Unaffordable cheap data.

Do you remember the chant of the bhakts about how data has become cheap under the Modi regime? Well, apparently, even that supposedly cheap data is so unaffordable to Indians that millions are dropping out of the mobile internet revolution.

Just in December 2021, it seems that India's mobile user base dropped by 12.88 million. If you look at October 2021, when we had 1.18 billion mobile users and were adding 25 million per month, to the end of 2021, in just 3 months, when the total mobile base was reduced to 1.15 billion, you will see a loss of 30 million users just from October to December 2021. And that is the net drop, which means the actual people leaving mobility out of their budgets every month are rather higher than that.

So now, with US$ above Rs.75, petrol above Rs.100/litre, LPG at Rs.900/cylinder, cooking oil at Rs.180/kg, no black money returning but actually increasing, open encroachment by China, no jobs on the horizon, rising NPAs and wilful defaulters getting away with it, HNIs emigrating to tax havens, a low-balling sell-off of the family silver to cronies, a humiliating fall in HDI rating, a near-destroyed tattered social fabric, and the PM reduced to a costumed event manager, we have to live with the shame of over 1 Crore people dropping out of mobility every month because they are so poor as not to be able to afford the 'world's cheapest data prices.'

The batteries on your phone are dying, mate. How cheap the data was or is has ceased to matter anymore.