A lot has changed between 2014 and 2018 in how India’s two major parties—the Congress and the BJP—work their social media ‘capabilities and handling’.
It was the US, of course, that quickly realised and tapped social media’s potential in influencing elections.
As both Republicans and Democrats formed separate portfolios and cells to tame the genie, the power and reach of social media also shaped fundraising campaigns of Presidential candidates and helped them communicate to heterogeneous groups en masse. Since many Indians, experts in IT as they are, acted as key members in setting up and running such campaigns for the likes of Obama, they were among the first few to realise and appreciate its immense potential.
Many Indian Americans and NRIs in California’s fabled Silicon Valley were eager to present and pass on their new-found Brahmastra to help politicians in India—particularly to the ones based in Delhi, Mumbai, and Gujarat—and make a quick dough. And, Narendra Modi, not surprisingly, was the ‘First Mover’ in his field. Not only did the former Gujarat CM use social media to silence his own party colleagues who were opposed to his PM candidature, he also used it to win over India in the 2014 general elections.
With the technology genie at its beck and call from early 2012 to the run-up of 2014, it was a blissful era for the Bhartiya Janata Party. As the party set out on what turned out to be a fairly smooth road to the 2014 triumph, narratives were crafted by a sophisticated team of experts, many of whom were expats who had flown in to strategise a modus operandi to suit Indian electoral needs. That’s how stories of Bal Narendra retrieving a ball from a pond full of crocodiles hit social media. That’s how the Gujarat model was sold as the only model of development.
For campaign experts from Silicon Valley, internet’s limited reach in India was a big challenge though. More than 70 per cent of the population was still not digitally connected. This is when the think tanks stepped in to bridge the gap. India was experiencing a massive middle-class upsurge. First generation educated youths were teaching parents how to handle smartphones or watch .mov clips—these videos were laced with perception-altering messages—and so the ideal roadmap was set. Call centres and the so-called ‘media cells’ cropped up with military precision, covering the entire length and breadth of the country, top to bottom. From states and districts to towns and neighbourhoods, everything up to the booth level was covered, leaving nothing to chance.
That’s how the Modi narrative was built. The BJP’s core leadership at the time comprised the likes of LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Sushma Swaraj. They were systematically bypassed. Sensing the upswing of one of their own, they gave in meekly to the digital onslaught by Modi as he presented himself as the only viable option for the 2014 general elections.
Congress was caught off-guard as a digital savvy Bharatiya Janata Party took total control of the narrative by mid-2013. The Grand Old Party was reduced to simply fighting fires (defending) lit by a highly advanced and digitally savvy, social media command and control centre of the BJP.
The whole operation, manned by a plethora of digital properties and an R&D team that maintained a constant supply of propaganda material, Twitter and Facebook were turned into ideological frontlines.
As it happens in a typical high-end football match, the BJP identified key players from rival camps and devised strategies to contain them before they had the chance to make a mark on the match that was to unfold.
The aggressiveness of these campaigns varied from polite nudging to channelling the harshest of abuses at the opposition. It even translated into issuing threats that few would be able to withstand. This virtual ‘Free For BJP’ scenario in the digital space enabled them to paint Rahul Gandhi as ‘Pappu’ without the remotest of resistance or a counter-perspective emerging.
With Gandhi too shy to open a verified account on Twitter and no other prominent leader to back them, Congressmen were literally left to fend for themselves, individually. A few who put up a meek defence were youngsters, ill-equipped, with no statistics to support their viewpoints and R&D a far cry. Handles such as @maswoodZ, @brumbyOz and a few others facing brutal onslaughts on social media was a regular sight. But Congress MP Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor), a social media pioneer but a victim of an unethical digital onslaught [the infamous “50 crores ki girlfriend” jibe still rankles], remained a perennial source of inspiration to Congress workers online.
While the historic victory that BJP registered was there for all to see, the Congress’ course correction didn’t come until a year after BJP swept to office. As the importance of social media sunk in, Gandhi opened a Twitter account under the handle @OfficeOfRG, not using his name to perhaps protect himself from the onslaught he expected would greet him on the micro-blogging site.
The account @OfficeOfRG started growing gradually, followed more by trolls and so-called Bhakts initially than by Congress’ own members. The retweets and the likes slowly moved into the 3-digit figure, and, in a few months’ time, into the four-digit zone. With confidence back, the name of the handle was changed to @RahulGandhi. There has been no looking back since then. By this time, the Congress had started flooding social media domains, although the effort was unstructured and lacked direction. The crowd swelled further as individuals and organisations at the receiving end of the Finance Ministry’s unpopular policies such as demonetisation and GST joined in. As the Congress’ social media clout gradually grew into prominence, complacency hit the BJP’s social media machine.
