Narendra Modi goes live on Google+ Hangout

MUMBAI, INDIA: Narendra Modi, Gujarat Chief Minister, has once again set a new standard for his political counterparts in India. The tech-savvy administrator hosted a live Google+ (#ModiHangout) session on Friday night and directly interacted with people without a fuss.

Under the live-program titled “Strong & Glorious India long cherished by Swami Vivekananda!”- Bollywood actor Ajay Devgan accompanied Modi.

The two-term Chief Minister answered a range of questions including secularism, black money, brain drain and others, which where posted by people using audio-video tools.

Though there were some technical glitches during the live Google+ Hangout session caused by net connection, Modi’s experiment of using social media platform to reach out to people got an overwhelming response.

While most political leaders in India are unreachable when it comes to common man, Modi has certainly showed “how to use technology to connect with masses in the digital age irrespective of geographic locations and preferences.”

Given Modi’s Hangout experiment, many political commentators have raised questions - “Will common people ever easily access and reachout to political leaders like Sonia Gandhi, Mamta Banerjee or Rahul Gandhi?”

Modi’s Google+ Hangout session lasted for little under two hours and this entire session is also available on YouTube.

A day before the scheduled Hangout, Modi’s official Facebook page informed all his fans about his Friday night’s Google+ initiative, which got over 700 user comments.          

In fact, Modi’s official Facebok page has close to 700,000 likes and has a huge fan following that has created several community pages under his nick name “NaMo”.

Moreover, Modi’s new social media experiment took theTwitter world by storm as twitterati got busy to discuss BJP poster boy’s latest idea. The #ModiHangOut — tag topped in Twitter’s trend list.   

Actor Gul Panag tweeted, “Best possible way to launch 2014 campaign #ModiHangout #NaMo.” 

“1.6 million monitors, 20,000 questions. A blockbuster #ModiHangoout,” Vinod Sharma tweeted. “Modi has overnight raised the bar for leaders on two counts: public accessibility and accountability,” tweeted Online_Florist

“I am back, because my 85 year old Mom was using my laptop to watch #ModiHangout Yeh Beta PM banega she says,” tweeted R S Bains, a human resource professional.

Another twitterarti Harsh Gupta tweeted, “Americans should line up for Indian visas, not vice-versa. Now, that is what is called visionary.”

Two interesting tweets from Professor N K Pandey-“Hangover of Old monk may die down next morning but 2 hour HangOut with Modi to keep us awake for times to come”.

“Modi is the visionary India has been waiting for long to raise it fortunes” — sums up all what makes Modi so popular and a closely followed political figure in the social media world.