Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg on Friday and discussed extensively on how the social media can be used to help in clean India mission and promote tourism.
"Had a wonderful meeting with Facebook CEO Mr. Mark Zuckerberg. We discussed several issues during our meeting," Modi wrote on his Facebook page.
Modi said that he spoke to social media tycoon about Swachh Bharat Mission and "Zuckerberg shared that Facebook would assist the Government of India in the Clean India mobile application." He believed that this will surely give an impetus to Swachh Bharat Mission.
"Zuckerberg is excited about Digital India initiative. I requested him to identify certain areas where Facebook can help us in that. I also requested Mr. Zuckerberg to identify how Facebook can help promote India's rich tourist potential across the world," added Modi.
Zuckerberg also visited a "cyber village" in Rajasthan's Alwar district and spent over half an hour in the village and enjoyed the state's folk songs and music, according to IANS.
"Zuckerberg visited the cyber village, Chandoli, over 170 km from the state capital Jaipur where he interacted with school children and villagers and discussed how this centre is helping in improving Internet connectivity in the area," a local official told IANS.
"It is really nice to know that villagers in Chandoli are taking steps to connect to Internet," he said during the trip, adding that India is a country of huge opportunities.
Zuckerberg had said on Thursday that he was excited about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Digital India programme and would discuss with him ways to connect the country's masses with the digital world.
"I am meeting with Prime Minister Modi tomorrow (Friday). I am really excited about his Digital India campaign. We will be trying to work together for spreading the internet to the one billion Indians who are out of reach of the Internet," IANS quoted Zuckerberg as telling reporters on the sidelines of the Facebook summit.
"Facebook on its own cannot spread Internet accessibility. We require to work together with everyone, including the government and telecom operators to do so," he added.
The Facebook founder, who is on his first visit to India, said that they were excited to see how Facebook can help Modi's commitment to connect Indian villages online, adding that the country has about 243 million Internet users and 100 million plus Facebook users.
He also met telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Thursday. He said that internet can improve the lives of the people and help innovation.
"Connecting more than a billion people with internet is not only going to improve lives of people in India but helping innovation and imagination of Indian people will help turn around the world and we are very excited in opportunities in India," The Times of India quoted Zuckerberg as saying after meeting Prasad.
"About 2.7 billion people have access to the internet. But that's only one-third of humanity. Almost 4.5 billion people don't use the internet," he added. "Connectivity cannot just be a privilege of the rich and powerful. It is a human right."
(With inputs from IANS)
