It's very easy for internet shut downs to get normalized.

I mean, I would never have thought that an internet shut down was possible and then I live in Delhi

and Delhi's also had an internet shut down.

And suddenly, you almost start accepting it.

It seems like a joke, but it's really, really difficult to explain how helpless do one feel

in like 21st century without internet for such a long period.

That time, our priority was to just survive somehow.

We could not imagine what kind of life we could expect in future.

It was not just about internet.

Shut downs bands, they greatly undermine freedom of expression

and I think they go against our fundamental rights. They go against our fundamental right of expression and free speech.

Welcome to the shut down on the BBC World Service.

We're following the work of Felicia and Sonia, a campaigner who tracks internet shut downs as they happen around the world.

When screens fall dark in a country, it's Felicia who is checking internet traffic to see who's fallen offline.

She's making contact with people on the ground and she's alerting us the rest of the world to what's going on.

I'm Beatrice Pickup, the producer of this series. Join me as we follow Felicia's work for Access Now,

a global digital rights organisation.

Hi Felicia, how are you?

Do you agree? And you?

Oh, I'm well, thank you. It's really nice to catch up with you again.

In these programmes, we're investigating why governments are choosing to shut down the internet and trying to find out how it impacts ordinary people.

In the last programme, you told me that governments often justify shut downs by claiming that they need to stop the spread of misinformation,

...