SaveTheInternet.in revisisted – The blogged history of India's largest and most successful digital rights campaign

Index

Welcome to the SaveTheInternet.in revisited blog. This is a chronicle of events and experiences from the largest digital rights campaign in India’s history. (Read: Why are we doing this), with over 2 million people participating.

Aug 2012: An early meeting with Airtel
Mar 2014: Early warnings from the Mobile World Congress
Aug 05, 2014: The TRAI Seminar on OTT Regulation
Sep 15, 2014: On the sidelines of Sundar Pichai’s visit to India
Oct 26, 2014: Hillhacks and getting Kiran Jonnalagadda interested in Net Neutrality
Oct 09, 2014: The Internet.org Press Conference with Mark Zuckerberg
Mar 25, 2015: Sidin Vadukut and the plan for the Net Neutrality campaign
Mar 27, 2015: TRAI consultation begins, and how AIB got involved with the Net Neutrality campaign
Apr 28th, 2015: Losing my cool at the DoT meeting on Net Neutrality
Apr 06, 2015: Breaking the Flipkart-Airtel Zero story
May 06, 2015: Thinking Thali with Dilip Cherian
Dec 23, 2015: Vijay Shekhar Sharma to the rescue

The updates are posted on this blog in a random order, and the blog is reverse chronological. This Index serves as a chronological index if you want to follow the sequence of events as they happened.

December 23rd, 2015: Vijay Shekhar Sharma to the rescue

I was morning, I remember, when Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the founder of Paytm, called.

He had just landed in Hong Kong, looked at Twitter and read my tweet. I can’t still find the tweet, but I remember being exasperated with Facebook’s Free Basics campaign, and feeling hopeless about the status of our campaign. We had some 6000-7000 submissions to TRAI in what was the final leg of the campaign on Zero Rating, and Facebook’s Free Basics push was bringing in multiples of that.

They had set up a missed call service with a 1800 toll free number which they promoted via newspaper ads in multiple Indian languages, where people were asked to give a missed call in order to support Free Basics. There were SMS campaigns, spamming millions asking people to do the same thing. They had hoardings up across major cities. We were going to lose Net Neutrality. AIB still hadn’t made a video. I was home in Delhi after 20 exhausting days in Bangalore, despite the support of friends. So I tweeted, frustrated with everything. Vijay read that tweet. I explained the situation to him. He said he’d do something (literally, “Main dekhta houn.”)

Within a day or so, on the 23rd of December, Vijay had his team change the Paytm post-payment page to one that embedded the savetheinternet.in website.

source: https://twitter.com/jishnu7/status/679637272136790016/photo/1

To understand how big this was, you need to get a sense of scale. Paytm had a couple of hundred million users, and many multiple of millions of users were recharging their phone balances every day. There was no bigger marketing outreach landing page in India than Paytm’s post-payment page. Vijay replaced one of his most significant sources of online revenue with savetheinternet.in . The numbers started coming in. Bit by bit others got involved, activity increased, and submissions increased to the TRAI. It all began, and the tide turned, with that phone call from Vijay.

Over the next couple of weeks, Vijay put actual money behind promoting savetheinternet.in website, though he’s never told me how much, and I’ve never asked.

We had banner collateral ready for anyone to use. Vijay used these to run savetheinternet.in ads on DTH (streaming services weren’t there in India then), and I only found out when someone told me they saw an ad on TV. I was in Jaipur for a TiE annual off-site on December 29th (I think…more on this later), where I was speaking, when someone from his team called me to run some audio scripts related to SaveTheInternet by me. Next thing I know, there were SavetheInterent radio ads (radio was big in India then) running across radio, being run by Paytm.

It would be unfair to everyone else to say that Vijay saved the day and saved the savetheinternet.in campaign with this, but what he did helped us immensely. I was giving up and he gave us hope. Above all, he brought momentum back to the campaign.

For the next few weeks, that word “momentum” became a key one for me. I would wake up in the morning with the word momentum on my mind. It kept me going, and I kept pushing everyone to do more.

May 6th 2015: Thinking Thali with Dilip Cherian

We were still in the counter-comments stage of the campaign when, around April 29th, I got an email from Dilip Cherian, a PR consultant and a co-founder at Perfect Relations. Dilip is very well networked in Delhi, and I have spotted him often at conferences. We had been introduced, but I don’t know if he really knew of me then (or remembers me now).

The email was an invite for “Thinking Thali” lunch, a ‘space’ for “off-the-record & free-spirited conversations”, with a group of people that is “deliberately small (rarely more than 10)”.

This “edition of Thinking Thali, will be held on 6^th May, Wednesday at 1pm sharp at the ‘Private Dining Hall’, India International Centre-MAIN (It’s inside the Main Dining Hall, First Floor).

No speeches or prepared texts are expected, so relax! Only fluid lunch time conversation with a theme is our idea! We end sharp at 2:15 pm so we can all get back to our real weekday lives.”

I read the mail again (in 2025), and Dilip had cited the Chatham House Rule without calling it that, saying “We may refer to and use any content but we never report is as the views of any one individual by name.” So was it off the record or under Chatham House? How much can I truly tell you about this?

Given that Dilip was a well known lobbyist, I wasn’t sure of his agenda here, and given the situation we were in, I needed to get a sense of the environment and the people. I wrote to Apar and Raman and asked them if either of them had been to one earlier. Apar responded saying that he had been for one previously, so he’ll pass it on. “anything that I should be conscious of?” I asked him. “Just been there once,” Apar responded, saying “it’s nice”.

I wrote to Dilip confirming my participation, and as I often still do, waived Chatham House rule for myself saying “I’m happy to waive those, since my views have been public and consistent throughout, and point out what is off record when I say something I want off record.” I still do this: in meetings with people I don’t know, or with a large number of people, I treat everything I say as on-record because someone is always taking notes.

