Modi’s Facebook Connect Moment: Tears, transformation and song of new India

It was the quintessential Facebook moment for India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, eliciting thousands of likes. In a spirited townhall-style meeting at the Faceboook headquarters at the sprawling Menlo Park near San Francisco, the leader of the world’s largest democracy interacted with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and captive listeners as he waxed eloquent on the power of social media to connect people in a wired world.
Mr Modi, who deftly harnessed social media for his electoral campaign in the summer of 2014, spoke about his ambitious agenda for transforming India through digital revolution. But the moment that’s going to stay in memory of nearly 500 people present at the Facebook HQ and all those following it on TV is when the Indian prime minister got emotional when talking about his mother, his eyes moist with tears.

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Modi Way: Unleashing a million Digital India dreams, in Silicon Valley

Welcome to Brave New Digital India, right in the heart of Silicon Valley – home to nearly half a million Indians and the crucible of innovation, creativity and enterprise. On a balmy laid back evening in San Jose plunging into Saturday night frenzy, there was a joyous celebration of the transformative power of technology and the power of ideas as India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi unfurled his radiant vision of Digital India in a wired world where Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are our “new neighbourhoods.”

“The status that now matters is not whether you are awake or asleep, but whether you are online or offline. The most fundamental debate for our youth is the choice between Android, iOS or Windows,” said Mr Modi, triggering applause from the movers and shakers of Silicon Valley. Closeted with tech titans and pioneers, which included India-born Microsoft boss Satya Nadella and Google’s Sundar Pichai, Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen, Qualcomm’s Paul Jacobs, and Cisco’s John Chambers, the Indian leader expounded eloquently on his vision of a digitally empowered India, which is adding millions to its burgeoning online population every passing day. From a man who rose from being a tea-seller to the leader of the world’s largest democracy, Mr Modi knows how to sell dreams with conviction and has scripted a new anthem of digital redemption, with its own vocabulary and semantics.

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