Chennai women who took over PM’s Twitter handle for a day share their experiences

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on March 3 that he would give away his social media accounts for a day on Women’s Day, and asked people to nominate inspiring women, Chennai’s Dr Malvika Iyer and Sneha Mohandoss admit that they did not imagine being among the seven achievers shortlisted for the huge responsibility. While, Malvika, a disability rights activist took the opportunity to share her life story and the need for an accessible India, Sneha, the founder of Chennai-based NGO Food Bank-India, tweeted to raise awareness on food wastage. They recount the experience of handling one of the most influential social media handles in the world for a day as part of the campaign,#SheInspiresUs.

When she was rummaging through her home’s garage at the age of 13, Malvika unknowingly held a grenade, which blew up in her arms and snapped her forearms. Ever since surviving the bomb blast, she has been an international motivational speaker and disability rights activist, giving hope to thousands of disabled persons around the world through her fight for accessibility for all. “As soon as the PM announced on social media that he would hand over his social media accounts to inspiring women, several hundreds of people nominated my name. I was contacted by MyGovIndia, the citizen engagement platform of the Indian government, and was told that I was chosen. It felt so overwhelming to be one of the seven women from over a billion people in our country,” says Malvika in a conversation with DT Next, from the US where she now resides.

Malvika, 31, who urged people to not give up on life due to challenges, tweeted through Modi’s twitter saying, “I believe that education is indispensable for change. We need to sensitise young minds about discriminatory attitudes.” Some of her personal posts earlier had gone viral, but each tweet she put out through PM’s account attracted thousands of messages, says Malvika, who received the Nari Shakti Puraskar from President Ram Nath Kovind in 2017. “I’m so glad there were so many positive messages, and many people could say that theyhave learned from my story. This opportunity made me realise how important my voice can be in working towards change,” she says.

For 27-year-old Sneha, the opportunity was the best Women’s Day gift she could have received. As the founder of Food Bank-India, which was started in 2015, the year of devastating Chennai floods, Sneha’s mission along with many volunteers has been to eliminate hunger. “A lot of the volunteers and friends nominated my name when they saw the campaign. I received a call from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) a week ahead informing that I was shortlisted. I was informed that it was confidential and that I was free to tweet about my work, my life and the experience,” recollects Sneha. “Feed the needy, ensure no food goes to waste,” she urged through her tweets.

As the Food Bank’s volunteer interactions take place mostly on Facebook, Sneha says she wasn’t very active on Twitter. “I had just around 200 followers on Twitter earlier, and now have over 12,000 followers. It was a great opportunity to spread awareness on food wastage, and work towards a hunger-free world,” she remarks.

The other five women who also steered the Prime Minister’s Twitter, included Kashmiri woman Arifa Jan, who revived the Valley’s Numdah handicraft, water conservation warrior Kalpana Ramesh from Hyderabad, Maharashtra’s Vijaya Pawar, who is promoting Banjara handicrafts, woman mason Kalaveti Devi from Kanpur, who built thousands of toilets and Bihar farmer Bina Devi.