I walked into the sparse but brightly lit room – the private dining hall – to find a round table set up. I don’t remember clearly whether name cards were placed on the table, but I found myself sitting facing Dilip, with Ankhi Das (Facebook) to his left, and a few telecom operator representatives, including from Indus Towers. By the time the room filled out, I realised that there were mostly telecom related people in the room, and though I think I had some civil society folks next to me, they weren’t very vocal. Sudhanshu Mittal, a BJP politician, was among the last to walk in.

I’m going to honour Chatham House Rule here and not disclose what people said, but I remember walking out of that room feeling like I had been set up, and at some points, felt like mine was a lone opinion (it wasn’t). I was also wondering if any of the folks invited there – particularly Facebook, Indus Towers and Idea Cellular – were clients of Dilip’s, and I had walked into some kind a trap. I was livid with myself. Sudhanshu Mittal had, quite unexpectedly, left me with some hope, though.

Dilip’s recollection of this discussion (I read this for the first time today) on the Thinking Thali blog, and highlights the complexity that was created around public policy debates:

I’m reproducing Dilip’s post in its entirety for reference for critique here. It’s absolutely brilliant and highlights the strategic approach were dealing with, and by no means am I saying that his position was pre-planned. He wrote:

“It emerged that barring one all the participants agreed that it is imperative to protect the neutral and equal nature of the internet. It is a platform that has supported many entrepreneurial ventures to grow and by limiting its potential the fear is that we may kill the spirit of the net.

But is neutrality of net a homogenous concept or can it be defined in different ways in the context of geographies, demography, affordability and availability and ways of allocating spectrum. When telcos have to pay a huge premium for spectrum (yes we can argue that no one asked them to pay but the Government IS auctioning spectrum at those rates and you have to pay them if you want spectrum for expanding services), is it justified for them to let OTT and other services use the same resource for free?

Is there a flaw in our system of allocation of spectrum? If the Government has a vision of Digital India (which will become a reality only with PPP) should spectrum be treated as a scarce resource to be auctioned for profits or should the welfare of society play a role in deciding spectrum prices?

While debate on net neutrality started a long time back in US and EU, it is still in its nascent stage in India. Any regulation requires consultation with a larger section of the society that will be impacted by it. So views of a few elite for whom affordability and access is not an issue can’t be taken as a view of public in general. Many members feel that in a country like India where a large section of the society still does not get even basic internet service, the main concern of any government should be access and affordability.

If the TSPs can have a commercial arrangement and business model with its partners which can provide basic internet service to large section of society for free or at a low cost model, it should not be confused for violation of net neutrality. Can net neutrality in context of India be different than what it is in context of USA or EU? While a few feel that net neutrality is an absolute concept and any changes however minor will lead to discrimination and turn internet into TV where the service provider decides on how when and what content you can see.

Others may argue that TSPs put in all the money in putting up the infrastructure which is then used by OTT players to reap huge financial benefits without paying for either spectrum or infrastructure. TSP raise the issue of security and claim that they have to adhere to a lot of regulations while OTT does not require to do the same.

In this context what role does access play in the debate on net neutrality? The panel debated whether platforms like internet.org, which aim to provide access to the large unconnected population of India, should be viewed with in the myopic and iron clad definition on net neutrality.

But the essential question is do we need regulation? Some felt that yes regulations are needed but the majority concurred that regulations just won’t keep pace with technology! Perhaps a topic to discuss in a new edition of thinking thali!”

If you break this down into its structure, here’s what it looks like:

Highlights that their intent is the benefit of society
Equivocation of the intent behind opposing points
Point out a problem that they intend to debunk
Position an opposing point of view as extreme, foreign and/or absolutist
Color something as elitist or myopic in order to get people to disregard that point of view
Push for a middle ground suggesting that that would benefit everyone

There is some beauty in the strategic way this argument is constructed.

I had also gone into this meeting unprepared, and with long days spent running the campaign, I can cut myself some slack and say that I was probably burnt out. I was clearly not equipped well enough to respond to some of the sophistication of those arguments then, but in hindsight, this was excellent preparation for the internet.org debates that were about to hit us later in the year.

I remember thinking later that day, after I discussed it with Apar (who was shocked by how it went): I’m okay to lose in this room, dust myself off, and fight again elsewhere. We’ll play this on our turf, by our rules. On the Internet.

Our Turf, Our Rules became a theme for me. I didn’t need to be in rooms where I had no control.

April 28th 2015: Losing my cool at the DoT meeting on Net Neutrality

A few of us, Kiran Jonnalagadda, Apar Gupta, Raman Chima and Pranesh Prakash met outside Sanchar Bhawan, which houses India’s Department of Telecommunications (now Ministry of Communications) on April 28th 2015. The security guards checked our names with a list and let us through. We were there for a meeting with the Net Neutrality committee that the DoT had put together.

The committee, we were informed when we received an invite on April 23rd, intended:

1. To examine the pursuit of net neutrality from a public policy objective, its advantages and limitations.

2. To examine the economic impact on the telecom Sector that arises from the existence of a regulated telecom services sector and unregulated content and applications sector, including over-the-top (OTT) services.

3. To examine, assess and specify qualifications on the applicability of the principal of net-neutrality from the security, traffic management, economic, privacy and other stand-points.

4. To recommend overall policy, regulatory and technical responses in the light of examination and assessment of the issues in the first three terms of reference

We had been invited because the “Committee has decided to have interaction with Civil Societies / Academia representatives”, and “it has been decided to have one participant from each invitee organisation in the interaction.” I didn’t know which organisation they meant, because we were a loose collective, and this invite came to my personal email ID. I wasn’t working on MediaNama work anyway, and hadn’t been doing that since the campaign went live.

The security guards checked our IDs and whether we were on the list. Naresh Ajwani, who said he was with APNIC, the regional Internet address registry for the Asia–Pacific region, walked in after us. I didn’t know know him well, but I knew him by face and had heard his name before at the various telecom related meetings I had gone to.

