The venture capitalist and Facebook board member Marc Andreessen has stoked the growing

rowabout banning a free data service that gets impoverished rural Indians online.
On Monday, Indias telecomms regulator TRAI effectively outlawed the Facebook Free Basics
service, which offers a basic data service to rural communities in over 30 countries, arguing it was
their own good.
Free Basics offers a few Ceefax-like pages of information to communities that have previously had
no data access at all.
Yet in recent months it has become the target of Western activists seeking to prohibit any free data
services, which they consider fails their politically-correct definition of net neutrality.
TRAI agreed, suggesting, rather patronisingly, that consumers may not be in a position to
understand the information being presented to them (pdf, par.21) and fretting about the impact of
Free Basics on paid services (23), fearing the latter might lose customers to the Ceefax-a-like.
Paternalistic, undoubtedly, but colonialist?
They argue that its better for the Internet if Indias impoverished and disconnected simply do
without, than transgress their Silicon Valley paymasters global ambitions, fumed the group PIF this
week, Its akin to a debate among the well fed about whether the starving should be given soup that
isnt organically sourced.
The influence of Western ideas and money on the debate is not hard to discover. A year ago, zero
rating wasnt on anyones radar. Taking a prominent role in the Indian campaign was Googles
former policy counsel and government affairs manager in India, Raman Jit Singh Chima.
Chima left Google in December 2014, but swapped hats and resurfaced two months later as the
Asia Advisor for a group called Access Now, based in the United States. Google has donated more
than $1m to Access Now. Although only tens of thousands petitioned for the ban, as opposed to
1.8m objectors (after Facebooks clumsy robospam had been discounted), the regulator sided with
the activists.

Just a regular Google guy... doing Google's good work in India

Quite coincidentally, Google now has a free tilt at the Indian market to harvest even its poorest
citizens' personal data. So its very much about big business.