A little good now at the expense of a significant amount of future opportunity. In established markets this is called "dumping" -- giving something away to destroy competition.

I don't think there is any loss of significant future opportunity. When someone will be able to afford the Internet, they will start using whichever service they find fit. Till then for those people, I can't overstate how important free access to even this limited Internet is. Even free access to wikipedia and facebook helps a lot of people in a lot of ways. Fun Story: One day I was with the brother of a friend of mine. He said facebook helped him a lot in SSC preparations. I thought he was joking, but it turns out that there is an entire ecosystem of services on facebook which help several people in several ways and for those people, this free access matters a hell lot.

What about the third and fourth and fifth alternatives that are never talked about? Why must India choose between Free Basics or nothing?

You are assuming that the other services can just wait it out while people break out of FB ecosystem and discover them. Development of these kind of walled gardens significantly harm the development of independent services. That is one of the main problem. If everyone had free Orkut and no access to FB, how long would it have taken Facebook to catch on?

I am not assuming anything. People who don't have internt access are not using those service anyways. So those services will continue at their natural pace. So I don't see how free basics will harm the development of independent services. Regarding Orkut, it had a lot of users before facebook arrived on the scene. But Facebook was just so much better that everyone eventually jumped on it. I doubt the outcome would have been any different had Orkut been free, considering that the network effect was a huge price in itself. The point is, I am yet to see anyone who can afford a monthly data pack interested in choosing a service based upon it's inclusion in free basics. Free basics is good for those who won't use the internet at all otherwise.

In the FB vs Orkut example, not only is the Orkut Free, FB is inaccessible to Orkut users. What do you think will be the outcome then?

You are also assuming that if not for Free Basics, there will be nothing done to increase the internet spread in India. As those opposed to Free Basics have repeatedly pointed out, there are other better options available.

Facebook could make all this opposition evaporate by changing from a fixed service model to a fixed bandwidth model open to all services. I'm not trying to keep people from getting their first access to the Internet, I'm trying to keep corporations from creating a permanent tier of second-class locked-in customers.

If Facebook is bringing in Free Basics only to get those who do not have internet access to get some, then why is Free Basics provided even to customers with data packs? I have seen in person and verified that it is the case.

Facebook has reportedly spent more than $20 million to advertise, push and lobby for Free Basics. Just imagine if that money was used to provide some MB of unrestricted internet usage to people. A lot of people would have benefited. That also begs the question, how is Facebook going to recoup that? And every answer to that question is bad for those poor users that Facebook is connecting to their own walled garden impersonating internet.

Also if people can afford to get phones that support connecting to internet (these days almost all such phones are smartphones and prices start from Rs. 2000 onwards), can they not afford Rs.100 odd to get a reasonable amount of 2G data to access the actual internet? Imho most of them can.

Would you still be OK with that knowing that Facebook gets to spy on their browsing habits and steal their data? My family originates from Bihar, and so I've seen my share of poverty. But being poor doesn't mean that you don't have basic human rights of privacy. HTTPS doesn't work with internet.org for a large set of phones still used in India. So not only can FB spy on you, anyone eavesdropping on your connection can too.

The last time the West tried to help us and bring 'enlightenment', we were enslaved for 200+ years. Do you want that again?

Facebook could have provided free data and let the users choose which sites they visit.

How much does a half-gigabyte 2G pack cost in your region?

Rs. 125 for 15 days on the Idea network. Should be similar on others.