SRINAGAR: In the Valley, some are calling it the “Information Curtain”, borrowing from a seven-year-old speech Hillary Clinton , then US secretary of state, gave on internet freedom. Countries that censor the net are creating a barrier that rivals the Iron Curtain of the Cold War era, reckoned Clinton. She counted China, Tunisia, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia among those countries attempting to block out the net.The Jammu & Kashmir government’s order earlier this week to ban at least 22 social media websites and applications, including popular Facebook Telegram and Viber, is also bringing back another retro word from the Soviet bloc era — Samizdat, a kind of dissident activity to avoid censorship by reproducing underground publications and passing them on.Some respite came on Saturday when mobile internet services were restored after two weeks, although a digital curfew is nothing new to Kashmir. The government has in the last seven years choked the Internet at least 30 times, a standard operating procedure of sorts to scuttle dissent. In 2016, in the wake of massive protests after the killing of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani along with his two associates, the net was shut down for at least three months.In 2010 — the same year in which Clinton spoke on digital freedom — mobile internet services were banned for a short period in the Valley. That’s when a section of young Kashmiris started searching for the new ways to communicate, developing indigenous applications and even social media platforms. Knowledge about VPNs (virtual private networks that enable users to send and receive data across public networks) and alternative secured internet tools has perpetuated across the valley since then. Besides, many internet service providers find it difficult to completely shut down access to social media websites or applications without blocking the Internet completely.“We got around 3,500 registrations in the past few days,” lets on a member of NetShell Software Solutions, which has developed a networking website called Connect Kashmir. The portal is aimed at promoting the region’s culture primarily by getting people to ‘socialise’ at the regional as well as global level. They claim to have around 25,000 registered users right now. There may be two words for it: digital Samizdat.The PDP-BJP government in J&K feel that the viral videos, blog posts, pictures, tweets and social media interactions from the Valley need to be controlled. The social media gag was imposed against the backdrop of student protests across university, college and school campuses.The government closed all the colleges for a week and some higher secondary schools in Srinagar continue to remain closed. 3G and 4G services on mobile phones were barred as well — till yesterday — to avoid any immediate circulation of pictures, videos or messages of the prevailing situation across the Valley.J&K, as per the active mobile subscriber data available with Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, had some 1.13 crore cellular subscribers as on December 31,2016. Internet penetration is higher in J&K than the all-India average. There are 28.62 internet subscribers per 100 population in the state compared to the all-India figure of 25.37.The mood among the youth is predictably defiant. “It is nothing more than a digital utopia of the government to think that they can curb the sentiment in hearts through a ban on social media,” a 12th class student of Srinagar’s MPML Higher Secondary School told ET Magazine. A section of students and young professionals in Kashmir feels the ban could prove counter-productive.“They have throttled peaceful means of expression. Now the streets are the only place to communicate, even for those who have never ventured out of their homes,” said Muhammad Saqlain, 21, a college student from north Kashmir. Police authorities, however, point out that the clampdown is having the desired results. “The ban on 3G and 4G services showed results and it encouraged the government to ban social media. The wave of protests has considerably stopped after this ban,” a senior police official told ET Magazine.Obvious realities, however, can easily be forgotten during times of a blanket ban — such as that there’s a sizable population of Kashmiri students, professionals and businessmen working outside the state who need to communicate (cost-effectively) with their families; then there’s the 32-year-old Kashmiri researcher living abroad, who recently came back home for a brief visit, could not file her visa application on time and has not been able to submit her project as well. “It feels worse than a war zone here,” she said.The ban has also impacted business, especially telecom, tourism and online startups. “Our venture was entirely dependent on the internet, especially social media. And now we have to start from the beginning and give advertisements in newspapers,” says Furqaan Qureshi, who runs online home delivery service company KartFood Kashmir. The government and police for their part seem to feel that they have to tackle — as one government official put it — the “revolutionary potential of social media”. The ban, he told ET Magazine, may appear as “modern authoritarianism” but is necessary to “give a sense of orderly justice”.J&K police, sources in government say, has started a voluntary survey focused on social media, and has prepared a questionnaire asking for personal details, and details of online presence, preferences and habits on digital platforms. “It is perpetual change not stagnation that allows governments to survive,” is how a police official put it to ET Magazine.