Mantris who Facebook: How Modi turned BJP into a social media warrior

PM Modi’s sarkar is all ready to take the social media world by storm. There’s a totally revamped website for PMO India with regular messages, a video gallery, pictures and even a section on Narendra Modi’s personal life. A new PMO India Facebook page that was updated five days back and has already managed to get close to a million likes, and a new jazzy Twitter timeline that has pictures and not  just boring tweets about a policy. India’s new Prime Minister has also stressed that all his Cabinet ministers need to use social media extensively. According to an Indian Express report, a government source says, “Like his poll campaign, crowd-sourcing and digital media will continue to play a crucial role in governance too… The new PM has already issued a diktat to all his ministers to be present on Twitter and Facebook and interact with masses.” Modi ministers who tweet Late last night, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley shared a detailed blog post on Facebook discussing the future economic policies and the challenges  ahead. To be fair, Arun Jaitley has always been active on his blog and what made this different was that it was shared on his Facebook page was as well. [caption id=“attachment_1552353” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] The new PMO website under Narendra Modi. Screengrab.[/caption] Jaitley wrote on Facebook that, “Reviving the growth momentum, containing inflation and altering the pattern of growth to gainful employment is today an overriding priority. There is a need to boost domestic low-cost manufacturing and hasten the pace of reforms. Price stability and growth are inter-twined but may require a different strategy.” He went on to note, “India must prepare itself for this. We must commit ourselves to this discipline so that in order to strengthen the Indian economy which can improve the quality of life of every Indian and pull out the deprived ones from the state of poverty. Short term disciplining till we reverse the present trend will give us long term benefits.” You can read his entire blog post on Facebook It marks the  first time that Indians have been informed about government policy via Facebook. Unlike Shashi Tharoor in the UPA, Jaitley is not an exception in the Narendra Modi’s cabinet, which is fairly active on social media. All the big guns in Modi’s cabinet have made sure that they have a fairly strong following and engagement level on both Twitter and Facebook. According to a report by Mind Shift Interactive, ministers active on social media include Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Smriti Irani, Dr Harsh Vardhan and Arun Jaitley. The report notes that Rajnath and Smriti Irani are the most active on Facebook as well – as we can see in the chart below. Where Twitter is concerned, almost all the ministers have a clout score that is above 70 which is very respectable. This is radically different from UPA where key ministers such as P Chidambaram, or Pranab Mukherjee when he was Finance Minister or even Salman Khurshid who was the outgoing External Affairs Minister were AWOL on Twitter. UPA’s social media battle was often fought by Manish Tewari, who only became and I&B Minister in October 2012 and the likes of Sanjay Jha and Digvijya Singh, who while prominent party faces, weren’t really in the government. Social media genius of Modi But biggest indicator of the dramatic shift from UPA to Modi sarkar is the PM himself. Narendra Modi has two Twitter accounts, one where he is tweeting in personal capacity as an individual and the other is the PMO India Twitter account. The fact that he has continued to maintain his personal Twitter account shows that Modi understands the need to engage with his audience on both levels: as the head of India’s elected government and as Narendra Modi the political leader. According to a study titled “Social Network use by Indian Politicians” at the University of Michigan by researchers Joyojeet Pal and Priyank Chandra, Modi’s social media  success is a consequence of the kinds of interactions he engages in on Twitter. Narendra Modi, “has a careful system of reciprocity.”  What this is means is that Modi follows a selected number of casual Twitter users who post about him or BJP, unlike the majority of politicians on Twitter who tend to either follow other celebrities, or not follow anyone at all. As the study notes, there is “a sub-genre of posts by people who post about ‘being followed’ by Modi, which in itself is considered a prize.” The study notes that Modi’s strategy fosters the impression of being a peoples’ person - of offering a kind of parity to his people.  “Modi’s selfies on voting day or with Chetan Bhagat  give the impression of a common technology user, not an ivory tower politician,” says one of the authors of the study in an email interaction with Firstpost . But PM Modi isn’t just content with revamping the various PMO social media accounts and the official websites. According to an Economic Times report, close to 87,000 online citizens headed by BJP’s Communication cell will keep an eye on the Modi government. The PM has constantly stressed on the need to create an accountable and transparent government. The report notes that “the aim to ‘Transform India with Narendra Modi’ is not only to act as a pressure group on the government by not just tracking various schemes and their implementation, but also enabling citizens to exchange views and give constructive inputs.” Rajendra Pratap Gupta, who is coordinating the citizens’ circle initiative, told ET that the group will monitor the performance of all ministries to ensure they fulfill the promises made in the manifesto. Of course, the objectivity of the group remains debatable given that it is run by the BJP, but it reveals yet another facet of a complex and extensive PR strategy built around social media. Modi had written in a letter on the new PMO website saying , " I am a firm believer in the power of technology and social media to communicate with people across the world. I hope this platform creates opportunities to listen, learn and share one’s view." With that kind of endorsement from the big man, the Modi sarkar shows every sign of becoming a full-blown social media junkie.