The telecom policy space is full of grey haired folks who have been around for decades, but frankly don’t bring much to the conversations apart from the relationships they have built over the years. I didn’t think much of his being there, but in hindsight it did feel like an anomaly: I don’t remember any of the usual telecom policy suspects being there. However, he represented APNIC, and I thought he would bring in a global interconnection perspective to it.

We went up to the 5th floor, I think, and via a narrow passage, entered what looked like a conference room. It was fairly dimly lit, there was, from what I remember, only one row right at the end. I took my place next to Pranesh Prakash of CIS, whom I had been sparring with online about Net Neutrality, but we were, and still are, friends. We still disagree on many things.

Pranesh had an Ubuntu laptop, and an intriguing notetaking app which I asked him about during the consultation. We took turns to speak, and after some of us had spoken, Naresh Ajwani piped in. He slipped in one line at the end that pissed me off: he said that these people running the campaign are funded by Ford Foundation.

I had a decision to make then and there, and I took a call: this has to be shut down immediately and harshly. Instead of addressing the DoT committee, I turned to him and told him off, yelling at him: asking him for proof, saying he can’t have any proof because there isn’t any, and that I’m sick of these unfounded claims being thrown at us by people who don’t understand the issue, and are are trying to politicise something that’s of deep importance to us, and casting aspersions on our integrity by making such personal remarks. I reiterated that we hadn’t taken any money and asked him for proof again.

He appeared to be taken aback, as were the folks from DoT: no one had yelled at a regulatory meeting any more. The DoT folks jumped in and told him to refraining from making any unfounded claims and to stick to the substance. After the meeting ended, as we were walking out, someone from the DoT came to placate me. I told them it’s not a problem. Near the elevator, Ajwani put his hand on my shoulder and said something conciliatory. I ignored him and pushed his hand away. He continued making conciliatory statements and I walked on.

Losing my cool was worth it. We never heard that Ford Foundation jibe again.

April 6th 2015: Breaking the Flipkart-Airtel Zero story

Sometime during the first week of April in 2015, I learned from someone that Airtel is planning to launch a Zero Rating service, and Flipkart will be the first to sign up for it.

Flipkart was the darling of the startup ecosystem in India, and its founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal (who are not related) were stars. They were solely responsible for the growth of e-commerce in India, and for me, the founding of Flipkart and its subsequent growth remains one of the key moments for India’s Internet growth. Ajit Balakrishnan, the founder of Rediff had once explained how important the growth of ecommerce is for a country’s Internet access: Ecommerce increases advertising spends, because of a direct linkage between advertising and transactions. This means that the growth of e-commerce fuels the growth of advertising, which in turn fuels the growth of content. Sachin and Binny were also extremely competitive (at that time, competing with Amazon, Snapdeal, Jabong and a few others) and were extremely aggressive in their approach. They were in an environment that demanded that aggression.

My source – and I don’t even remember who it was – suggested that there was strong push-back within Flipkart’s engineering team against them signing up with Airtel for Zero Rating services.

Flipkart had an on-going relationship with Airtel: In November 2014, it had partnered with Airtel for something called “OneTouch Internet”, which was merely a WAP page that listed certain Internet services that were offered on a trial basis to access to Internet users. Half a year before this launched, Airtel CEO Gopal Vittal had said that they wanted to change the vocabulary of the Internet, from data (i.e. selling MBs or GBs) to content packs: essentially users should buy access to specific apps and websites instead of buying data.

I knew where this was coming from: Airtel used to run a closed WAP portal called Airtel Live, which enabled access to various services, including caller ring-back tones, news, ringtones, images (GIFs), short videos. These services were provided by third party firms like Onmobile Global, One97 (which also owned Paytm), ValueFirst, Spice Digital, among others. These companies were vendors for content. On the other hand, I was acutely aware of what Facebook had done with fan pages: one fine day, reduced reach that publishers and creators had spent money building, and said – pay for reach. This bait and switch was common. Platforms encourage on-boarding, increase fragmentation of suppliers, and then monetize the aggregation by adding a distribution charge, in a manner that no single supplier has sufficient negotiating power against the platform. In case of Telecom Operators, that charge would be service specific, like it was with VAS. Airtel OneTouch, at least the way I saw it, was the beginning of that bait-and-switch, currently being pitched as a try-and-buy offer. This Try-and-buy approach resurfaced later with Gigato, but that’s for another post.

I asked Flipkart two questions then, which I didn’t get a response for:

Do you pay Airtel for the provisioning of your service to Airtel customers?

Do you get any revenue share for provisioning of your service to Airtel customers?

I can only guess now that Airtel One Touch was a showcase of the ability of Airtel to convert users into customers, and between November 2014 and April 2015, they had driven enough conversions for Flipkart. I did what journalists do when trying to break a story: pick up the phone and call one person after another. I had to be quick though: word gets around once you start calling people. Once I had confirmations that this debate was raging inside Flipkart, and from within Airtel that this was being launched and Flipkart was on-board, I sent formal mails out. I had questions ready. I mailed both Airtel and Flipkart at around 7pm ( the last confirmation, a key one at that, came in the evening on Friday, April 3rd, 2015), knowing that I was running out of time, and the weekend had begun, which meant that the likelihood of a response was limited.

We’ve confirmed from three reliable sources that Flipkart has done a Zero Rating deal with Airtel. By Zero Rating, I mean that Flipkart users on Airtel will not have to pay any data charges when using the Flipkart App. As you might be aware, the TRAI, in its consultation paper on OTT licensing and Net Neutrality, has said that this is a violation of Net Neutrality.

Would appreciate it if you could answer the following questions on this deal:

Does Flipkart have exclusivity in the shopping/ecommerce category in this Zero Rating deal with Airtel?

Has Flipkart closed similar deals with any other telecom operator?

Is Flipkart in talks with any other telecom operator for similar deals?

Is there any preferential bandwidth allocation as a part of this deal? As in, will specific bandwidth speeds be allocated to Flipkart, so that access to Flipkart is faster than it is ecommerce/shopping apps or sites?

