Hyderabad: Protest against free basics

A large group of students, volunteers, hacktivists, academics, IT employees and lawyers held a public meeting at Gachibowli on Tuesday to protest against the Free Basics initiative by Facebook. Among the speakers were Prof. K.S. Rajan, head of Spatial Data Analytics, IIIT, and Prof. L. Pratap Reddy of JNTU.

 

Prof. Rajan said that the internet is a great gateway to spread knowledge and education. Like every knowledge system, the internet should be open, accessible and affordable to all and should not be controlled by a few corporations and said that Free Basics would create barriers instead of creating digital equality. Prof. Reddy underlined the importance of the fight for net neutrality and how Free Basics would lead to digital colonisation. The public meeting was conducted by Swecha, which is part of the Free Software Movement of India.