Social media fascinates Jaitley but he stays out

Bangalore, Jan 20: The great communicator was stumped at the first tweeters meet in Bangalore on a hot Sunday afternoon. BJP leader Arun Jaitley said that it was first time in his public life that he was having an interactive session with the real people who are active in virtual world, and spoke on variety of subjects asked by the

world.

At the outset, Jaitley, who is very articulate, gave reasons for his inability or the absence from social media. He believes that his individual ideas on issues may clash with the party's collective decisions and that was the reason for not taking to social media to air his views. It seems that his desire to be politically correct has prevented him from sending tweets.

But that does not prevent him from recognising the relevance, the strengths and weakness of the social media, especially the twitter. There is great virtue in communicating with large audience helps in a democracy, said Jaitley but felt that instant message often promotes half-baked information or disinformation.

In 160 characters one cannot say much, however, it does sharpen the language and social media requires facility or the command over language, the BJP leader said at a well-attended twitter's meet organised an NGO Samagra Vikas Trust run by professionals from various fields.

Jaitley does stay interactive with the public through his articles and answering queries on the party's website and also his website. In fact, he had fight a court case to get the website with his name as somebody else had registered it, which is known as ‘squatting' on domains. So, Jaitley has not completely abandoned the virtual world.

Answering some of the questions sent by the twitter community, Jaitley suggested few wacky and revolutionary measures. To bring order, discipline and respect for rule of law, he said, send more people to jail. He said we should show less compassion so that democracy functions.

On Pakistan and recent border episode of soldiers killings, the BJP leader felt that talks with Pakistan in the face of such provocations does not succeed. He advocated ‘sullen diplomacy'. It means stop taking to Pakistan or dictate level of engagement.

He also spoke about the need to bring into politics people from various professional fields.

OneIndia News