Does this deal involve any throttling of other ecommerce sites or apps? As in, will other ecommerce sites or apps be slowed down by Airtel so that the Flipkart app appears faster?

What is the price being paid by Flipkart, on a per MB basis, to Airtel for making Flipkart free?

Is this a part of the Airtel OneTouch Internet access gateway?

Would appreciate it if you could respond to this by tomorrow.

thanks,
Nikhil

Simultaneously, I sent the same questions to Airtel. Next morning. At around 9.15 AM next morning, I followed up with both. Flipkart said it would get back to me. Almost immediately, I followed up with more detail this time, this time cc’ing Binny Bansal and (then Chief People Officer) Mekin Maheshwari as well:

“We’ve further heard from sources that Flipkart is paying Airtel Rs 1000/gb data transfer for this deal. Would appreciate if you could confirm or deny this figure. If incorrect, would appreciate if you could share the actual figure.”

I sent the same to Airtel. Initially, in comparison with Flipkart saying that they’ll get back to me, Kinshuk Gupta of Airtel said that it’s the weekend and they need time. He must have had a chat internally, because he then called to schedule an interview with me later in the day, with Srini Gopalan, the then Director- Consumer Business for Airtel.

In the interview Airtel confirmed that the program was called Airtel Zero, and that it’s being offered to startups to Zero Rate their services in a non-discriminatory manner, but declined to confirm or deny that Flipkart is on it. Around half an hour after the interview, Flipkart sent a non-committal response, saying:

“We would not like to comment on speculation regarding any future associations that may or may not happen. All our activities in the past have always been completely compliant with all laws including those formed by TRAI – and we continue to remain committed to that.”

In journalistic parlance, the absence of denial is treated as something of a confirmation: it is the smoke that indicates that there is fire. Companies don’t outrightly deny something that has legs because they don’t want to be called out for lying later. It’s not that they don’t lie, though, but this impacts trust.

I had my source-based confirmation about Flipkart anyway, including from sources within Airtel.

Still, I sent the following follow up, irritated:

since this mail mentions “future associations”, are you saying that no deal has been closed with Airtel yet? My sources in Airtel indicate that the deal is done. Please confirm or deny.
The TRAI has said that Zero Rating is a violation of Net Neutrality, but that there is no law governing Net Neutrality in India. Hence, Flipkart’s tie-up with Airtel would not violate any laws, but the principle of Net Neutrality.

In the meantime, 45 minutes after this email that Flipkart never responded to, Airtel sent a useful follow up about Airtel Zero:

(1) Airtel Zero is an open, non-discriminatory platform that is a real win-win for customers and e-commerce app players.
(2) It is in sync with Governments vision of digital inclusion and make in India vision.
(3) Customer doesn’t pay data charges either for the entire app or part of the app depending on what the player has opted. Complete app or some part of the app can be made toll free.
(4) One of the most effective way of marketing and get app downloads by a customer. From the pilots undertaken we have seen that on an average if a player pays Rs. 100 to generate a download using digital marketing, he will end up paying 1/3 in Airtel Zero.

On Monday, before I reported on the interview, the Hindu carried a small story about Airtel Zero in the newspaper, not realising the significance of this development. I had made the mistake of not pushing the story out on Saturday or Sunday, and waiting till Monday. Thankfully they had no inkling of the Flipkart deal, and it was likely that Airtel had decided to speak with someone apart from me as well, so that there isn’t all critique.

I reworked my story to focus on the Flipkart angle, in order to differentiate it from the story in the Hindu. Looking back it almost appears that I buried the Airtel interview below the Flipkart bit. Airtel hadn’t denied that they were charging startups for being zero rated, but didn’t comment on the rate. Expectedly, the Flipkart angle made further headlines — it even made TV news. The backlash against the startup that most people in the Indian startup ecosystem idolised began.

I went back to this story to get a sense of where I was at the time I wrote it. I was in a tricky situation as a journalist — I was reporting on something that I was already campaigning against online. Shefaly Yogendra, my mentor, used to ask me about whether I’m an entrepreneur or a journalist. My answer eventually was that I am an entrepreneur AND a journalist. This campaigned changed that: I was now an entrepreneur, journalist and an activist.

My disclosure offered a hint that I don’t know other people picked up on:

Disclosures: Readers should bear in mind that MediaNama has always taken a strong pro-Net Neutrality position. Our coverage here. Personally, I’m helping create awareness of the issues that might arise from anti Net Neutrality regime.

The big-bang “awareness” outreach was still 6 days away.

The story precipitated a debate, especially in the startup ecosystem, about what is wrong with Airtel Zero, and the fact that it enables user acquisition. The same argument I had with Prashant Singh seven months before this, now became a mainstream debate.

I published a critique of Airtel Zero the next day that went viral: multiple publications asked me if they could republish it, and I eventually released it under CC-BY, so that everyone could republish it, and get the word out.

The idea of “Splitting India’s Internet into many Internets” would become a critical argument in our submissions to the TRAI going forward, and drew from my previous critique of Internet.org when Mark Zuckerberg hadn’t taken questions related to Net Neutrality.

March 27th 2015: TRAI consultation begins, and how AIB got involved with the Net Neutrality campaign

It was sometime in the afternoon on Friday the 27th of March that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India unexpectetdly released the Net Neutrality consultation paper.

The spectrum auctions had ended on the 25th of March, and I expected that it would be at least a week or two before they release the paper. There’s a pattern: Firstly, regulators usually focus on one thing at a time, so I knew there would be nothing until the spectrum auctions finish. They also take a bit of a breather between issues, to wait for the news cycle related to the previous issue to die down. The paper being released just two days after the auction ended was unusual.

What was not unusual was that they released the paper on a Friday. Governments typically prefer to release consultations or orders on Friday: it’s the end of the week, and journalists turn in their articles for the week and most of them take the weekend off. A fresh news cycle begins on Monday. This probably staves off further scrutiny of whatever is being done.

