Minister a-Twitter Part Deux

Prem Panicker writes an excellent piece about what he sees to be the real deal behind all this brouhaha about Tharoor’s Tweeting Tendencies. I wholeheartedly agree with the man on this one, perhaps because he articulates ever so eloquently what I had raised a few months ago; each one of his tweets is breaking the barrier between the old-world formalism of Indian governance (dignified silence, at best & mutual chair-throwing, at worst) and new age media which encourages random chatter and expression of personal opinions on matters professional.

In the strangest of ways, Shashi Tharoor’s Twitter banter is fuelling what has been in motion for a while (and, might I say, is long overdue) – an increased engagement with domestic politics among Indian youth. The birth of a civil society is taking place, beyond mere political slogans and jingoistic exhortations, and a democracy is growing up. Even as I sit here, thousands of miles away from my motherland, I feel a palpable change taking place among people of my generation and yearn to be a part of it, somehow, anyhow.

Keep tweeting, keep including, keep informing.