BANGALORE: Around 1 lakh people have joined the government’s social media platform MyGov within two weeks of its launch by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a senior official from Department of Electronics and IT said.
“We have had over 100,000 contributions (at MyGov). Several thousands of hours have been contributed by common people to participate in it. The platform today provides the opportunity for people to connect directly with the Prime Minister,” said DEITY Joint Secretary Ajay Kumar at Asia-Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF). The platform was launched by Modi to engage with citizens online who want to contribute to development of the country through their ideas. Internet Service Provider Association of India (ISPAI) and National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) have jointly organised APrIGF to discuss India’s view on points around Internet governance that should be placed before main Internet Governance Forum to be held next month in Turkey.
Kumar said India is widely using Internet and launching large-scale infrastructure project to connect masses and the drive is being spearheaded by the Prime Minister himself. ”MyGov is an example of how Prime Minister is using Internet to connect with people. It is a new Facebook with different objective and theme. The belief is that in this country of 1.2 billion people there are large number of people who want to participate to the development of country,” he said.
He said India now has a large stake in Internet eco-system and should take its position with respect to governance. ”The Asia Pacific region is underrepresented with respect to Internet governance affairs of the wold. Given the fact that we have so much plans for technology, we need to assume our due position,” Kumar said. The DEITY Joint Secretary announced that government will shortly start Internet governance forum at India level in which it will engage states to come up with their viewpoints. Asia Pacific Network Information Centre Director General Paul Wilson said the region is under-represented at global and if people don’t come forward they may miss to get benefit of Internet and many Internet applications which don’t cost anything today may attract cost.
“Internet is going very rapidly. India has huge population. Internet governance is about how Internet develops. The open Internet is very easy to deploy but when you try to put some control, you have to be very cautious that you don’t damage the benefit that Internet has,” Wilson said. At present, there are various issues around Internet which include a tug of war between telecom operators demanding share of business from various websites and applications. There are issues around Internet-based companies and government over content which leads to various restrictions like ban on certain websites and interception of Internet traffic.
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