Using Social Media for Social Good

hello everybody hello

i can’t see you guys but i know that you

are very excited all right

so uh let me make a confession

right i hate giving lectures i know one

thing about you guys you hate listening

to lectures as well

so let’s do something different let’s

have a conversation

uh all of us know that india is special

but then we are going to show you three

images and

you will understand why india is special

all right we have prepared a special

menu for you just take a moment to

read this menu and figure out what would

you like to have would you like to have

some crunchy veg

chicken chili chili chicken you want or

probably some chicken schezwan

all right this is a special menu but

don’t even think about coming to our

kitchen

and figuring out how we make this

because

our kitchen room permission not allowed

all right although our kitchen is not

visitable

our juices are so then yeah that’s about

it

so you see english is the most commonly

spoken language

all over the world and yet india has a

way of making it special

you know india is special all of us know

that india is unique

and yet when our friends from abroad

come over here and asks us

what makes india special we get stuck at

two points

cricket or bollywood but there is more

to india right

india is home to nalanda which at one

point had more than nine million books

in its library

india is also home to the samrat yantra

which is the world’s largest sundial

where you can still tell time with an

accuracy of two seconds

india has a railway network that is so

large that if you lay down the tracks in

a line

you can go around the equator more than

one and a half times

okay let’s have a show of hands how many

of you knew these facts

all right a few of you how many of you

didn’t know these facts

okay and how many of you are not going

to raise your hands no matter what i say

all right so this is the india that we

are constantly forgetting and that’s

what we are here for

we are here to remind you of this

beautiful india

hi and i am and two years ago in 2018 we

got married

and one year into our marriage we

decided to have a baby

but our baby was different our baby was

a brain child

it was an idea it was a fashion project

we wanted to discover india like never

before we wanted to roam

all over india for 200 days and make 100

videos about 100 reasons to love

india hi i’m avi and i want to give you

a reason to love

india

starting today i’ll be travelling every

day for the next 200 days

doing the one thing i love the most wow

telling stories

these are real stories that make india

special

because india is awesome and these

amazing things must reach the world

and give you me and everyone else 100

reasons to love

india so let’s go

[Music]

but why give you 100 reasons to love

india it’s because our news feeds are

becoming increasingly negative

just check your news feeds and you’ll

find negative videos negative news

everything is so negative so because our

news feeds are becoming so negative

studies actually show that you’re

actually being more depressed you’re

feeling more anxious

and you’re getting more stress apart

from this there’s another more important

problem

interacting with all of this negative

news is robbing us of our compassion

it’s something that’s called compassion

fatigue so over a period of time

you actually start to get immune to

these causes or the videos

the animals being tortured and that’s

true and we’ve observed that this

actually happens in case of india as

well

there’s so much of negative news about

india that over a period of time

you have some sort of a hatred for india

india is simply not cool yeah

and that’s what we wanted to change we

wanted to change your perception about

india

see what we realized was today’s

generation the millennials

they don’t have the time to watch a 45

minute documentary on apj abdul kalam

but that doesn’t mean that they are not

interested they are interested

and they do have three minutes so why

not present

so much data in a compressed format in a

format that people will

actually like that’s what we decided to

do

see we love to travel but we didn’t want

to travel like tourists all right

we wanted to travel with a purpose and

that’s

that became our first purpose to travel

to find stories find

interesting stories and to find

interesting stories you have to have

conversations you have to read books and

we decided to read the best possible

books ever

these books have no pages and they are

open to all

these books are called people and that’s

how we met

him

meet padmashi shivang norfolk so ladakh

is a cold mountain desert and it always

has a water problem because their source

of water is melting snow

and over the past 40 years because of

climate change these glaciers have

receded

so farmers don’t get water when they

actually need it

so padmashi chivang a civil servant had

a simple idea

to use science to solve this problem he

diverted water in winters and froze it

and collected it

in such a way that when summer months

would arrive the increasing temperatures

would cause this water to melt

and absorb in the soil and help those

farmers exactly in those villages

so these farmers who had not seen crops

like potato could actually grow it

because they had water when they needed

it padmashree chivagra stays in a very

simple house in lay

and still he’s changed the lives of

thousands of people across ladakh

but you didn’t know that and we wanted

to share his story

we met suraj so suraj

is a kid from kerala who took up farming

at the age of 13.

