news details |
|
|
| Digital India - A missing Link to Covid-19 Pandemic | | | Dr. Ashaq Hussain
The recent outbreak of second wave of Coronavirus has had a significant impact on global health, the economy, and society as a whole. Various measures are being taken to respond to the pandemic, with digital media playing a pivotal role, especially in the use of visual data to disseminate information, mobile health to coordinate medical resources, social media to promote public health campaigns, and digital tools to assist population management and disease tracing. However, the digital India concept has stood the test of the time during the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak in country as it faces some challenges like misinformation, lack of guidance, information leakage and ideological tools such as nationalism were indeed very useful in manipulating online discourse, it appears that we had possibly underestimated its unexpected negative consequences. This sponsored ‘reprogramming’ has seemingly instilled in people an ill-thought-out ideology based on fear and ultra-patriotism which at present is responsible for all sort of domestic and international contradictions. No doubt the government’s focus to develop key information and communications technology infrastructure (ICT) has beyond doubt helped during the ongoing Covid-19 crisis by reducing the pandemic hardships but on the other side the controlled sponsorship has affected more than the expectations. Understanding the management and control of digital information is imperative in modern politics, particularly in our country where the Government keeps a very careful eye out for any information it deems challenging to its legitimacy.
As the 2nd wave of Coronavirus has spread all over the world, our Government at present has become the focus of criticism for its lack of transparency in dealing with the pandemic. The people have started questioning the government, yet it is less known how the government is handling of the Coronavirus crisis as again the controlled information is being disseminated. It is believed that National and traditional media are being closely controlled and monitored, so the Internet and social media have become the major arenas of criticism as well as a battle ground for different ideological sects.
Before the pandemic, Internet was already one of the most heavily policed in the country. In order to keep ahead of public opinion, it was being closely monitored, guided, censored, and often the information was directly engineered that circulates through various networks, as the government sees the digital world as just another part of its sovereign territory which needs to be managed and controlled. Then, under such conditions how the administration can response to the voice of the people and what strategies are to be adopted in order to deal with the challenges it perceives arising from the Covid-19 crisis are beyond to understand.
To add more to the foe, if we analyze the recent past one can easily find an updated marriage between digital technologies and pseudo-nationalist ideologies, thus gaining the ability to reshape important narratives on the Internet and social media while also having to confront the inevitable backlash from this manipulation. This has emerged the present situation when this virus has begun to spread across the length and breadth of the country again at the alarming rate. However, most people are still unaware of the growing threat as still the digital India is not focusing at its factual work. Days before appearance of series of tweets and orders when, the government announced the lockdown in different cities across the country, the decision came to a shock to many and while for some others who were aware of the situation, started to take the issue more seriously, no doubt dissatisfaction and anger also proliferated on social media. People criticized the government for lacking transparency and for dealing the crisis during 2020. They were especially furious about the fact that the government did not took the issue seriously between December 2020 to April 2021 as when the country was hosting important political events as well as religious ceremonies.
A further issue responsible for the Covid crisis is the unfortunate association of digital India and pseudo-nationalism with the religious and racial aspect of Indian identity. Discrimination against some ethnic groups, and people belonging to a particular community, has been exacerbated during the Covid-19 pandemic. It was wide spread theory in the controlled media that a particular sect of people are responsible for spreading the virus and there are many evidences how these people were treated in a most unpleasant and discriminatory manner. Many Social media videos showed some people being expelled from their residences, and others were banned from entering restaurants, public places etc. No doubt, when some citizens with true national sprit saw some social media videos infected with nationalist propaganda, blamed their government for being ‘too soft on goons’ and reducing its own people to ‘second-class citizens’ helped to gain some confidence back. In this and other ways, identity games with ill-conceived concepts of racism and religionalism under the umbrella of nationalism have also backfired on the government agenda of digital India and Covid crisis.
To conclude it can be added that while the Internet and social media have provided the people with the means to express and exchange their ideas more easily, these technological opportunities have not promoted a ‘Habermasian Public Sphere’ which could facilitate countries transition to a liberal, democratic system of government. Instead, the pseudo-nationalists forces has taken over the overarching model of media management and has creatively extended it to its digital India. This group has used up-to-date digital technology to control the digital content of Internet output by managing narratives which promote their agenda of hate. By being the most powerful player in digital world, the electronic media has managed to simultaneously deploy ‘hard’ power (censorship) and ‘soft’ power (reshaping public opinion by promulgating ideologies such as nationalism) to manage and control ‘digital India. The state is left with employing its digital skill set to control its citizens, rather than the other way around. So the time has arrived when we have to encourage the increased use of digital media with a focus on improving trust, building social solidarity, reducing chaos, educating the public on prevention measures, and reducing the medical burden in facility-based sites. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
STOCK UPDATE |
|
|
 |
| BSE
Sensex |
 |
| NSE
Nifty |
|
|
| |
CRICKET UPDATE |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
