After the Supreme Court refused to entertain a plea challenging the two-month long Internet shutdown in Manipur, a division bench of the High Court — comprising Justices Ahanthem Bimol Singh and A Guneshwar Sharma — directed Home Department of the Manipur government to lift the ban on providing Internet through Internet Lease Lines (ILLs). However, based on the recommendations of an expert committee it had appointed on June 27, the Manipur High court laid down several safeguards as a prerequisite for providing restricted Internet services to the people and considering Fibre to Home connections on a case-to-case basis. The judgement is evidently aimed at striking a balance between the maintenance of law-and-order situations and certain fundamental rights of individuals. The balance indeed is the need of the hour, but the course to this balance has to be well-guided and organised, rather than ad hoc and discretion-based. Calibrated protocols are still absent, despite the Supreme Court making explicit observations in several of its judgements, including in the landmark Anuradha Bhasin vs Union of India (2020). In the case, the apex court held that indefinite suspension of Internet violates fundamental rights like freedom of speech and freedom to operate a commercial enterprise. While suggesting the need for limitation on the duration of Internet bans, the apex court also highlighted the need to consider the ‘principle of proportionality’ before imposing Internet shutdowns. Notably, the Anuradha Bhasin case had appeared after one of the most grotesque and prolonged Internet shutdowns globally — the shutdown in Jammu & Kashmir following the abrogation of Article 370. However, the chaotic Internet shutdown in Manipur is evidence that nothing much has changed since the Anuradha Bhasin case, system wise. The protocols for imposing and lifting Internet shutdowns remain ill-defined and largely incoherent. While the High Court’s intervention to direct a limited removal of Internet ban is appreciable, and may help the situation improve a bit in Manipur, it doesn’t offer a lasting solution. Indeed, Manipur has been in a state of turmoil, and it needed a certain degree of control on communication channels that hold notorious potential to spread inflammatory ideas and misinformation. But the measure and nature of this control are not yet defined in the rulebook. One may agree with the argument that a singular standard protocol cannot be applied to different cases, but it is equally true that a blanket ban for an indefinite period is not the only and best alternative to maintain law and order situation in all cases. In fact, it should be one of the last resorts. Reportedly, 60 per cent of the Internet shutdowns imposed globally between 2016 and 2020 were enforced in India. In 2022 alone, a staggering number of 84 shutdowns were imposed in India — of the total 187 Internet shutdowns across 35 countries in the world. The years between 2019 and 2021 were particularly discouraging for both the world and India which registered above 100 Internet shutdowns in each year during the period. Even the notorious reference of being the Internet shutdown capital of the world has not nudged India to bring about a positive change in its approach. India has been repeatedly topping the charts prepared by Access Now for the past five years in terms of the number of Internet shutdowns imposed. Given the manner in which the Internet has been woven into our lives, it is extremely difficult to estimate the exact financial cost of the bans. Several entities, following their own model, have been calculating the economic costs of shutdown. For example, Top 10 VPN estimated the cost for India to be USD 2.8 billion for 2020 — leaving all other major democracies far behind. The humongous cost is a result of the long hours of Internet shutdowns (8,927 hours) and a large number of affected Internet users (10.3 million). With the fresh directive of the Manipur High Court, the state administration must effectively lift the Internet ban, and look for more effective solutions, including winning the trust of all ethnic factions and striking liaison between them. Administrative lapses cannot be covered up by prolonged blanket bans on the Internet. Beyond Manipur, the governments in India should look for a more calibrated set of protocols to deal with the Internet shutdowns.