I already had plans for Friday: I was going all the way to Gurgaon from North Delhi to meet an old friend (and as we did when we met, get drunk). I skimmed through the paper, and it seemed overwhelming and long.

I posted a tweet with a link to the paper, and asked people to mail me if they wanted to work with me over the weekend to help simplify the paper. I called Apar and told him we need to get started with this, and asked him for help. He was on board: we had discussed Net Neutrality during the Shreya Singhal case. Raman, on the other hand, was on a break: he had left Google a few weeks prior, and at that time, was out of the country, on a beach somewhere I think, and seemingly offline.

Then I mailed Gursimran Khamba for help. Khamba and I had followed each other on Twitter for a few years. On 2011, he had mailed to interview me for a 5000 word paper he was planning for his media studies subject at Tata Institute of Social Sciences on the IT Act. We never ended up having that chat. A couple of years later I had connected him with a friend (Sidharth Rao of Webchutney for some benefit events for HopeMonkey, which Sid had funded).

We had met twice briefly before this: Once I had landed up at an Open Mic at a bar in South Extension in Delhi where Khamba was trying out new material. This was well before he was famous. Another time, we met with a common friend (Surekha Pillai) once, after a gig in Delhi.

I mailed him because a year before, in June 2014, John Oliver had done a show on Net Neutrality, as the fifth episode of the first season of “Last Week Tonight”. The number of comments sent to the US’ Federal Communications Commission let to them voting to reclassify broadband as a utility in the US in 2015. Given my plan to push for 10,000 submissions to the TRAI, I thought the only way to get to that number was to get AIB (All India Bakchod), a comedy group that Khamba was a part of, to do something.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure if AIB would help. This was a tough year for them and they had been in silent mode for a few months after they had got into trouble because of the AIB roast, which was held in Mumbai in December, and was uploaded to YouTube in January 2015. The outrage that followed was significant enough for them to almost go underground. There were lawsuits filed against them. In fact, that’s how I first met Tanmay Bhat. Vijay Nair, co-founder and CEO of Only Much Louder, which managed AIB’s business, was an old friend. Vijay and I first met in an unusual way in 2004. I used to go for a lot of music gigs, and he used to organise them. I remember one day, I was at home, and I recognised Zephyretta (by Them Clones) playing. It was one of my favourite indie songs. I stepped out of my house, and it sounded like it was being played live. I got into my car and drove towards the music, to Sri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) in Delhi University and landed up at a music concert. There I recognised Vijay (I don’t remember how I recognised him) and went over and said hi. His brother, Ajay, used to be “Mage” at an online forum called Freshlimesoda, where I had been “Alter Ego”, and I remember using that as a reference to start a conversation.

Our paths crossed again once I started writing about the digital industry, especially digital music. We met at Nokia Music Connects in Mumbai a few times. He was in Delhi often, and we ended up meeting several times in Delhi and Mumbai, including at gigs, parties and the NH7 weekender, which he used to organise. I went for the NH7 Weekender to Pune from Delhi for most of the initial years, and was the only journalist who paid for his ticket, according to Vijay. I wanted to support the scene.

Vijay needed some help from me: he was coming to Delhi, and wanted to meet. He was planning to go for the AAP government swearing-in at Ramlila Maidan on February 16th, but I told him that I’m not really interested in spending half my Sunday morning at a political rally. We were to meet at the Lalit (opposite Barakhamba Road) early in the morning, at around 8.30am. It wasn’t very far away from the Ramlila Maidan. I reached there in the morning and waited for Vijay. He was late, not for the first time. Eventually, after almost an hour of waiting, just as I was to leave, he called. He reached the Lalit shortly, and suggested that I join him at the swearing him. We can chat there, he said.

I got into his car, and Tanmay Bhat was there, along with Rega Jha, then the editor of Buzzfeed India. We went for the swearing in, and Vijay and I sat separately from Tanmay and Rega, and we discussed the lawsuits filed against AIB. Once the swearing in was over, we found that his car couldn’t pick us up because there were just too many people exiting Ramlila Maidan. The roads were packed. We decided to walk to Connaught Place, and grab lunch at Monkey Bar. As we walked from Ramlila Maidan towards CP, every few meters, someone would stop us to take a selfie with Tanmay.

This made me realise that for all the outrage about the AIB roast, regular people who had watched it really didn’t mind. If nothing else, it had only enhanced AIB’s celebrity status. I don’t remember any of the conversation from that day– except for a weird instance where my water alarm went off (with an drinking water sound), and Tanmay turned to me and said “Dude. What IS that?” — but I did find Tanmay very authentic. He is genuinely smart and funny, and just seemed like a guy who enjoys making people laugh.

I don’t know if any of this had an impact on AIB’s decision to work with the Net Neutrality campaign, but this meeting did give me the idea of reaching out to them. On the day the TRAI paper came out, I didn’t have Tanmay’s email address or number, so it all depended on Khamba. I sent him a short, sharp email at 3:35PM:

“Trai’s consultation paper on net neutrality is out. Over the next week or so, am preparing a response and a simplified paper. Is there any way you can help get the word out and people to participate? Trai favors telcos who have pushed for this consultation, and telcos have a very strong lobby. We need 15000 responses to counter their 10, and get people to tell Ravi Shankar Prasad to stop this.”

Khamba responded within a minute (at 3:36PM), saying “For sure. How do you think we can help? Will be more than happy.”

At that time, I didn’t actually know how.

I said something silly via email to Khamba: “One would be memes. Have an idea for a small crazy sketch as an appeal.” My only big idea here was to get AIB involved: they were approachable, I knew how to approach them, and I had hope.

I’d just taken a long-shot, and it hit bullseye.

Khamba connected me with Rohan Joshi and Ashish Shakya for a call. I took the call with Rohan and Ashish on my way to Gurgaon. I think they said they’d get back to me with ideas, but I’m not sure if we discussed a video then. I reached Gurgaon, met my friend, and bored him with conversations about Net Neutrality and rants about telecom operators while we got drunk.

