MEA logs on to social media to connect to Gen X

NEW DELHI: ‘The Mussalman’ is unique: it’s possibly the world’s last handwritten newspaper. Even today in Chennai, it is published and read every day as it has since 1927. Behind the Wallajah mosque, the office has six “writers” penning in news and opinions lovingly and painstakingly, in the endangered art of Urdu calligraphy. But see the film for yourself on YouTube, and celebrate the fact that none of the writers have quit — they pass on their talents to the next generation.
Prepare to be surprised — the film, crisp and attractive with over 60,000 views so far, has been made by the much maligned MEA.
In the past year, India’s foreign office has uploaded close to 200 videos on India, its politics, history and culture, on the world’s biggest social media platforms. Through Facebook, Twitter and the web, MEA, famous for its grumpy silences, appears to have harnessed the power of Web 2.0 to reach out to the world successfully. “We plan to be in the global top 5 by the end of this year,” Navdeep Suri, additional secretary, said.
Western diplomats, accustomed to sighing over MEA’s obsession with secrecy, now admit many countries could take a leaf out of India’s public diplomacy division.
Another film, “Integral India” returns to the confusing days of Kashmir’s accession to India, in the voices of those who were there and who lived to tell the story for posterity. A piece of oral history of one of the most contentious issues in South Asia, the film highlights the soul of Kashmir, with a simple statement — that the “secular fabric of Kashmir could not accept religion as a basis for division or for defining nationhood.”
The newest film in their library celebrates the sari in ‘Six Yards of Grace’ featuring Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Vidya Balan.
MEA’s Facebook page goes to 6,000 people-who-like. “For a ‘sarkari’ page, that’s pretty good,” says Suri. The break-up of users is revealing: 70% male; 45% between 18-24 years of age and 18% between 25-34 years. That’s a fairly good measure that youngsters are MEA’s bigger consumers. The biggest users are from Egypt, followed by Indonesia, Colombia, Malaysia and Bangladesh.