One person is a 64-year-old man, leading the biggest democracy in the world, whereas another is the youngest billionaire in the world, now aged 30. What do these two people have in common? They both command the functioning of over a billion people (1.2 billion people to be accurate). Also, they just met each other on 10th October 2014. Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi and the co-founder of Facebook, Mark Zukerberg met in the capital on 10th October 2014.
Agendas of the Meeting
After the recent visit of internet giants, Jeff Bezos, the CEO of the head of the e-commerce chain, Amazon and Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, Mark Zukerberg has come to India to promote his dream project “Interenet.org”, which focuses on the providing affordable internet access to the people. After realizing that the Internet growth would befueled by the mobile generation, there lies immense untapped potential from the countries like India and Mexico. Less than 13% of the population of India has access to Internet, mostly by the way of mobile networks. Through the medium of Internet.org, Mark Zukerberg wants to provide Internet access to majority of the population.
Mark Zukerberg is impressed by Narendra Modi’s initiative of Digital India, where the Prime Minister wants to ensure Internet access to every village and ensure connectivity throughout the country. Mark Zukerberg, wanted to help with the said initiative and ensure the participation of Facebook in furthering its goal. Its recent acquisition of the app, WhatsApp should be the dial tone of the internet generation, as he claims.
Narendra Modi, also keen to meet the young CEO wants to ensure public safety and security. As official reports clearly state that Facebook is an important tool to gather new recruits for many of the terrorist’s organizations. There have also been talks of creating a “Clean India” app based on the initiative of the Prime Minister which was started on 2nd October 2014, the Swachh Bharat Mission.
What it Means?
- Stronger Ties with the Government
Every government in the world wants to regulate the content that is being displayed on various social networking sites and messaging applications. This is done in light of public welfare and security and to ensure that illicit content is not displayed as a sense of morality is to be maintained. This is a long battle and emerged when BlackBerry refused to hand over the Indian Government the key to it’s encrypted chats on their messaging app of BBM (Blackberry Messenger).
Even though Facebook is not keen on setting up servers in India and give in to the Indian Law and the government, stronger ties with the nations to ensure that there is availability of Internet facilities to ensure connectivity to both the government and Facebook.
- World Wide Recognition of the Swachh Bharat Campaign
Mark Zukerberg was one of the main prominent leaders that ensured that the ALS Bucket Challenge gained recognition beyond boundaries. Through the Swachh Bharat Campaign, the Prime Minister wants to create awareness in the whole population. This would in turn lead the people to make India a healthier and cleaner place to live in. Not only the people residing in India will know of this campaign, but due to the recent event at Madison Square Garden, Narendra Modi has had an international following and hence, it can gain appreciation from all over the world and people across boundaries can help provide a cleaner environment by taking a simple initiative. Mark Zukerberg has also extened his hand of help to give expertise on the “Clean India” app that government seeks to launch.
- Connectivity in India
The reason for Mark Zukerberg’s visit was to ensure that his dream project, Internet.org would gain recognition.It would also ensure that from the contribution given by Facebook, the concept of Digital India can actually come true. Social Media was used by Narendra Modi when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat to find missing children and it gave positive results. Also, social media can be used to increase the tourism of India. Along with literacy, there is also a need for the infiltration of Internet Literacy, as proposed by our Prime Minister. This would come true only if everyone in the country worked towards making the dream of these two people come true.
India is a huge marketplace for Facebook to set up its base and ensure that everyone is connected worldwide. This would be only possible if there was Internet connectivity everywhere. If both these global giants work together, they indeed can ensure a greater scope of business, investment and a means of social service to humanity. This was indeed an important meeting which would ensure stronger ties as well as greater connectivity and expert advise to ensure the successful implementation of many campaigns to come.
