Talk of fiddling while the capital is burning!
This morning, the Supreme Court delivered a stinging rebuke of the UPA government’s telecom policy, which is cloaked in layers of corruption in the sale of 2G spectrum.
The verdict in the case, and in other cases relating to the alleged culpability of one of the government’s senior ministers P Chidambarm, have enormous consequences for the government policy, on business and industry, on politics.
The problem with twitter is that followers see the existence of the @PMOIndia account as an enabler for the PM to share his views.
The electronic media have all had instant responses, presenting a 360-degree view of the implications of the judgement. We at Firstpost too have been on the ball, and we had this analysis out within minutes of the judgement:
“The Supreme Court’s decision to cancel all the 122 telecom licences issued by jailed former Communications Minister Andimuthu Raja on 10 January 2008…will affect every major licensee from Reliance to Tata Teleservices, Idea, Bharti, Aircel, Loop, Vodafone, S Tel and many others, including the controversial Swan Telecom and Unitech Wireless… has major political and economic implications. The cancellation amounts to an indictment of the way Raja and the UPA government issued those licences… It is not only a setback for the former – who is accused No 1 in the 2G scandal – but a huge embarrassment for the government,” reads Firstpost’s immediate analysis of the Supreme Court decision.
But over the past hour or so, in all the time that this momentous judgement has been occupying millions of people’s minds, guess what is on the vacuous mind of the Prime Minister’s Office? It’s recently opened Twitter account PMOIndia gives a peep into what’s going on – and it points to an office that is in complete disconnect with India.
This is what the PMOIndia account has had to say for the past couple of hours or so:
“Prime Minister to inaugurate MNREGA Sammelan in Delhi on the completion of 6 years of the scheme- a landmark.”
“MNREGA has provided employment to more than 250m people in 6 years, more than the population of Europe.”
“In 2010-11 MNREGA reached 55 m households in the country. More than Rs 25,600 crore have been distributed as wages.”
“Prime Minister speaks at MNREGA sammelan on Doordarshan News.”
These boring updates do not surprise us one bit.
Firstpost had noted, when the PMOIndia account went live on Twitter:
“The PMO’s understanding of the use of twitter is clear when you see that the account follows no one at all. The PMO account will be broadcasting, not interacting. It will tell all of us what the PMO wants us to know. It will not be engaging and cerebral, it will be banal and boring, as seen by the first few tweets. It will not be a meeting place for, say, opinion-leaders and thinkers of the country and the prime minister’s office. All it’s going to be is PIB on twitter. Time to unfollow the account.”
Since then, there has been no great change with the Twitter account, except that it now follows one other account — @IndianDiplomacy.
One could argue that even if @PMOIndia felt it could not break out of the “PIB on Twitter” mould, as its behavior pattern suggests, perhaps on a momentous occasion such as this, when the government has been wrapped on the knuckles by the highest court in the land, the Prime Minister could have found his voice for once. Even if he had to stick to the ‘press release’ format, he could have shared with his followers his views immediately after the news broke.
Sure, there’s some merit in the argument that he might choose to wait till the legal implications of the judgment have been interpreted by his advisors and the ministries concerned.
But even so, @PMOIndia could still have said something along the lines of “The PM has called for a meeting with P Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal to discuss the 2G issue in the afternoon”, so that some semblance of action and concern could be conveyed.
The problem with Twitter is that followers see the existence of the @PMOIndia account as an enabler for the PM to share his views. If the Twitter account goes silent on the burning topic of the day – even more silent than our flesh-and-blood Prime Minister is in real life – the only interpretation one can take away is that the PM has chosen not to do so.
That’s rank bad public relations. And this bad PR will be visible every time there is a development that causes citizens to expect/look for a view from the prime minister.
Which is why, rather than recommend that you unfollow the #PMOIndia account, it makes more sense to suggest to the PMO that they shut down the account.