‘TWITTER MINISTER’ TO THE RESCUE
Problem solving via social media
Nearly a year after his wedding, Santosh Bandargattu Achari is optimistic that he will finally be able to settle down with his South African wife soon. The 30-year-old IT specialist from Hyderabad married Monica Lisa Bradshaw, an NGO worker, last March in Johannesburg after a courtship of five years. She applied for an Indian visa in June and waited for months without hearing from Indian authorities.
Frustrated by the delay, Mr Achari tweeted his anguish to Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Jan 6. “We have been married for 10 months now, and my wife is still struggling with a visa to India,” he wrote. “It is draining us emotionally and financially (esp medical expenses). Requesting your help.”
Ms Swaraj, as has been her habit, responded immediately. She asked where the visa application had been made and what reason had been given for non-issuance. Her ministry has since asked the Home Ministry to expedite the case.
The Home Ministry, it turned out, had not approved the application because Ms Bradshaw had been blacklisted in 2011 for travelling to a sensitive border area in Ladakh, part of Jammu & Kashmir, in a vehicle with a diplomatic registration.
Mr Achari said the vehicle belonged to his wife’s employer, who had bought it from a diplomat in 2010. “Monica’s employer and his wife were also blacklisted along with my wife. But they have since been cleared,” he told Asia Focus.
Ms Bradshaw, a former manager with Daughters of Cambodia, which helps trafficking victims in Phnom Penh, was working for a company in Bangalore in 2011.
Mr Achari said he had suffered a great deal because of uncertainty over his wife’s visa. “I have been operated for some breathing issues. My wife has also been unwell. Moreover, both of us are jobless for several months,” he said.
However, he finally has grounds for optimism. “I am hopeful that our situation will be resolved soon, as I have heard from both the ministers involved (Ms Swaraj and Home Minister Rajnath Singh),” he said.
The Bradshaw case is one of at least three that Ms Swaraj has taken up in recent months on behalf of a foreigner married to an Indian. That’s in addition to the numerous updates she posts on Twitter about her efforts on behalf of Indian citizens experiencing trouble abroad. Her rapid online interventions are regular headline news.
Last July, she responded to a tweet about a Kazakh woman, Zhanna Chalabaveya, not getting her visa extended even though she had an Indian husband. A day later she turned saviour for Olga Efimenkova, a Russian woman had been staging a sit-in with her daughter outside her in-laws’ house in Agra and had tweeted about her plight.
In the first case, Ms Swaraj messaged a relative of Teenu Jangra, the husband of Ms Chalabaveya: “Ask your daughter-in-law to file an application for a visa extension. We will help her.” Subsequently, she met the couple in person and assured them of assistance. But Ms Chalabaveya expressed a desire to visit her country before applying for the visa extension.
Unfortunately, the story did not have a happy ending, but not for a lack of trying on the minister’s part. Ms Chalabaveya flew to Kazakhstan in late July and returned in August. In November, she went back to her country, citing cultural differences with Mr Jangra, and is unlikely to come back.
“I spoke to her on Dec 16. She said she had already divorced me in the Indian High Commission at Almaty. She is currently in England and will probably marry an Englishman,” he told Asia Focus.
Mr Jangra, 23, married Ms Chalabaveya, 33, on June 2 last year in Fatehabad, his home town in Haryana, after befriending her on Facebook. He is a welder and can barely speak English while Ms Chalabaveya, he said, was qualified to be a lawyer and knew half a dozen languages including Russian, French and English.
In the Agra case, Ms Swaraj asked Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav to get in touch with Ms Efimenkova and redress her grievance, as the issue could affect India’s image in the world. A day later, the officer in charge of the New Agra police station, K Singh, visited Ms Efimenkova.
It turned out to be property dispute between the Russian woman and her in-laws. Mr Singh said he ensured that Ms Efimenkova and her husband Vikrant Singh Chandel would receive their share in the property in question.
Mr Singh not only settled the issue in writing but also made sure that Ms Efimenkova posed for news photographers while hugging her mother-in-law, Nirmala Chandel. Vikrant, who married Ms Efimenkova in 2011 in Goa, had returned to his family home from Goa after his restaurant business ran into losses. He has since gone back to Goa to look for work.
Former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal is a fan of Ms Swaraj’s refreshing approach to problem-solving. He calls such examples of diplomacy conducted through social media “modern” and “with the times”. Conservative diplomats might be uncomfortable with a medium such as Twitter but it makes them look more “humane and accessible”, in his view.
Mr Sibal said Prime Minister Narendra Modi, another enthusiastic Twitter user, set the precedent when he announced Barack Obama’s visit to India on Republic Day in January 2015 on social media.
Mr Sibal, who received the Padma Shri, the fourth-highest civilian award in India in January, said Ms Swaraj’s accessibility on Twitter was making an impact on people, particularly the young.
Ms Swaraj is so popular on social media that when she was admitted to hospital in November for renal failure from diabetes — which she announced on Twitter — a number of her social media followers offered to donate their kidneys to her. She had a successful kidney transplant on Dec 10 and was busy tweeting again in a matter of days.
Former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal says social media use makes officials look more “humane and accessible”