Facebook is an increasingly active political force in India. The company launched their Indian election tracker Tuesday to coincide with the first Facebook Talks Live digital broadcast, “Town Hall” style conversations in which 2014 candidates field questions submitted by Facebook users. These projects build on the get-out-the-vote collaboration between the Times of India and Facebook, which was announced in September.

Even without the Upworthy-esque headline, one man's Facebook video explaining how routine petty larceny occurs at gas stations in India went viral and spawned spontaneous organization around the topic. It is an example of the culture of civic engagement in India that breeds successful projects like I Paid A Bribe.

On February 18 the Indian government launched an information website inspired by Wikipedia. Vikaspedia is available in five local languages, including English, and will eventually expand to include 22 more Indian languages.

Today is the 10th anniversary of The Facebook. At the start of the new year, it boasted 1.23 billion users worldwide. While we in the United States fret over Facebook's alleged identity crisis or whether or not it is “over the hill” or happily middled aged, in other parts of the world Facebook is an essential platform for mobilization and activism and even, in many places, a gateway to the world wide web (if not the Internet in its entirety).

In honor of Facebook's birthday, techPresident presents a round up of Facebook news from around the world.

A paper by Yuen Yuen Ang, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, explains“Why 'I-Paid-A-Bribe' Worked in India but Failed in China.”

Last month, Microsoft India launched Microsoft CityNext. CityNext is an initiative in which city residents and government officials alike use technology to improve and grow their city. One blogger called it the “Real SimCity for India.” One of the biggest challenges on India's plate right now is how to update aging infrastructure to cope with expected city growth in the next two decades.

In the midst of the terrible drought that struck the Indian state Maharashtra in March 2012, a political scandal broke and revealed a top minister was helping divert water from farmers to power plants. Greenpeace India launched an awareness building campaign on May 22 by unfurling a 250 foot banner that read “Water For Farmers / Not Power Plants” over a dam. Although an online petition garnered support from urbanites, Greenpeace India needed to reach people in rural areas, the ones hurt most by the drought. The Digital Mobilisation Lab at Greenpeace (MobLab) blog took a critical look at what worked and what didn't, and interactive voice response comes out a winner.

In August I wrote about a citizen journalism project in India called CGNet Swara, which residents of the central Indian state Chhattisgarh were using as a kind of government watchdog/accountability site. Since then, reports per day have nearly doubled, up to 400 a day, and a Global Post story highlights how the tool is being used by women to combat rampant rape and domestic violence.