In October last year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg visited a village in Rajasthan’s Alwar district. Again, in the middle of a raging debate on Net neutrality, he mentioned that trip. Uma Vishnu finds out why Chandauli
Hajrat Sapwan is a Dabangg-style police officer, complete with dark glasses and a cap. He soon gets bored of it. So he stands with his arms crossed, in the same killer glasses, next to Santa Claus and with red stars in free-fall. That’s so ho-hum. Next, he makes a grand appearance on a giant screen at the ‘New World Tower’ in Beijing, his name “h.s.khan” featured prominently. This is it then, decides the 15-year-old, and he makes it his cover photo on Facebook. Sapwan is a Class 9 student of the government senior secondary school at Chandauli, a village in Rajasthan’s Alwar district, and most of his photographs on Facebook are the result of some deft photoshopping that he does at the village’s Internet centre.
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