The Net Neutrality campaign had begun.

March 25th 2015: Sidin Vadukut and the plan for the Net Neutrality campaign

The Shreya Singh verdict from the Supreme Court was announced on the 24th of March 2015. It remains the foremost judgment for free speech on the Internet, even though some parts of it did not go our way. I say “our way” because some of us had spent years pushing back against Section 66A, and in court, I spent some time helping Senior Counsels understand the issues better. It was also, interestingly enough, a case which was being live tweeted by some lawyers, and including by J. Sai Deepak, who I had multiple conversations with about intermediary liability in court. I felt it was my case: I had almost become a petitioner, but instead, recommended my friend Faisal Farooqui to the Software Freedom Law Center, in my stead, because his organisation, Mouthshut, had received hundreds of takedown notices.

I remember walking out of Court number 1 of the Supreme Court after the verdict and feeling despondent. We may have had Section 66A (arrests for posts that were annoying, inconvenient or grossly offensive) taken down, but Section 79A (takedown of content upon notice) was only watered down, and Section 69A (secret blocking) remained protected. Raman and Apar were thrilled and talked some sense into me: a victory like this was unprecedented and significant. The judgment we got here today is one that can be used in free speech cases in the future.

That day (or the next) Sidin Vadukut, twitter star, author and columnist with Mint, and asked on twitter (now x) what the lessons were from the campaign. I had been preparing for the Net Neutrality campaign for almost 3 months, so I thought I’d write it down. Here’s the text of the email (with minor grammatical and typo errors fixed)

Subject: Learnings

Text: tldr: civil society orgs have it all wrong. need to get people involved.

*

Not specific to this case, but learnings from the last two years of watching how the policy space works

There are three levels of advocacy: politics, power and influence. This is in increasing order of perceived impact, decreasing order of credibility. Civil society members essentially focus on power: they create a position of power for themselves, and use perceived influence to push those in political positions to act. For example, an organization like ORF, SFLC or CIS will invite experts from across the globe to speak at small events they organize, invite people of importance in the audience, and through discussion, position themselves as a source of knowledge and connections with experts, to position themselves as experts. They will hold consultations, create research and white papers, and using their expertise, and connect with the media (who they invite for events), try and influence policy makers. They take the sniper approach: target the right people.

Two years ago, a week before the global IGF event in Baku, there were four events in Delhi in the space of a week. The same people, the same audience, the same conversations, the same panelists. They meet regularly. It’s an echo chamber.

In my opinion, this is useful, but likely to fail. Policy makers, given that they are likely to be influenced more by politicians, the industry, the press and people (social media), are likely to lean towards what impacts them the most: whether it is keeping their position of power, ensuring what keeps their paymasters happy, or what keeps the perception right. A few civil society organizations complaining will be seen as irritation, and can be ignored. These are people who will send them white papers, research reports and plead with them rationally about what is to be done.

What they can’t ignore, is people.

If you see how the judgment panned out, 66A was the only part that people cared about. They didn’t care censorship: about 79 and rules which allow takedowns and 69 which allows secret blocking. 66A was declared unconstitutional, 79 was written down, 69 was left as is. There are reasons, but the judges could have found reason to address 79 and 69 too. The massive public sentiment against 66A, reflected by reactions on social media and in the press put pressure on the government and the judiciary. Volume matters.

We worked on aggressively reporting Net Neutrality issues for three years. Nothing happened. Telcos spoke up about wanting to create interconnection charges and charge startups for allowing access to their apps. No one cared. It is when Airtel made VoIP costlier that there was a massive public outcry, there was pressure on TRAI to stop Airtel, pressure on Airtel to change the plan. Airtel brought people on board. We only explained to people why they were wrong, helped them understand. Now, when this goes to the TRAI for consultation, we are up against telecom operators and telco bodies who have been lobbying the TRAI for a year and a half. Telco CEO’s have met them several times, their execs meet the TRAI guys twice a week. TRAI’s policies often take the middle ground, and lean towards the telcos. On Net Neutrality, any middle ground is bad. It’s 8 powerful telcos versus people. My point is, while civil society organizations are taking a sniper approach, wouldn’t a shotgun approach be better? Once the TRAI opens up for submissions on net neutrality, if we can get 10,000 submissions from people like you and me, against 10 from telcos + telecom industry orgs, which way will the TRAI be forced to lean?

That’ll be an interesting experiment, and I’m already on it.

Now there’s some additional context needed here.

Firstly, the differential usage of power, politics and influence is something I learned in organisational dynamics in college in 2004, in terms of how groups and teams work in organisations. We had to do a group presentation on the usage of tactics in power, politics and influence, and their impact on recipients. Instead of applying it to a workplace situation, I took it to a public perception battle at the time that there was a split impending between the Ambani brothers and analysed the strategy behind their communication choices and the impact on how the media reported on it. The group went along with whatever I decided, and we titled it “Reliance and the Art of War”. This was not what the teacher had taught or expected, but I found out a year later that our presentation was being used in other colleges for teaching the concepts.

Secondly, I had being going for TRAI open house discussions since 2007: I knew how the consultation process works, how open house discussions were held, and having reported on, and participated in TRAI consultations, I knew the process. I knew that typically, there were 15-30 submissions to TRAI on most issues. The Internet, I hoped, could help us get to 10,000, so that the regulator understands what people want.

Thirdly, I had had this exact discussion around my frustration with how civil society organisations work, with Apar sometime in December. He had been working on a research project on Civil Society in India, and had interviewed me for it. As you can imagine, I was frustrated that Civil Society orgs didn’t do enough around issues of 66A, 79A and 69A even at that time. I didn’t realise then that they’re built for research, not advocacy, and that research is, in many cases, a weak form of advocacy.

This understanding helped me formulate some of the plans for the Internet Freedom Foundation later.

At that time, though, I didn’t know that there was mayhem just around the corner. The TRAI consultation would begin in a matter of days, not weeks.

