India, Aug. 16 -- Yesterday we celebrated freedom. The speeches were stirring, indicating India's time had come. And yet, in the real world where our economy now lives, inside racks of servers, lines of code, and foreign-owned systems, the picture is less about sovereignty and more about how easily the rules can be changed on us.

Two weeks in this space, I wrote about Microsoft pulling the plug on Nayara Energy. A decision taken in another country, quietly yanked control away from a major Indian company. No troops crossed borders. No sanctions were announced. Just a click somewhere far away, and the lights went out here.

If that sounded like an isolated incident, it wasn't.

In India's data centres, a friend in the software business poi...