By The People: How ‘clicktivism’ helped shape net neutrality in India

Abstract

In March 2015, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) released a consultation paper inviting responses and comments from the public to recommendations that private telecom operators be allowed to charge extra for third-party internet-based applications and services. This was in response to certain telecom companies deciding to charge internet-based voice calls at the rate of voice calls, paving the way for differentiating between kinds of content transferred via the internet using mobile phones. In response, an unprecedented online movement inundated the TRAI website, seeking to overturn the recommendations, and laying the groundwork for what has come to be seen as robust net neutrality laws.

The movement was magnified online by a group of artists, journalists, technologists, lawyers, and policy experts who came together under the Save The Internet campaign and encouraged internet users in India to take part in the consultation process. TRAI received over a million responses. It was this public outcry that defeated some of the most powerful players in the digital realm – from telecom companies to Facebook, leading to the net neutrality laws that now exist in India.

This paper will attempt to chart the evolution of net neutrality in India, focusing on how the net neutrality regulations came to be. In so doing, the paper hopes to understand how a leaderless citizen movement helped shape policy within a highly technical space, normally considered the domain of ‘experts.’ As more and more ‘users’ of the internet are transformed into ‘consumers’ of internet-related products, the lines demarcating ‘consumers,’ ‘citizens,’ ‘users,’ and ‘data subjects’ are becoming increasingly blurred. In moments such as the public debate on net neutrality, not only did the ‘citizen’ aspect of internet users come to the fore, it also allowed for the observation of participatory democracy in action.