The mobile phone, internet and social media are no longer external devices, they are now an extension of our bodies and senses. They weave our reality, and our apprehension of it.
The abrupt suspension of 26 popular social media by Nepal government is short sighted , poor in logic and practice. The countrywide protests by the youth is reflective of it. The severity of their grievance is demonstrated by the casualties. At least 19 are reported dead and more than a hundred injured.
The government had banned them for noncompliance with local laws and regulations. It’s noteworthy that the Chinese platforms had registered themselves recently and therefore escaped the ban.
Social media is not just about virtuality or escapism, they are possibilities. Overcoming distances, physical, social, and literal. It’s about finding voice, when your identity condemns you from it.
It’s about finding solidarity when you’re surrounded by hostility and it’s about snatching power from those who monopolize information. It’s not limited to these abstractions, it’s real economy. It’s a market place, where you can sell anything, and it’s a regulator which records everything.
The young have developed a language around it and the old are not liking it. So in times of high youth unemployment, these platforms are spaces of employment and entrepreneurship. After all these platforms had only recently monetized themselves in Nepal. Despite all their anomalies of algorithms, they have empowered the youth and disrupted hierarchies.
We in India can definitely understand their anguish, we have the most number of internet blackouts in the world. Any protest against the establishment, invites internet blackout at the earliest. Kashmir faced internet blockage for months after the article 370 was abolished. After 80 years of democracy, we have not protested against it, but with less than 2 decades of intermittent democracy the Nepalese youth are not ready to compromise it.
यह भी पढ़ें : नेपाल में Gen-Z प्रदर्शनकारियों का उग्र प्रदर्शन, सरकार ने लगाया कर्फ्यू, हिंसक झड़प में 1९ की मौत
