Avery hot debate is going on in India on about net neutrality since last some days. Most of the netizens, mostly intellectual types, are crying foul about this in the TV and social media.
There are no laws about net neutrality in India so far but it is in the process. A committee has been set up for this specific purpose and that will submit its report in May, according to which the laws will be formulated.
Two network operators of India, Bharti Airtel and Reliance Telecom have come out with Zero Rental Internet Schemes. Reliance Telecom has Facebook as its partner in this scheme along with many other sites, including Wikipedia and some news channels.
The basic idea of this scheme is provide free but limited internet service to such lower end of the users, which cannot afford data charges. Contrary to the developed countries, this segment is the biggest one in India amongst mobile users. According to the latest estimates, which are certainly not official, still merely 20% of the mobile connection holders use internet, while rest use their connection only for making or receiving calls and messages. A majority of this segment is such which really cannot afford data charges, while some of them are not literate enough to use the internet, because of not knowing English.
I think that it is good initiative, which has more pros than cons, especially in the context of India and should be welcomed. But, most of the present internet users see it as an unfair practice because everything is not free in this scheme and they see it as a backdoor advertisement of certain sites and against equality and neutrality.
Their argument certainly has a valid point but I think that they are blowing it out of the proportion. This scheme has some biased approach for sure but the point is which advertisement is not biased! Can there be any advertisement of any product ever that can be unbiased and fair to its competition! If not, why there is so much noise about this alone!
Let us look at some other products. Soft drink giants like Pepsi and Coke spend millions on their advertisement. They use all types of celebrities, right from film stars to famous sport persons, to sell their products. According to some sources, which seem to be true more or less, the cost of their advertisement exceeds many times more than the cost of physical manufacturing their products. Objectively speaking, using the huge financial muscle they have, they are pursuing either millions of innocents or ignorant to consume such a thing which has no real benefit but causes harm instead.
Is that fair!
Secondly, there cannot anything truly fair in the competition, if one goes by the true definition of the competition. As soon as any condition is enforced, the essence of the competition would be cheated. This phenomenon can be either good or bad. It can lead to monopoly or unrealistic prices (like in the case of soft drinks and many other similar products) or to healthy competition, which would eventually lead to reduced prices (like in the case of electronic goods).
Again, as usual, the trick is to pay attention to the ultimate result of the ontology, not the means. That is where the governments should step in. They should evaluate the outcome in the first place, before giving verdict on the process.
Most of those 80% mobile users will not able to use internet ever, if this so called net neutrality would be upheld. But, if network operators will be allowed to come out with zero rental plan with the help of some advertisement, millions would be benefitted. Most of the left minded liberal intellectuals, which are in the majority in the media and social media, are getting it all wrong. They are actually harming more people than benefitting. It looks to me that liberals get emotional when they see notions like equality and neutrality. Then, they tend to ignore all other aspects of the issue and insist blindly only on maintaining equality at any cost, even if it is going to harm majority of the people.
A poor farmer, somewhere in the remote location, could be benifitted by the weather forecast offered in the zero rental plan, who has no other way to have access to such things. But, for some intellectuals, net neutrality is more important!
Is it not ironic that people do not see unfair trade practices in industries like soft drink, cosmetics, costly fashion brands etc but only in telecom industry!
with love,
sanjay