*Free Basics: Corporate Freedom To Privatise India's Basic Economy*
*By Vandana Shiva*
30 December, 2015
*Vandanashiva.com* <
http://vandanashiva.com/?p=369>
*A*s the TRAI decides the fate of Free Basics, Mark Zuckerberg is in India
with Rs 100 crore, in pocket change, for advertising. Facebook’s Free
Basics is a repackaged internet.org, or in other words, a system where
Facebook decides what parts of the internet are important to users.
Reliance, Facebook’s Indian* partner*
<
http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/social/facebook-free-basics-trai-tells-reliance-comm-to-stop-service-for-now/>
in the Free Basics venture, is an Indian mega-corporation with interests in
telecom, energy, food, retail, infrastructure and, of course, land.
Reliance obtained land for its rural cell phone towers from the government
of India and *grabbed * <
http://www.countercurrents.org/shiva100207.htm>land
from farmers for SEZ’s through violence and deceit. As a result and at no
cost, Reliance has a huge rural, semi-urban and suburban user base –
especially farmers. Although Free Basics has been *banned *
<
http://trak.in/tags/business/2015/12/23/rcom-defying-trai-free-basics-available-despite-trai-ban/>(for
the time being), Reliance continues to offer the service across its
networks.
A collective corporate assault is underway globally. Having lined up all
their ducks, veterans of corporate America such as Bill Gates are being
joined by the next wave of philanthro-corporate Imperialists, including
Mark Zuckerberg. The similarities in Gates and Zuckerberg’s perfectly
rehearsed, PR firm-managed announcements of giving away’ their fortunes is
uncanny. Whatever entity the Zuckerbergs form to handle the US$45 billion
they will be investing will most likely end up looking a lot like the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation. ie: powerful enough to *influence *
<
http://seedfreedom.info/the-raging-elephant-in-the-climate-change-room/>the
climate negotiations, responsible for nothing.
What could Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have to gain from dictating terms
to governments during the climate summit? “The Breakthrough Energy
Coalition will invest in ideas that have the potential to transform the way
we all produce and consume energy,” Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page.
It was an announcement of Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Coalition, the
combined wealth of hundreds of billions of dollars of 28 private investors
who will influence how the world produces and consumes energy.
At the same time, Gates is currently behind a push to force chemical,
fossil fuel dependent agriculture and patented GMOs (*#FossilAg*
<
https://twitter.com/hashtag/FossilAg?src=hash>) through the *Alliance for
a Green Revolution in Africa *
<
http://www.alternet.org/food/how-bill-gates-causing-collapse-traditional-farming-and-local-food-economies>(AGRA).
It is an attempt to lock African farmers into a dependence on fossil fuels
that should be left underground, as well as creating a dependence on
Monsanto for seeds and petrochemicals.
95% of the *cotton in India*
<
http://ableag.org/resources/bt_cotton_in_india-2002-2014/> is Monsanto’s
proprietary Bt Cotton. This year, in regions from Punjab to Karnataka, 80%
of this Bt crop *failed*
<
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/80-pc-of-bt-cotton-crop-destroyed-in-pest-attack-in-raichur-district-expert-team/article8031087.ece>
– that’s 76% of Bt Cotton farmers with no crop left at harvest time. If
they had a choice, they would switch. But what resembles a choice between
cotton seeds is the same Bt Cotton seed, marketed by different companies
under different names, purchased in desperation as farmers try combination
after combination of seeds, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides—all of which
have chemical names designed to make you feel inadequate—until you have no
‘choices’ left but to take your own life.
What Monsanto has done by pushing *Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) laws
and patents* <
http://vandanashiva.com/?p=358> on seeds, Zuckerberg is
attempting to do to internet freedom in India. And like Monsanto, he is
targeting the most marginalised Indians.
Free Basics will limit what the internet is to a vast majority of India.
Already at its outset Free Basics has said it won’t allow video content on
the basis that it will interfere with the telecom companies’ services
(read: profits) – despite the TRAI’s own recommendation that video content
is more accessible to different parts of the population.
