States roped in to push job scheme on FB

In a bid to tap the social media for an image makeover ahead of the 2014 polls, the Congress-led UPA Government is now pushing states to log on to Facebook and spread the word about its flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) – a programme implemented vide the act of the same name, abbreviated to MGNREGA, and meant to guarantee livelihood security to villagers across India.

As a recent audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) revealed lack of awareness about MGNREGS in villages, the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) has come out with a comprehensive Information, Education and Communication (IEC) strategy exclusively it. Though bulk of the MGNREGS beneficiaries are from rural India, with limited footprint in social media, the government’s communication strategy includes tapping the world of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to deliver the message.

The MoRD had opened a Facebook page for MGNREGS – www.facebook.com/IndiaMGNREGA – about a year ago. It has, over the past few months, prodded Andhra Pradesh, Mizoram, Punjab, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Uttarakhand to launch similar pages about the programme on the social networking site. During a meeting of the Performance Review Committee at Vigyan Bhavan in New Delhi earlier this week, senior MoRD officials asked the representatives of all other States to create respective state-level Facebook pages on the MGNREGS.

All the state governments were asked to link their respective Facebook pages and that of the Central ministry to the MGNREGS websites of their Rural Development departments.
The ministry also asked the states to keep updating their pages with photographs, comments and write-ups about the scheme’s implementation.

According to the MoRD, its publicity strategy for MGNREGS takes a detour from the conventional mass-media-driven approach, focusing on social and interpersonal media initiatives to ensure that the messages reach the target group in an effective and sustainable manner.

It has integrated into it a detailed media advocacy plan that intends to capacitate the MGNREGS system to respond to media continuously, rather than reacting to it.
The MoRD’s campaign plan underlines the advantages of the rapidly expanding social media, particularly in connecting with the “youth and other stakeholders”.