Video: Google provides public Wi-Fi to 400 Indian train stations
With less than a year left for the general elections[1] in India, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government hopes to deploy a "social media analytical tool" that will create digital profiles of citizens.
Read also: Why Walmart could get severe indigestion from its Flipkart acquisition[2]
According to a tender floated[3] a few months ago, the plan is to develop a tool to "gauge opinions on social media campaigns linked to various schemes run by the government." It will have to "give location-based insights, measure the effectiveness of hashtag campaigns, needs micro-level categorisation for mentions around topics, which, in turn, should help in efficient decision making by identifying the key problem areas."
Then, the intentions turn decidedly Orwellian[4]: The tender goes on to declare that it wants this new tool to "analyze sentiment," identify fake news, disseminate information on behalf of the government, and inject news and social media posts with a "positive slant for India," the tender said.
It suggests the social media tool should use "predictive modeling" and "data mining" to "make prognostications about the future or unknown events," including the impact of headlines in international publications such as The New York Times, The Economist, and Time magazine.
What "would be the global public perception due to such headlines and breaking news, how could the public perception be molded in positive manner for the country, how could nationalistic feelings be inculcated in the masses," it continued. How "could the media blitzkrieg of India's adversaries be predicted and replied/neutralized, how could the social media and internet news/discussions be given a positive slant for India," it added.