How? Will they ban internet?
Exactly my thoughts. The collective power of all the governments in the world cannot stop bitcoin since it is a dominant force which will only continue to power forward no matter what which is why I feel that the news posted by op seems like FUD and nothing else. Best to ignore such FUD in my opinion since the Indian government know that they can never ban bitcoin, but they are simply trying to regulate it which will obviously not work out at the end of the day. More and more FUD is driving the value of bitcoin down currently and am expecting a rally in the middle of this month.
They will glue your hands together if caught using bitcoin. I mean how dare you try to further enrich your life by using a powerful currency run on powerful technology when you could be using our government issued currency that's doing so well that why most of India is not poor at all. It is like china banning facebook and all that crap. It will never work.
What is most stupid about the indian finance minister is that he says "we will ban cryptocurrencies but we will encourage blockchain in payment systems".
Is it a joke?
They know they can't really control crypto so they want to use it's technology to create their own currency that they can control.