Agencies/New Delhi

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said yesterday his social media network wanted to help India’s new prime minister connect remote villages in the country of over 1.2bn to the Internet.
Zuckerberg, who will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi today, said India had huge potential, with only around 243mn of its people currently online.
“With more than 1bn people still to be connected, India is just at the beginning. It is not only a challenge for Facebook but for everybody,” he told a conference in New Delhi.
“Tomorrow I’m meeting the prime minister. He is committed to connecting villages online and we are excited to see how Facebook can help.”
Modi uses social networking sites widely to communicate and has been promoting e-governance.
Zuckerberg is on a two-day visit to India aimed at promoting the internet.org app, which allows people in underdeveloped areas to access basic online services.
“We believe that connectivity is a human right and one of the fundamental challenges for our generation,” said Zuckerberg.
He denied accusations he is seeking to create a monopoly in access to online content in the developing world, saying mobile operators were free to decide which services they included, and did not have to include Facebook.
He said the app, which Facebook launched in Zambia earlier this year in co-operation with Samsung and other partners, will not be available immediately in India.
“India is such an important country with so many people that we didn’t want to start here with the risk of not doing well,” said Zuckerberg.
One of social media’s main challenges in India is that many different languages are used across the country, and Zuckerberg said Facebook was now “focusing on content in local languages.”
“Facebook on its own cannot spread Internet accessibility. We require to work together with everyone, including the government and telecom operators to do so.”
He said Facebook will support the development of local-language apps and ones that help farmers and migrant workers in developing countries.
Technology was meant to serve all of society, not just the wealthy and powerful, Zuckerberg said, adding it was important to make the Internet both accessible and affordable in countries like India.
Facebook is creating an initial fund of $1mn to help developers build and scale apps that help to serve farmers, migrant workers, students and women in developing countries, the Facebook founder said.
Facebook would run a competition that would provide funds to apps which it assessed would have the biggest impact on people and communities in developing countries, Zuckerberg said.