India likely to seek Facebook's help to promote education

New Delhi: Indian government is expected take up with social networking giant Facebook social sector issues like education and empowerment of the girl child, female foeticide and 'Clean Ganga' campaign and seek its help in promoting them.

The government, in its interaction with Facebook co- founder Mark Zuckerberg Friday, is also likely to ask him to promote Hindi on its social networking site.

Sources said the Facebook CEO on his first visit to India will be meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad tomorrow and hold discussions with them.

They said that Facebook is keen for promotion of e-commerce and e-health in India, besides taking up issues relating to expanding in the education sector during its chief's interaction with the government.

On its part, the government is reportedly keen that Facebook should take up social issues of empowering the girl child through education and involve in aggressively campaigning against female foeticide.

It also wants its help in the ambitious Ganga cleaning up project, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is taking up in a major way.

Zuckerbuck, on his part, is looking at deeper engagement with the government in expanding Internet penetration to villages and promoting creation of regional content.

Zuckerberg is the third high profile CEO of a US-based firm, after Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Microsoft's Satya Nadella, to visit India in last few days.

He announced that Facebook is creating a USD 1 million fund to help developers develop apps for farmers, migrants and women. This will be a contest to drive new apps and services in local languages.

"Since 2007, Facebook has been working on new apps and services in local languages. About 65 per cent use Facebook in a language other than English, including 10 Indian languages," he said.