In a first, UPA govt tweets the press

Sam Pitroda, who is hailed as the man responsible for the country’s telecom revolution, on Tuesday held the government’s first ever conference on Twitter on “democratisation of information” advocating sharing of “relevant information” with people.

However, the initiative to use the social media by Pitroda, who is the prime minister’s adviser on public information infrastructure and innovations (PIII), comes at a time when the government is battling charges of Internet censorship and trying to rein in the social media.

“In India, we have the Right to Information (RTI) but the information is locked up in files. Information does bring about openness, accessibility, connectivity, democratisation, decentralisation. In this age, information is a great resource but that information is power and not many people likes to share power,” said Pitroda in a recorded message on Youtube just before the conference started.

“The idea behind democratisation of information is to create public information infrastructure in the country and then put right kind of information relevant information and timely on the net for people to access and work with it,” he added.

In his opening remarks on the Twitter press conference, Pitroda hailed information as the fourth pillar of democracy. “I firmly believe that information is the fourth pillar of democracy along with legislature, executive and judiciary,” Pitroda tweeted using the #DoI handle.

He also batted for the UPA government and said: “UPA government has various plans to build robust information infrastructure to democraticse information on a scale that has never been done before. UPA govt also has political will to make it happen.”

Pitroda has 28,611 followers on Twitter.
While Pitroda hailed the RTI Act, the government has been in the past few years accused of trying to dilute it. It has also successfully kept agencies monitoring the Internet and social media out of the RTI’s purview.

DNA asked Pitroda how a government can expect the social media to increase openness especially when agencies tasked with monitoring the web are beyond the transparency Act. He, however, didn’t answer the question.