Anirudh Regidi

TRAI’s stance on differential pricing is strong, clear, and laudable in the face of Facebook’s relentless onslaught. As Indians, we’re rightfully proud of what we’ve accomplished and, dare we say it, more than a little proud of TRAI’s stance. But what does the rest of the world have to say about this? Net Neutrality is, after all, the core of a great many debates in a great many countries.

Perhaps the strongest opinion against TRAI’s decision was offered by The Wall Street Journal, which published a strongly worded editorial claiming that, “Delhi’s fear of foreigners kills Web services for millions” and go on to state that, “Net neutrality—the misguided idea that all Internet access should be the same—trumped the goal of offering hundreds of millions of poor Indians the most essential online services.”

Quite frankly, the notion is so absurdly self-centred that we’re at a loss for words. TRAI’s decision is as much about Facebook as it is about Airtel Zero, Aircel’s free Whatsapp plans and all other such plans. The only reason that the neutrality debate in India revolves around Facebook is because of Facebook’s own hubris and unwillingness to focus on the larger picture.

As the New York Times so clearly points out, “Facebook miscalculated in introducing the program in India. While Facebook expected to be welcomed with open arms, its message to the country focused on itself rather than the broad coalition of telecommunications firms supporting the effort”. The result was inevitable. Distrust.

Motherboard (Vice Media) goes on to take the strongest anti-Facebook stance yet. While very ideological, their stance is bound to ring true with many an Indian. “Was India’s rejection of Free Basics indeed based solely on principles of net neutrality—the idea that all data should be treated equally—or resistance to economic, political, or social colonization by a powerful American corporation?”, they ask.

They go so far as to say that “Facebook’s ostensible attempt to give itself a head start” was rejected because it was a “perceived attempt to colonize India’s cultural life and telecom infrastructure”

Despite missing the point, Free Basics wasn’t the focus of TRAI’s verdict, their conclusion is by far the most compelling, “when we prevent large corporations from curating our access to information along the lines of economic self-interest, what are we really preventing?”

Other popular sites like The Washington Post and Gizmodo were mostly neutral, reporting on the situation as it stood, without bias, and offering little by way of an opinion.

The Guardian’s stance was, like Motherboard’s, an ideological one, but one in favour of services like Free Basics. They take a “greatest good for the greatest number” approach. “Under conditions of constraint, something may be better than nothing.”, writes the Guardian.

“Digital exclusion exacts a daily price”, they say. A very powerful statement with a lot of truth in it.

It’s true that getting Internet connectivity to millions will go a long way towards the betterment of the country, but is Free Basics really the way to go about it?