22nd April, 2010
It entered into the public space as a humble notice board, made inroads into our private space with the hook of fan followers, gradually made its presence felt with occasional scoops posted by the celebrities, started spreading its tentacles into the neo-techy masses and before we realised it had driven the otherwise largely technophobic nation into its tweet zone. From politicians to cricketers, film stars to media professionals; it seems everybody wants to tweet and be followed. Many have become addicted to the social media site and can’t seem to stay away from it. So, what is Twitter?
Is it the new face of expression in a society groping for recognition beyond mere identity of “We the Nation”? Has India readily accepted twitter as the new face of tangible recognition? More the followers the better standing you have in the society, so it seems. Facts suggest more than what twitter is supposed to stay for. In a developing society like India one may have to run from pillar to post to get a ration card or any other identity card, something that is not worthy of flaunting. But for the twitter exposed lot a twitter id is much easier to get and more fancy to flaunt.
When you first look at Twitter, it seems as though it is just a large bunch of random thoughts. It is actually much more than that. It is over hyped, over exposed and over estimated channel of communication. Twitter is being used and abused like no other media vehicle. It is true that one of the biggest scams of the era involving Cricket, Politics, Money and Sex has been exposed on twitter only. But twitter can’t take the credit of any worthy contribution to this. Had the mainstream media not followed it up, this twitter post would have gone as unnoticed as thousands of others in the day.
After all, everybody is tweeting. It seems twitter is the new public address system in the country and every one is busy twitting good, bad and ugly without any censorship-legal, ethical or whatever. However, this is India and definitely the soci0-political spectrum is not as tweety as France where the President asks for public opinion on political and personal agenda through his tweets.
Twitter, as a matter of fact, has been snowballing into the political spectrum of the nation ever since a Union Minister with a fair degree of international exposure during his stint with the United Nations started tweeting his not-so-politically-correct views on various issues. Nobody had then imagined that twitter posts are going to be his nemesis in the days ahead. The accusation against Union Minister Shashi Tharoor by the IPL Commissioner and Mastermind of Gambling Racket called IPL Cricket is just the precursor of the emerging trends of Indian politics. The victim of tweets, Indian politics has added a new vocabulary in its lexicon and vendetta politics will be henceforth referred as Twitter Politics.
The first high-profile casualty of twitter posts is not just the resignation of a Union Minister, or the surfacing of what seems to be the biggest betting racket of India thus far, called the IPL Cricket. The inherent dangers are deep rooted. If tweets are the way to go, I am afraid life in the public space will be less respectful, lesser trustworthy, and even lesser accountable to the democratic institutions. Imagine a minister making policy announcements on twitter rather than in the Parliament. Can a twitter mandate replace the trouble of conducting an exhaustive election procedure?
Probably those who conceptualised the idea of twitter first had no idea as to how BIG IDEA they had been working on. The cost of running a country like India can be brought to almost negligible if twitter has its way. The law makers would not have the trouble of travelling all their way to Parliament from respective constituencies in the remote areas. The easiest possible public address system called twitter is there to take care of the causes and grievances of the nation. Union Budgets will also be tweeted and law makers along with the common man on the streets can retweet their opinion on it.
Twitter was actually meant for interaction limited to commercial and personal reasons. It is now also being used for political and other vested interest purposes. Now that Twitter is in the mainstream, with all of its tentacles reaching as far into society as it does, it is not going anywhere anytime soon. The advocates of tweet politics will soon suggest taking the advantages of twitter and seeing how it can contribute to transform the democratic and institutional fabric of a developing nation like India. Of course, there is a price tag to this universal public address system that demands a thorough cost-benefit analysis. The question is whether the Indian society in its collective consciousness is ready to pay the price of “We the Twitter”?
6 comments:
most of the ppl related with ipl are currept. PM should personally interven and guilty should be punished including persons behind the curtains.
Twitter empowers through its level-playing-field of communication. Twitter's appeal lies in the fact that a common man has as good a chance of being heard as a celebrity/politician does. There lies the trouble too.
Quoting a famous byline from a famous super-hero movie : 'with great power, comes great responsibilty'.. which needs to be exercised, more importantly by those whose 'handles' are constantly in the public eye :)
I think it’s a sign of things to come…twitter is growing big and in a country which loves politics and maroing ‘adda’ is intrinsic to every Indian- be it the local tea shop, or the south Delhi drawing rooms, we all love to ‘discuss’. Plus twitter to some extent feeds into our inherent desire to stand up and be heard. I agree with gotlo that it’s a kind of level playing field for communication (well even if there is noise, but still where else will I get an opportunity to write to SRK..even though he might not respond, atleast 3 lakh of his follwers saw it! Plus numerous more who might be searching for him).
Don’t think twitter is going to run the government or going to influence policy as radically as to some extent indicated by you. But yes, it is going to transform the way people are heard and atleast give a platform to reach out to the people who govern us…its like a open town centre where we can atleast try to reach our inaccessible ‘public’ servants’. Let’s say it is a real time look into what the general public its feeling on any particular issue (but then yes, do 2 million urban, educated and net savvy users make up for all of India?). Another debate but then at least something’s better than nothing!
I feel just sitting and talking about political system being currupt and many other things will not work. In my opinion one has to take the responsibility of changing the system if she/he is commenting on the system else please stop passing judgement on this system. They are there coz we elect them or may be because we don't excercise our right to vote. For whatever be the reasons my say is if one is ready to take responsibility of changing the system then comment else just watch as mute crowd not knowing what to do and let them rule us. We are such a hyppocrates we think something, want to say something and say something..
Ravi I congratulate you and thank you for bringing it to this platform and wish that more people get involved.
Good work! keep it up:)
Ravi Sir, this post is very true. I am a die hard twitter addict. I read tweets to catch up with latest news , some random jokes on current issues by celebrities like Rakesh jhunjhunwala , some sensible thoughts by ace journos like Rajdeep Sardesai etc. and also to present my thoughts and market my funny articles on my blog as well.
http://amitsinha69.blogspot.com/2010/04/indian-female-league-new-venture-by.html#links
http://twitter.com/amitsinha69
Politics is very distinguished job but given the current morale of our politicians... and not to mention their behaviour in and out of the parliament.. twitter can play role in reducing their head-on collision with each other.. atleast for the sake of people to continue their " faith" in them...
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