Google Outpaces Facebook on Getting India Connected to Internet

It's almost unbelievable how disconnected from reality we've become if we think that 500 MB per month is useless. Ignoring gaming and media, 500 MB is more than I use per month on my phone, and I use it a lot every day. I remember when the web first became a thing and I was first able to contact people using IMs and emails. It was a huge, life-changing deal. You need to think back to your own experience with this, assuming you lived through it anyway. The difference between no Internet at all and 500 MB of Internet per month easily captures 95% of the total value that the Internet actually delivers to your daily life compared to the difference between 500 MB and unlimited.

A central premise of its advocats is that net neutrality is a value on its own. (More like a natural right.) Therefore, utility arguments that might favor a position in disagreement with netneutrality don't apply simply on a value basis.

That's probably the reason you got downvoted.

edit: There do exist a lot of utility arguments in favor of net neutrality. But most advocats use them as parallel constructs for their deeper reason of believe. A simple emotional test one could exercise: If you can not construct a case in which the violation of net neutrality could lead to a greater overall benefit, your position is probably more a believe than a result of rational consideration.

>Facebook doesn't let them decide. Because they only provide Facebook. It's an illusion of choice.

They can decide between having Facebook or not, no one is forcing them to use it. Government is forcing them to not use Facebook. That's an illusion of protection.

>Governments exist because the people themselves prefer to defer such matters to people that presumably know what they are doing.

That's strange logic. Considering that people often do not prefer such deferment and are often pissed at government decisions.

I'm merely stating that it is not the government's roll to determine if the individual should or should not have access to a certain product.

Has the West not done the same? Who was Mother Teresa? When she adopted India as her home, leaving her birthplace for good, to help the distressed, did the West not glorify her as a "savior" and elevate her status to a "Saint"? Heck even after her death, lots of Western publications still continue to praise her work (and rightfully so). Should we call the West hypocritical then?

Just because Sundar Pichai left India for good does not make him any less Indian. At the same time, he is also not a celebrity.

If you bother to look at other articles published by the same publications you referred to, you'll notice that they praise a lot of other, more powerful Indian entrepreneurs as well. Sundar Pichai is not even on the same plane as those of Tatas, Birlas, Kirloskars etc. These are the local celebrities (household names if you will). Not Sundar Pichai. Go ask any Indian about Tata and s/he will tell you everything they know. Then ask about Sundar Pichai. That is when you'll understand who is the real celebrity in India.

Indian schools are very different. Indian education (up to but not including college) is very different. While top IB schools and whatnot (which are super expensive and may not be affordable even if you have earned money in the States -- besides, you will be earning less money now) exist and are closer to the Western model of education, most likely you will be in something less expensive. There is an enormous focus on rote learning. There is a very high competitive attitude. These things are _very hard_ to adjust to. Rote learning especially; that's not taught in the US, and is a very hard skill to pick up at a later age. This is not something that can be trivially brushed away.

(The reverse is true too; I know Indian kids who have had a hard time when moving to the West.)

And really, schools are often why people avoid moving from state to state in a country, forget moving to another country altogether. Its generally about not wanting to uproot your family's life. Schooling is a big part of that.

Nobody's saying schools don't exist in India.

Source: I'm an Indian-American who came back to India and had to switch schools. I know many other families who have done this.

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Edit: Some other things that I missed:

The school year is different. Furthermore, many schools (at least in Mumbai) start the year in feb-apr before summer vacation.

Languages. Depending on your location and the grade you're in, you may have to learn one or two languages other than English. If the child is very young this is okay, but you can't expect older kids to pick up the new language and get to the level of proficiency expected at that age. Most Indian-American kids do speak one Indic language, but not necessarily to the degree of proficiency required. They may not speak Hindi at all.

Many exam boards allow for some flexibility with choosing a different language, like French. But most schools won't have the faculty for that.

In my case there was exactly one school in all of Mumbai where I would not have had to have Hindi as a subject AND would not have had to sit out a year of school (this was after leaving my American school a few months early -- they were okay with that because I had good grades. Imagine the situation people would be in if they didn't have the grades necessary to be able to leave school early.)

I actually still started after the school year was underway, but fortunately this school was okay with that. Didn't help the transition between education systems though.