Twitter Moving The Narendra Modi Government Machinery Into Top Gear!

Prime minister Narendra Modi lets his ministers know that they will be judged by their ‘social’ standing.

- Uday Mahurkar

As a prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi was quick to realise the power of social media. His two-year old government runs a fairly successful outreach using it to communicate its achievements. Modi is also now the third most followed world leader, after US President Barack Obama and Pope Francis with 21.3 million followers on micro-blogging site Twitter and 35 million on his Facebook page.

In March this year, the Modi government ramped up its social media outreach, running workshops for ministers on how to use the micro-blogging site Twitter more effectively. The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) also quietly monitors the performance of the cabinet on social media, grading the quality of their tweets. These ratings are also believed to have played a role in the recent ministerial reshuffle, and may well go down as the world’s first such e-governance initiative.

SOCIAL MEDIA OUTREACH

Until March this year, the government’s social media campaign operated in silos. Individual ministers pushed their ministries. Some like foreign minister Sushma Swaraj (also among the top 10 followed world leaders on Twitter) ran an outstanding public diplomacy campaign, reaching out to Indians in distress overseas. Other vital ministries, like civil aviation, food processing and women and child welfare, were either unrepresented or dormant.

The first indication of change came in March. The PMO hashtagged ‘Transforming India’ as the catch-all phrase to project the government’s second anniversary achievements. Ministers were instructed to use the hashtag every time they tweeted about major outcomes on social media. This would allow the PMO to monitor social media commentary on the government and its achievements.