Welcome and Peace be upon you!

The ability of social media to move and activate people is something we have seen first-hand in our palm fringed island. Despite almost all of them being some form of hoax and rumor, and many promises to investigate them by the authorities, the potency of social media posts seem to be unaffected and relentless. The island, its citizens and rulers are once again churned by unverified social media content, and somehow the need to respond to them has not diminished, despite previous experiences.


This fiasco unfolded with social media videos claiming that the long grain rice sent by Pakistan as relief aid for the recent floods contained plastic rice grains. The videos provided a demonstration of the rice not behaving like rice should and attributed this to the presence of plastic rice in the product. They urged the viewer against purchasing and consuming the rice. Following a series of such videos, a video appeared on social media claiming plastic rice grains have been found in the loose long grain rice stock at the state co-operative outlet, departing from the previous allegations pointing to relief rations.

The Ministry of Industry and Commerce was prompt to release a statement saying that the rice mentioned in these videos sold by the co-operative is safe, but the Chairman of the co-operative said it was pulling sale of the rice from its outlets until they are scientifically examined, citing the concern created by the video mentioned above as the motivator.

This suspension of sale of long grain rice couldn’t have come at a worse time, as our island finds itself in the middle of the holy month. Many middle class citizens who rely on the co-operative for their rations will no longer be able to buy long grain rice. And the price of rice as a whole may increase to compensate for the shortage, and the stock that is being held without sale.

Charity may also be affected by this. Many Saracen give long grain rice as Sadhaqqa-al-Fithr, and the amount they will be able to give this year may be impacted. As a matter of fact when you consider the charitable donations of Kanji at mosques is also affected, the collective impact of the co-operatives decision makes the holy month a little bit uncomfortable.

We must remember that all this is happening because of a single video on social media. The power of this video has led to the suspension of sale of a type of rice at a state co-operative. It is unclear whether the authorities have contacted the makers of these videos, but no mention of such is in their press releases. Despite many people including the authorities admitting that social media scares like this are dishonest most of the time, the impact of the videos are felt as if those videos are real, time and time again.

Investigations are ongoing as to who created the video regarding the co-operative but it is clear that the video maker has not complained to the co-operative as claimed in the video.