While cooperative sector is yet to take note of the potential of social media, as a part of 67th Republic Day celebrations Ministry of Information & Broadcasting organized a competition for social media enthusiasts and the winners of the contest were provided a unique opportunity to witness the Republic Day Parade, 2016 at New Delhi.
The travel and accommodation arrangements of all these winners were sponsored by Ministry of I&B. Speaking on the occasion the Minister said that the innovative approach to crowdsource ideas from the people provided government an opportunity to understand the people’s perspective on major flagship programmes of the government.
The minister also complimented the winners for providing fresh ideas through social media platforms. Minister of State for Information & Broadcasting, Col. Rajyavardhan Rathore and Secretary I&B, Shri Sunil Arora were also present during the occasion.
The contests were held on the Ministry of I&B Social Media platforms – Facebook (www.facebook.com/inbministry), Twitter (@MIB_India) and a specially designed webpage (http://www.graffiti.inbministry.in) where Graffiti were invited from participants on various flagship programmes of the Government. The competition was open for a fortnight from, 1st January to 14th January, 2016.
The First prize in the Graffiti contest was awarded to Shri Narendra Kumar Singh for his work captioned Housing for All. The winners of the Tweet contests across three chosen theme segments taken collectively were as follows in order of first, second and third places: Shri Ganesh Joshi, Shri Narayana Vinayak and Shri Neeraj Gupta.
The jury also awarded first prize to Shri Advait Chitnis for his artwork captioned “Save the Girl Child” where “the artist highlighted a graphical representation of a female gene which led to the noose, whereas a male foetus seldom faces this ordeal.”
Cooperative sector has a few social media enthusiasts. Barring a few such as IFFCO MD Dr U S Awasthi and some of the Sahakar Bharati leaders, the sector is not ready to understand the reach and depth of social media platform.