At a meeting with ministers in March, Prime Minister Narendra Modi handed out a report card to each of them. Each of the reports, in a sealed cover, contained an analysis of how the minister had performed on the social media, including the number of followers on Twitter and Instagram, friends on Facebook, and posts made by them on these platforms.
Instead of the old-school summoning of ministers and issuance of veiled threats of reshuffling portfolios, what the ministers were confronted with was data from social media. The second part of the exercise was stiffer - ministers with a score of less than 100,000 followers were asked to be more active on social media. And, all of them, irrespective of their presence, were told to set up a social media unit within their ministries. These units would be in addition to the social media cell in the ministry of information and broadcasting (I&B), it was decreed. Even as ministers Arun Jaitley, Piyush Goyal and Smriti Irani pepper the social media with their comments extensively, there are others like Mahesh Sharma, J P Nadda and Narendra Singh Tomar who are relatively inconspicuous on such platform.
The initiative is not only about pushing ministers to build scores on the social media. Ten per cent of the Indian population was on social media by the end of 2015, according to a report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India or IAMAI. Leaving out the population below 10 and above 70 years, the concentration is dense. With social media leading the dialogue on every conceivable topic, ministers have a key role in ensuring the government's point of view finds prominent space. (TWITTERATI MINISTERS)
This comes at a time when the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government is about to complete two years in office. The social media scores are a ready reckoner, said one source privy to the exercise, to see how ministers have fared.
Robin Jeffrey, visiting professor at the National University of Singapore, who has analysed Indian media trends for decades, says, "Today, especially in North India, where there is illiteracy and semi-literacy, 140-character messages with lots of pictures and sound have huge potential to capture people's attention. Cheap 3G and 4G phones are making this widely possible." He says the technology is a "force multiplier" when allied with a clear message and cadres who are true believers.
Senior officers in the government, whom Business Standard approached for this story, refused to be quoted but confirmed details of the exercise. According to one of them, from now on, the ministers have to virtually work with the new social media teams till the next general election. Ministers have also been allowed to hire agencies to manage their social media accounts. Former I&B secretary, Bimal Julka said the focus on technology was driven by the PM. "It has been a revolutionary change. As of now, training programmes for the ministers and their staff are on. The plan is to tap the two-way flow on information the social media platforms."
Rakesh Thukral, managing director of Edelman India, which claims to be the largest public relations firm in the world, said, "This is not a new trend and should be seen as specialists being brought into the fold. The polio campaign in the past and more recently Make in India, and COP 21 are examples. Whether it is messaging, integrated campaigns, international outreach, social media or creative inputs, I see an increase in the role of the specialists in the future."
He is referring to the same phenomenon as Jeffrey - the role of clear messaging that acts as a force multiplier. "When technologies change, there is a first-mover advantage for politicians who already have substantial support and who quickly work out how new technologies can be used. Theodore Roosevelt saw how an American president could get into millions of homes once the telegraph enabled his activities to be published every day in attractive, rapidly produced mass magazines and newspapers," Jeffrey adds.
An officer associated with the exercise said, unlike a conventional press release issued through the Press Information Bureau (PIB), publicity arm of the government, the ministers would be now forced to take direct responsibility for the messages that appear under their names on social media. It would, in turn, make them see the response and demand clear results from their departments.
This exercise has already begun in the health ministry. "We are scarcely out of one report when the next one surfaces. These have all begun in the past two months," said one secretary-level officer. He said he had brought the issue to the notice of the minister who had declined to relax the pace of information flow.
A report released by IAMAI this week claims of the 294 constituencies in the West Bengal assembly elections, as many as 70 have good presence on social media to influence the results. Admittedly on a thin base, the survey found "more than 42 per cent (were) sharing articles related to elections/politics on social media and 31 per cent commenting on political issues". It concludes there is a good chance of focused, elections-related content reaching them.
An adverse impact of Modi government's exercise could be on the future role of PIB. Julka said while the communications platform used by it and other media units have improved of late, they still lack a cutting-edge look and feel.
