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Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi set social media alight last weekend with a tweet stating his pet dog Pidi was the author of his suddenly effervescent posts . The sarcasm had his detractors scrambling to portray him, on the one hand, as frivolous, and doing so, on the other, without sounding humourless and stodgy. The hashtag #Pidi trended all Sunday, capping Mr. Gandhi’s makeover since the summer. The numbers speak for themselves: his followers on Twitter have shot up from about 2.5 million in July to more than four million now. The change is clearly a result of the Congress’s recently revamped social media team; more interestingly, also perhaps its strategy. The playfulness, the self-deprecatory humour, the regular-guy undertone in Mr. Gandhi’s social media messaging are aimed at creating a new public persona, a plan that was evident since his tour of American campuses last month. What political dividend this will pay is not clear, but it’s unsettling the official narrative. From being mocked as a princeling of Lutyens’ Delhi, Mr. Gandhi is trying to recast himself as a humorous, almost subversive, insurgent taking on the formidable powers-that-be. Referring to the GST as the “ Gabbar Singh Tax ”, he harnessed the film Sholay ’s capacity to myth-make, and to project the indirect taxes overhaul as an extractive, arbitrary reign reminiscent of Hindi cinema’s memorable villain.
Mr. Gandhi and his social media team are still a light presence in the Indian social media space — Mr. Modi has 36 million followers, and this machine’s drive to take the battle to every post is the stuff of case studies in political campaign. But perhaps it is this mismatch that has given Mr. Gandhi’s campaign the oxygen it seeks. During the second UPA government, as an anti-establishment mood swept the streets, Mr. Gandhi appeared equally keen to be seen as a dissenter — for instance, in 2013, when he angrily tore into the UPA’s ordinance to invalidate a Supreme Court curb on convicted legislators. Then, his assertion of power over his party’s Prime Minister smacked of dynastic entitlement. Now, he is the everyman blocked off from the corridors of power, highlighting the depths of his failure after the dismal summer of 2014 to give an assurance that he is on the learning curve, using disarming wit to isolate the trolls’ violent imagery. The online space has been the staging ground for political projection before — most notably, Mr. Modi’s saturation strategy for the 2014 general election and Barack Obama’s 2008 “yes we can” challenge. And certainly, skilful use of social media allows a politician to control the message, as well as directly reach her audience unobstructed. But it is not just that an electoral battle is ultimately won at the hustings on the strength of party organisation and street campaigns. Unsettling the narrative is not enough; a campaigner must shape it with a social and economic agenda.
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