Still reaping benefits of the ‘first mover’ advantage, the ‘bhakts’ went to town about bringing the actor Aamir Khan to his knees when his wife spoke about considering a shift out of India due to the rising intolerance. More unethical conduct followed in forcing Snapdeal to snap ties with Aamir Khan and after the Modi government replaced Khan with Amitabh Bachchan in the ‘Incredible India’ tourism campaign.
Similar instances of trolling were used to silence dissidence—a trend that was proudly labelled as the BJP’s forte. This was more prominently reflected when, speaking at a book launch in Maharashtra, Goa CM Manohar Parrikar suggested that anyone who expressed less than an unquestioning devotion to the country should be “taught a lesson of his life”. A certain actor and an “online trading company” had got their comeuppance last year for violating this line, he added referring indirectly to the Aamir Khan and Snapdeal controversy.
Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there. This is exactly what happened with the BJP while the Congress was busy coming to terms, identifying faults, plugging loopholes and overcoming hurdles inherent to a late start.
Moreover, as arrogance swept the BJP, many wrongs, deliberate or otherwise, started taking place. Here are a few examples:
- Many SM (social media) players who helped the BJP come to office wanted to go for the kill and began abusing funds that were now easily accessible. Many even opened party-funded companies. One such company was RedKraft (name changed) with its CEO, an erstwhile dental professional and activist, fabricating and publishing stories in favour of the BJP.
- With heavyweights occupying key positions, the inflow of new talent literally stopped. They were recruited at petty levels akin to daily wagers.
- Added to this is the unwritten policy allegedly followed by the BJP with regard to Muslims—also visible in how they give tickets to MP and MLA candidates. The BJP, thus, keeps itself devoid of a big chunk of expert hands in the form of Muslim IT professionals and experts (approx 15% of the entire talent pool).
- Many handles followed by PM Modi started getting drunk on power and went berserk, threatening murders and rapes, celebrating killings like that of journalist Gauri Lankesh and brought a bad name to the party and the Indian social media scene across the world.
- The book, I Am A Troll—Inside The Secret World Of BJP’s Digital Army, by journalist Swati Chaturvedi further dented the credibility of the BJP’s social media arm.
Thus, despite all the gains and advantages, a quick learner started emerging as a potential foe. And this is what Congress with its mammoth size and 133 years of existence needed to stand up. Finally, this trigger came from none other than Rahul Gandhi who, having realised the mistakes, hurriedly went ahead overhauling and structuring the social media blueprint. The past year saw much of the action. From appointing experts such as Pravin Chakravarty as the R&D head to appointing Divya Spandana as the social media face, much work was done at the highest level.
Results started flowing in. As of today many of Rahul Gandhi’s retweets and likes surpass those of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s in the first 24-hour cycle itself.
Gujarat and the Karnataka elections were good statistical reminders of the progress made by the Congress’ social media team. If the Gujarat elections, where the Congress almost outperformed the BJP, were any indication of the Congress catching up with the BJP on social media, it seems to have done much better in Karnataka.
Not only has the Congress upped its game, it has even overtaken the BJP by a couple of miles. This was evident from the mid-night presser to counter the accusations of BJP MP Prakash Javdekar after the Election Commission discovered thousands of fake Voter ID cards stored in an apartment followed by the immediate trending of the hashtag ‘#BJPDramaExposed at 2 AM in the night’.
According to figures from the Congress’ social media cell, Congress registered 87-crore “impressions” on its tweets about Karnataka elections. In contrast, the “impressions” stood at 35 crores in Gujarat. The figures are likely a conservative estimate. The actual figures will be higher since there is no way to measure and take into account the vast number of individuals who aren’t members of the Congress but ordinary citizens who happen to be supporting the Congress.
Information technology is a field that evolves every couple of months and no one can ever claim to have a permanent edge over the other. The elections in 2019, with every bit of social media expertise counting, will be a delight to observe. Major ground factors such as the performance of a party during its tenure and the governance trail that it leaves behind coupled with the hard work put in by foot soldiers at the booth level will always remain the major building blocks that an effective media campaign needs to be in sync with.
Least of all, at the risk of sounding like an SM propagandist, the fact remains that social media as a potent tool can be used to alter and tweak narratives to produce desired outcomes. It’s safe to say that the battle has just begun and it will be worthwhile watching the BJP warhorse of 2014 taking on the Congress’ agile mustang of 2019 in the general elections next year.
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