No, Google’s Not a Bird: Bringing the Internet to Rural India - By ELLEN BARRYMAY 21, 2017 TARADAND, India — Babulal Singh Neti was sitting with his uncle on a recent afternoon, trying to persuade him of the merits of the internet. “I told him I wasn’t personally saying anything about the Yadavs, it was Google saying something negative,” Mr. Neti said. One of my cousins received a call on a mobile phone, was asked to go someplace and was murdered.” The internet, Mr. Patel felt, is worse: a labyrinth of shallow diversion where many young people in the village would lose their way. “It seemed,” he said, “as if I was diving into a sea with no bottom to it.” This marked the beginning for Mr. Neti of a wide-ranging inquiry about the world surrounding him. “I had no idea what to do,” Mr. Neti said. “Ninety-nine percent of mobile users misuse them,” said Devender Kumar Patel, 17, whose hair had been coaxed into a four-inch ducktail. Mr. Neti said he had made little effort to explain the internet to Sitabai.
