One of the questions that TRAI poses the "stakeholder" is:
Question 9: What are your views on net-neutrality in the Indian context? How should the various principles discussed in para 5.47 be dealt with? Please comment with justifications.
The question shows a presumptuous understanding that there should be a different definition of net-neutrality in the "Indian context". Does it mean that even in the face of the American Federal Communications Commission's recent quashing of similar shameless efforts by the US telecom companies to maximise profits our TRAI can even imagine that different countries and societies can define freedom of information differently? Will the Human Rights Commission of India also come out with a "consultation paper" on how to treat the value of human life in the Indian context? Or, will the National Commission for Women on how to treat rapes in the Indian context?
And, here we are, the Indian intelligentsia signing on-line petitions to the government and to the TRAI to stop discrimination in Internet access. As if online petitions ever had any impact on decision making. Such petitions can be easily scoffed at by the powers that be on the ground that two lakh signatories in a country of one hundred and thirty crore does not count even for half a mouthful for a starving man.
Like the ever pliant and obedient subjects of the state we have accepted that the TRAI paper is a valid document to start with and that TRAI has some mandate to ask our opinion on this issue. I do not subscribe to this understanding. What business did TRAI had to think that an Airtel can have a "deal" with a "Flipkart" and that citizens would be asked to opine on this? Why did the TRAI not come down on Airtel with a hefty penalty the moment such a "concessional rate" of access was offered to its subscribers? Why publish a consultation paper?
I think that the TRAI consultation paper #2/2015 on Regulatory Framework for Over-the-top (OTT) services is unauthorised, illegal and beyond the mandate of TRAI. TRAI is just supposed to enforce the principle of net neutrality. It cannot seek public opinion on this matter, just the way a judge cannot ask public at large whether award of a jail sentence to a rapist is justified in the "Indian context". The judge simply has to do his assigned job.
If there must be an online petition, it should be on whether the TRAI Paper should be withdrawn, whether the official, who wrote it should be sacked and on whether TRAI should be questioned on why it has not acted against the offenders so far.
