"You get what you deserve'. It's an old saying. One that survived the years, because it's true. For the most part. But not for everyone. Some get more than they deserve. Because they believe they aren't like everyone else. That the rules, the ones people like me and you, the people that work and struggle to live our lives, just live, don't apply to them. That they can do anything and live happily ever after, while the rest of us suffer. They do this from the shadows. Shadows that we cast. With our indifference. With a pervasive lack of interest in anything that doesn't directly affect us, we, in the here and now. Or maybe it's just the shadow of weariness. Of how tired we are, struggling to claw our way back to a middle class that no longer exist, because of those who take more than they deserve. And they keep taking, until all that's left for the rest of us is a memory of how it used to be before the corporations and the bottom line decided we didn't matter anymore. But we do. You and I, the people of this city we still matter."
Have you logged in to Facebook today? Of course you have. You never logged out. Neither did I.
As it does every day, my phone alarm went off at 7:30 in the morning. I woke up, slightly annoyed, as I do every Monday. I picked up my phone to shut the alarm up and tried to get those sweet five minutes of sleep, but I knew I could not afford to be late to work again. Maybe I'm growing up, maybe the fear of another poor quarterly rating from my manager did not let me go back to sleep. My mind, which is much smarter than I can ever be, decided to give me an incentive. "Why don't you check Facebook? It's been 5.5 hours since you last checked it. There are bound to be so many new stories to look at. Somebody may have been married yesterday. Honeymoon Pics? Maybe someone had another baby. Where in Hauz Khas Village did everyone go for dinner last night?" Unable to contain my curiosity, I picked it up the phone with closed eyes and felt my finger open up the app.
It took some time for my eyes to adjust to the light. It was lucky that a small part of the brightness of the screen was dulled by profile pictures. Everyone's profile picture was sepia-fied with what seemed like a stylised curved transparent tricolour superimposed on it. It had the caption "Created using fb.com/supportdigitalindia" A quick scroll down showed that it had happened to many others. What had happened while I was asleep? How had so many people suddenly changed their minds about Net Neutrality? A couple of scrolls further down, I had my answer:
ABC and 10 other friends liked Mark Zuckerberg's photo
and soon after, XYZ and 47 other friends liked Narendra Modi's photo
"He's done it!", my groggy, almost awake mind said to me,"The brilliant bastard has done it!". Unable to completely comprehend what this meant, I went to Mr. Modi's profile page and found this video
It was already 7:45 and I had to rush. I decided to keep the Facebook app open and listen to the interview on the way, wondering what could Mr. Modi possibly have said to change so many people's minds, people who had so vehemently agreed with each other that Internet Neutrality was second only to God and Internet.org was the devil incarnate.
I listened to the interview during my 1.5 hour drive to work, listening to how Mr. Zuckerberg travelled to India on Mr Jobs' advice to visit a temple, which was where he, upon seeing the masses of humanity, got the inspiration to grow Facebook even further and connect everyone in the world with each other. Mr. Modi then talked about some of India's recent achievements and how he looks at social media in India. There were some further questions about the government's investments in Internet connectivity in India. This was the last of the internet related questions to be asked in the interview, which was a bit of a let down. Most of the rest of the interview felt like a continuation of his address to the United Nations one day previously. Towards the end, a question about Mr. Modi's mother caught me off guard. It felt like it was supposed to follow from the discussion about Women's rights in India, but it seemed completely out of place and context to me. Mr. Modi handled it very well and gave a very honest and moving reply. That was the end of the discussion.
Perhaps I had expected too much from the interview. As publicised as it was, I should have expected the questions to be pre-vetted and the lack of controversial topics should not have been surprising. For the rest of the way, I listened to Reply All, a fantastic pod-cast about the internet. As I walked to my seat, I looked at Facebook once again. Two people had become married, one had had a baby, a few had been to Social Offline and everyone was tricoloured. Oh well, I thought, time to get to work.
All day, I kept coming back to the thought of what a master-stroke Zuckerberg had played. This June, Internet.org had turned into a fiasco after everyone on Facebook and their dog had learned that there were websites on the internet other than Facebook. There had been long discussions about what it entailed and how it is a right of everyone to have access to the greatest repository of knowledge, entertainment and pre-wedding photo shoots ever created. 750,000 emails were sent to TRAI demanding that the government not support Zero Rating as it would pave the way for Internet.org and help monopolize the internet for established giants of retail and telecom.
It made me feel glad that my friends, acquaintances and those whose name I didn't know until they sent me a friend request on Facebook felt so strongly about the sacredness of the internet. I slept happy knowing that we were together in our struggle to keep the internet open. A place where 8 years ago, a brand new website like Flipkart.com would load just as quickly as a retail giant like Amazon. A place where you could call your dear friends and family using Skype or WhatsApp or Viber and talk for hours upon hours when you were abroad, without either of the two worrying about the phone bill. A place where you could still choose to go to Google Plus, if you decided that Facebook just wasn't working for you, or vice-versa. A place ...
Alas, I realise this evening, as I type this out, it was a faux happiness. A happiness built out of fickle minds and malleable hearts. With the Goliath of marketing himself, the Prime Minister of India standing hand in hand with the owner of the biggest social network in the world, it is already a foregone conclusion. Internet.org is coming to India whether we like it or not. And like it, we will, because it is fed to us by our beloved Prime Minister.
I found this grossly exaggerated and hilarious comic on this page today.
