PM Modi's social media popularity reflects India's significance, says cyber expert

Cyber expert Pawan Duggal on Thursday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi's rising social media popularity reflects India's significance under the latter's leadership, and added it is a salutation to his eccentric understanding of the social media and internet.

Duggal said Prime Minister Modi is having the second largest number of followers after U.S. President Barack Obama.

"One single fact to tell you how significant India has become, but more significantly it's also a salute and salutation to the eccentric understanding of this distinguished statesman who understands, lives

and breathes social media and the internet," Duggal said.

"It is because of him giving the message in such crystal clear simple words that he is becoming extremely popular, and I believe very quickly his popularity is further going to increase," he added.

Talking of the Digital India programme that was launched earlier in July to bridge the divide between digital 'haves' and 'have-nots', Duggal said: "I believe it is going to irreversibly change India and

transform India into a knowledge economy because this is the vision of the programme."

"If entire governmental services are going to be made available on the cloud, on the go, for people where participating governance is going to be the mantra governance, I believe, Digital India programme, if implemented properly can not just catapult India among the top group of nations, who are the top IT superpowers o f the world, but also can set an example to the world of how internet and social media can be used for the purposes of governance and participating governance," he added.

Prime Minister Modi has crossed the eight-million followers' milestone on the micro-blogging network Twitter and 25 million mark on the social- networking site Facebook.

According to reports Prime Minister Modi remains the third-most followed world leader on Twitter after U.S. President Barack Obama and Pope Francis.

He is the second-most followed politician in the world after the U.S. President on Facebook.