The double whammy of fake news and ignorance can have lethal repercussions for many people. We are now living in a world where most of our important decisions are based- to some extent- on information available on the internet. Whether it’s about choosing a place to visit, stay, study, the food we want to eat and even the person we wish to marry, we all first do a basic search on the net. In this scenario, one can imagine how a wrong information or fake news could impact our lives.
Few years back, Kannur in Kerala was facing the brunt of fake news. A misinformation regarding vaccination spread widely, and created such a mistrust among people that they started boycotting the administration’s vaccination campaign. Then came the IAS officer Mr Mir Mohammed Ali. A 2011-batch officer, the first thing he did after being posted in Kunnur was to catch the twin menace of fake news and ignorance by the horns..
Fighting Fake News
Taking to Indian Masterminds , Mr Ali said, “I was just posted in Kannur when I came to know about a story that there are apparently some people out there who are trying to kidnap students. However, the police were unaware of anything related to. We investigated it and found out that information is totally baseless. With little effort, we were even able to clear the doubt of people. Later, during the vaccination campaign I got to know that many people were avoiding it. They had read somewhere that vaccination did not work, and was in fact harmful to the body.”
Mr Ali took the initiative to educate people about the benefits of vaccination. Many times, he sat down with them and told them about the wrong information being fed to them. Slowly, people started to understand, but Mr Ali realised he had to take other steps too, to instill confidence in the local population. And this could be done by making the people realize the dangers of fake news. He came up with a plan to educate the children about the consequences of fake news. In the coming months, as many as one lakh students in 200 schools were approached and told about the evil of fake news.
Making Kannaur Plastic Free
Kannaur is the coastal district of Kerala, characterized by beautiful mangrove forest. During a visit of the district, Mr. Ali found about the amount of plastic that was being disposed in the waters of Kannaur. He wanted to get rid of this but through a process which could be sustained and with maximum support of public. He started by setting a few targets, such as ensuring ‘plastic free wedding’ in the district. For this he not only talked to the people managing wedding halls but also to the brides and the grooms. He also promised them that if the wedding were be plastic free, he himself would attend the function.
Just as in the case of effectively battling fake news, this approach too worked in making Kannur a plastic free district. Buoyed by the success of his initiatives, Mr Ali also launched
‘Collectors At School’ campaign, where students were taught about the waste management. Once every week,the students would come with the waste that could be recycled, and segregrate it and put it in different bins installed in the school campus. The waste collector would then come and take it all with him.
`Enticing’ Tribal Students to Come to School
There is place in Kannur called Aralam Farm. Most of the population here is of tribals. Before Mr Ali’s posting in Kannur, very few tribal children would attend the Aralam Farm High School. To lure more tribals to the school, Mr Ali came out with novel scheme. He announced that students with 85% to 90% attendance would get a chance to go to malls, amusement parks and other fun places on weekends. “The scheme worked like a charm,’’ said Mr Ali, adding that “it was like, if the students come to school six days regularly, they could have fun day on Sunday. This became popular among the tribal students. They started taking interest and the attendance graph increased exponentially. Once we took senior most students to Kocchi and returned by flight. You won’t believe, but the very next year the number of admission seekers to the school increased by 100 percent! I was satisfied with my efforts, and the results made me happy.’’
An App Which Keeps an Eye on Govt. Officials
In the very beginning of his tenure in Kannur , Mr Ali started ‘Map my home’ to add the location of every public place in the district on the google map. After this, he also launched an app named ‘We are Kannaur’, where people could rate the government officials. Pointing out the importance of this app, he said, “Every now and then you would listen to people saying that we called many times in an office but nobody picks up. Some officers didn’t help them or they were reluctant. This is why we thought of this app, where one can rate the officers and everyone can see the ratings. The result was that many officials started working and behaving properly to better their ratings. When someone had a bad rating, I would personally give them a warning. I am really thankful to the people and all the officers and government employee for making it a healthy activity.”
Mr. Ali is currently the Executive Director of Kerala’s Swachh Bharat Mission. But wherever he goes, one can expect him to come out with innovative pro-people initiatives.
