In the very recent past, all the social media platforms were flooded with hashtags like ‘BoycottSnapchat’ and ‘UninstallSnapChat’. Users were urged to give the app a one-star rating and then uninstall it as a sign of protest. This took place after it was reported that the Snapchat CEO had allegedly said that India was a ‘poor’ country. What exactly happened was that Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel is alleged to have said in 2015 that Snapchat didn’t have plans to expand their markets in India and Spain, since they were ‘poor’ countries.
According to an ex-employee of Snapchat, Spiegel had made this statement at a board meeting. Even if he did say this, it may have been based on the fact that people in India are mostly using low-end phones and may not have high-end connectivity all the time. The alleged statement made by him was not made in public.
Insane Reactions
Outraged Indians launched a campaign to undermine the photo and video sharing application. Several protests were seen on social media where people were showing their anger through memes or by trolling. People without even thinking about the ground reality, just started criticising the Snapchat CEO.
What Indians Must Understand
What we need to understand here is that even if he did say such a thing, was the statement factually correct? Is India a ‘poor’ nation? If yes, who is responsible? We must question our government rather than trolling the people who criticise India.
Even without understanding the difference between Snapchat and Snapdeal, people started giving low ratings and uninstalling the Snapdeal app. This clearly shows that we lack common sense too. The Indian population who had never used Snapchat throughout their life, have given low ratings to Snapdeal and urged people to stop shopping on Snapdeal.
Yes, We Are Poor!
Firstly, India is a poor country. There is no question about that since 67% of our nation’s population lives in poverty. There are wealthy people in every country. Probably every country has wealthy people living in mansions. However, this doesn’t make those countries part of the first world. I don’t know what a nation needs to do in order to be a ‘first world nation’. However, in India, there are far too many street children, beggars and the standard of people living in India is very low, for it to be considered a first world country.
According to statisticstimes.com, the GDP per capita of China is $12,880 and of India is $5,855, if measured using the purchasing power parity (ppp). China is also 4.66 times richer than India if compared using the nominal method and 2.20 times richer if the ppp method is utilised.
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