Data war among telecom companies leaving Indian youth loggerhead?

The advent of Jio has literally disrupted the telecom sector in India. In order to woo the mobile users Jio entered into the Indian telecom market with unlimited data offers as ‘Welcome Offer’ for 3 months until then the data was a costly affair. For the data hungry Indian youth, it was a flabbergasting offer. Of course, the entry of Jio with unlimited data offers toppled down the monopoly of the trinity; Airtel, Vodafone and Idea, which mainly constitute Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI).

There should be some kind of ethics that are supposed to be followed in the business as well. When there are major players in the telecom sector, how come Jio comes one fine morning and start giving everything freely, how about the other major players, who have been doing business here. TRAI should have taken a call on this, allowing other telecom companies also do their business. To rub salt into the wound of other telecom companies, Jio keeps coming up with new and continued offers. The youth is not rather concerned with the brand (company) but the free data that is made available.  

The telecom sector was torn asunder leaving little hope for the trio for survival because of the magnificent advent of Jio. The trio was bleeding, in order to cope with the unlimited offers provided by Jio, they did not have any other options but to slash down their data tariff and come up with a series of data offers at frequent intervals. It was a great boon for the data hungry Indian youth.  

Until the advent of Jio, perhaps the two utmost concerns of Indian youth were their data balance and the battery life of their mobile phone. The former concern is solved now. Their hunger for data was quenched like never before.  On the other side of the coin, there is an alarming situation. The Indian youth has been being becoming all the more unproductive and indolent and the availability of free data will worsen the current situation. There has already been an alarming concern that how many of the Indian graduates and post graduates are really employable and the statistics shows that it is not even 15%, when all the streams are put together.    

By and large, Indians have a mindset that if anything is given freely, make the maximum use of it. Of late, the heads of Indian youth are down, looking at their mobile, busy finishing off their free data pack within the stipulated time so that, not even 1MB of data shall not go unused. The youth, which is the wealth of the country, and future of the nation seems not investing their time and energy to be productive, to learn, to develop and master their skills. The youth waste the major chuck of their time in loose chats and browsing, which otherwise could be invested for their holistic development.   

The availability of free data makes them confined to their mobile phone, living in a cyber world than the real world that is out there. The availability of free data will make them less focused, oriented, communicative, interactive, outgoing and excess use of the mobile phone data by stooping down the head will cause new generation diseases like Text Neck Syndrome and the glare of the mobile display could eventually harm their eyes as well. Majority of the Indian youth is not able to have a right and meaningful use of the data that is abundantly available free. 

Now it is high time that we begin an extensive #LookUp campaign for youth to keep their head up and to keep them focused on their goal, to make them humanitarians and basically to have essential human concern, also to help the youth to get rid of Text Neck Syndrome. The advent of Jio has not only disrupted the telecom sector in India but also the entire Indian youth, who have been hungry for data. The time and space will prove how badly the Indian youth has been affected by the abundant availability of free data.

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