While Anna Hazare the 72 year campaigner continues with his fast against corruption in Indian government, we kept seeing facebook posts supporting him. We had the option of "like"ing and "comment"ing on such posts. And then came a few facebook posts pointing out the irony of the situation! Yes, it is a bit ironic that while this dedicated campaigner did something real, we only had the option to go viral in the internet and do something as insignificant as "like" other such posts.
But, surpassing this irony I really felt the power of social network and thought about it for the first time. Here I should mention that I am not terribly active in the network. I do check my facebook page once or twice a day but do not post trivial comments about the insignificant and irrelevant details about what I am doing at every single moment of my life. And I have been rather skeptical of the real consequence and benefits of interactions over the internet.
These posts about "Anti-corruption fast" as well as the previous posts on "Dandi march" and "Dr. Binayak Sen release" changed my views quite completely.
These "ironic" and "insignificant" posts are not all that insignificant after all. How else would I, not living in India at the moment and not very politically aware, have known about "Anna Hazare" or "Jan Lokpal bill"? I would have read about the corruption scandals and just been saddened by it for the next 10 seconds and maybe discussed it over coffee with some other folks and that would be the end of it. How else would so many people have known about the Dandi march that happened here in California and joined it?
I am completely awestruck by the power of social network. While it has the rather unnecessary effect that I will get to know about the boring facts of somebody else's day to day life, it does have the power to motivate a lot of people from all over the world for a just cause. It does make us aware of the many very important news and also people's reaction to it. Many of these movements would have gone un-noticed not just by non-resident folks but been drowned in the n-th page of a newspaper or 2 lines of a newscast for those back home. Without social networking, we would have known about the scandals and we would feel helpless and not even try to change a thing. However, now thanks to social networking we do feel empowered. We do see how "we" can make a difference. Maybe by as small a response as clicking "like" or posting a news. But, this action however trivial does move the news forward and build support. People might find this action ironic and hypocritical but at the end of the day if one more person comes to know about a movement for a just cause, we have increased the support by one person and the chain reaction goes on. And little as it may seem this increases the pressure on the people and the government to do the right thing. Most importantly it makes a common citizen feel empowered and makes us feel that democracy is not just a hypothesis. We as citizens matter. And we as citizens can make a difference. It gives us the optimism that I saw was lacking even a few years back!
I don't have too much more to express. Except that I am liking this change. And it is filling me up with optimism and the despair to not be able to make a difference might soon be a thing of past. Social networking is truly making us global citizens. No matter where our home is, no matter where we live, we can support just causes and do our little bit to change the world.
