Why we need to leave Narendra Modi’s Twitter handle alone!

Social Media has made politics – and every aspect of life – all the more fun. Now anything, anyone says gets scrutinised, analysed and dissected under a microscope until we figure out what they meant by that statement. A simple Narendra Modi tweet: ‘Had some amazing chocolate cake’ would probably get the following reactions from different individuals and entities:

Rahul Gandhi: I never eat cake when the poor can’t afford roti.
Manish Tiwari: Rahul baba never eats cake without sharing with every Dalit in the country. 
Nitin Gadkari: Narendra, you didn’t call me! Was it because I forgot to wear my helmet? 
Uddhav Thackeray: Modi is eating the cake that my father crafted with so much effort. 
Arvind Kejriwal: Modi eating a chocolate means he’s in favour of a foreign entity taking away our livelihoods. Why can’t he eat Indian sweets like an aam aadmi? 
NaMo Trolls: Modiji’s tastes show that he’s an individual grounded in Indian tradition but with an international outlook. 
Arnab Goswami: ‘Who gave him chocolate cake – Ambani or Adani?’ The nation wants to know. 
Khap Panchayat: Chocolate cakes are responsible for the way girls dress these days.
Buzzfeed: 20 best chocolate cakes of all time
FirstPost: How can the Prime Minister gulp down cake while the masses suffer from hunger? 
TOI: Check out the top 10 starlets eating chocolate cake! 

The latest case was when the PMO India’s official Twitter handle tweeted statements made by a private individual (although I don’t know how Nita Ambani can be considered private considering she’s omnipresent – football matches, cricket matches, advertisements, reality shows) which meant that she was somehow misusing the Prime Minister’s Office. 

Twitter was full of jokes claiming NAMO now stood for Nita Ambani Marketing Office, and this proved that the Ambanis and Modi were hand-in-glove. Of course, the PMO’s handle has been used to quote various people, most of them ministers in the government. Ministers who’ve been quoted include Dr Harsh Vardhan, Narendra Singh Tomar, Nitin Gadkari and Yashodhara Raje Scindia. Granted they’re all ministers in the government, but should tweets quoting someone at an event really lead to this much outrage? 

It’s quite common for media outlets to have their journalists tweet live updates, and they often quote other individuals. If the PM’s office does this, why is it such a heinous act? Like religious groups that wait around for their sentiments to be hurt, aren’t people just waiting to read into every single thing the PM does?  

The thing with the ‘Narendra Modi v/s Congress v/s AAP’ debate is that there’s no room for rational behaviour. You are either with Modi or you’re an AAPtard or a Congress supporter. I will probably be labelled a part of the paid media/Modi brigade for writing, but the truth is that all the fascist/Big Brother stuff that secularists/liberalists/pseudo-intellectuals predicted before the elections hasn’t come true. NaMo is not Big Brother, rather it seems like we are set to have a stable government and also, India’s stock has never been higher abroad. Will the government’s new economic policies work? Will India become a better place? Will we be less communal and less corrupt? We will have to wait and see how all this pans out. But leave the man (and his office’s) Twitter handle alone!