It must be feeling good to be Shashi Tharoor today. Our principal political party, to which the former UN under-secretary general swears allegiance, wants him to retweet.

Wasn’t it just the other day that Tharoor was the butt of so much criticism, for he tweeted — in my opinion, harmless —wit on traveling cattle class?

Compounding our uncommonly poor sense of humour was the fact that Tharoor and his wife Sunanda (then Sunanda Pushkar) were friends to a relatively impoverished group of cricket club owners. Those Kochi folks wanted Ms Pushkar, then in Dubai, to help them garner branding and sponsorships. Being short of cash, they offered her sweat equity instead; a fact then IPL chairman Lalit Modi made into a really big deal — ironically, on the same social media channel that Tharoor has 1.7 million follows!

[Also read: Cyber constituency: how parties woo the new middle class]

Today, a few months after he was restored as a minister of state, Tharoor is the top seed for anchoring the Congress’s belated social media charge. It’s a role he is well equipped to play. In fact, not using his services — and insights — in an institutionalised way is a bit like the BCCI choosing to banish Sachin Tendulkar in his prime.

But Tharoor now has an uphill task of building an innings languishing at, say, 45-4.

First, there’s not even  an official announcement on his official 'twitterection.’ It’s the Indian Express which has made the first claim; and Tharoor has responded by sending out a polite statement of fact: a) that no one has formally told him anything about his role, and b) he’s willing to do whatever his party requires him to [please see screenshot].

Next, Tharoor is surrounded by a political class of social media dinosaurs [I include here politicians as a class, not merely within the Congress]. But until those in the Congress find an unequivocal message from the Gandhis that social media is alright, Tharoor will remain on probation. Success will be ascribed to the Congress’s (read Gandhi family’s) mystique; failure consigned to a lonely death.

Third, the temptation of riding on Tharoor’s 1.7 million follows on Twitter has its own nuances. Like Tendulkar’s runs, each inning has to be crafted de nouveau. Many on Twitter don’t follow Tharoor because he’s a Congressman; they find him a clever wordsmith and enjoy the juggling he’s done with his multiple roles, particularly the one as an author of repute.

So, some clearly would get put off if his tweeting crosses the thin line of what he — and by implication, the Congress — would do for the Thiruvanthapuram parliamentary constituency. RT’ing what, for pure example, Kamal Nath is claiming to do in his burrow, or what some less credible folks are doing elsewhere, will call for verification and questioning.

Will Tharoor have the time and the resources to do all that? I have my doubts. A recent case in point is when Tharoor liberally tweeted his involvement with industrialist Navin Jindal’s ‘tiranga bangle’ and then had to extricate himself when the object turned out to be hocus pocus.

Similarly, if he chooses to ignore the thousands of claimants for his Twitter endorsements, he risks being trolled within his party.

It must also be said that a ‘follow’ is hardly a ‘vote’. I, for one, follow Tharoor, Narendra Modi, Sushma Swaraj, @PMOIndia, and Barak Obama, not to mention spoof sites on Rahul Gandhi and Prince Charles. But what does that have to do with who I choose to vote for on D-Day?

That brings me to the burden of my song. Top-notch brands are always in demand for extensions. Rene Lacoste was a tennis great. He then launched an iconic label and a famous T-shirt. But forays by his successor Bernard, a man who had nothing to do with tennis, into golf clubs and sunglasses, even bikinis, didn’t really work.

Would Tharoor be risking his own equity similarly?

Finally, Twitter, or any social media platform, is about authenticity on terra firma. The Congress — or for that matter any political party in India — hasn’t got that yet. Nor do the Pepsi generation understand life beyond “abhi” solutions. Unfortunately for them, Twitter RTs are hardly a quick fix. Social media needs to be backed by deep insight into client engagement and empathy, and humour as well.

So Tharoor will need to run tutorials — may be online ones — for an entire gamut of characters. It’s a game that has few ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’… where everyone is learning as they go along.

It would help if Rahul Gandhi, if not Sonia Gandhi herself, joins the fest with a verified handle and a ‘Yes-We-Can’ message. Also, it would be a serious mistake if this is confused into ordering a million Blackberry Z10s or iphone5s! It isn’t just about acquiring the hardware, silly.

So, can we assume that there are processes and systems that can be placed within the Congress — I hear Manish Tewari, the government’s chief spokesman, has made enviable strides in studying the social media game — to ensure that this can be managed with the right checks and balances?
Those on the Narendra Modi side won’t like it, but in Mahatma Gandhi the Congress that has history on its side for mobilising mass communication.

Gandhi-ji did it without Twitter, a mobile phone, or even television and radio. But then, he had more authenticity and followers than all politicians on Twitter have as an aggregate.