26th October 2014: Hillhacks and getting Kiran Jonnalagadda interested in Net Neutrality

Kiran and Zainab were going to be in Delhi for a brief stay, after which they were going to Dharamshala for a break. Kiran had a particular fondness for Dharamshala, I knew. One time, in 2011 or 2012, he had dropped by home on his way back after spending an extended time (1 month or 6 months, I forget which in Dharamshala).

We sat then for a few hours in my rooftop office and I discussed with him my participation in a consultation on Mobile VAS, and he had explained the way the Internet works, with URLs, DNS’ (Nameservers), and I fleshed out on a whiteboard, a corresponding model for liberating VAS from the clutches of telecom operators, and essentially freeing numbers (like STAR TV’s 7827) from the control of telecom operators. At that time, SMS was big: Times Internet had 8888 and would later launch a service called FOLLO (which I thought was brilliant). That shortcode, though, was an identity on SMS, like a website was an identity on the web, except that you licensed it from the telecom operator and could never own it.

In the VAS industry there was folklore of how once a telecom operator was refusing to renew the license for a companys short code, and Ajay Vaishnavi, who later became head of mobile for Times Internet, went from circle to circle, and convinced circle CEOs to renew that short code. Eventually they gave in, but telecom operators drove a hard bargain, and they controlled your existence on SMS. I presented this idea to the TRAI later at a public consultation in Bangalore, but the TRAI never

The bus for Dharamshala leaves from Majnu Ka Tila in Delhi, near my house, so I asked Kiran if he could drop by on his way to the bus stop, and I could explain the Net Neutrality problem that I saw coming ahead of us. If we did anything like a campaign, we would need tech to run an email service, and I needed Kiran on board. Except that Kiran didn’t make it: he got late leaving from Karim’s house (Karim is not his actual name), where he was staying, and couldn’t stop by. “Why don’t you come to Dharamshala for Hillhacks? Just take a bus, and I’ll tell you how to get there.” Next day was Diwali, and I knew Delhi would be unlivable for a week or so, so I thought it over and told Kiran the next morning that I’m be coming for Hillhacks. I booked a bus for 7PM, packed and boarded a largely empty bus. That night, for as long as I had a mobile Internet connectivity, I saw AQI readings rise progressively. It was Diwali night, the roads were empty, and the bus reached at 5AM instead of the expected 7AM. The bus also dropped me away from where Kiran had suggested I disembark, so I walked all the way down, trying to find “Ghoomakkad” where Hillhacks was being held. When I did reach there finally, dodging a few strays on the road, only one person was awake. I was pointed to a dorm — a large hall with wooden beds and mattresses on them, and people fast asleep. I found an empty bed and crashed.

Hillhacks is/was a makers community, and this was the first one, called Hillhacks 0. There I met Akiba from Japan, who had managed to bring in sacks of solar panels to teach kids how to solder and build solar powered items, like lamps.

Sva appeared to be running the show, and there were a few people from Germany. People had been here for a couple of weeks, and had spent time teaching kids in schools tech. The community had pooled in money, some more some less, and there was a minimum charge. Food was made by the community. Someone had brought and set up a 3D printer. Sva, I think was teaching people how to print t-shirts. This was a makers space, a geek-paradise, the kind that Kiran was connected to and I was fascinated (and daunted) by.

In the morning, I told Kiran a little about the Net Neutrality issues and what we were facing. He stopped me short and suggested that I do a talk on it. There was going to be an unconference the next day, and there were open slots: all you had to do was put up a post-it for a time-slot that was available. I blocked an afternoon slot. In the evening we walked to McLeodGanj for some Korean food. I came back and crashed.

The next day, Kiran convinced me to do the Triund trek – we went halfway up, to magic view. Somewhere along the way I found enough connectivity for a silly tweet.

The Unconference was the next day. There was a projector, a screen, in an open area covered by a tent of some kind, and carpets on the floor.

We sat on the carpets and people made presentations – I don’t remember most of them – but Kiran gave a talk about open source and platformisation. He pointed out that “We seem to have come to a unilateral understanding of tech, that it is industry led. Different ways of looking at development. “

In the afternoon, on the 26th, I shared the issues with Zero Rating. There weren’t many people there – maybe a maximum of 10-15 – and most people didn’t quite understand the implications of these issues for business. They were hackers not startups. I remember getting into a debate with someone from Germany who didn’t quite understand why someone shouldn’t be able to subsidise data costs for their apps and websites, and I remember struggling to respond to this at the time. This was my first time talking in public about Net Neutrality, albeit with a small audience.

Some of it, it seems, landed.

I remember staying till the end of Hillhacks in 2014, as plans were made for the next hillhacks, and everyone went their own way. I returned to smoke-filled Delhi.

P.s.: I’ll let Kiran detail his version of events here

October 9, 2014: The Internet.org Press Conference with Mark Zuckerberg

One late evening, I got a text from the CEO of a Bangalore based startup, telling me that he’ll see me in Delhi for the Zuckerberg visit. I didn’t know what he was talking about, so I called him up to find out what was going on. Everyone will be there, he told me, for the Internet.org summit, so he expected that I would be there too. Internet.org had been announced in May 2015, and was expected to launch in India.

I mailed Carson Dalton, head of corporate communications at Facebook, and Ankhi Das, head of Public Policy, asking if I could attend and interview Zuckerberg. Carson responded almost immediately saying that I’ll get an invite soon, and he’ll get back regarding the interview the next day if they have slots. A few days later, he called, saying that there will be a press conference. Send me your questions, he said, and we’ll pull one out of a fishbowl. There were going to be many journalists there, so it’s only fair that the selection be random, he indicated. The next day, I sent 2 questions across:

“Doesn’t creating a consumer data pricing differentiation between those companies which are on board at internet.org and those which are not, disadvantage those startups who can’t afford to pay telecom operators for subsidising data? India is a very price sensitive market.