and people think that there is no money

in farming this guy has a farm on his

own

and he generates a lot of revenue he

changed people’s perception

we wanted to tell you his story we met

the siddhi tribe

this tribe came to india about 400 years

ago and today

they identify themselves as indians so

much so that they want to represent

india in the olympics

we met sarang he is an engineer just

like you guys he has a job

and he still feels that science can you

can be used to kill terrorism

education can be used to reach out to

those who resort to terrorism extremism

so that they have no choice

they focused on finding a solution and

that’s what makes them a hero

so throughout our videos we actually

started to share and support these

people and put forward their ideas

but not with em but not with sympathy

but with empathy

so when people asked us what they could

do for children’s day we shared ideas

about five ngos who are doing a great

job making the lives of children better

so sarang established a science park in

ladakh so we raised funds to install

a solar panel over there so that the

science park would have electricity the

year around

as our following kept growing we wanted

our audience to come across

such great people and great causes and

actually be a part of the change

so as we traveled as we traveled our

pope is evolved

our purpose became making the right

people reach the right audience in the

right kind of way

we didn’t want to lecture anybody we

just wanted to start a conversation

and that’s what we did as we traveled

all over india

what we realized was india is amazing

india is awesome it gave us a lot of

reasons to love india

but you know what’s ironic while trying

to find hundred reasons to love india we

were probably finding

1 000 reasons not to love india you know

and one of these reasons was this one

so you guys must have seen this video i

mean these videos or this image

very frequently in your whatsapp after

ganpati it’s a broken idol that has

washed ashore after visarjan

so even in a city like mumbai during the

10-day garnpati festival more than two

lakh isles are immersed in different

water bodies

and this number keeps increasing every

year because more and more people

welcome baba ho

and there’s nothing wrong in that except

that the idol is made of pop pop or

plaster of paris

when this mixes with water it turns

exothermic which means that it

increases the temperature of water which

makes it toxic for the marine creatures

apart from that all that glittery and

amazing paint that you see

is toxic it has metals like lead cadmium

mercury which mix with the water

and that becomes toxic for the fishes

and for you

this water gets into our food it gets

into salt it gets into the fishes that

we eat

and in short you and i are drinking

poison but

yeah so this is not just disrespecting

the nature

but this is also disrespecting the god

that we are worshiping

and we wanted to change that so what

happened was

in 2018 when we got married and nyati

moved into my house

she saw that even we were getting a pop

idol a proper idol with paint and

everything

and she thought hey why not go

eco-friendly

when she told me this idea i said okay

we will propose this idea to my

grandparents but then making people

change is the most difficult thing to do

but we were surprised that they were

very welcoming to the idea

they accepted the change and what we

thought was if

my grandparents who have been doing one

particular thing

in the same fashion for the last 40

years if they can change then maybe the

world can change as well

so last year in 2019 we made a three

minute video

we had one thing in mind that we are not

here to touch anybody’s beliefs

we are just here to give them options we

are just here to tell them that you guys

are not the villains

and there are a lot of options that are

available that can help you

be even more pure to your beliefs so we

made a video it was a three minute long

video

and overnight this video went viral it

got five million views on facebook

and two hundred 000 likes on instagram

it was amazing i mean

overnight people started calling us for

interviews for radio interviews and

newspapers were calling us it was

amazing

but it was more than just numbers it was

about something even better

so what happened sorry so what happened

when we uh

this video started going viral was

nothing short of a miracle

so our video basically had solutions for

the city of mumbai because both of us

stay there

we didn’t expect the video to blow up

this much but

peoples from other cities started

actually giving us their solutions

so you guys have heard of the word

crowdsourcing right when people actually

start contributing for one common

project

that’s exactly what happened here so

there were citizens from cities like

bangalore pune hyderabad who started

