Why I'm clicking dislike for Modi-Zuckerberg's idea of 'free' internet

Weeks before Prime Minister Narendra Modi even set foot in Menlo Park, where Facebook's sprawling headquarters is located at the fashionably named 1 Hacker Street, advertisements of "Internet.org" - a supposedly altruistic venture from Mark Zuckerberg's arsenal, to connect the digitally disenfranchised to the World Wide Web - have been flooding our television screens. We see men and women and children from remote corners of the world, some in Africa, some in tribal belts of India, creating and discovering windmills and other machines by chance, without the benefit of the internet and its enlightening touch. We are asked to imagine a utopian future in which such entrepreneurially inclined individuals are indeed connected to the digital universe we are familiar with. Internet.org would make that happen, we are assured.   

On Sunday, as Modi and Zuckerberg engaged in a seemingly freewheeling Q&A at the town hall of Facebook's Menlo Park campus, amid Bollywood songs such as "Chak de India" sprinkling Indian patriotism under Californian sunshine, Internet.org loitered, hovered, hung around like a shadowy entity that both tried to put a prettier cloak on. Although the session was about "Digital India", one of PM Modi's flagship schemes, and even though they spoke about how to bring the ray of cyber sun to the 800 million smart phone users in India, and the wonders that such a phenomenal move would do to the geo-economics of the world's biggest democracy, what they didn't say was how this personal chemistry between Modi and Zuckerberg was the glue for a much larger plan in which the poor are just a pawn.

Well, certainly not in those many words.

We are living in a world where internet is being considered a human right, fundamental to planetary knowledge economy and inclusive development. Democracy isn't so until it's a digital democracy, with everyone having more or less equal rights and access to the internet. Though not fully enshrined in law yet (it's still nebulous, being written down) the civic and political benefits of a well-connected collective is not lost to anyone, and world leaders, as well as people all over, are harnessing the power of social media like never before.

Also read: You can log out now: Tearing Modi's Silicon Valley tour apart

Yet, never before has the scramble for the digital pie been uglier, with giant corporations, egged on by powerful nations and their covert, unaccountable surveillance organisations, vying with each other for total control over the internet. So, exactly as both Modi and Zuckerberg sang paeans to the beauties of the digital universe, they were also pushing forth a model of a so-called "internet for the poor", which is essentially an internet of total control.  

Let's get one thing straight. Internet.org is NOT about either inclusion, or the poor. Internet.org is about power, exclusion and Mark Zuckerberg-led Facebook's obsession with doing to the knowledge economy what Jeff Bezos' Amazon has done to retail economy - create a quasi monopoly. This will be a gross violation of the level playing field that the internet essentially offers, termed "net neutrality", which can be compared to equality of all citizens before the eyes of law. Just like a differential treatment of influential figures, such as politicians, business leaders, film actors, creates a sham democracy, Internet.org creates a sham internet.  

That Zuckerberg, like Bezos, is a marketing genius is doubtless. But if the man-child's business ambition turns over 800 million Indian poor, who are nevertheless smartphone-enabled, into guinea pigs to pilot his Internet.org, we have a big, big problem. Because Internet.org, a supposedly "free", app-based service that Facebook would provide to the smartphone users, offering a much slimmed down version of the internet in the name of connectivity, is about dealing a body blow to Internet as it is, the World Wide Web, wherein Facebook is just ONE website, along with billions of others.

The financial and symbolic muscle that Zuckerberg wants to flex via Internet.org will create a parallel universe of tightly controlled digital content, with only 50 or more affiliates as of now. The affiliates, whose services will be freely available along with Facebook on Internet.org, are required to enter into lucrative deals with the master company, and inevitably would score gargantuan points over those who would opt out of the package. That about 800 million smartphone users, who would be paraded as the staggering success of "Digital India", would be actually connected to only a handful of websites and apps in partnership with Facebook, would mean two, terribly undemocratic things.

One: Tiered, unequal Internets

Facebook will create a hierarchy within the digital world, with the poor having only Internet.org, with virtually no real exposure to the hugeness of the internet as it is now. This is akin to having an immense network of highly underperforming  schools for millions of poor children in the name of government-run, charity-run establishments. Internet in its current form, still free as air despite fighting pollutants of control and lack of access from many fronts, will become a bastion of the rich, who will be buying their way into knowledge economy. Moreover, because Internet.org, if piloted in India and made into a compulsory appliance for our smartphones, will have far more number of users than actual world wide web, the latter will become non-lucrative and unattractive for many digital investors, who would want to latch on to the Facebook/Internet.org bandwagon to maximise outreach.

Two: Information control and propaganda

If only a cluster of job, money-oriented websites are available to almost two-third of the population as a part of Internet.org, it becomes extremely easy to control and channel the flow of information. Modi government, already under scathing attack from all corners - particularly from human rights organisations, conscientious academics and civil society groups - for waging a propaganda war over the secular, democratic fabric of the nation, would have it even easier to shove their dumbed down, fabricated version of history, politics, religion, science and linguistic heritage down our collective throats. [Slyly enough, Zuckerberg's "Steve Jobs directed me to Indian temple" story has become a high point of the town-hall rendezvous.] Obviously, Internet.org, given Modi-Zuckerberg's great rapport, would not have any problem eulogising Vedic aircraft and Ganesha's plastic surgery, or the glorious Hindu past of entire India, but such a big-scale assault on the mindset of about two-thirds of Indians is likely to have a deep impact on our future. We would end up creating hundreds of millions of Indians, most of them under 30, with not just a flawed sense of historical politics and singing with false cultural nationalism, they will also be cut off from the websites, media organisations, academic institutions and public intellectuals devoted to uncovering the truth, or merely presenting strong, oppositional voices. In other words, Digital India will be incredibly more draconian version of internet in Russia or China or North Korea. The information superhighways will be basically digital graveyards with no access beyond what's carefully sanctioned.

That Zuckerberg and Modi changed their profile picture on Sunday, apparently to show support for Digital India, became a matter of pride for umpteen numbers of well-educated Indians who promptly followed suit. What Zuckerberg and Modi didn't tell them that for each profile pic change in support of Digital India, Internet.org collected one covert vote in favour of their "developmental initiative". Facebook still hasn't come clear on its involvement with US National Security Agency's notorious Prism programme, under which extensive and absolutely illegal surveillance of world leaders and diplomats was carried out. Outed by Edward Snowden, that episode remains one of the reasons why Facebook, despite its massive clout, is deeply suspected by activists all over the world.

Given the Modi's government's recent clampdown on online expressions, and its attempt to peddle a diluted encryption policy draft, there is no doubt this regime wants as much transparency from its citizens as it prefers opacity for its own operations. Facebook and the current Indian government are made for each other, when seen through the lens of governance as surveillance and information control.

But we cannot let that happen at any cost. Indians have a fundamental duty to ensure net neutrality and keep the internet free. Modi's shortcut to Digital India via Zuckerberg's dirty backyard is a nefarious idea. Despite Modi's penchant for hugs, this is not the beast we should embrace.