PM Modi government's welfare schemes take social media route to crowdsource ideas

Elated over first of its kind experiment of crowdsourcing ideas to promote various welfare schemes, the government has decided to initiate such social media drives frequently.

"We will use the ideas and content generated through the contests to publicise various schemes. More such drives will be organised in the future as the experiment was successful," NR Vishwanath, head of social media cell of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, told MAIL TODAY.

"The innovative approach to crowdsource ideas from the people provided the government an opportunity to understand the people's perspective on major flagship programmes," I&B minister Arun Jaitley said while giving away awards to the winners of the social media contests.

Nine winners were chosen from around 1,700 entries in which participants suggested various ideas to promote flagship schemes. Vishwanath said the winning ideas will be shared with other ministries who will use it to promote their respective schemes on social media platforms. "We will share content with other ministries. We have a copyright on the content," he said.

A three-member jury carefully scanned the entries to ensure only the genuine ones were selected. "They even crosschecked entries by searching on Google," said an official. "Contestants were assigned numbers to keep their identities under wraps. This was done to avoid any favouritism," he added.

The contests were held on social media platforms of the ministry like Facebook and Twitter. A special webpage was created where participants could post their graffiti. The competition was open for a fortnight, running from January 1 to 14. Winners were provided a unique opportunity to witness the Republic Day Parade from a VIP enclosure at government's expense.

The graffiti themes were - StartUp India, StandUp India, Digital Empowerment, Entrepreneurs of Young India, Skilled India, Powerful India, Make In India, Financial Security to All and Housing For All.

For the Twitter contest, netizens' responses were invited on on three hashtags -#VisionofTeamIndia, #MyIdeaofIndia and #RDayNotJustaHoliday. A total of 888 tweets were received by the ministry's twitter handle. In the poster making contest on Facebook, participants were invited to send ideas on three themes - Give It Up: LPG Subsidy, Per Drop More Crop and Save the Girl Child.

(In association with Mail Today Bureau)