The Indian PM – Dr. Manmohan Singh is on facebook, which is a small step in the same direction as the giant leap taken by Barack Obama. Obama’s mastery of facebook and the internet is folklore but even Dr. Singh’s unprompted interest is an interesting development.  This marks a small but important step. India politicians are remarkably unapproachable except for during elections.

The internet is yet to take political mainstream in India because of its demographics . The numbers stack up against it.  Only 8% of the population is online, while a much larger section is rural and illiterate. The urban middle class, which is by and large internet friendly also has the lowest turnout on election day. The internet featured as a tool for the first time in the national election is 2004. However, in the 2009 national elections, it made its presence felt in a significant manner.

Candidates were tweeting their electoral leads while the electorate was warming up to twitter making#indiavotes09 the top search trend on twitter.  Leading candidates tried their hand at generating a buzz online – some such candidates might have failed but the internet is here to stay.  Websites recorded candidate educational qualifications, income disclosures as well as their criminal records. Indians generated up to 100,000 hits per minute on the day the results were declared.

It set me thinking about a recent TV ad for a cellular network in India phone in India, where a novice politician uses the uses the phone to conduct flash opinion polls to weigh in their decisions.

Would Dr. Singh be using status updates to tell us what he really thinks?