BBC - Soutik Biswas's India: India's 'Twittering Minister'

Description

India's 'Twittering Minister'

To tweet or not to tweet is the question that Mr Shashi Tharoor must be asking himself these days.

India's junior foreign minister is a former UN diplomat, a prolific writer, a political debutant and an inveterate Twitter-er . Some are already calling him, rather uncharitably, India's 'Twittering Minister', and skewering him for "wasting time" with his "frivolities" on the social networking site. His supporters - and there are over 160,000 people following him on Twitter - say that Mr Tharoor is not your average staid, fuddy-duddy Indian politician; and his thriving online social networking skills make him refreshingly different.

His political colleagues may not agree. It all began when Mr Tharoor got ticked off by the government for staying in a luxury hotel in Delhi as his official bungalow was not ready to move in. He promptly moved out and Twittered about how it didn't make much sense to him because he was paying for his hotel room, not the taxpayer. It was bad timing. The Congress government says it is on a major austerity drive in these pressing times, though many feel that it is mere tokenism - ministers may travel economy class and Rahul Gandhi may travel by train but they invariably do so with a retinue of sullen faced security men and fawning officials, which ends up inconveniencing other passengers.

Matters came ...

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/soutikbiswas/2009/09/indias_twittering_minister.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/soutikbiswas/2009/09/indias_twittering_minister.html