Digitally challenged CMs

BY NANDITA JHA| IN Digital Media | 03/10/2015

Digital media savvy chief ministers. Clockwise: N Chandrababu Naidu, Vasundhara Raje, Arvind Kejriwal, Anandiben Patel

If the leadership for making Digital India a reality has to come from the political class  and if India lives in its states, how convinced are our regional political leaders  about the usefulness of Internet outreach and social media? 

If their personal use of  it is in any indication, the answer is not very. Roughly fifty per cent of our chief ministers are managing without using these tools of communication themselves. Out of 29 states,  the CMs of 14 have neither  a personal website nor  a blog, nor are they on Twitter.  These include the CMs of all four southern states!

Among the more formidable women CMs, neither  Jayalalitha nor Mamata Banerjee have any use for these tools, but Anandiben Patel, on the other hand, is a dab hand at digital communication. She uses all three and, unlike most Indian politicians who prefer to tweet rather than blog, she actually manages to post on her blog every month.

The following CMs do not use the Internet or social media to reach out to people:

A few like Akhilesh Yadav, Manohar Lal Khattar, Virbhadra Singh and Shivraj Singh Chouhan, prefer to just tweet. Naveen Patnaik, who also has a website, became active on Twitter only last month.

Twitter only

This is why Patnaik figures at the bottom of the active-on-Twitter list. Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party is the most active followed by Devendra Fadnavis, CM of Maharashtra and other BJP CMs who dominate the list. The exception is the Congress CM of Arunachal Pradesh, Nabam Tuki who is the fifth most active CM on Twitter.

Those on Twitter in order of activeness with their Twitter handle and total no. of tweets are:

Only three chief ministers blog frequently - Chandrababu Naidu, Anandiben Patel and Vasundhara Raje.

Those with a website, blog and twitter

And what of other state politicians – opposition  leaders? Mayawati stands out for having no truck with Twitter or other internet platforms. Derek O’Brien is an avid  tweeter, and M.K. Stalin has a fairly snazzy website. Omar Abdullah tweets diligently, as does Lalu Prasad Yadav.

State-level politicians on the web

CMs with a website plus Twitter accounts

Twitter Plus blog

Only Website