Facebook India appoints former Uber executive Rajiv Aggarwal as head of public policy, a post that has been vacant for nearly a year since Ankhi Das quit
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook India is filling a hole that has defined its government relations for a year: Ankhi Das, the public policy director for India, South and Central Asia, [[a:959373|quit in October 2020 amid allegations of content-moderation interference favoring India's BJP]], leaving the platform's most politically sensitive market without a policy lead.
The replacement comes from a company that has had to navigate Indian regulators itself — Uber, whose India-experienced bench includes figures like Manik Gupta, profiled after his promotion to chief product officer. Hiring Aggarwal signals Facebook is rebuilding the function around operational regulatory experience rather than continuity with the Das era.
First-order effects
- Facebook India regains a single accountable public policy head after roughly a year of vacancy, at a moment when its content-moderation decisions in India remain under political scrutiny.
- Uber loses an executive with India policy experience to a direct competitor for regulatory attention — Meta's platforms now have an advocate who knows ride-hailing-era regulator playbooks.
Second-order effects
- The hire raises the bar for how Facebook's India policy office engages government: coming in after the Das allegations, Aggarwal's mandate is credibility with officials, which pressures rivals in Indian markets to staff comparable senior policy roles.
- Uber must backfill a policy-facing leadership gap in one of its largest international markets, likely drawing from the same pool of India-experienced executives its alumni network has repeatedly supplied to other platforms.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, India policy chief becomes a rotating seat across big tech — high-scrutiny, high-churn roles filled by executives shuttling between platforms — rather than a long-tenure post, as governments treat platform content decisions as a standing regulatory file.
The trend: Big tech platforms in India are cycling senior public-policy leadership between consumer-internet companies as government scrutiny of content moderation intensifies.