After angrily signing off from his blog in 2008, Omar Abdullah is back on social media. Is he gonna stay this time around, Zafar Choudhary reports.
Amidst rumours of Jammu and Kashmir Government planning to take facebook off the social lives of thousands of netizens, the man accused of giving the go ahead is himself on the network. Last week, an ‘authoritative news’ on front page of a widely circulated national Hindi Daily attributed to ‘reliable official sources’ a scoop claiming Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s go ahead for banning social media network facebook in Jammu and Kashmir. Perhaps the writer did not notice that the man being obliquely blamed for muzzling the social media democracy is himself very much there on the web and his own arrival couldn’t have been taken as a signal for the end of online milieu of Jammu and Kashmir which is eyesore of the security agencies. While Omar’s facebook activity is not being noticed much, his tweets are already a hit so much so that he has began to exchange ‘140-character’ thoughts with political b?te noire Mehbooba Mufti of Peoples Democratic Party. The first tweet which put them together made Omar to exclaim: ‘I can’t believe this is real Mehbooba Mufti’.
Not active enough as Foreign Minister George Yeo of Singapore or addictively focused as President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria or mercurial like our own Shashi Tharoor, Omar is austere on facebook in terms of both –frequency and expressions. If facebook’s status post invitation ‘what is on your mind?’ is anything to go by, events in Egypt seem to have topped Omar’s thinking over past two weeks. Four of the 15 status posts are about developments in Egypt but unlike the general thinking in Kashmir he is not quite impressed with the kind of revolution in the Arab nation. “One military man is believed to be preparing to hand over to another military man (and) Egypt is preparing to celebrate. Strange place(!)”, this post of February 10 is a reflection on Omar’s astonishment over what the Egypt revolution is hailed for. And cues from Egypt shaping a new political debate in Kashmir is also somewhere at the back of Chief Minister’s mind. He writes on February 12: “Mehbooba Mufti calls for Kashmiris to replicate Egypt. Seems she wants army rule as well (in Kashmir) since her party is in opposition now”.
When most of the politicians and other public figures interact on the social media through fan pages, mostly operated and moderated by assistants, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister’s arrival on facebook as an individual account is an inspiring happening. He has opened a direct channel of communication with the people, with no gatekeepers in between. Use of social media in Kashmir is attracting as much talk in the world media streets as it is about the trends in Iran and Egypt where facebook, twitter, blogs and youtube are the new tools of political communication and, of course, revolutions, whichever way. It is now too well known that half of last year’s Intifada in Kashmir was through stones on streets and rest of it was through social media. In these times, Chief Minister’s coming on facebook holds good for building a two-way traffic of trust between him and the angry youths.
In ten days very few have been able to catch up with the Chief Minister but before onset next summer if he is able to weave a community around him, things would certainly be different in Kashmir. Perhaps, an enhanced engagement with a certain degree of frankness is what his facebook account would expect for building a larger constituency of trust.
There are not enough of creative and imaginative feedbacks to Omar’s posts for no one seems to be disagreeing with the Chief Minister or seeking to draw him into debates. Each of his posts is getting a modest response of an average ten comments and most of friends in the list are seen writing back to register their presence rather than discuss an issue. Omar’s posts are, of course, quite engaging though not sharp enough to trigger reactions but on the other end his friends seem cautious and inhibitive in breaking into debates.
There is sufficient to understand that his friends at facebook are more inclined on becoming ‘friends’ only. Activity on Chief Minister’s facebook account, at times, appears as a virtual equivalent of a political gathering where the leader raises a voice and the crowd responds with Zindabad! Perhaps Omar would not have intended to have the kind of ‘hail all’ activity at his page but he would need to engage more actively and solicit arguments to make his facebook experience worth the significance it offers in connecting with the Chief Minister. Perhaps coming back once a while to see how friends responded to posts and then drop in a comment would actually make it a two-way communication.
A late comer to J&K’s fastest growing online jungle and visibly more cautious this time, Omar Abdullah is around since February 7 and has made some 15 posts since. His earlier blogging experience with overwhelmingly interventionist netizens seems to have kept Omar away from facebook all these months when the social media was emerging as one of the most powerful means of political expressions. In 2008 he had logged on a blog at his party National Conference’s website but that experience remained short-lived, though eventful.
Apparently, Omar signed back quietly to check whether it was same place he had left at a disappointing note on August 10, 2008 or there was a bit matured community of social netizens. Perhaps the social media has graduated for better over past two years. In 2008 Omar Abdullah had become a darling of a limited number of internet users and more significantly of the news-hungry media persons when he took blogging at his party’s website.
No one could have survived the kind of online flurry of those times. During less than two months of his blogging he made 42 posts and got more than 900 comments. However, 42nd post reflected the pain users made Omar to go through. “I am going back to being an old school politician and you can read what I think in the newspapers”, he wrote in his Alida post on August 10, 2008 and went on to say:
“There was a time not so long ago when I used to enjoy rushing to this blog and reading comments. I used to look forward to pitting my wits against people who I didn’t necessarily agree with but who could argue a point on its merit. Sure, they didn’t like me and would not trust me further than they could throw me, but they had the maturity and self confidence to listen…Last night, as I finished my last post, I realised that I was filled with dread at the heap of personal abuse I was expecting when I logged on this morning and I was not wrong”.
Omar has come back and this time the netizens too must share the responsibility of letting him stay here for a while as any next facebooker as he is trying to be. Chief Minister’s careful approach to facebook as an ordinary user is something worth respecting. He is accepting requests without making the aspirants to wait in secretariat like queues or go through the obvious scanners. And his posts are unusual in carrying no symbolism of his status. When he says
“I really have to break this habit (and) craving for chocolate after dinner”, join in the thread to encourage him have some chocolates. And when he says “I’m feeling like a bit of a zombie today” (February 10) try to draw him into fun of expression instead of waiting for him to come back and say: “Now some one is gonna say but you are the CM of a troubled state, you are not allowed to be anything but mechanical so no zombie shombie”.
