In a bid to unclog the chaotic roads of Bangalore, the city?s traffic police has clicked upon a novel way that involves another kind of traffic ? a steady stream of comments, videos and photographs to their page on Facebook.

This initiative to tap into a social networking platform is about five months? old and the Bangalore traffic police are enthused by the response. While they can notify commuters about the traffic density on key roads and what routes to avoid, they also get some help in keeping traffic rule violators in check.

?A lot of people put up photographs or video clips of violations. In fact, we book almost 20-25 cases a day through citizen policing,? says M A Saleem, additional commissioner of police (traffic), Bangalore. Often, their Facebook page also receives photographs of policemen flouting rules and the department has acted on the information, he adds.

Bangalore?s traffic police are one of the several government departments in India that have seen a potential in social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs to reach out to a large population, a development that comes even as the government is seen to be placing curbs on social networking sites by getting them to screen their content. (IT ministry came out with a set of draft guidelines in September for government departments using social media.)

Among other government departments are the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, which has a Facebook page; and the Indore police, which has a wall on both Facebook and Twitter.

In the ongoing crises in West Asia, social media platforms like Twitter helped the external affairs ministry locate and evacuate Indian citizens. Early last year, the Census of India 2011 became one of the first government programmes to tap into social networking sites in a big way as it put up regular posts providing information about the population count. There are more than 20,000 members currently on Census 2011 Group on Facebook and Twitter as of now.

The Planning Commission sees social media as a useful tool for public consultations on the 12th Five Year Plan even as the Election Commission (EC) is busy devising ways to leverage its outreach. In November, the EC held its first workshop with various government departments, companies such as Google and civil society groups to see how it could engage voters through social media.

?I think social networking is good because it engages with the middle class in India which has not been very politically active. So, it makes them stakeholders of the data the government is putting out,? says Nishant Shah, director-research of Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society. ?As long as social media does not become an excuse for the government to not make efforts at producing open data, it is a good step.?

Planning Commission member Arun Maira last week suggested that the volume of information on such platforms can be digested by various civil society organisations and then communicated to policy-makers which would help construct more inclusive policies. ?It’s just a force that can’t be stopped, it keeps reinventing itself and is growing,? he said. ?Because it is so new, it is enabling things to happen which never used to happen before. It is this surprise element that can be a cause of worry for established systems.?

In this regard, the ministry’s draft guidelines for government departments notes that most often it is difficult to define the need or objective for using these platforms and also which platforms to use.

?We have not seen a single instance of a state department being able to mobilise a large number of people for interaction. There might have been sporadic events,? says Shah, adding that it is still a broadcast model that the government departments follows.

On the Bangalore traffic police’s Facebook wall, there are pledges from users to join up as volunteers. Perhaps, that’s a small step.