During a recent visit to my hometown Chennai in India, I met
with Ambedkar, a highly respected Inspector of Police in my hometown of
Chennai, India. Chennai is a sprawling metropolitan city in India with a
population of over 12 million squeezed into an area that is less
than half the size of New York City. Ambedkar also happens to a good friend of
mine from my law school in India.
Ambedkar has harnessed the power of
social media to keep his constituents informed about the progress that the
police department makes on important cases and other matters of public safety.
He does this by updating his Facebook account multiple times everyday. Besides
informing the public, he also uses his social media platform to engage and interact
with population in the police precincts he oversees.
While this may not sound like a big
deal in the American context, it is indeed a very novel approach of engaging
the public for crime-fighting activities in India or for that matter anywhere
in the developing world. Typically, the people in India are distrusting of the
police and do not interact with the police in any meaningful way. This makes
crime-prevention/detection harder as people are not forthcoming with
information that can at times be crucial to solve a case. The police department
has not been effective with its PR and often the good work done by the
department goes unnoticed. What is impressive about Ambedkar is how he has
leveraged his Facebook account to build a strong rapport with his community,
given them an opportunity to interact and engage with the police department and
humanized the whole department. As a result, he has built a strong network of
trusting and admiring citizens who have been providing him with highly useful and
relevant information that aid the crime prevention activities of his
department. Besides, Ambedkar has successfully built his personal brand and he
set himself up for continued growth.
Ambedkar’s story is a testimony to the multi-dimensional utility of
social media channels from staring revolutions to everyday crime fighting.
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