From the East India Company to Silicon Valley: Digital Platform Governance and Data Colonialism in the Global South

Abstract

This conceptual study examines digital platform governance as a management mechanism through which contemporary digital capitalism can reproduce patterns of dependency and unequal value appropriation associated with colonial power. Drawing on critical political economy, postcolonial scholarship, and platform governance literature, it compares the East India Company with contemporary technology corporations without treating their legal authority or coercive powers as equivalent. The analysis considers five dimensions: market entry and legitimacy, infrastructural dependence, value extraction, information-based control, and the concentration of economic gains. Using a historical-comparative interpretive approach, the paper examines how corporate rules, infrastructure ownership, data access, and automated decisions shape participation in digital markets. South Asia provides the principal regional context within the broader Global South. The resulting implications concern responsible data stewardship, transparent participation rules, vendor-dependency assessment, human review of consequential automated decisions, and meaningful stakeholder redress. These organizational measures complement wider policies for digital sovereignty, competition, and local technological capacity. The analysis develops conceptual arguments rather than statistically tested relationships