Social Mediums

Bureaucrats are using the power of social media to humanise governance

- SURUCHI KAPUR GOMES

Behind every highway ribbon-cutting, every vaccination drive, every election queue that curls around a government school, stands the Indian bureaucracy-a roughly 10 million-strong public workforce across the Union and states, including 5,000-plus officers of the elite All India Services such as the IAS, IPS, and IFOS. India inherited its steel frame from the Raj. Yet the verdict on bureaucrats swings wildly.

To some, they are nation-builders who carried out land reforms, Green Revolution logistics, and the mammoth exercise of conducting the world's largest elections. To others, they embody red tape slow files, opaque corridors, and colonial hauteur dressed in khadi. Now, however, India's bureaucracy is undergoing a visible, and at times dramatic, transition into the public square of social media.

District collectors and police commissioners who once communicated through typed press notes now post real-time updates on X and Instagram. During floods in Assam, district administrations have used Twitter threads to announce rescue helplines and relief camp locations within minutes. Police departments in cities like Mumbai and Bengaluru respond to traffic complaints on social media, tagging field officers, and resolving issues publicly A pothole complaint that earlier required multiple visits to a municipal office can now be geotagged, photographed, and escalated in a single post.