Facebook India MD Kirthiga Reddy resigns

‘Would be relocating in the next 6-12 months, ‘ Reddy confirmed in a Facebook post. In a post on Facebook, Reddy said, “When my family relocated to India, we knew that we would move back to the USA some day”. Just days prior, India launched new rules preventing Internet service providers from offering separate price plans for accessing different areas of the Internet.

Not someone to easily give in, Zuckerberg wrote on his facebook wall: “India has been personally important to me and Facebook”.

However, critics of the service observed that this service can be detrimental to the efforts of net neutrality everywhere, and India’s legislative body took notice, eventually banning the service from the country. Facebook quickly responded. “We strongly reject the sentiments expressed by Marc Andreessen last night regarding India”, Facebook said in a statement.

On Feb. 8, TRAI said in a much-awaited regulatory order that “No service provider shall offer or charge discriminatory tariffs for data services on the basis of content”.

Facebook founder and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg also distanced himself from controversial comments about the country made by the social media giant’s Board member Marc Andreessen. More importantly, we hope her successor is given more responsibility in furthering future projects by Facebook in the India market.

Under Reddy, Facebook has grown rapidly in India, making it the second largest operations after the United States, with almost 150 million active users.

“It may be a short free access but it is definitely a long term control of how our people access, consume and use the Internet”, says Yannick Lefang, the Cameroon-born founder of Soko Insight, a Canadian-based consumer research firm focused on Africa. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which campaigns for an open internet, said Facebook was doing what it could to open up the Free Basics scheme to local companies, the inherent flaw of the programme was that Facebook remained the sole gatekeeper. Interestingly, when she was looking out for job opportunities, she was led to Yashwant Kanetkar, author of the popular book in engineering colleges in India – Let Us C. As an intern, she would help the author with the programming examples in his book. We care about these people, and that’s why we’re so committed to connecting them. “It solidified my understanding that when all people have the power to share their experiences, the entire world will make progress”.