It seemed an innocent enough question, posed by an Indian on vacation recently in the palace-studded region of Rajasthan. Should the Indian government make it more difficult for tourists to visit the country's glorious sights by tightening visa requirements in the name of preventing terrorism? On a road trip with his wife, the man who posed the question, Shashi Tharoor, tapped out this brief missive to his Twitter followers on his BlackBerry, in the cramped argot necessitated by Twitter's 140-character limit: 'Dilemma of our age. Tough visa restrictions in hope of btr security or openness & liberality to encourage tourism & goodwill? I prefer latter.' But Tharoor, a writer and a former top U.N. diplomat, who is now a member of parliament and a junior minister of foreign affairs, is not just any Indian, and the message went out not to just a handful of friends but to more than half a million people who follow him on Twitter. That message, along with a few others mildly questioning the merits of India's new, stricter tourist visa policies, landed him on the front page of most of India's English-language newspapers, which accused him of a very big no-no in Indian politics: appearing to disagree publicly with his superiors on a delicate issue. Politicians in democracies the world over have warmed to Twitter, the microblogging service, and other social media tools, like Facebook, to connect with voters. Many members of the U.S. Congress use it, as does Australia's prime minister, Kevin Rudd. But in India, the world's largest and most boisterous democracy, it has not caught on with elected officials. Indeed, many of India's power elite, whether in politics, the news media or business, seem to look askance at Tharoor's enthusiasm for a medium that collapses the distance between the governors and the governed and dismantles the layers of protocol and decorum that keep elected officials and senior bureaucrats here aloof from the everyday concerns of those they serve. Most of India's political elite seem to have no idea what Twitter is. Many senior bureaucrats see it as a waste of time. Asked if he would consider using Twitter, India's home secretary, G.K. Pillai, pursed his lips disapprovingly and said, 'I haven't got the time.' But Tharoor reads almost every post sent his way, according to his staff, and personally responds to as many as he can. Such direct access to an elected official is almost unheard of in India, and Tharoor's use of the medium has helped define his political rise. Many analysts here are closely watching his progress now for signs of whether Indians with experience abroad can apply their expertise to politics here. Tharoor is an unusual figure in Indian politics. After a long career at the United Nations, he ran for parliament from his hometown, Trivandrum, the capital of the southern state of Kerala. In his spare time he also became an author of some acclaim, writing 11 books, including three novels. At 53, he is considered young by the standards of Indian politics, and something of an upstart. An aide opened a Twitter account for him early last year, but initially he was wary and simply too busy with his campaign to post much. But he quickly saw the potential. 'I suddenly realized it was both a broadcast medium and an interactive medium,' Tharoor said in a telephone interview. His vacation message was not the first one that landed him in hot water. In September, in the midst of an austerity drive that had senior officials flying coach, he posted a message about riding in 'cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows!' But the remark about cows, in the context of Hinduism, was not a laughing matter for many, and some officials in his own party said he should resign over the remark. The news media breathlessly chronicle each of Tharoor's supposed Twitter missteps in editorials and talk show discussions. One news channel scrolled his latest Twitter updates across its screen under the rubric 'Breaking News.' Twitter enthusiasts say the news media make a fuss about it because it usurps its traditional role as intermediary and interpreter between the powerful and the masses. 'By constantly associating Twitter with controversies, Indian media will successfully dissuade other politicians from joining the social networking site,' Ajit Narayana, an avid Twitter user who is organizing a conference this month on Twitter's use in India, wrote in an e-mail message. Because he was born abroad and spent most of his career outside India, Tharoor has sometimes been accused of being out of touch with the country's mores and folkways. His use of Twitter, which is getting more popular but is still the province of a tiny fraction of Internet users, smacks to some of elitism. Tharoor said that he embraced Twitter because it helped Indians understand what he did every day, and it helped him understand what his followers thought. Twitter, he said, 'is a way of engaging the people to whom all politicians are ultimately accountable in the substance of our work.' Today, Tharoor has more than half a million followers on Twitter, and his ability to speak directly to these people is an invaluable asset to an increasingly networked Indian society, political experts said. 'Shashi's tweeting habit is a way to connect with the electronic-age population, which will be very important in the years to come,' said Brahma Chellaney, a professor at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi who also uses Twitter. But Diptosh Majumdar, national affairs editor at CNN-IBN, a cable news channel, said in his Twitter feed that the Congress Party's old guard, which in many ways controls Tharoor's political destiny, was unlikely to be impressed by his social media credentials. 'If Twitteroor feels that virtual reality may help him climb the political ladder faster, he is yet to identify the contours of politics here,' Majumdar wrote, using a nickname for Tharoor. Nevertheless, Tharoor said he would keep on posting Twitter messages, whether it helped or harmed his political career. 'I will not pretend the experience has been uniformly positive,' he said. 'But I am very happy to have this audience out there.' 