Governing in silence for the past six years, the Prime Minister Office-India suddenly voiced itself (ironic for the term “Prime Minister”, which has, over a period time become synonymous with the phrase “dead silence”) on the popular 140 word social networking website, twitter, only to realize that it’s impact has been way too large, larger than the popularity of the Office itself – thanks to some “#cattle class” networkers running parody accounts of the PM Office.
The Government, fearing misinterpretation of such accounts or more reasonably, unable to digest the harsh criticism, had filed an application with twitter in June this year. Perhaps a justified approach, given that the esteemed citizens of this country had failed to interpret the real faces of their parliamentary representatives during the general elections.
Refusing to give in to the illogical demand of the Government of India, the social networking site didn’t respond, teasing the Supreme to resort to its countless power. And so it did. Hiding behind the exodus of the North-Eastern citizens, the government shut down the six “misleading” accounts by ordering the Internet Service Providers (ISP) to block their profiles URLs.
Although, we all agree to the fact that there are certain websites and some content over the internet that promotes communal disharmony and needs to be dealt with stiffly, but anything that criticizes the government can’t be made a scape goat. This is no China, for god sake.
Damning the government for its arrogant attitude, the rest of the “netizens” are seen taking on the corrupt class (political power-heads) by offensively tweeting against them. The hashtags #goiblocks, #emergency2012 and #indiablocks have been trending over the internet.
To quote, some of the tweets read as:
“The worst hate speech was made not on social media but in Parliament by Owaisi. While he is still on twitter, others gagged” @jitengajaria
“At the stroke of the midnight hour as Indians slept, world awoke to censorship” @MsWeera
“Rabid right-winger PM0India a) gets to become a martyr and b) will re-appear and start hate-tweeting from another account.” @DilliDurAst
Meanwhile, justifying their high-headedness, a PMO official was quoted as saying, “We are fine with parody, even though at times it is in bad taste, and there is criticism of the government. But we cannot allow anyone to misrepresent the PM’s office and tweet nonsense from these accounts”.
Well, Sir, all I fear is of the day when the name of every other netizen starts appearing to you as that of PM Manmohan Singh. If only you could bring down the internet on that day.
The public sentiment is pretty evident – people feel disgusted by the brazenness of this government. The officials must try and understand that in order to run the country, they need to feed the so called cattle class; whic no longer eats the long political speeches, but an uncensored internet.
P.S. – This latest cyber restriction by the government in the wake of social media uprising has only jeopardized its already deteriorated public image #RIP Censorship.
Arjun Tuli
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