Valley heroes in a hashtag

On the evening of September 9, at 7pm, the Additional Directorate General of Public Information - Indian Army helpline number receives the following WhatsApp message - "An elderly couple S Kuldip Singh and Surjit Kaur staying Pahalgam Hotel Pahalgam. His phone 99XXXXXXXX not contactable. Will be grateful if their well-being could be checked and intimated. Regards, Raj Kadyan."

45 minutes later, the ADGPI replies, "Yes sir they are being relayed to Srinagar via helpline Est and the Whatsapp group…..ADGPI".By the afternoon of September 10, at 2.55pm, they receive a message of gratitude, the couple has been airlifted from where they were stranded and brought to safety. - "I cannot thank the army enough for this great humanitarian help," Kadyan signs off.

As the people of Kashmir get help because of distress signals sent out on Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp alike, we realise that social media is a lot more than a domain for inferiority-complex-inducing ten-Books-That-I've-Read-And-You-Haven't status updates. That it can seamlessly connect most parts of the world has helped anxious relatives of those caught in the ravaging floods, perhaps the most devastating in a century, reach out and locate their loved ones.

Two dedicated officers manage the social media accounts (the AGDPI Facebook Group with 1.3 million followers and the Twitter handle with more than 2 lakh followers) of the Army, which receives distress messages and tweets largely between 5 and 1.30am everyday. This process is streamlined with the help of the smartfeed created by Twitter India, through which tweets are routed to the Army to help with operations - this includes tweets tagged with #SOS, #KashmirFloods, related to people stranded and needing rescue.

Internally, the Army has a WhatsApp group, the members of which include officers in Srinagar, Udhampur and Nagrota. Messages received on Twitter and Facebook are copied on to this group from the headquarters, and instantly delivered to those on ground if the networks permit. Else, they are conveyed over calls on landlines and satellite phones.

This method of communication, rather necessarily for missions such as these, disregards the stringent system of hierarchy within the Army and expedites the rescue process. All the officers on the WhatsApp group can read every message sent over, and they do what they can to deploy rescue teams within their areas of control, and also help troupes stationed in locales with poor network coverage.

The outreach on the Internet, even if only considered in the case of the floods in Kashmir, shows that at the end of the day, there is a network of support you can rely on today, as you broadcast a cry for help to the world at large, and hope that someone is listening. Proof of this is that between September 5 and September 8 alone, the team at Twitter recorded a remarkable 1,94,796 tweets about the floods being posted at the rate of 45 tweets per minute.

The social networking site has also tied up with corporates to help with relief operations. "Emami is sending in sanitary pads, Biocon has sent 1,000 insulin wires, Cipla has sent 128 life-saving medicines, Goonj and the Uday Foundation are also sending essentials like blankets," said Raheel Khursheed (@Raheelk), head of news, Politics and Government at Twitter India, who is also among the many actively tweeting and retweeting pleas for help from the Kashmiri diaspora across the world.

The large number of tweets and their specificity has helped in setting up district centres across the state and 25 collection centres in Jammu so far. These centres are run by locals on ground and a host of volunteers who are helping out both in Kashmir and in other cities.

Also helpful is the JK Flood Relief (@JKfloodrelief) website, an "independent initiative to support priority needs for relief, donation collection centres, and donation transportation logistics for public awareness on what to help via donations, where and how."

Moreover, concerned Kashmiris sitting halfway across the country are working with their "liaisons" in the state to facilitate rescue and relief. Azhar Mushtaq, 21, a local on ground, gets messages from his former schoolmate, 19-year-old Ruhan Naqash (@NaqKash), who is in Chennai. Mushtaq is stationed in the Wanbal area, afflicted far less by the floods than places such as as Jawahar Nagar and Bemina. Naqash informs him about messages he reads on Twitter and Facebook over the phone, and Mushtaq subsequently makes calls (there is a functional landline in two places, he says) to others in his team to rescue and relocate as many people as he can through the day. The 21-year-old engineering student says that all those who have been brought to dry ground by boat are presently taking shelter in a marriage hall where supplies are sent, and if they're running short, he makes a list and conveys the message to Naqash who then tweets to organise crowd sourced reinforcements.

Many like Naqash and his friends, the two officers at the headquarters administrating the distress messages and those behind the JK Flood Relief website are coming together because of the web, as a large unit to help their fellow countrymen and women.

So, the next time you change your status on Facebook, post a tweet to your many followers on Twitter, or scoff at the incessant buzzing of your phone because of an annoying WhatsApp group, think about how these remarkable virtual crusaders are routing messages from the Kashmiri diaspora across the world, to those who can help their families, trapped on the third floor of a submerged building with no food or water for days.