Hard to get info from ministries

It is a tale of two governments and the media. One was seen making all sorts of efforts to help the press and the other, not so much.

The just-concluded state visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the media realise how old school Bangladesh government still is.

Even though it claims of establishing Digital Bangladesh, the ministries of foreign affairs and information are not used to utilising modern information technology and social media in dissemination information.

Indian officials were seen meeting journalists of their country, briefing them about developments both on and off the record, and keeping them updated. India has been holding separate media briefings exclusively for Indian journalists during VVIP's visits for a long time.

In contrast, Bangladeshi journalists found themselves chasing their country's officials to get information, documents or any sort of briefings.

When the two countries signed 22 agreements, MoUs and protocol deals on Saturday, following official talks between Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Indian counterpart Modi, the Press Information Bureau (PIB) and Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) of India uploaded details of the deals on their websites.

They also uploaded Modi's statement at the joint press briefing between 6:45pm and 7:00pm.

And the Bangladesh foreign ministry?  It emailed journalists a list of documents signed, exchanged, adopted and handed over about five hours after the Indians had made the uploads.

In such a situation, the Bangladeshi press had to depend on the MEA and PIB websites for information.

Several foreign ministry officials had even suggested the local media to keep an eye on MEA website to get the documents.

Indian Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar briefed the visiting Indian journalists Saturday around 8:00pm exclusively on the outcome of the official talks and details about the agreements signed.

Bangladesh foreign ministry did not arrange any briefing. Rather, its officials were attending a banquet when Jaishankar was briefing the Indian media.

Jaishankar held another briefing around 5:00pm yesterday.

In case of a major event, like the visit of a VVIP, the Press Information Department (PID) coordinates the media on behalf of Bangladesh government.

The PID asked journalists to contact the Prime Minister's Office for covering the official talks between the prime ministers. The PMO only let a handful of selected journalists in. The Daily Star was left out.

The foreign ministry and the PMO do not have any official twitter and Facebook page, two vibrant tools for connecting with the rest of the world, whereas the MEA of India is extremely active on both the platforms.

The visits of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee have proved once again how Bangladesh foreign ministry is lagging behind in terms of connecting with the world.

Since the very beginning of their tours, Modi, PMO India, MEA spokesperson and Mamata made tweets one after another and updated their Facebook status several times.

Bangladesh media frequently quoted tweets of Modi and Mamata.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is known as one of the most tweeting politicians in the world with 12.8 million followers, as of June 7, 2015. US President Barack Obama has 60.1 million followers on his twitter account.