Comment

You know, I am getting to like Twitter. Minister of state for external affairs, Shashi Tharoor triggered the liking, really. Every day, soon after logging into the office servers, I tune in to Twitter to find out how India’s foreign policy overlord spent the better part of his morning discussing the easing of travel restrictions with his counterparts from Thailand. Wonderful, isn’t it?

For the not-so net-savvy, Twitter is a micro-blogging service that enables users to send and read messages 140 characters long, fondly called tweets. Some of India’s top newspaper and television editors are on Twitter.

As the day gets on, they keep us abreast of what’s top of their mind, vis-à-vis developments on that day. They tweet not to hog attention, but because they feel a responsibility towards their audience. In my humble opinion (IMHO, in tweet lingo) senior officials should start tweeting. It’s free. They should open up verified accounts with Twitter (verified accounts are maintained by VVIPs.

Their identities are ascertained by Twitter) and share as much minutiae about their work life with the people, as possible.

Tweets by Tharoor were initially ridiculed by gerontocrats in the Congress, who felt that statecraft should be a vernacular prerogative, not the stand-in career of international bureaucrats.

Tharoor’s aside the holy cow and holy calf, who made well-publicised trips in cattle class, were enough to snuff out the career of a junior minister. There were attempts to explain the merits of ministerial quietude to the dapper Tharoor, who has had little ‘political experience’ in India. It’s surprising then that the minister and his tweets have still survived.

Simply by going through his tweet archive, a kid of fifth grade can make a list of what the minister has been up to in the last one week or the month before that. Do we have the same information about our prime minister, the chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance, leader of the opposition or national security advisor? Nope. There is little likelihood of us ever taking a peek into the portals of power.

Then imagine a scenario where the Mumbai police commissioner, the state’s chief secretary, the municipal commissioner, deputy police commissioners of various zones and legislators of each constituency start tweeting about their daily business. Frankly, the opacity of the administration is often the reason why people are annoyed with the establishment. People believe it’s their fundamental right to know something that may impact their lives.

A case in point is the investigation into the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. Lack of clarity on the part of the police has led to varied assumptions about the death of three senior officers. Conspiracy theorists and rumour-mongers are having a field day adding grist to the mill with ‘revelations’. I’m not making a case for administrators tweeting about what’s contained in official files.

I’m only suggesting that we need a more information-friendly and open system. If more babus and netas come aboard Twitter, then it will be a glasnost for Indian governance.

Happy tweeting.