Reflections from graduate coursework and a viral Facebook post
On November 18, a good friend of mine wrote a post on Facebook about a new and growing phenomenon of ‘social patriotism’. One of the categories of these patriots, according to him, was ‘the debater social patriots’ who vigorously debate about various issues on social media, and believe that such discussions can bring a social change. On reading his status, I self-categorized myself into this bucket of social patriots, but the question that kept bothering me was, can we really bring any social change through Social Media discussions or posts?
Being in a graduate school at this point in time is really exciting, especially when you are studying public policy while there is Demonetization in India and Trump in the US. We get to apply a lot of learnings from our classroom to what is happening around the world. Just a month before this FB status, I had learned about ‘Non-Organizational Forms: Social Movements and Social Media’ in our Management of Organizations class. We learned how ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement was born out of Facebook and Twitter Hashtags, and how it gained national prominence within no time. Back in India, something like this had happened in 2011, during the India Against Corruption Movement, which mobilized thousands and thousands of people for the cause of the Lokpal Movement. As part of our course curriculum, we had readings like ‘fostering social movements with social media’ where we dissected the role of social media through class discussions. Somehow, within me, I believed that social media can be leveraged to bring a social change.
I decided to put this theory to test. Through my internship with Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) in 2012, I had long known about the political parties misusing a law to hide their black money. As per the law, political parties in India are not required to declare the details of donors who give less than 20,000 rupees, while enjoying 100% tax-exemption. Many political parties, therefore, used this provision to declare incomes to the tune of 500 Crores per annum, all in small parts under the 20,000 cap, and get away without declaring the donors. This was a common practice prevalent from many-many years to accumulate black money, and despite numerous demands from ADR and other civil society members, no government acted on it. When the Central Information Commissioner (CIC) of India, in a petition by ADR, ruled that the six national parties would fall under the ambit of Right to Information Act, and would be required to declare their information, they openly defied the order. The Election Commission and Law Commission’s numerous recommendations for electoral reforms were totally sidelined for many years.
But something revolutionary happened on the 8th November 2016. The Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi, suddenly demonetized the 500 and 1000 rupee notes which accounted for 86% currency in circulation and gave a 50-day window to the people to deposit this money into the banks. According to him, this move that affected the daily life of every Indian for the next 2-3 months was aimed at removing black money and curbing corruption. The whole country backed him in this move and stood in bank queues for hours and days and months to deposit their hard-earned money into the bank. The government announced that anyone depositing more than 2.5 Lakh rupees in their account will be monitored, and questioned about the source of this money. If found guilty of getting this money from illegitimate sources, they would be taxed heavily. While the common citizen was burdened with numerous rules and scrutiny and was being forced to explain even sources of 50,000 rupees, the political parties were totally unaffected. They had the freedom to deposit large amounts ranging in hundreds of crores, by using the 20,000 exemption limit.
Now, this was not something new for the political parties, and those working for electoral reforms had long known about this issue, but there was no awareness in the general population about this misuse. I decided to use this opportunity to call out the hypocrisy of our government, and most importantly, test my null hypothesis (overdose of statistics classes?) whether social media can bring a change or influence policy decisions.
So, I put up a post on Facebook, explaining this loophole in a simple language that would appeal to a large number of people. Within a day, the post went viral. It was shared by 1700 people from my wall and also circulated on other mediums such as WhatsApp. A friend helped me convert that into an op-ed article, for YourStory - a popular digital media platform, from where it was shared by another seven to eight thousand people. In a week, it became a raging issue. People started discussing this on the social media. I received a lot of messages from friends and even unknowns, furious about the double-standards of our government, and wanting to do something on this front. Another friend urged me to start an online petition on Change.org. Within one week, the petition gained more than 14,000 supporters.
So, thousands of shares, likes and comments on Social Media, but what did it achieve? This is the common criticism against such ‘social media movements’. People share, and they forget. “Do you really think the Prime Minister will read your status and change the rule?” was the common criticism I received. Frankly, that was never my aim. My aim was to make more and more people aware about this issue, to build a social pressure on the government. I knew that the parties have paid no heed to recommendations of Law Commission or Election Commission, and have even gone to the extent of defying the orders of the CIC. So, the only hope to bring a change was through citizen pressure, because nothing can beat the power of citizens in a democracy, in my belief.
Did it work? Partly it did. My status was picked up by one of the topmost Hindi News channel of India (although without credits) who did a detailed investigative story on this. Various other media houses started questioning the government about this issue. At the same time, Election Commission shared a recommendation to reduce this cap from 20,000 to 2,000 rupees. In his election rallies, the Prime Minister was also forced to acknowledge this issue. And finally, today, in the Budget session of the Parliament, the government reduced this cap to 2000 rupees. While this may not radically change anything, as the income that could be hidden through 100 unknown donors earlier, can be hidden through 1000 unknown donors now. But given the scales, it had reached where it required 5 Lakh donors for 1000 Crores, the same would now require 50 Lakh, such donors, making it a little difficult. Therefore, I would still count it as a small positive step.
However, it would be grossly inaccurate for me to attribute this policy shift to a viral Facebook status. For there is absolutely no evidence to believe that this change happened because of tens of thousands of shares on Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp. But, despite these recommendations being made by the Law and Election Commissions from years, what made the government to act this time? Well, I would like to believe, that what changed this time, was a more informed citizen.
The aim of this post was not to take any credit for this change. For frankly, I cannot take any. If there is an organization that deserves credit would be ADR, who have been fighting for this for years, and where I learned about this issue. The aim was to reflect on my learnings from the course-work at my graduate school and to promote the practice of healthy discussion on social media. For I still believe, that ‘the debater social patriots’ can bring a change.
