Five things Indians want Modi to ask Zuckerberg

• 14 September 2015
• From the section India

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s impending visit to Facebook headquarters has generated massive buzz in India.

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg’s invitation to the prime minister generated 621,000 likes and 34,000 shares, while Mr Modi’s acceptance on his own Facebook page, was ‘liked’ 71,000 times and shared more than 5,000 times.

And it didn’t take long for the social media banter to start.

Mr Modi tweeted, asking people to send in their questions through the official Narendra Modi app.

Indians quickly began drawing up a list of things they wanted Mr Modi to tell Mr Zuckerberg once he got there on 27 September, though not all of it had to do with “how communities can work together to address social and economic challenges”.

How can Facebook help with education in India?

The Facebook CEO has already expressed intentions of working to improve education in India, and some Indians want to know exactly how he plans to bring this about.

Others have expressed worry that Mr Modi’s visit will give a further boost to Mr Zuckerberg’s pet project Internet.org, which has come under huge opposition in India because of the belief that it will violate net neutrality.

Internet.org attempts to act as a “gateway” to the Internet for people who currently have no means of accessing it. It will offer people a bundle of sites they can access free of charge.

Enough with the Candy Crush requests!

With 46 million monthly users, there is really no escaping the popular mobile game Candy Crush Saga.

From invitations to play, add-ons, extra lives and access to higher levels, the average Facebook timeline is always bound to have a few notifications a day from Candy Crush Saga addicts.

Clearly the aggressive status messages to the effect of “aaargh! I will BLOCK the next person who sends me a Candy Crush request” have had limited success.

So will Mr Modi convey the frustration of Indians fed up with the game to Mr Mr Zuckerberg?

More jobs for Indians please!

More jobs at Facebook for Indians is also something Indians want their prime minister to lobby for.

“Bring in Jobs and Internships in Facebook India!….we have the best Computer engineers in the world!.. Sundar Pichai..Satya Nadella…there can be many more!”, said one user, Vivek Sardana.

Another Facebook user had a more practical suggestion to ensure that more Indians got to live the Facebook dream: Instead of hiring one Indian for a salary of 20 million rupees a year ($301,250; £195,139), why can’t Facebook hire 20 Indians for a salary of 200,000 rupees a year?

This is an interesting predicament. It remains to be seen whether this will be one of the questions put forward by Mr Modi.

How can Facebook help the farmers?

The high number of farmers who are killing themselves is a big issue in India, and many people are of the opinion that social media, and specifically Facebook, can help.

A number of questions on both Facebook and Twitter were related to how and if Facebook could lead an initiative to help farmers in India.

“Facebook should initiate a program for poor Indian farmers to educate on seasonal cultivation. Almost every farmer is illiterate in India. They don’t know how climate will change and what to cultivate according to weather changes. They just stick to traditional farming sticking to one particular crops without applying modern techniques. If you start educate farmers on this, this would be a huge revolution”, said one user, Murthy Naveen Reddy.

Can Zuckerberg send us some onions?

India is going through yet another “onion price crisis”.

An integral part of Indian cuisine, the impact of high onion prices has both social and political ramifications, with governments even falling over the issue.

The price of a kilogram of onions recently increased five-fold to 100 rupees, generating another bout of angst and tears.

So many Indians on social media believe it seems logical that one of the richest men in the world should send some onions through Mr Modi to make life easier for them.