture. Nepal showed that the public can still reverse repressive measures, forcing the withdrawal of the Social Network Bill after a youth-led uprising, though at the cost of at least 19 lives on the first day alone. And Bangladesh’s post-2024 reforms removed most inherited speech offences, only for draft amendments in September 2026 to propose reviving them. Neither reversal is secure.
Meanwhile, the actors best placed to hold the line are weaker. Technology companies continue to underinvest in content moderation in the region’s languages. Civil society remains the main source of accountability but is working with sharply reduced resources after the 2025 collapse in donor funding, and, in Pakistan, with public interest litigation effectively closed off
The paper sets out what should change. Governments should legislate through parliament rather than executive rule, repeal vague speech offences, require independent authorization for surveillance and shutdowns, and protect judicial independence. Governments and the development partners financing digital public infrastructure should put data protection and redress mechanisms in force before these systems scale, guarantee offline alternatives, and consult before rollout. Technology companies should resource local-language moderation in proportion to their users, publish what governments ask of them, and build standing channels with regional civil society. Funders should provide flexible core support that reaches new, youth-led forms of organizing as well as established organizations.
The paper updates each country section through August 2026, revisits the five themes identified in 2025 and adds a sixth on techno-solutionism and state digital infrastructure, and assesses which routes to accountability held up over the year. Courts proved an important but unreliable check, public pressure the most decisive and the least durable, and civil society coordination valuable but confined within national borders.
