Indian Minister Holds Facebook Q&A to Interact with Citizens

There is no communication between the government and public in India, as ministers treat commoners as their slaves. And now this Facebook Q&A.

By Rakesh Raman

Although most politicians in India are uneducated and clueless about the applications of information technology (IT), at times they keep displaying their little tech awareness ostentatiously.

Meet India’s Minister of State for Information & Broadcasting, Rajyavardhan Rathore (pictured above). According to a government communiqué, he participated Friday in a live Facebook Q&A with the public and replied questions fielded by people from different parts of the country.

This is strange considering the fact that there is no communication between the government and public in India, as ministers treat commoners as their slaves. All politicians and bureaucrats in India are so stubborn and unskilled that they refuse to respond to people’s requests.

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But surprisingly this Rathore emphasized the need to stay connected, as he asked citizens to interact with the government on Mygov.in and NaMo App on a regular basis, to send questions and topics to Prime Minister’s (PM) Mann Ki Baat, and to stay connected with all ministers on their respective social media pages.

Rathore claimed that the present government under the leadership of PM Narendra Modi strives to reach out to every individual through every means possible, to empower them with relevant information on government policies and schemes, and to bring their feedback to the government to make schemes more effective.

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During the one-hour interactive session which began at 9.30 in the evening, according to the government statement, Rathore answered questions on various aspects.

These included information and broadcasting, media ethics, crisis communication, public policy, Defence preparedness, border security, cyber threats, Olympics, skill development and employment generation.

The Minister also received many suggestions and ideas from people on a wide variety of subjects during the live interaction, it was claimed.

But was it real? It is believed that government secretly hires a few social media workers for such public interactions, as most Indians are illiterate who cannot write even a single correct sentence to interact with ministers. So, in all probability, these are not real but phoney Facebook interactions done by hired workers.

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At the end of the session, the Minister appeared Live on Facebook video and thanked all the people who interacted with him. He also said that as it was an interesting and important means of reaching out and staying connected with the people, he would request other ministers also to use social media platforms for similar real time interactions.

In his first Facebook Q&A, according to the government statement, the Minister could answer 65 questions in English and Hindi out of a total of 1,453 queries received during the hour-long session. The government also claims that Rathore’s live video on Facebook received more than 12,000 views and around 6,000 Likes.

The Q&A event was jointly organized by the social media team of Press Information Bureau, New Media Cell of Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, and Facebook.

By Rakesh Raman, the managing editor of RMN Company

Photo courtesy: Press Information Bureau