Foreign Policy Blogs

Changing India’s Disaster Response – One Tweet At A Time

Source: The EconomistIt was news most Indians received with weary resignation – India’s business capital, Mumbai, had once again been targeted by some faceless terrorists. It was happening all over again – multiple attacks, torn limbs, distraught relatives, reporters breathlessly reporting the latest developments, and the inevitable platitudes about Mumbai’s resilience.

Yet, incredibly, there was still something new and hopeful to be found in the deluge of depressing news. Within a few minutes of the blasts, people were furiously updating their Twitter streams and Facebook pages – giving real-time traffic updates, making offers of blood, transportation and shelter and dispelling false rumors. As phone lines jammed, friends and family looked online to seek the whereabouts of loved ones.

Nitin Sagar, an IT engineer from Delhi and now de-facto hero of the disaster, created a Google Docs database to capture the numbers and addresses of people willing to help on Twitter. The database was frantically passed around Facebook and Twitter as people posted the names of missing persons and those injured and created lists for everything from blood donations to rides for stranded commuters. Another software engineer created a disaster-tracking map by crowdsourcing crisis information from Twitter, and regularly updated the map using team of volunteers, including some from America.

India’s netizens were also quick to shoot down rumors and conspiracy theories, including one that claimed the attacks were timed to coincide with the birthday of the only surviving terrorist from the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Even the inevitable anger over the government’s response and general ineptness was discouraged, with users being urged to focus on providing help. “Don’t use bandwidth to curse government and police,” wrote a Tweeter. “That can come later. Help who you can online.”

With over 25 million Facebook users and approximately 3 million Tweeters, it is hardly surprising that so many Indians turned to the internet to respond to this disaster. Social media sites have become an increasingly powerful tool in emergency response as evidenced by recent disasters, from Japan to Joplin, Missouri. FEMA, the main disaster management agency in the US, has already incorporated social media strategies into its response plans.

Obviously, social media sites can be tremendously useful for a population that is web-savvy and has the resources to take advantage of these sites. In a country like India, however, that still remains a pretty small number. As well-intentioned as the offers of help on Twitter and Facebook were, there is still a lack of understanding (and reporting) on how much these sites actually helped people who needed help the most. Did traffic updates actually help with normalizing the traffic? Were those offering blood donations taken up on their offers? How many commuters ended up accepting rides home from those offering them? How many of the relatives of the 18 dead and 130-odd injured found helpful information online?

This isn’t to play down the significance of social media sites; rather, these questions need to be carefully examined to see how these sites and other types of technology can be harnessed to reach and help more people during a disaster. In an ideal world, the Indian Government would look to expand this phenomenon so anybody with a mobile phone (over 840 million users per the last count) is able to tap into these citizen-generated resources. That seems a distant dream, especially after a somewhat similar proposal to make ordinary citizens part of the government’s intelligence-gathering mechanism has already been abandoned.

The least the government can do then is to make the best of what is already available. An ordinary citizen was able to revolutionize emergency information-sharing using simple tools like an online database and crowd-sourcing. It boggles the mind that neither the state or federal governments nor the Mumbai police have even an online presence (outdated websites not counting) – let alone one on social media. A good example to follow would be that of New York, where Mayor Bloomberg recently unveiled “ the nation’s first geographically targeted emergency-notification system, which sends free emergency alerts to enabled mobile devices to warn citizens of “imminent threats” in their area.”

Until that happens, however, Mumbaikars can take comfort in their own citizen heroes, like they do every single time. Even the most reluctant ones like the IT engineer, Mr. Sagar, who, dismayed by his 15 minutes in the spotlight, declared (on Twitter, of course) – “Dear new followers gained in the wake of a truly delusional momentary Twitter glory, good luck. I am genuinely annoying on most days.”

 

Author

Aarti Ramachandran

Aarti Ramachandran is currently pursuing a Masters Degree in International Affairs at Columbia University, New York, where she is specializing in energy policy with an emphasis on South Asia. She previously worked as public and government affairs advisor in the energy industry for five years. She holds a Masters degree in environmental engineering from Northwestern University and a Masters degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, Columbia.