Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his election campaign for the top executive post, never shied away from advertising his skills at executing ambitious projects in Gujarat or his espousal of technology. However, one of his pet programmes--one which he has personally pushed and frequently mentioned at trips abroad--of exhorting India's richer consumers, who don't require a subsidy on their cooking gas, to give up their subsidized cylinders isn't that niftily executed online. Turns out that inspite of the catchy #Giveitup campaign and the several ads, the executors have been shoddy in the way the programme has been executed online.
The campaign which is marketed as Give It Up, or #Giveitup, rests on a domain name, called givitup.in (sic), an execrable spelling mistake. It also turns out that the domain name www.giveitup.in has expired and is up for grabs. Moreover, unlike widespread online campaigns, that snap up every available subdomain, such as .com or .net, the GiveItUp campaign only banks on the .in.
Maheshwar Peri, Founder and Chairman, CAREERS 360 pointed this, and other errors on his Facebook page: "For the amount of money being spent, I would have blocked every possible sub domain. But they only go for (a) .in. A dream fructifies with a strategy, a plan and meticulous execution. I still wish it works out, but this execution still takes away a lot of sheen of the dream. And heads must roll for bad execution."
Going by the government's claims, however, such errors haven't dented the popularity of the scheme. As of Friday, nearly 5 million Indians have given up their LPG subsidy though there are reports that the total beneficiaries and the savings are exaggerated. To be sure, both these programmes are related but not the same with the latter being the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) for LPG (also called PAHAL).
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been urging citizens who can, to give up their subsidy. There are as many as 14.54 crore active LPG consumers in India, of which at least one crore consumers are eligible to surrender their subsidy.
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