Indore not smart any more on social media

Indore: While most government agencies, officials and ministers including the Prime Minister himself use social media extensively to connect and communicate with the people, Indore Smart City seems to have lost its touch online.

The civic body too used the platform to interact with city residents and invited opinions to pitch for Smart City. However, this zeal died after the city was selected in the first list of smart cities.

On October 3, 2015 in a grand function in the city, mayor Malini Gaud launched a social media campaign for Indore Smart City. A twitter page, a facebook page and a website were launched to connect with the people of the city.

“We seek citizens’ engagement with a focus on your responses to innovative solutions that will improve livability and governance to meet your expectations,” Gaud had said during the inauguration of Smart City.

In November 2015, a report of the central ministry of urban development ranked Indore fourth in citizen participation. The civic body back then had received over 91,000 suggestions from people through various media. With the efforts of the civic body, Indore was selected for Smart City project in the first list in January 2016.

One and a half years down the line, the civic body seems to have lost its touch with social media.

While the city has a population of over 20 lakh, on twitter only 1,600 people follow the twitter handle of the Smart City project. What is more surprising is that 1,300 people were following the handle in November 2016, which means only 300 people were added in 18 months.

The rise in the number was negligible as the civic body had stopped paying attention to social media handling. The last tweet of the civic body came more than a year ago, on February 12, 2016. The last Facebook post of the civic body was made on February 13, 2016.

The posts on both platforms were related to the launch event of the Smart City project. The tweets and posts suggest that the civic body lost interest in social media just after the smart city project was launched.

Bhopal Smart city on the other hand has been posting social media posts on a regular basis.

Officials of the civic body said they would initiate social media interaction again.

“We have started a lot of work on ground. We will start informing about the developments taking place in the city through social media,” said Rohan Saxena, CEO, Indore Smart City Development Limited.