Need To Take India’s Development Narrative Globally: VP Dhankar

While interacting with Indian Information Service officer trainees, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar has expressed the need to regulate information saying, “Information is power, information is too dangerous a power, information is that power which has to be regulated.” 

In this midst, he emphasised the need to take India’s development narrative globally. The VP asked the young officers to act with lightning speed to neutralise misinformation and praised the state actors for effectively countering manipulated and false information through social media responses.

Dhankar stated that fake narratives can ruin an institution or an individual reputation. Therefore, he told the officer trainees to act as information warriors who protect people’s privacy and the reputation of the affected person or institution.

While explaining that in a democracy the legitimacy of a government depends on people's trust, the Vice President noted that in this age of information revolution, misinformation emerges as a dangerous threat challenging democracy. He cautioned that manipulative, divisive and agenda-driven narratives peddled in our information space by proxies present a real danger to the sovereignty and integrity of the nation.

He expressed concerns over ‘sinister forces with pernicious agenda’ operating in the country and outside and told the young officers to neutralise them immediately. 

“Global media setting biased narrative has to be blunted,” he stressed calling for effective countering of motivated narratives uploaded by global media. Dhankar said that we must never allow others to calibrate us.

Reiterating the need to take India’s development narrative globally, he held that the Indian Information Service should sculpt and promote “Brand India” globally. “Let the world know what kind of a country we are. We are a country without a parallel; we are a country that has a rich cultural heritage and diversity. Our 5,000 years of civilisation ethos is required to be known to the world,” he added.

He praised the Indian Information Service officers for their role in recent Lok Sabha elections and said, “Increasing voter awareness and securing the greater participation in the world’s largest democracy by reaching out to the citizen at the very last mile, you have done admirably well.”

Speaking about formulating the right policies, Dhankar recognised that the right feedback from the ground is important and advised the probationers to update themselves with the latest technologies.