In March 2024, the World Inequality Lab published a paper on economic inequality in India, with an eye-grabbing headline: “India’s ‘Billionaire Raj’ Is Now More Unequal Than the British Colonial Raj.” The coauthors of this piece, including noted economist Thomas Piketty, trace the steep rise in inequality to the 1990s, a decade that saw the full embrace of neoliberalism in India, building on a set of International Monetary Fund–approved reforms in 1991.

The figure most associated with the 1991 reforms is Manmohan Singh, who was finance minister for the Indian National Congress (INC)–led government at the time and went on to serve as India’s prime minister for two terms (from 2004 to 2014). Singh passed away on December 26 at the age of ninety-two, and his death has unleashed a flood of praise for his leadership and legacy, even from progressive media outlets. The Wire, a news media site known for its independence and critical analysis, has published no less than ten glowing reflections on Singh’s life and work.

A few observations on Mark Zuckerberg’s astonishing volte face today, declaring that he will end the crushing climate of censorship on his Meta platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, in time for Donald Trump's arrival in the White House.

It should not have taken a video admission from Zuckerberg for us to appreciate the degree to which we have been living for many years under a regime of political censorship on social media, with Meta leading the pack.

In his grovelling video message to Trump – I mean, to Meta users – Zuckerberg effectively settles the question of whether his globe-spanning corporation has been aggressively corralling its 3 billion users away from political content. He admits it has.

What he has not admitted, and won’t, is that Meta has not even been trying to enforce that censorship evenhandedly or neutrally. We know, for example, that Meta’s algorithms were carefully engineered for many long months during Israel’s genocide in Gaza to keep Palestinian news sources out of public view, while the same algorithms left Israeli news sources unharmed.

For years, Zuckerberg’s goal – his business plan – has been to keep the main power-block of the western establishment happy: that is, the Biden administration, the three-letter agencies, the war industries, the “legacy media”, and the billionaire class to which he belongs.

None of them wanted voters thinking too deeply about politics – all the more so populist kinds of politics, whether of the left or right, that risked disturbing their smooth ride on the neoliberal gravy train and the forever wars from which they profit so handsomely.

Zuckerberg must now recalibrate his algorithms to keep the Trump team happy, and not stray too far from the “free speech” mantra of fellow billionaire and social media mogul Elon Musk. Zuckerberg must ensure his own platforms don’t end up getting treated like a US equivalent of Tiktok, under risk of a ban for supposedly posing a “national security” threat.

The reality is no one in the establishment cares about free speech, least of all yours or mine. They care about power. They care about staying billionaires and, ideally, becoming trillionaires. What Zuckerberg has made clear is that free speech is not a principle. It is a toy, a plaything to be dangled in front of us, the people, who respond like grateful, credulous, open-mouthed babes.

We will be allowed free speech only in so far as it assists the powerful to stay powerful.