Lot of discussion about govt outreach here in earlier posts. I would like to address that.
They kinda already do this. How many people are aware that even Indian govt uses Telegram and whatsapp to give out information about govt initiatives, various programs, and various citizen campaigns.ITs called MYGov Newsdesk.
Regular English Channel :Telegram: View @MyGovCoronaNewsdesk
Hindi Channel : Telegram: View @MyGovHindi
This is also available as whatsapp channel at : MyGov India | WhatsApp Channel
But all of 5 Lakh people seem to be subscribed to both combined on telegram with only few thousand on Hindi channel. Under 8L on whatsapp. Thats peanuts compared to our population on whatsapp or telegram.
The MyGov.in website too has lot of resources, information and proper links to navigate to reach govt agencies.
There are citizen bulletins, ebooks, podcasts, discussion sections and lot more. And dont think its all pointless. Someone actually followed up with me when I contacted the agencies regarding the difficulty I was having with compliance with our business.
Now, coming to other points. The one thing I hate the most is the constant pessimistic view of our own people and our govt. Yes, we can hate our politicians or a party or a nata, but a lot of times I see it devolving into hating our own people and country. I see some negative nancys here in this discussion too. Oh nothing will happen, og govt will use it to surveil people and yada yada yada. Dude, they control our communication lines. If they wanted to they can find out everything we do unless you take very specific precautions which most dont. Do you see govt hounding individuals as a standard practice like we see some authoritarian govts do where people simply disappear overnight. To our credit both current govt and previous govt rarely crossed the big lines. It has happened but never stuck as a standard policy.
So let’s keep that aside and see what good we can do for ourselves. Complete reliance on foreign entities for critical services was never a good idea, but they had the best products and we used/use them. That’s fine but we saw how that can be weaponised. Both in the physical world and the digital world. The US had blocked our space program from progressing in 90s when they blocked Russian cryogenic engine supply to ISRO (Biden’s legacy and personal vendetta against the Indian govt that one was). Then they weaponised GPS at a critical time. Went after our farmers, fisheries and our solar companies at WTO. Refused to recognise Indian IP at the international level, siding with their companies when they violated it. They have tried to block various weapons deals, including our exports to various countries. And latest blocking of services by Microsoft and deliberately delaying already finalised weapons purchases. GE engines for Tejas and Apache deliveries were deliberately delayed to try to arm twist the Indian govt to side with west. This has been done by admins run by both parties in US. So we can never trust any US govt completely ever.
So while US might not have used things to hurt Indian Individuals, but they do target indian infra, agencies, industries and HVTs. They are indirectly targetting every one of you and they will target you personally if they feel like it. It has been done and now its a policy if you ever plan to travel to US. Social media disclosure is compulsory going forward to apply for US Visa.
There is a classical saying… Apna Kutta akhir mai apna hota hai. We will deal with our problems, our netas ourselves, but you cannot do that with outsiders in current political enviroment worldwide.