In 2014, Narendra Modi pioneered the usage of social media and digital campaigning in India to turn out to be prime minister. Generally known as one of many first international politicians to harness the facility of the web, he has essentially the most social media followers of any world chief at present in workplace.
In the present day, over a decade since Modi’s digital-first political marketing campaign, an internet-fueled youth motion referred to as the Cockroach Janta Get together (or the Cockroach Folks’s Get together) is utilizing the identical social media platforms to prepare protests, efficiently forcing the resignation of one in all Prime Minister Modi’s prime advisers. The Indian authorities has responded with a crackdown, arresting protesters and more and more censoring X, Meta, and different social meda websites. The legacy of the Cockroach Janta Get together will probably be complicated: On one hand, it dropped at the forefront vital conversations round Gen Z unemployment and meritocracy; on the opposite, it might have pushed the Indian authorities to create stricter new censorship legal guidelines to silence future dissent.
The web that helped propel Modi to energy is changing into a software {that a} new technology makes use of in opposition to him. How a lot additional will Modi’s authorities go to censor its individuals and prohibit free speech?
Learn extra about censorship in India and the Cockroach Janta Get together:
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