Before the townhall event, both PM Narendra Modi and Mark Zuckerberg changed their Facebook profile picture with hues of the Tricolor in support of the Digital India initiative.
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Political parties in the country like AAP and Congress also took to sharing the video while taking pot shots at the PM for his love for the camera and criticising him for behaviour.
“The bond between India and the Silicon Valley is strong”.
From Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai, Indian-American chief executives of Microsoft and Google to Apple’s Tim Cook and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg everyone seemed keen to get behind Modi’s digital dream.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has hailed the political power of social media, as he visited the headquarters of Facebook in California.
The first Indian leader to visit the U.S. West Coast in more than 30 years, Modi’s arrival contrasted with Xi’s Seattle visit. Tens of thousands of comments were made in reply, with questions on internet expansion in India, unemployment and also Modi’s human rights record.
“That note is based on hard facts, on what the Government has actually done, what it has done for ease of doing business, where we all expect that when the next report comes, India should have jumped several places up”, Swarup said.
“We are an $8 trillion economy today.
This is actually brain deposit and it would serve its motherland at an appropriate time”, he said addressing the Indian community at the packed SAP Centre here. Historically, India has had a poor reputation in this area, with foreign investment suffering because of burdensome bureaucracy among other issues.
The visit has also brought out Modi’s critics, a few of whom protested outside Facebook’s headquarters.
In Canada, he triggered another controversy by stating that before he became the Prime Minister, it was “scam India” and he inherited filth and corruption.
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Even though the enthusiasm of the press in the USA has been somewhat lukewarm this time, the media in India has been giving it saturation coverage, beaming his meetings and speeches live.
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Touted as one of the most technologically advanced world leaders, Modi ranks second after Obama in terms of his number of twitter followers.
