V.P. Sharma
In May 2014 the entire administrative establishment in Delhi was engulfed by a Modi led saffron storm. Bureaucrats, government employees, advisors and policy makers who inhabited the intrigue filled power corridors in the exclusive Lutyens zone were preparing for the massive churn that awaited them on arrival of a new government. For veterans in government circles this wasn’t the first transition and most were confident that historically established precedents on executive change will serve them satisfactorily this time as well.

Yet there was one development for which there was no historical standard to draw lessons from. With the advent of a digital age, the Prime Minister of India was transmitting policy achievements and initiatives of the government on social media platforms of twitter and Facebook. A first in the history of the Indian Republic, a transfer of social media accounts to a new government had to take place. Barring a fruitless controversy at the start of this new process which one can attribute to beginners’ confusion, the twitter and Facebook accounts namely “PMOIndia” and “PMO India” were successfully transferred from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

This small but notable event amidst an array of brain numbing activities that occur during a governmental transition was significant. Transfer of accounts including all its followers, existing reach, brand value and network power set the precedence for a mature transmission of social media capital between the incoming and outgoing governments. It also established certain unwritten principles pertaining to accounts managed by government executives. Primarily this transition founded a rule that all government social media accounts will be associated with the executive position manned by the official whether elected or unelected and these accounts will transfer to individuals appointed to the positions on an as and when basis. This created a clear distinction between individual personal accounts of politicians or officials and accounts entrusted to them by virtue of the position they hold.

The crucial purpose behind creating such a differentiation is to ensure that tax payer owned and funded technological apparatuses are not used to promote the personal political agendas of politicians and bureaucrats. Rather, official accounts will be used only to communicate government policy and outreach including citizen awareness of various schemes, programs and initiatives undertaken by the government.  The underlying logic behind this norm is based on the ethical standards of transparency and accountability citizens demand from the government. Tax money expropriated by means of coercion must always be used to further the public good and strict safeguards must be in place to prevent personal exploitation of citizens’ money by those in power.

All across the world including India we find that despite the unscrupulous nature of politics politicians have usually adhered to this distinction. When in power they maintain distinct personal accounts financially managed by them individually and official accounts financed by the government which are used to transmit authorized government messages from their departments or ministries.  Several chief ministers in India have followed the line set by the Prime Minister and are maintaining distinct individual social media accounts separate from the official social media accounts they have as department or ministry heads.

Even in a general atmosphere of respect for morality, ethics and rule of law exceptional rogues are prevalent in certain remote corners. Although most leaders have valued the dissimilarity in individual social media accounts and official accounts, the Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh seems hell bent on collating the two. In the serene mountains of the western Himalayas where value attached to tranquility far exceeds the price of digital media, Virbhadra Singh and his entourage are determined to make a mockery of unwritten customs promoting transparency in social media accounts of political leaders. He is resolute in expropriating tax payer money and using it for a joyride into the narcissistic amusement park of self-branding and promotion.

The chief executive of the hill state currently operates a twitter as well as a Facebook page under the titles of “virbhadrasingh” and “Virbhadra Singh” respectively. The two digital media accounts have been in the news recently for all the wrong reasons. Under the circumstances that have emerged over the past couple of months, it appears that these so called “official” accounts of Virbhadra Singh are managed and maintained by a team of social media experts (or nincompoops given the stream of information circulated on the page) who are paid roughly around 2,50,000 rupees every month from the state treasury. Their infamy came to light when the managers released pictures of innocent individuals and brandished them as rapists during an ongoing criminal investigation. Despite such blatant violation of individual privacy, no action has been initiated against the CM or his page managers under section 66E of the Information and Technology Act which explicitly provides for a punishment of 3 years if pictures violating privacy of an individual are circulated without his consent. This raises considerable doubts on the competency of the page managers bankrolled by the tax payers and the independence of the police in the state.

The perplexing fact about the chief minister’s social media operation is that the accounts which Virbhadra Singh operates on the two primary platforms of twitter and Facebook are private accounts and not official government accounts. Had they been official government accounts their title would be “Chief Ministers Office Himachal Pradesh” and “CMOHP” as is the norm. A cursory search on the internet reveals that no such account exists. All communications from the chief minister and his office are sent out via Virbhadra Singh’s private accounts. There are deep reservations on the ethical efficacy of the account since exchequer money is being spent on personal promotional campaigns of the Chief Minister. There is absolutely no objective criteria in the present structure to distinguish between approved government message or personal political propaganda. If the goal of the current account is marketing the personality of Virbhadra Singh and his son through state subsidy, the Chief Minister and his team will not only be violating basic moral standards, they may also be in violation of section 409 IPC which specifically punishes criminal breach of trust by public servants.

In a state which is heavily in debt one would expect its veteran leaders to jam the brakes on profligacy. The Chief Minister and his staff however want to maraud through the finances of Himachalis like drunken heirs to a rich fortune. Spending 30 lacs a year on personal advertisement from an already depleted treasury signifies a level of moral depravity the innocent pahadis may have never seen. To restore the beleaguered confidence of people in the state government will be an uphill task, and the CM must start by acknowledging the private status of his account. Following which he is obligated to reimburse the state treasury of all the expenses that the people have incurred in financing his social media accounts and he must do so from his personal income.

(An associate with a law firm, V.P. Sharma writes regular articles for various news papers. His articles take a contrarian view of political, economic and social issues.)