While the Kerala government’s move to set up 2000 public WiFi hotspots, and offer 300 MB of free Internet Access across the state is welcome, its approach of making government services and public content available outside of this data cap will be in violation of Net Neutrality, and the TRAI’s differential pricing rules. In the announcement (available here on the CM’s website, and copypasted below) says:

Similar to Free Basics

Net Neutrality requires that those providing Internet access act as exchanges of data, and do not discriminate between users of the Internet: whether these users are corporate, individual or government. Remember that users are both consumers and creators of content. Thus, there should be no incentive provided by the entity provisioning access to the Internet in favour of a particular type or creator of content, even if these are government services. Remember that what Facebook was doing with Free Basics was giving access to a few select services for free, and like the Government of India is doing, it was selecting which services are to be made free.