The Silent (Social) Revolution

The Ikea Play Report 2014 suggests that Indian parents are concerned that their children are obsessed with social networking and the traditional family system is falling apart with 59% agreeing that “sometimes in my family everyone is using their mobile devices and not talking to each other”. With growth of internet services and more inexpensive devices hitting markets every day the trend is surely going upwards and does possess some serious challenges as to how family structures are going to evolve against this new threat of virtualization that eliminates the need for a face-to-face conversation with family.

Although this may seem a bit depressing but it’s not all bad out there. With social networks getting stronger we see people collaborating and teaming up to solve various problems from suggesting ideas at national level (using mygov.in etc.) to coming together to protest a new regulation or an archaic law, online Indian is connected like never before. A recent example that caught my attention is from Lucknow where a Police Inspector decided to have his show of strength by smashing the typewriter of a senior citizen who has been working on the roadside for 35 years. The news surely caught public attention as well as of the conventional media.

Later the Uttar Pradesh DM & SSP handed over a new typewriter to him but the question remained whether this high-handedness of police is tolerable. Among all the noise that followed with people cursing the inspector and denouncing the police and the administration for a poor attempt at cover up a tiny silent discussion was underway.

Strangers from different parts of the country and possible different parts of the globe were actually coming together, not curse someone or anything negative. They figured out what really mattered and decided to do something. Breaking physical barriers is what makes a nation. Railways gave an edge to Indian freedom movement a century ago by facilitating people-to-people interactions and making them aware of the power they held when they are united, social networking is doing the same but at a much faster rate.

And it is not just the occasional-man-on-the-street that gets highlighted, floods in Uttarakhand and Kashmir or the Nepal earthquake showed how people came together to help out total strangers from a different state or even from a different nation both monetarily and otherwise. This building up of collective conscience of nation is the most useful service that social media has blessed upon us.

This is the power of social networking that is working like a tiny flash of light in a tunnel to future that is mostly dark. Better India will not be made by Governments or FDIs or even NGOs. The future lies in the hands of citizens coming together, working towards issues that concern them and finding collective solutions.

Facebook and twitter are the next generations Panchayats where issues are discussed, objections raised and problems solved in a truly democratic manner.