Govt to hold social media talks on YouTube every fortnight, will answer public questions

In keeping with its enthusiasm for all things social media, the Modi government has taken a few more steps to increase interactions between the common people and the government’s ministers. According to an Economic Times report, the government will hold live talk sessions on YouTube every fortnight. The first one took place on Monday with minister Piyush Goyal. The report says that Goyal answered 20 questions for half an hour in the first session and was asked a rang of questions from electricity to coal allocation, and “even why he was chosen to be US President Barack Obama’s minister in waiting.” Railway minister Suresh Prabhu and Finance minister Arun Jaitley could be next, though none of this is confirmed. The report quotes a senior official of the Information and Broadcasting ministry as saying, “The idea is not just to interact with people but also to answer their difficult questions. Policymakers are thinking hard before taking every decision and the thought process has to be conveyed to people.” Questions can be fielded on Facebook, Twitter, and the replies are given live on YouTube. [caption id=“attachment_2091717” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Narendra Modi in this file photo. PTI[/caption] This initiative is perhaps the first of its kind from a government, at least as far as live interaction on social media bit goes. As we had noted earlier in this report , PM Modi, who made history as the first politician to talk to voters on Google Plus hangouts, had stressed to his Cabinet ministers, soon after coming to power, that they would need to use social media extensively. In fact, 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. From Rajnath Singh to Smriti Irani to even Arun Jaitley, the Modi cabinet has been well-present and active on social media for sometime now. But evidently that didn’t helped in the Delhi polls, where the BJP’s defeat is also being seen as big tactical loss for the Modi government, given that the PM was the face of the party’s campaign in the state. Now the government is hoping to ramp up its social media presence from mere tweeting to actual engagement by taking up the public’s questions. If the process continues fortnightly and with ministers answering tough questions, then it could well be a new avenue for how the government interacts with its citizens. However it should not be forgotten that a majority of India’s citizens are still not online (only 20 percent of India’s population is actually online), so perhaps the PM’s Mann ki baat is actually a better model for his netas to emulate!