When PM Narendra Modi addressed the people of the Nation after being elected, among the first words mentioned were the now iconic words, “Achhe Din aane wale hai” – Good days are round the corner. Ever since, these words have been used to showcase progress as many times as they have been abused to show how the BJP government has failed in its duties. These words have been misused by Modi baiters to pick an argument with those who support him. They have been the butt of jokes, used in debates, used for various elections, in marketing strategies and in many more imaginative ways. In short, ‘Achhe Din’ became a code-word for ‘change’. In my opinion, this has been the greatest success of PM Modi – change.
For the first time since Independence, the people of Bharat have woken up from their stupor and are showing interest in the happenings in our country. A healthy debate has now become a part of the everyday conversation of every Indian, be it a professional or the man on the street. Suddenly anybody and everybody who till yesterday never checked upon the taxes or octroi charged, knows about how much GST is being charged for everything of note. And he has an opinion about it! That person who did not complain about Rs.2 being charged extra for an ice-cold bottle of water, today wants to know why Rs.2 is being charged extra for a packet of tea. I remember the times when the date of the Budget would invoke seriousness in all Dads who were nervous about how much further they would be taxed or whether they would get an exemption. But the resource allocation would hardly evoke any interest, nor would the 5-year plans. These were taken for granted. But today, not just Dads, even Moms and everyone over the age of 25 want to discuss how much has been allocated for the Armed Forces, how much has been allocated for building roads, ports and airports, and how much has been set aside for improving Railway efficiency. Look at the Facebook and Twitter posts – there are 328 million users on Twitter – out of this, nearly 25 million users are from Bharat, second highest in Asia. India has world’s largest number of Facebook users with over 195 million users.
Even if we were to assume that most of the users are using both these social media sites to keep in touch with family and friends, there is no escaping the fact that many of them use these sites to keep in touch with the happenings in our country. This means that they have access to instant news and they are becoming increasingly proactive in their opinion.
For the first time since Independence, there is a social awakening. There is a fervour in people to change the ground situation, be it about showing their empathy and support for the Armed forces, showing their disgust towards anti-nationals, showing their anger towards biased mainstream media, showing their solidarity with victims of bullying, rape and social evils of various types, and above all, showing their support towards Government policies – whether it is the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan or the demonetization. While some may argue that this is because of the revolution of the social media, I wish to state that the social media had started a change in the method of communication ever since the days of Orkut and messaging on the cell phones. People were active even then, but mainly for personal purposes. The use of SMS for sharing information about the Nation started with the political campaigning of PM Modi during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. But even the most intelligent of pundits would have never guessed that this would result in building a Nationalistic spirit. And definitely no one could have thought that Bharatiyas would use this medium to learn more about their own culture.
When BJP made more and more SM groups, they had probably planned to use it for information retrieval, communication of policies, ideas and orders to their ground workers and supporters. But what happened is that these groups spawned more groups, each having its own networking based on likes and dislikes, and these off-shoots encouraged people to reach out to discover Bharat in various ways. This has reaped rich dividends wherein people have formed their own self-help groups where agendas on rediscovering their lost history, culture, tradition and more, are becoming stronger day by day, all without the interference of the government. What a great, positive change!
While there must be some groups working towards spreading hatred or breaking up the Nation, the average Indian is using these very groups to spread love for the country in ways which even PM Modi and Amit Shah would have not dreamt of. It is the law of Nature that positivity brings in progress and negativity destroys Itself first. For the first time since Independence, there is a nationalistic movement in our country wherein the citizens dream of converting our country into a better place, with or without the help of the government. And people who earlier had access to information only through the mainstream media are learning about their anti-national/anti-establishment stance and are now using the social media to get correct information and speak against misinformation. We are undergoing a ‘Manthan’ where right now, animosity seems to cloud the environment more. But it is just a matter of time before that spark of nationalism which PM Modi started, will turn into a flame which will purify and brighten up our country.
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