Delhi Traffic Police, Kanpur City Police have their facebook pages – India Gov., offices on social media – can they handle it ?

When newspapers and television news channels find extremely difficult to make our police departments or other government offices transparent to public, facebook has succeeded in reaching these government desks with ease.

In an effort to increase the transparency with the public, Delhi Traffic Police and Kanpur City Police have opened up their facebook pages. Delhi Traffic Police facebook page has been there for a while and interestingly it got good reception among the netizens. The page already has over 39,400 fans and provides plethora of traffic information and some links for rules and problem reporting.

DIG of Kanpur district Mr.Ashok Jain is of opinion that main objective behind opening facebook account is to generate a direct medium of communication with the public and to facilitate better communication between police and the public.

Kanpur City Police is also planning posting the photos and sketches of wanted criminals on the wallpages of their new facebook account. Their objective is that once these are posted, the general public would be aware of the criminals and inform them, which will ultimately aid them in hunting down the criminals.The police station would also have a well planned and instructed procedure to review the Facebook page on daily basis.

Also, Delhi traffic police and Kanpur City Police believe that their facebook accounts will help them get public feedbacks faster and help to evaluate themselves. Going by the good reception of delhi and kanpur police offices facebook pages, other city polices & various other government institutions might soon open their facebook branches.

One thing that our government officials might want to think of before opening up a facebook page is that out netizens are much more expressive on social media than in the real world. Mean, their facebook wall might see some nasty comments on their functioning from the fellow public. Better they got to handle them in a nice way once they come to social meidia otherwise they will spoil their name much more. Are Indian government offices social media ready ?