BackOf tweets and GDP
Planning Commission’s challenge will be to communicate the next Five-Year Plan in 140 words to engage India’s restless generation
Premium(Hemant Mishra/Mint)
What if the governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), a self-proclaimed believer in the wisdom of the crowd, wakes up tomorrow morning and updates his Facebook status with, “rate cut on my mind" and then goes on to tweet, “how about a repo rate cut, folks." At 11am, he then does a Google Hangout to announce the actual policy decision. From what has been happening around, this may not be a distant dream.
The 2013-14 Budget signalled the coming of age of the social media in India. Its most innovative and long lasting aspect was the first ever social media interaction by a finance minister on the Budget—the well-received Google Hangout with finance minister P. Chidambaram. By organizing that event, the finance ministry acknowledged the communication realities of a new India.
More than three quarters of Internet users in India engage in social networking. That accounts for nearly 65 million social media users in urban India.
Being social on the Net has spread beyond cities as well. Though the top eight metros constitute more than a third of the entire user base, 66% belong to other, smaller cities.
It has been estimated by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) that almost a quarter of all social media users in India belong to small towns that have a population of less than 200,000. Another 11% are from towns that have a population between 200,000 and 500,000.
The statistics become even more relevant in terms of the usage patterns. Social media usage ranks second after email (80%).
The finance minister’s Hangout seemed to have been thought through to meet all the tenets of a good social media initiative. Not only was it on an issue of great relevance to everyone, Chidambaram knew his audience: the apprehensive foreign investor, the worried wealthy individual and the disgusted domestic private sector executive.
Quick on the heels of the finance ministry, the Planning Commission tried to leverage social media for engagement on issues concerning the 12th Five-Year Plan. Montek Singh Ahluwalia and his team did a Google Hangout on the Plan.
The Plan is no Budget, either in terms of its relevance or direct impact on the stakeholders, but publicizing it on social media channels, including Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube can help inform if not enthuse citizens about it.
All these initiatives are a positive development for public policy. Facebook, Twitter and blogs do provide an opportunity for some to have their voice heard, especially those who otherwise cannot or choose not to attend public forums or make statements in print or television.
It also provides an audience to concerned policymakers, such as Chidambaram and Ahluwalia, who pay close attention to social media, and may change the course of their own policy development based on what large groups appear to be concerned about. But this is not enough.
What they need now are the collaborators, who see the tools of social media as helping them do their jobs better. Only then can they overcome the majority in government, the resisters, who are concerned about the genuine risks associated with government use of social media.
To make glamorous and symbolic forays on social media into something relevant and lasting for policymaking, the government needs a framework on how to integrate social media into the structure of public policy formulation.
The government doesn’t have to worry about a cultural change. Every year, it is recruiting thousands of young people for whom social media is the way they live, work and think. They need to think how to benefit from social media with its collective creativity in policymaking—in its design and dissemination—so that government can benefit from new media. This is easier said than done.
For one, social media democratizes and decentralizes decision-making which can cut the roots from under the existing social contract of the government. The Lokpal Bill and the proposed anti-rape law are instances of this issue.
At a more mundane, operational, level, by its very nature social media is spontaneous. Governments, on the other hand, are exactly the opposite: premeditated and constrained.
There is an obvious need for think tanks to re-tool for social media. At a basic level, it can take the form, for example, of putting out research findings and policy recommendations as relevant online conversations. Or, as suggested by some social media experts, experimenting with projects that translate their research and recommendations into online tools rather than white papers.
Haseeb A. Drabu is an economist, and writes on monetary and macroeconomic matters from the perspective of policy and practice. Comments are welcome at haseeb@livemint.com
To read Haseeb A. Drabu’s earlier columns, go to www.livemint.com/methodandmanner
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