Twitter Samvad brings digital governance to the masses

Twitter is well-established as the platform for political conversations, civic participation and a key element of the Lok Sabha election across India last year. Now we are working with the government’s Digital India initiative through a service we call Twitter Samvad that enables any Indian with a mobile device to receive real-time info from their political leaders and government organisations.

The Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi (@NarendraModi) became the first leader to kick off this service.

The word samvad means a dialogue and speaking together.

A simple missed call to an assigned phone number for each government partner means you will be able to receive each Tweet from the partner as an SMS, even if you are offline. Twitter Samvad is able to combine the power of Twitter technology to deliver these messages to anyone with a mobile phone.

Our CEO Dick Costolo launched Twitter Samvad alongside Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Tuesday. Since Samvad is built on the technology of @ZipDial, an Indian company we recently acquired, this is truly a locally-developed initiative to connect every Indian with a mobile phone to their government and political leaders.

Anyone signed up for the service will receive updates, information on new services and administrative messages simply by placing a missed call to the numbers tied to any of the these 16 partner Twitter accounts:

1. @NarendraModi (Personal account of Prime Minister Narendra Modi) - 011 3006 3006
2. @PMOIndia Official account of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi) - 011 3006 3007
3. @adgpi (Official account of Additional Directorate General of Public Information, IHQ of Ministry of Defence) - 011 3049 6116
4. @RailMinIndia (Official account of the Ministry of Railways) - 011 3049 6222
5. @anandibenpatel (Personal account of Anandiben Patel, Chief Minister of Gujarat) - 011 3049 6050
6. @CMofKarnataka (Official account for the Chief Minister of Karnataka, Siddaramaiah) - 011 3049 4737
7. @CPBLR (Official account for M N Reddi, IPS, Commissioner of Police, Bengaluru City) - 011 3049 5141
8. @BlrCityPolice (Official account for Bengaluru City Police) - 011 3049 5242
9. @blrcitytraffic (Official account for Bengaluru City Traffic Police) - 011 3049 5464
10. @ncbn (Personal account of N Chandrababu Naidu, Chief Minister, Andhra Pradesh) - 011 3049 5767
11. @TelanganaCMO (Official account of Chief Minister of Telangana, K Chandrashekar Rao) - 011 3049 5868
12. @YadavAkhilesh (Personal account of Akhilesh Yadav, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh) - 011 3008 3380
13. @UPGovt (Official account for the Government of Uttar Pradesh) - 011 3049 6353
14. @NitishKumarJDU (Personal account of Nitish Kumar, Chief Minister of Bihar) - 011 3008 2828
15. @MamataOfficial (Personal account of Mamata Banerjee, Chief Minister, West Bengal) - 011 3008 3333
16. @MeaIndia (Official account of Ministry of External Affairs, Syed Akbaruddin) - 011 3049 5969

People who sign up will receive a set of curated Tweets based on the highest engagement throughout the day to stay up-to-date with real-time information about government-related news, policies and activities. And you can use Twitter Samvad during emergency situations to receive live updates from government bodies, such as time-sensitive information and details about rescue efforts.

Here are some of the Tweets that introduced Twitter Samvad to users across India

We do hope everyone across the country will find the service useful to know about government news, updates and activities every day.