DNA Edit: Guess who left the digitally deprived behind?

In the deafening void of digital transactions, there, where liberal India is beating its breasts for the ‘digitally-deprived poor’ who are turning cashless, is where the hypocrisy of net neutrality activism sits most silent. Just over a year ago, when Facebook proposed a host of free internet services by offering a basket of basic functions —admittedly a limited bouquet to allow a whole lot of people to access very little of the internet for almost no charge — digitally well-connected activists rolled out a massive campaign to derail it. They claimed this would be the end of internet freedoms in India. They came on television with their prophecies of doom – panel after panel on channel after channel, though it too followed the same model of chopping airwaves into bouquets by direct-to-home providers for a nominal subscription. Without these packages, the common man has only access to Doordarshan. This bothers no one. Probably because the airwaves themselves are not diminished by which package is subscribed to. The act of subscription becomes an exercise of choice. Which is how the Basics plan would have worked. It would have allowed those who cannot get access to all, to have access to some.

But no activist who canvassed to get Facebook FreeBasics banned asked those who did not have access to the internet. In a supreme stroke of cruel irony, all voting was done digitally, via email. The haves voted to deprive the have nots. Haves who also had means to subscribe to plans such as YouTube Red and other paid-for sites. Which means the internet is not truly free of class hierarchy. It is only encouraged upwards — when one has to collect payment for access, not downwards, when one has to give access without charge. Who benefits in the former and doesn’t in the latter? The vendors. The public has not been offered a classless virtual society either way.

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg wrote after the FreeBasics uproar broke out, “The internet is one of the most powerful tools for economic and social progress. It gives people access to jobs, knowledge and opportunities. It gives voice to the voiceless in our society, and it connects people with vital resources for health and education. I believe everyone in the world deserves access to these opportunities.”

Who are those people? We have only 300-400 million users connected at this point. FreeBasics would have brought basic access to many more. Those many more who today wonder how to access their e-cash. Those whom the same activists today wail for because they have no digital literacy. Guess who left them behind?