Social Media in the beginning was a boon, as every individual with a phone or access to digital means stayed abreast with the happening in the world in real-time.
It is so sad that to discover that the same media is abused to the hilt by being hijacked by manipulating the contents. They spread miscommunication and horror.
It is observed now in India that every protest is very tactfully handled by the means of social media for violent and wrongful purposes.
Information warfare which was a domain earlier only with the military and the dominant media houses has infiltrated into any potential individual who can spread unrest through fake news and distorted information.
The digitization of communications has enabled ease and speed of information. The effectiveness of targeted and manipulated messages is immense. In India, large and affordable access to mobile phones has led to bending and twisting opinions in an amazing manner. Again more abuse of this technology is clearly visible. The knowledge and awareness that fake news is ubiquitous are still not there. Everyone should make it a norm to first check the authenticity of sensational and sensitive messages before jumping to any conclusions. For the unfortunate less educated masses they will be yet driven by the emotional tsunami that the vested interests take joy in creating.
The protesters are outsourced and hired goons who are paid and have absolutely no idea about the reason for the protest. Whether it is CAA or NRC, Shaheen Bagh, Farmer’s bill- or the recent Agnipath, Agniveer- these protests were handled by the hooligans going about burning public property and burning railway stations. No person wanting to join the Indian defense forces to protect the honor of India out of patriotism will ever want to burn the property as a protest. The whole thing was fomented and instigated by a few groups with the common objective of going against the ruling government.
This politics is not restricted as it has also infiltrated the poultry industry. How else can we justify that a handful of farmers under contract protest with the clear suicidal results? The Indian Poultry industry is and has always been majorly run by Private investors with the least support from the government. The integrators take risk of borrowing money at high interest and volatile market conditions hardly seeing any profits in the last two years. The investing integrators are providing sustainable and consistent livelihood to the contract farmers. To unreasonably protest is to cut off this lifeline without any visible alternative. If the farmers push these integrators to the wall, then obviously the contract farming will come to an end and the farmers will be far worse than they are now. Wisdom must prevail – to think calmly before making demands and accusations against a tried and tested system that is very well-evolved and adjusted over time and established in supporting the growth of poultry farming. On reality check- the farmers express gratitude and are grateful to integrators who give them assured minimum contracted money without which their farms will definitely close. If there are some cases of exploitation then it must be sorted out on case to case basis. Hasty generalization will destroy the delicate fabric of trust and understanding that exists so far. The small farmers have no capacity to buy feed at ever-increasing prices or hold inventories and definitely do not sustain continuous losses because of high input costs and low chicken costs. So who are these protestors and how genuine is their concern? Is it a motivated one or out of ignorance? Or sheerly again the result of guided orchestrated social media victims of well-engineered manipulation! This curse must be removed asap for the wholesome benefit of the Poultry fraternity.