The government on Tuesday gave in to a massive outrage over its decision to ban 857 pornographic websites and said it will lift the blockade while continuing to censor sites that promote child pornography.

"A new notification will be issued shortly. The ban will be partially withdrawn. Sites that do not promote child porn will be unbanned," Information and Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told India Today TV.

The Ministry of Communications and Information and Technology, in its order of July 31 under section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act 2000, banned the 857 websites terming their content "immoral and indecent".

In July, the Supreme Court had said banning adult websites was not its job, but was an issue for the government. That followed an order from the court last year that suggested the government needed to monitor access to pornography.

No moral policing, said Indians

Many Indians had accused the government of moral policing and infringing on personal freedoms. "Don't ban porn. Ban men ogling, leering, brushing past, groping, molesting, abusing, humiliating and raping women. Ban non-consent. Not sex," author Chetan Bhagat said on Twitter. "Porn ban is anti-freedom, impractical, not enforceable. Politically not very smart too. avoidable. Let's not manage people's private lives," he added.

In the past India has tried to control social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and ask them to take down offensive material. It had briefly blocked several Twitter accounts in 2012 citing security and law and order fears. It also blocked access to a homegrown soft-porn website in 2009.



Owing to the growth in the smart phone sector, online porn viewing is going to see an explosion in the next five years, a recent study said. According to Britain-based digital market research specialist firm Juniper Research, online porn watching will grow by nearly 42 percent in the next five years.

The porn video hits will grow to 193 billion a year by 2020 from around 136 billion this year, it said. Growth is taking place in the video chat and webcam content area in the global porn industry that is worth $97 billion.

Child pornography remains banned



India's top sex and behavioural experts had favoured making sex education mandatory for young Indian teenagers so that crimes like rape or child molestation can be efficiently curbed. According to them, a crackdown is not the solution as adults have a right to watch porn in the privacy of their homes and that right should not be taken away.

"Banning porn websites is not the solution at all. Educating the youth about what sex and related behaviours are must be on the agenda of the present government,?" Dr Prakash Kothari, one of India's leading sexologists based in Mumbai, told IANS. The ban will only result in a boom for the pirated porn industry, experts say.