On September 10, BJP president Amit Shah asked the youth of Gujarat not to fall prey to ‘anti-BJP propaganda’ being promoted by the Congress on social media. “I appeal to the youth not to blindly believe the anti-BJP propaganda being spread on WhatsApp and Facebook,” he said. “Before making any judgment, you need to do an analysis of what Gujarat was before the BJP came to power and what is the situation today,” said Shah.
Shah was reacting to a popular social media campaign by the Congress, ‘Vikas gando thayo chhe (Development has gone crazy)’, which took potshots at the BJPs’ much-vaunted ‘Gujarat model of development’. The campaign featured a series of photos of damaged roads, broken bridges and unfinished construction.
Its effectiveness can be gauged from the fact that Shah went on the defensive: he promised the roads would soon be repaired.
“We don’t have the money power of the BJP and we started late but we have a dedicated social media team, of which 85 per cent are women, working 24×7 for the party in the digital world,” says Divya Spandana, social media head of the Congress.
The effectiveness of the team is evident. Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter account gained about a million followers between July and September, the fastest spike in his social outreach since he joined Twitter in April 2015. That said, it’s still just a tenth of the 34 million followers PM Narendra Modi has on Twitter, where he has been active since 2009.
Congress leaders believe that Rahul will soon catch up despite the late start. Sources say the Gandhi scion has come to understand the importance of delivering his message via social media, resulting in an active and aggressive online presence.
For instance, soon after foreign affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said at the UN General Assembly that successive Indian governments had built IITs, IIMs and AIIMS, putting India on the path of growth, Rahul offered her a backhanded compliment by thanking her on Twitter for acknowledging the Congress’s contribution to the country.
