Cartoon: Minister threatens Twitter and Shashi Tharoor
By Techgirl

The Ministry of External Affairs is run by two intelligent, suave, well spoken and well dressed men.  SM Krishna is the senior Minister and is assisted by his junior Shashi Tharoor who is Minister of State.  Both are good public servants.  One represents the old India while the other is the face of new India.

As I had reported on Dec 30, 2009, Indian media and public were agog when Shashi Tharoor tweeted his opposition to the new Visa laws announced by the Home Ministry.  It is rare to see such courage in any junior minister when dealing with the Home Minister and Congress heavy weight Chidambaram.

Sadly, the system does not like honest views being publicly expressed by bright young Ministers.  Senior Minister Krishna publicly reprimanded junior Minister.

A number of articles were written about what had really happened.

I teamed up with maktoons.com to create a cartoon showing what really happened.    

(Techgoss had published the following article on Dec 30, 2009)

Twitter to tick off Shashi Tharoor?
By Techgirl

The Indian Ministry of External Affairs is run by two intelligent, suave, well spoken and well dressed men.  SM Krishna is the senior Minister and is assisted by his junior Shashi Tharoor who is Minister of State.  By any measure, both are good public servants.  One represents the old India while the other is the face of new India.  

Indian media and public were agog when Shashi Tharoor tweeted his opposition to the new Visa laws announced by the Home Ministry.  It is rare to see such courage in any junior minister when dealing with the Home Minister and Congress heavy weight Chidambaram.

Shashi Tharoor had tweeted: "Issue is not security vs tourism, but whether visa restrictions protect our security. 26/11 killers had no visas."

Despite Shashi Tharoor getting me evicted from Twitter, my personal feeling is that he is a very able Minister. I feel Shashi Tharoor is right in his views about such restrictive Visa policies.  Millions of Indians agree with him.

There is one thing about Shashi Tharoor being right; it is another thing about the system being mature enough to accept a sensible dissenting voice.  The old men in the Government got together and asked senior minister SM Krishna to tick off the junior Shashi Tharoor.

SM Krishna called a press conference on Dec 28 and let it me known: "Well, these issues are not to be discussed in public (read Twitter). They should be sorted out within the four walls of the two ministries”.  Mr. Krishna also told a press conference on Dec 30 that he made the broad policy for the Ministry and everyone (Read Shashi Tharoor) has to follow it.

Not many know that the less tech savvy big boss SM Krishna is also on Twitter. Sadly, he is not as prolific as his more tech savvy junior.

Wouldn’t it have been so cool and hip if SM Krishna had tweeted his rap on Shashi Tharoor’s knuckles via Twitter rather than an old fashioned press conference?

Shashi would have got the message via Twitter. Even though Shashi has more than half a million followers on Twitter, he only follows a handful of people one of whom is his boss SM Krishna.

Twitter makes us gives our honest views.  It would have been great to see SM Krishna tweet to Shashi Tharoor in 140 characters: “HM Chidambaram after my ass. Asked me to discipline you. Easy on Tweets please. Better to be Minister then MP”.

If Shashi Tharoor does decide to walk out of the Government in protest, perhaps he can ‘unfollow’ SM Krishna on Twitter.  And then report Mr Krishna to Twitter management for harassing him.  This will surely get Mr. Krishna ejected from the micro blogging platform.

Techgoss note: Techgirl is a senior Tech journalist who reports on the IT, KPO and KPO Sectors for a leading media house.  In her spare time, she dabbles in satire in her blog http://techgirltalk.blogspot.com