Bashing opponents is easy but to compile something positive, without sounding theatrical and vain, is tricky. Mumbai-based lyricist Manoj Yadav explains the dilemma he faced when Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav asked him to write a campaign song that not only spoke of the Samajwadi Party (SP) government’s achievements but also had a strong mark of the Yadav scion on it. “He [Akhilesh] was so careful not to make the song about himself that when I wrote a stanza in his praise, he shot it down, asking me to focus on the schemes of the government,” Mr. Manoj says. And that is how the SP campaign song for the 2017 Assembly elections came into being — Kaam bolta hai... (Our work speaks...) — a rundown of Akhilesh’s flagship schemes, and infrastructural and welfare achievements.
Kaam bolta hai is also the crux of the SP’s social media strategy, which is powered from a posh two-storey complex adjacent to the SP headquarters here. Mr. Manoj Yadav heads the 24-hour SP war room, which has teams for news monitoring, research and digital work, and includes a call centre. An independent Mumbai-based digital agency, Zozolo, is handling the digital section, where a team led by Aftab Ahmed Naqvi is constantly “listening” to online data and pushing content, while also receiving public feedback. “Even Kaam bolta hai was a digital-first campaign,” Mr. Naqvi says
In the war room, the SP tracks eight news channels, the information from which, along with the material dug out by its research teams, is constantly fed to its 21 official spokespersons — what other parties are saying, what’s the best stand for the party on a particular issue, speeches in rallies. “We want to ensure there is no loose talk. We want to base our discussions on researched data,” says Aashish Yadav, who leads the team.
Mr. Aashish Yadav, who formerly worked with the BBC, says the thrust of the SP campaign would be “positive” projection of Akhilesh Yadav (the Lucknow-Agra Expressway, skill development, Lucknow Metro, social pension, etc.) rather than targeting opponents.
So not only are pictures and videos tactically shared and posted, information and feedback are also transmitted through Whatsapp groups. If national and State issues are discussed on Facebook and Twitter, local constituency-specific data is also gathered as feedback through the various means, including the call centre, to brief the candidates on the ground. “This helps them address necessary issues and adjust the campaign,” says Mr. Aashish Yadav.
The first phase of polling in the State is a week away and parties have intensified their social media outreach.
BJP’s game plan
Less than two kilometres from the SP office, a team of 100 volunteers is running the show at the Bharatiya Janata Party’s U.P. election headquarters. The party’s election complex is a lot more elaborate than that of the other parties and boasts a digital library, a research cell, an IT department, a social media cell and a call centre, and departments for application, website and organisation management. There’s a separate WhatsApp cell.
“In total, we have 6,000 WhatsApp groups functioning across the State. The strategies are different for every medium. If Facebook is popular among the youth, we cannot expect to reach the old-fashioned through it. So for them we use WhatsApp, which is common today even in rural areas. Twitter is targeted at the educated masses,” says Rajesh Pandey, one of the BJP war room coordinators. Pandey quit his job as an Assistant Professor in Galgotia University to dedicate time to the party.
A key element of the BJP’s strategy is its active call centre where feedback is sought from voters and the information transmitted to the respective candidate.
According to a source, the BJP has distributed a phone number in every region. “Apart from distributing the numbers and inviting common people to join Whatsapp groups, the party also digs out numbers from local recharge shops of people who get internet packs and adds them to the groups to increase its reach,” the source said.
For its social media campaign, the BJP has divided the State into 92 districts and six divisions — Awadh, Kashi, West, Braj, Kanpur and Gorakhpur. Every district has set up an Atal IT cell with 15 volunteers each, while a separate team of 11 members works in each of the 403 Assembly constituencies. In total, around 10,000 volunteers run the BJP’s campaign. But unlike the SP, the BJP’s campaign is restricted not only to projecting the good work of PM Narendra Modi but is also tilted in favour of attacking opponents, especially the SP. Every evening, the team analyses the day’s seven to 10 social media posts, evaluating minutely the likes, comments, shares and reach it achieved.
Congress crunches data
While sources said talks were on for a coordinated social media campaign between the SP and the Congress, so far the grand old party has been running the war from two locations in Lucknow. While a team of 20 from strategist Prashant Kishor’s Indian Political Action Committee run their own 24-hour setting from Jopling Road, the Mall Avenue headquarters of the party houses a 10-member call and research centre of mostly women. A 23-member State social media committee and 110 district and city heads execute the operations on the ground. The Congress’ USP, its social media head Shiv Pandey says, is its deep research and data crunching, most of which is forwarded from the war room in Delhi. Among the party’s research team are two with doctorates in economics.
“All the anti-BJP material that you see being circulated and made viral by other parties, originates from the Congress,” Mr. Pandey says.
While promoting the previous UPA government’s achievements, Rahul Gandhi’s “dreams” and promises such as ‘karza maaf, bijli bill half,’ along with pictures and information on the alliance with SP, the Congress says it is also spending a lot of time dealing with misinformation. “The BJP misuses social media. We do not believe in spreading false information or rumours. So we have also been putting a lot of posts clarifying the BJP’s misleading posts. For instance, they are saying that Modi cleaned up assi (80) ghats in Varanasi, whereas the government has only started work at one ghat, the Assi ghat!,” Mr. Pandey said.
The newbie BSP
New to the social media scene, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is trying to sell nostalgia and promise. Though the party does not formally have any official Facebook or Twitter pages, or a dedicated war room, a team of volunteers, leaders, Dalit academics and young tech professionals and students from prestigious universities like JNU, DU and AMU support its campaign by live streaming and promoting Mayawati’s rallies and press conferences.
“We were the first party to start Facebook live streaming of rallies. The other parties followed us,” says Paresh Mishra, son-in-law of senior BSP leader Satish Mishra.
Mr. Paresh Mishra, along with a team of 400 volunteers, who mostly operate through their smart phones, is informally leading the BSP’s social media blitz. “There is no formal agency. We are handling it on our own,” he says.
At the top of the BSP’s game plan is to recall the “good governance and law and order situation” under the previous Mayawati rule, while targeting the Modi government for failing to fulfil promises of acche din and for demonetisation, and discrediting the SP government for its failure to protect citizens and indulging in infighting. This reflects in the crisp slogan — Behenji ko aane do (Let Mayawati come), and the party’s anthem, Singhasa par Behen Maya , written by Bollywood lyricist Manoj Muntasir of Bahubali fame.