Once allowed as a free service, what is to stop telecom companies from
redefining the internet to suit their own interests, and those of their
corporate partners? After all, the ban on Free Basics has not stopped
Reliance from carrying on with the service to its huge user base, a large
proportion of who are farmers.
Why should Mark Zuckerberg decide what the internet is to a farmer in
Punjab, who has just lost 80% of his cotton harvest because Monsanto’s Bt
Cotton and the chemicals he was told to spray completely failed? Should the
internet allow him to see how GMO technology has failed everywhere in the
world and is only kept afloat through unfair market and trade policies, or
should the internet suggest the next patented molecule he should spray on
his crop?
The Monsanto-Facebook connection is a deep one. The top 12 investors in
Monsanto are almost the *same*
<
https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2014/03/22/facebook-and-monsanto-top-shareholders-are-identical/>
as the top 12 investors in Facebook, including the Vanguard Group. The
Vanguard Group is also a top investor in John Deere, Monsanto’s new partner
for ‘*smart tractors*
<
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/01/21/264577744/should-farmers-give-john-deere-and-monsanto-their-data>’,
bringing all food production and consumption, from seed to data, under the
control of a handful of investors.
It’s no surprise that the Facebook page March Against Monsanto, a major
American movement in support of labelling and regulating GMOs, was* deleted*
<
http://www.march-against-monsanto.com/facebook-censored-and-deleted-march-against-monsanto-event/>
.
Recently India has seen an explosion in e-retailing. From large
corporations to entrepreneurs, people all over the country are able to sell
what they make to a market that was earlier unreachable to them. Craftsmen
have been able to grow their businesses, farms have found consumers nearby.
Just like Monsanto with patented seeds, Zuckerberg wants not just a slice,
but the whole pie of the basic economy of the Indian people, especially its
farmers and peasants. What would Monsanto’s monopoly over climate data mean
for farmers enslaved through a Facebook gateway to Monsanto data delivered
through an internet that is controlled by Facebook? What would this mean
for internet and food democracy?
The right to food is the right to choose what we want to eat; to know what
is in our food (*#LabelGMOsNow* <
http://www.labelgmos.org/>) and to choose
nourishing, tasty food – not the few packaged goods that corporations want
us to consume.
The right to the internet is the right to choose what spaces and media we
access; to choose spaces that enrich us – not what companies think should
be our ‘basics’.
Our right to know what we are eating is as essential our right to
information, all information. Our right to an open internet is as essential
to our democracy as our right to save, exchange and sell open pollinated
farmers’ seeds.
In the ultimate Orwellian doublespeak, “free” for Zuckerberg means
“privatised”, a far cry from privacy – a word Zuckerberg does not believe
in. And like corporate-written “free” trade agreements, Free Basics is
anything but free for citizens. It is an enclosure of the commons, which
are ‘commons’ because they guarantee access to the commoner, whether it be
seed, water, information or internet. What Monsanto’s IPRs are to seed,
Free Basics is to information.
Smart Tractors from John Deere, used on farms growing patented Monsanto
seed, sprayed and damaged using Bayer chemicals, with soil and climate data
owned and sold by Monsanto, beamed to the farmer’s cellphone from Reliance,
logged in as your Facebook profile, on land owned by The Vanguard Group.
Every step of every process right up until the point you pick something up
off a supermarket shelf will be determined by the interests of the same
shareholders.
Talk about choice.
Visit *
http://www.savetheinternet.in* <
http://www.savetheinternet.in/> to
tell TRAI (again) that we need net neutrality
*Dr. Vandana Shiva* is a philosopher, environmental activist and eco
feminist. She is the founder/director of Navdanya Research Foundation for
Science, Technology, and Ecology. She is author of numerous books
including, Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis;
Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply; Earth Democracy:
Justice, Sustainability, and Peace; and Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and
Development. Shiva has also served as an adviser to governments in India
and abroad as well as NGOs, including the International Forum on
Globalization, the Women’s Environment and Development Organization and the
Third World Network. She has received numerous awards, including 1993 Right
Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize) and the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize.
Received on Tue Jan 05 2016 - 01:02:24 EST