(Ankhi Das is the Public Policy Director - India & South Asia, Facebook)The great philosopher Plato had famously said "Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike." I think of those famous words often at Facebook.
2014 will be remembered as a year when the old ways of doing things will simply not work. It will be remembered as a year of transparency, impatience and an environment which, though irreverent at times, pushed the boundaries of openness. And surely the internet and platforms like Facebook have played a central role in that. It has enabled people to use the platform to speak fearlessly.
There has been much debate about the impact of social media on election outcomes. Recent data released by the Election Commission of India shows that there are 23 million first-time voters in the age group of 18-19 years. If we look at Delhi, for example. there are 12 million registered voters. The total number of internet users in Delhi is above 8 million. This picture is more or less mimicked in almost all urban and peri-urban areas of the country.
With the increasing growth of access infrastructure and rural connectivity, we hope this will eventually become a more pervasive tool for civic engagement, political organizing and governance.
With more than 93 Million active Facebook users, we believe we are already addressing this rural-urban divide issues and enabling sharing of information and local organizing of communities and opinion.
Right now some of the election issues trending on Facebook in India are jobs, education and corruption. It will be interesting to academically examine at some point the co-relation between these themes and also understand the causality.
Does corruption lead to joblessness and poor public service delivery like access to education and healthcare? These are all interesting questions for researchers, sociologists and political scientists to study and evaluate. These are also important issues for political parties and leaders to engage with and perhaps address in their manifestos and governance agendas.
The 2014 elections will be one of the most interesting and complex elections to call. Indian politics has matured a lot, thanks to many factors. One of them surely is the spread of communication, sharing of information and rise in people's aspiration. In big cities like Delhi or Mumbai, different sections of population are more concerned about protecting whatever they have earned through prolonged struggle - an illegal colony to be regularized, keeping the forest cover in their city areas. In small towns, rural areas and villages people want to move out of their closed society. They want an opportunity to escape from drudgery and hopelessness.
Politics is eventually about innovation and people power and that is why Facebook will be a relevant factor in this election.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this blog are the personal opinions of the author. NDTV is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information on this blog. All information is provided on an as-is basis. The information, facts or opinions appearing on the blog do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.