India is a country with multiple languages and scripts, and while Facebook is enabling reading in many of those languages, why hasn’t the company enabled input mechanisms in Indic when someone changes their language interface to, say, hindi?”

Everyone from India’s startup ecosystem was there for the launch, at the Taj Palace hotel in Delhi. There appeared to be a clear separation in the hall: the journalists were on the left side of the stage, while the startup founders were on the right. I waded through the crowds towards the right, and made small talk with some founders.

I remember some banter with Hitesh Oberoi, the now CEO of Info Edge (Naukri), before finding my place in the journalists section, sitting next to Shilpa Kannan, then working with BBC India. Zuckerberg announced Internet.org and walked off stage. As we made our way to the press conference, held at an adjacent room, I heard murmurs of discontent from founders and senior executives of tech firms, some of whom flew to Delhi, and expected to be granted an exclusive audience with Zuckerberg, or at least an interaction as a group.

At the press conference, around 30 of us, journalists, were waiting for Zuckerberg. At least we would get an interaction. He walked in. I don’t clearly remember what he said, but I noticed Carson with a printout in hand, pointing out journalists who would be allowed to ask a question. There was no fishbowl. The questions were, to my mind, insipid: why are you launching free Internet instead of funding toilets? What would you do if you were to start up again? I sat with my laptop open, waiting for my turn, which never came.

As I exited the press conference, I noticed Madhavan Narayanan, then with Hindustan Times, and Kashish Gupta of NDTV, angry with Dalton about not being given an opportunity to ask a question. I wasn’t as perturbed. Sitting at the press conference, I had realised that my turn would never come. I knew what to do.

A few weeks before this, Jeff Bezos was to be in India. I had been sounded-out about an interview with Bezos, and had been preparing for it. Bezos had done the rounds in India, given several interviews to mainstream publications, as I awaited my opportunity for when he visited Delhi. The day before the interview, someone from the PR agency representing Amazon called me up, and suggested that I ask him primarily about how his India trip was, and what kind of food he had tried. The kind of idiotic fluff you would never expect from me. I told them that they shouldn’t be so presumptuous that they can tell me what to ask. A few hours later I got an email saying that Bezos has been called into an important government meeting and won’t be able to do the interview.

Towards the end of the press conference with Zuckerberg, I had a moment of realization: as a journalist, my job is to ask the question, it is theirs to answer. Just because they haven’t chosen to answer my question doesn’t mean the question isn’t important.

Sometimes the questions are more important than the answers.

So instead of writing about what Zuckerberg said at the launch of Internet.org, I wrote about what he didn’t say, and posed the questions publicly:

– Before a telecom operator gets a roster of services to choose from, how would core services be selected for the Internet.org app?

– Under what circumstances are services going to be rejected for Internet.org?

– Who exactly pays telecom operators for free Internet access and how are the rates paid to telcos decided?

– Are the rates that telecom operators being paid for consumer access to Internet.org going to be higher or lower than market rates, and will there be public disclosures, so these can be compared with pay-per-use access rates in each country?

– Why is Facebook (via Internet.org) distorting the market by splitting the Internet into services that are free and paid for consumer access?

It was their problem now.

September 15, 2014: On the sidelines of Sundar Pichai’s visit to India

Sundar Pichai, then Google’s Senior VP, was in India for the launch of Android One in India. Prashant Singh, then with Spice Labs, and really the heart and soul of Mobile Monday Delhi, pinged me to ask if I’m going to be at a NASSCOM event with Sundar Pichai in Gurgaon.

Prashant and I used to organise Mobile Monday Delhi together, before I got busy with MediaNama, and he ran it till he eventually wound it up. He remains a close friend, and one of the most insightful people I know: unafraid to give a divergent point of view, share an insight that makes you think of things differently, and challenge your thinking.

Uninvited, I landed up at the Leela Ambience hotel, and we spent our evening standing at the back (the hall was full) listening to Pichai. On the way back, Prashant hitched a ride with me to the metro station at Jhandewalan (a direct metro to Noida), so we had a good hour to chat in peak hour traffic between Gurgaon and Delhi.

I took this as an opportunity to bounce my concerns about revenue share and the planned Internet.org with him. I wanted to understand what he thought about this, as someone who builds mobile apps. Facebook already has Facebook Zero in India, and Whatsapp had promotional deals with telecom operators. He was a little dismissive about it at that time, didn’t think of this as a significant concern.

If I can pay and get more downloads for my app by advertising, I remember him asking, what’s wrong with paying and getting more downloads for my app because users won’t be charged data charges fee for using it? Good for the developer, isn’t it?

I asked Prashant today (17th April 2025, since this post is back-dated) about what he remembered about this discussion, and he says this is quite accurate. Also, he remembers making the point that the telecom operators should offer this to everyone: “whoever wants to buy data should be allowed to buy…unless they are violating any term of resale say drugs etc.”

Prashant was acutely aware of the challenges that VAS companies (which provided ringtones, ringbacktones etc on mobile) faced with telecom operators. Telcos had someone called a Supply Chain Manager, who used to renegotiate revenue share with VAS companies, and their focus each year was to increase the percentage that telecom operators faced.

I remember Viren Popli, a friend who was then Head of Digital at STAR TV, telling me once that he had met one telecom operator for a deal about KBC (Kaun Banega Crorepati), and had discussed a rate. When he went to another telecom operator, trying to negotiate a better deal, he found that they already had information on rates from the other telco. It’s a cartel, he always said.

My other argument was that once you start a revenue share arrangement with a telecom operator, it will be bait-and-switch. Facebook, I pointed out, had already done this with brand pages on its platform: we first paid for making pages with fans, and one day, Facebook flipped the switch and forced people to pay to reach the same users who had signed up to view their updates.

Prashant didn’t seem to be convinced about all this: the entire situation was perhaps too hypothetical for him, whereas I had been in the thick of debates already.

However, this conversation was important because it foreshadows debates that we had during the Net Neutrality campaign. For me, this debate with Prashant was useful preparation.