The Indian Prime Ministers Office (PMO) launched its official twitter account yesterday. At the time of writing this story, there were just three tweets from the account, and it has 7824 followers (and counting). The launch of the account comes shortly after a change in the communications advisory position at the Indian PMO, with NDTV anchor Pankaj Pachauri joining to advise on media related matters; this has led to a few must-reads, if you're interested in media and politics - this and this. Pachauri himself has over 27000 followers on Twitter, and where he has confirmed the PMO's office is now on Twitter at @PMOIndia. This is, by no means, the first government department to tweet - the Ministry of External Affairs was among the first to do it -but given the criticism that the Prime Minister of India faces, especially on Twitter, this is indeed a bold move. However, there will be challenges for the PMO: Twitter users can be rather abusive and condescending in their approach, especially when it comes to the antecedants of the government, and one should expect much spleen to be directed at the PMO account. Typically, celebrities have had to take the good with the bad; the best strategy, if you ask me, is to ignore the abuse and the trolls, and converse with those being reasonable. That appears to be unlikely to happen because the risk that one takes with the PMO's account is that any response can be misinterpreted or quoted out of context:…
