India CSR News Network
RAIGARH : The prime minister of the world’s largest democracy, India, Narendra Modi, who has been recently giving much importance to Information Technology (IT), and has been spending crores of rupees towards it does not have an official email id. This surprising information was obtained through the RTI (Right to Information) act recently.
Rusen Kumar, the founder of Chhattisgarh based India CSR Group, had sought this information from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) under the Indian RTI act. In this RTI letter, he had requested to know which email id is being used by the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi or by his legitimate office representatives.
In response to this request, the PMO provided an answer to Rusen Kumar through an official letter numbered 10335/2014 and dated February 17, 2015. This letter clearly states that the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi does not have any separate email id. It also states that any form of information, feedback, suggestion, or complaint addressed to the prime minister and his office can be sent through the url: http://pmindia.gov.in/en/interact-with-pm/. The letter goes on to state that this link is available on the PMO’s official website.
Rusen Kumar expressed his surprise after reading the response to his query in this letter. He stated, with amusement, that why the Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy does not require an email id? After all, it is one of the simplest means to communicate with the people of his country.
He also questioned as to why the Prime Minister does not have even an email id when his led Government in India is promoting Information Technology and e-Governance in a huge way by spending thousands of crores on it. He also mentioned that, moreover in today’s era of internet and social media, email id of a person is quite a common thing, and it can be easily made without any cost at all.
Rusen has also claimed that the URL: http://pmindia.gov.in/en/interact-with-pm/, which has been given in this correspondence through the RTI letter is not working properly. To use this url link, all the visitors have to first create an account. One can only correspond using this link only after successfully creating an account first. This is a boring and lengthy way to approach the Prime Minister or PMO, and is not a very user friendly process. It appears as if this website has been created as a platform for single sided monologues instead of being a double sided dialogue friendly platform.
The important question here is that what platform is available to a common person to share one’s feedback, suggestion, complaint etc. with the Prime Minister or the PMO in an easy, cheap, and simple manner? To resolve this, the Indian government urgently needs to create a simple platform and process for establishing communications with the Prime Minister and his office that Indians can easily use.
