External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj may not be keeping well after recently undergoing a kidney transplant at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), but that hasn’t stopped the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) from being proactive on social media to help Indians in distress abroad. Like never before, sometimes a single tweet helps bridge the gap between the government and citizens in distress abroad. From helping and rescuing Indians stuck abroad in conflict zones or elsewhere to ensuring couples reunite, to helping families bring back bodies of their deceased relatives or solving minor issues related to passport and visas, the MEA has been utilising the power of the social media to the hilt.
Reacting to a recent tweet by Subrat Shukla, a distressed Indian national who was on board a ship in Yemen with his wife, the External Affairs Minister asked Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar to help rescue the couple and other Indians stuck in the ship. Parrikar reacted to the tweet promptly and has been working to rescue Indians stuck in Yemen with immediate effect.
Not only this, recently an Indian woman from Germany had tweeted to the MEA for help, claiming that she had been a victim of domestic violence by her Indian husband in Germany, to which the Indian embassy in Germany reached out to the woman to help her.
Speaking to The Sunday Guardian over phone from Germany, Swati, the victim of domestic violence, said, “I got married and as my husband was working in Germany, I moved to that country after six months of our marriage. However, soon after going there, I discovered a different side to my husband. Every day, I was being abused and sometimes even beaten up for no reason. When I got pregnant, things became better, but soon after the delivery, his behaviour towards me worsened. I tried to return to India, but my husband had filed a child custody case in a German court and my child was banned from flying out of Germany, which is when I reached out to MEA for help.”
“The Indian embassy in Germany had been kind enough, and contacted me soon after my tweet as the minister had directed the embassy here. But my husband has not been cooperating with the embassy here and thus I am still stuck. I request the MEA to help me and my child to go back to India,” Swati added.
In another Twitter case, where Santosh Achari, an entrepreneur from Hyderabad, had requested the External Affairs Minister to help him reunite with his wife, who is a South African national and is not being granted visa to come to India, the minister in her somewhat witty tweet replied “I will check up tomorrow and find out why our High Commission in South Africa is not letting the Bahu in?”
Speaking to this newspaper, Achari said that he had made a request to the minister as his wife was not being granted a spouse visa to India, because the Indian government had blacklisted her long back in 2011 due to some unforeseen incident. According to Achari, the ban was lifted on the other two, but not his wife.
Recently an Indian woman from Germany had tweeted to the MEA for help, claiming that she had been a victim of domestic violence by her Indian husband in Germany, to which the Indian embassy in Germany reached out to the woman to help her.
“Since the MEA and the African division have taken up this issue, it started moving faster and the MEA had done everything it could. The file is now with the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), which has not yet taken a call on the issue. From the MEA’s response, it seems that I would be able to unite with my wife soon. I am still hopeful that she would be allowed back in India soon,” Achari said.
The MEA has also been trying to help out families who have lost their loved ones abroad in conflict zones and do not have the means and required assistance to bring back the deceased body of their relative.
In a recent case, a distressed brother had tweeted to the minister about the unfortunate death of her brother who was shot dead in South Sudan. The MEA and the embassy in Sudan immediately got into action mode to fly the body back to India.
Talking to The Sunday Guardian, Syed Ezaj Hussain, brother of the victim, expressed his deep gratitude to the MEA for helping them bring back the body of his brother to India.
Not only this, while going through the Twitter timeline of the minister, one comes across several other requests including those to fast track passports and visas, to helping people with medical issues and hospitalisation and even requests for diplomatic negotiations to help bring back kidnapped Indians from abroad, and to help in the mercy petition of two young boys in Saudia Arabia, among others.
In another Twitter case, where Santosh Achari, an entrepreneur from Hyderabad, had requested the EAM to help him reunite with his wife, who is a South African national and is not being granted visa to come to India, the minister replied “I will check up tomorrow…”
Taking a cue from the MEA, the Ministry of Home Affairs is also likely to start some kind of “Twitter governance” to bring citizens closer to the government so that issues of law and order can be directly addressed to the Home Minister for necessary action.