sharing eco-friendly idle vendors

details with us

or sharing information when the

municipality was donating eco-friendly

idols

simply because they wanted to make india

a greener place because

one of our friends had booked an

eco-friendly idol and he sorry he had

booked the pop idol and he went back and

changed it for an eco-friendly idol

after watching the video a company that

had nothing to do with manufacturing

gunpathy idols actually started making

seed ganpatis and selling them to gated

communities

just because they wanted to make the

festival more eco-friendly

our friend chinoo cleans the beaches in

dada and then in 2018 he found 200 pop

idols and in 2019 he found just 20. you

can see that in the photo

[Applause]

we are we are not here to take credit

guys because actually speaking the

credit is yours

it’s all you we were just the messengers

you know

i mean you wanted to change and we just

gave you a lot of options that this is

possible

and that’s how our pope is evolved again

our purpose became

using social media for social good

you realize that 20 30 years ago we did

not have the internet

so it was so difficult to gather support

of 100 000 people

for something that you really feel

passionately about

but today that is possible today all it

takes is a good status update and

a lot of people will come together the

people that you don’t know the people

from

outside your city even outside your

country maybe that

is possible that is the power of social

media

today any video any message can go viral

then why not choose to put out a good

message over there

so that’s what we mean by using social

media for social good

so have you done something good lately

planted a tree well i know all of us

planted trees metaphorically this

morning

but have you volunteered at an animal

shelter or done something good then put

it up on social media

i know you’ll get a lot of likes you’ll

get comments someone might even share

your work and it feels good

i know that too we put out videos every

alternate day and it feels good when

people give us a good feedback

but i’m not asking you to do it for

vanity purposes there’s actually some

psychology involved in it as well

a year professor dr laurie santos wanted

to actually study happiness as a science

and her research

gave us some very critical insights when

you share something good

and you get a reaction on it then it

actually increases your feeling of

happiness

on the other hand when you share

something negative when you get a

reaction

it doesn’t actually make you feel better

but your feelings actually deepen

so if sharing something good is going to

make you feel good why not do it

volunteer somewhere go find out what

your passion is

if you feel strongly for a cause then go

out and do something about it

and then put it up on social media

because you will be happy both on and

off social media

and you’ll actually make a difference to

the world i also want to talk about one

of our favorite creators

leonardo dicaprio you may know him as

jack from the movie titanic

but to us he’s much more leo is not just

an ordinary celebrity

he is not going to share photos of

himself on the red carpet

or playing a game or doing some random

time pass leo uses his platform on

instagram of 40.6 million followers

to only talk about his passion which is

the environment

his continuous posts on the matter keep

bringing up a lot of awareness among the

audience

whether it’s individuals or students so

people are now becoming more aware of

issues all over the world with regards

to climate change students are starting

to ask the right questions

and then all of these people are

actually taking steps that make a

difference

and that’s what we mean by using social

media for social good

when someone actually takes a step

beyond thinks about an

entity above himself and actually

manages to change the world

in the end we want to give you this

magic number

1.3 billion you know what that is

you know what that is please that’s our

population right

and every sixth person in the world

is an indian a lot of people consider

that as a problem but it doesn’t have to

be

actually it’s a great opportunity think

about it

a population without a purpose is a

problem

because people just don’t know what to

do with their lives

imagine if 1.3 billion people dedicate

their lives to anything that they love

something that they feel passionately

about it could be anything

it could be the environment the

education system

or the economy anything that you feel

passionately about if you dedicate your

lives to that

then you can definitely be a hero

because a population without a purpose

is a burden

but a population with a purpose is an

unstoppable force

and that’s the reason why i love india

thank you so much thank you so much

[Applause]