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Post his speech in Parliament on Monday on the land Bill and the encomiums he got from his acolytes, who also include media worthies, Rahul Gandhi seems to believe he’s conquered land and has now set his sights on the skies — the raging issue of net neutrality. While he was on relatively stronger ground on the land Bill, he might be walking on thin air on the issue of net neutrality.
“If the government wanted to protect net neutrality, why did they start consultations about it in the first place?” he demanded, attributing motives to the Trai consultation process. So, does he expect the regulator to announce rules without consultation? As the king-in-waiting of a major party, Gandhi ought to know that Trai routinely puts out — as any regulator does — consultation papers seeking public response on major issues before framing rules. Questioning an established and transparent process of rule-setting and attributing motives to it is poor strategy indeed. If anything, it shows a leader ignorant of governance practices.
He did not stop with that. Little realising that the net neutrality debate is an international issue he sought to project it as a corporates versus the Modi government issue. In his view, the debate is a “trial balloon” and the government is engaged in an operation to “grab” the net for corporates. While one suspects that Gandhi may have got his briefings mixed up between “land”, “grab” and the “net”, he needs to understand that India is only the latest frontier in this worldwide battle for a free internet.
Again, Gandhi’s comparison of US President Barack Obama’s praise for Prime Minister Modi in Time with how earlier US presidents used to praise Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev appears bizarre indeed. What exactly was he trying to convey? Was he trying to draw a connection between Obama’s praise and the net neutrality debate in India? If so, someone should tell him that Obama is a strong supporter of net neutrality and there is no way he could be praising Modi to help Facebook in India.
Clearly, Rahul Gandhi needs to do his homework before he stands up in Parliament next time.
Associate Editor
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