This is a thread on the free-mobile schemes by the Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan governments. Ahead of the state elections, the schemes would influence more than three-fourths of the states' populations and would give big benefits to one company.
In Chhattisgarh, where Reliance Jio has won the bidding to bring network to 5 mn families, the govt will give the company free land for 10 yrs to establish 1000 new towers. See the bit from the RFP 
To top that, Jio will get these 5 million families as captive users. For two years, they will have to necessarily use Jio SIMs. The company can run its e-payment services on these phones. Jio and Micromax will also get paid Rs 14.14 billion for the phones and six-months data.
The Rajasthan govt gave early-bird advantage to Jio without even floating a tender. Though the scheme was opened to all companies, the first set of instructions to district admins were to give Jio phones to up to 10 million families on govt's expenditure with "co-branding"
Distribution of electronic appliances by incumbent govts before Assembly polls has been common in many states. But the smartphone schemes are unique as they allow the incumbent govts to constantly communicate with voters, even while collecting their individual profile data
The incumbent BJP govts are seeding Aadhaar of the users with the new mobile numbers and getting JIO to pre-install it's apps in the phones. The CG govt wants to install the apps for popularising “new initiatives... of the government” and “capturing citizens’ opinion/sentiment.”
CG govt then wants to employ data analytics, including social media analytics, to draw insights. It is pre-installing the BJP-promoted Narendra Modi app and the Raman Singh app. Raj govt would collect users’ data after “discussing… data sharing” with companies “individually”
Read the full story here: business-standard.com/article/electi…
