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Sunday, June 5, 2011

ON-LINE PATRIOTISM : A VIABLE ALTERNATIVE TO MOBILISE SUPPORT


No time to be PATRIOTIC ? NO PROBLEM ! Spend a few minutes from your home or office desk . Being a patriot is something you can do now with only a few clicks. Thanks to the Internet and social networking sites, you  no longer need to wage war or be involved in patriotic organizations anymore to be called Nationalists.

All you have to do is sit  in front of a computer email , blog or post statuses or comments on your  Facebook or Twitter accounts. And voila…so-called new patriots like you can  spring up all over the country — and even on other continents....to mobilise support and start a movement ... or call it revolution .

At a time when social experts have blamed new media for the failure of states, Internet users have tried to prove the opposite by building and spreading patriotism online. See whats happeed in Egypt , Tunisia and now Syria . People of diferent back grounds coming togther for a common cause - CHANGE .

A group of young people like you , for instance, can  initiate a movement called “ Awaken India” or “ChangeIndia “ on Facebook and Twitter. While the politicians try to divide us on the basis of religion, caste , creed , statehood etc , we can come together as ONE on-line and show that we can THINK as one . In MANAMA- Bahrain the slogans on-line were : No Sunni- No Shia - Only Bahraini !! In Syria it was "Not Kurdish - not Arab -We want NATIONAL UNITY !". 

You can  focus on generating SUCH patriotic fervor among young people in India and fostering optimism about the nation amid a disappointing political and social climate that has dominated our country, specialy over the past few years. To do so, you yourself and your supporters on-line can  organize a number of events aimed at encouraging patriotism on the Internet, on social networking sites and invite more people to join and participate in efforts to celebrate and build patriotism and optimism about India – this great country , that produced people like Budha , Gandhi and Vivekananda , but today is being lead by a group of corrupt Politicians with no ethical and moral values  .

Your  group can commemorate this year’s Independence Day by organizing a digital flag-hoisting ceremony to pay respect to national heroes for their service in bringing freedom to India .
Digital patriotism movements are on the rise on social networking sites. Groups or community bearing national slogans or symbols such as the Indian  flag or the Ashoka Chakra can be sprouted everywhere on Facebook and Twitter to gather followers, mostly young people, to share patriotic sentiments. Slowly all the sites can linkup and form one giant movement for CHANGE .

The media will then pay attention to online patriotism in India. It will become a force to reckon with . Let us start with movement on Twitter called "Indians Unite against Corruption" , to show support for the nation .


There are 62 million Indians on the social media( Twitter has about 16 million and Facebook  over 60 million ), and that may ramp up to 80 million by the next elections. Some 97 per cent of them are on Facebook. And they are spread beyond the big metros. One-third of social media users live in towns with a population of less than 5 million; 25 per cent of the total users live in towns with less than 2 million inhabitants.These findings of the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), the umbrella organisation representing online and mobile value added services, triggered off a serious examination of the links between social media and electoral outcomes. The study, jointly conducted by IAMAI and IRIS Knowledge Foundation, has claimed that in 160 constituencies, Facebook would be a critical tool which could influence people’s voting choices.(http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/80-million-social-media-users-by-next-elections/article4607051.ece )

Google claims that India is now the second largest consumer of mobile internet, having accounted for 5.9% of the 14 billion pages accessed on mobile phones in february 2010. A quarter of mobile internet usage in India comes from urban centres with populations of less than half a million – places like Meerut, Indore, Jalandhar, Kanpur, Kota, Hassan and Trivandrum. India has 700 million mobile phone subscribers, which is why BBC Hindi is now catering for this emerging audience demand. Spread  on-line patriotism  atleast .

For real change to take place in a democracy , it isn’t enough for the right people to be put in charge or wrong people to be be put behind bars. But  the citizens themselves have to get involved
Here is an option for you to GET INVOLVED !

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