Somewhere on facebook....

A slight to India in FarmVille, a game in which users play farmer and mark their territory with national flags, has stirred a patriotic crusade on the networking portal, with Indians from Bathinda to Barcelona and Kolkata to California asking the developers one angry question — why is the Indian Tricolour missing? Facebook owes a huge share of its popularity to the Indian GenNet. With the number of protesters touching 10,000 by Thursday midnight —increasing by around 1,000 every day — it’s a movement that cannot be ignored, even if the platform is virtual. FarmVille is the flagship application of San Francisco-based social gaming company Zynga that has 35 million users, a huge chunk of them Indian. Several countries, including the US, the UK, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Japan and many smaller nations have their own flags. There is even a FarmVille flag and a Zynga flag. But if Indians want to play under their own flag, they cannot. There is a deluge of complaints on Facebook.
FarmVille allows Facebook users to own a virtual plot of farmland, sow seeds, harvest, and gather points. Users can add friends as neighbours. They can also exchange gifts. Seeds and animals can be bought at a market, which has several countries’ flags
Pritam Bijlani, a 26-year-old MBA graduate working in Mumbai, has started the Indian Flag in FarmVille Cause. “FarmVille is one of the most interesting games ever. Fifty of my friends and cousins are playing it but they have to use flags of other countries — many of them much smaller than ours. So, I started the Cause and, to my wonder, 1,000 people joined in the first couple of days. I have written to Zynga and they have promised to ‘discuss’ and ‘review’ the ‘suggestion’. I hope they will soon give us our Tricolor,” said Bijlani. Sai Thakur, a 26-year-old businesswoman from Belgaum, is one of the pioneering campaigners. “I hope our movement pays off and we have an Indian flag in FarmVille soon,” she says. “It’s really disappointing to see that in spite of so many Indians playing this game, the developers haven’t given us the option to flaunt our own flag. I do hope they consider our petition,” says Nashik accounts executive Dipika Shrisunder. The Zynga community forum is not barren either — while Judebinoy (username) has put up a fluttering ‘gif ’ image of the Tricolour and got a thumbs up, London’s Sallly (username) asks “it’s the only major flag that is missing, so Zynga, please, can it be added?” So far, they’ve only been met with silence. Is it an oversight which will be rectified, or is it something more deep-rooted? A fluttering Ashok Chakra might be a small step for the US developers, but it’ll be a bumper harvest for thousands of Facebook farmers.