RNI Exclusive, New Delhi:
The difference is evident! While the Prime Minister Office’s official website remained inconsequential during the 10 year Dr. Manmohan Singh period, the Facebook page of the Prime Minister’s office has attracted over 1.1. million ‘likes’ merely in about 4 days of its launch.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been actively using social media to connect with people since two years now. Not just Modi, other party stalwarts like Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi too have been active on social media.
Consider this! While Narendra Modi’s Facebook page has more than 17 million ‘likes’, Rajnath Singh’s page has about 2 million likes and Arun Jaitley has 1 million likes, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s page has only a little over 2 lakh ‘likes’ while Manmohan Singh’s Facebook page has merely a few thousand ‘likes’. ‘I hate Rahul Gandhi’ and ‘I hate Sonia Gandhi’ pages have more ‘likes’ than Manmohan Singh’s page. Rahul Gandhi’s page is worth talking about with about 4 lakh ‘likes’ on one page and about 2 lakh ‘likes’ on the other. It isn’t clear which one of the two pages that are seen is his official page.
This is the bitter truth despite the fact that as per reports, a staff of nearly 250 people handled media for Congress in the run up to the elections. The entire team reported to Deependir Singh Hooda, Sandeep Dikshit and Ajay Maken. While Maken’s page has about 3 lakh ‘likes’, Deependir Singh Hooda’s page has about 4 lakh ‘likes’, Sandeep Dikshit’s page has merely 5000 likes.
It is evident that Congress’s team was merely promoting the pages of Deepindir Singh Hooda, Ajay Maken and Rahul Gandhi. Yet, the entire team couldn’t muster anywhere close to people like Jaitley or Sushma Swaraj.
Interestingly, Rahul Gandhi was first of the movers among various politicians in India. Way back on August 29, 2010, NDTV reported that “Rahul Gandhi is a hit on Facebook. He has a fan page following of 67,921 people which could be among the largest for any leader in the country on the popular social networking site.” During the last two years, while Rahul Gandhi crept slowly, Narendra Modi and his entire team worked night and day to create a ‘likeness’ for him among the youth.
According to Modi’s strategists, social media played a crucial role in building “traction” in 160 “digital constituencies” or Lok Sabha seats where a large number (more than four crore as identified by the BJP) of people were active on social media platforms.
Whereas on the other hand, in an article titled ‘Congress spokespersons differ on the very relevance of Rahul’s workshop’, (https://realnewslive.org/eng/index.php/2013/07/26/congress-spokespersons-differ-on-the-very-relevance-of-rahuls-workshop/), RNI brought to light that when Rahul Gandhi organized a workshop in New Delhi to train the Congress workers towards more effective use of social media, some of the spokespersons differed with him and maintained that social media was of little consequence. Such persons remained in job despite openly mouthing their views and belittling the importance of the workshop.
The article said: “In this workshop of Rahul Gandhi, the chief lesson was that party leaders should stop speaking in different chorus on any issue. And the second lesson that was taught was that they should become active on social media to promote party’s policies and point of view. RNI tried to find the views of certain senior party spokespersons from various states and got to know that they not only have differences of opinion on these two issues but various spokespersons have differences on the very relevance of the workshop organized by Rahul Gandhi.”
Congress’s spokesperson in UP - Virendra Madaan – who is supposed to be close to UPCC president Nirmal Khattri – had, while showing disagreement to the relevance of Rahul Gandhi’s workshop, said: “How many votes will you change through social media in Uttar Pradesh,” he had asked. Madaan had complained that “the two-day workshop focused entirely on social media. All the speakers who came were of view that entire election has shifted to social media. Only Shashi Tharoor who came towards the end clarified that social media affected 10-11 per cent of votes.”
Virendra Madaan had put forth another question. “Tell me how many youth visit the sites of political leaders? Neither anybody is doing political tweet, nor commenting on it.”
Congressmen like Madaan have paid the price for belittling Rahul Gandhi’s advice. While BJP managed to create the ‘wave’ based on the social media platform, others woke up late out of their slumber related to the emerging media tools and its newly-emerged significance. Today, even ministers in Samajwadi Party and Laloo’s RLD are becoming active on social media.
But Narendra Modi is still two steps ahead! Soon after his swearing-in, the PMO also relaunched its website (pmindia.nic.in), with Modi’s message to the nation. “I envision this website as a very important medium of direct communication between us,” he said in the message.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been active on Twitter for the last two years. Senior Cabinet Ministers like Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley — all part of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) — also have Twitter accounts.
Modi’s two Twitter accounts together already have over six million followers. Besides his independent Twitter handle @narendramodi, Narendra Modi now also has an official account @PMOIndia. While his personal account is handled by a team led by his OSD from Gujarat, Hiren Joshi, the @PMOIndia account will be managed by officials from the Prime Minister’s Office. Now Modi has asked all his ministers to open Twitter accounts and create Facebook pages. He has been actively utilising the social media to connect with people and expects his ministerial colleagues to do the same.
The new ministers have been advised to use the microblogging site and the social media platform extensively for public outreach. They have been asked to put all policy initiatives in the public domain through these platforms, initiate discussions, seek feedback and incorporate valuable suggestions, besides maintaining a constant dialogue with people, said sources.
In a recent letter to other ministries, Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar has said that the “Prime Minister expects all his ministerial colleagues to use the social media platform extensively to disseminate new initiatives of the government.”
“Like his poll campaign, crowd-sourcing and digital media will continue to play a crucial role in governance too… Public outreach is an important part of the PM’s governance model and social media will be an important tool towards that end. The new PM has already issued a diktat to all his ministers to be present on Twitter and Facebook and interact with masses,” said a person linked to the development.
The difference is evident! Juxtapose more than 20 million ‘likes’ on two Facebook Pages and more than 6 million followers on Twitter, in Narendra Modi’s case versus Dr. Manmohan Singh’s 6000 likes on Facebook and inconsequential use of Twitter and the difference in their approach will become clear to all.
Aziz Haider/RNI News Bureau
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