The Indian government isn’t exactly known for being social. Shashi Tharoor ran into trouble for his tweets on more than one occasion. However, it appears that the Indian government is finally warming up to the idea of leveraging social networks. India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) now has an official presence on Twitter.

According to the Economic Times, the public diplomacy division of the MEA is planning to reach audiences around the globe through a series of initiatives to harness the power of social networks. A new interactive portal, which is currently under development, will encourage conversations by tapping into both Twitter and Facebook.

India’s foreign ministry is not keen to publicise the Twitter account yet and termed it as a “work in progress”. In spite of this, the official Twitter account has already amassed more than a thousand followers. Obviously the number will increase as the word gets around.