Modi effect 8.0 "Modi"fication of Social media

 In an unprecedented rise to power Right Wing Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidate, Naredra Modi, now Prime Minister of India, used social media strategies to advance his campaign to the masses. From using 3D holograms at political rallies to caller tunes and SMSs’ Modi and his Media team used social media platforms to keep the buzz alive as he shunted through the country on a whirlwind tour conducting 477 rallies as part of his election campaign. Modi and his men undertook direct interaction with 814 million of the total electorate with close contender Rahul Gandhi clocking only 133 million in comparison. The 3D hologram rallies alone reached 14 million people and SMS WhatsApp and other social media platforms were used to contact 130 million people. At the end of the day with 3.9 million followers on Twitter, 13 million Facebook likes and the same number of YouTube downloads, Social Media drove the Modi campaign to success giving him a clear majority over other rivals in the General Elections 2014

Impact of Social Media in India

 India has more than 160 million Internet users, of which 86 million accesses Internet using their mobile devices.
In the last 3-4 years, the number of users who access the Internet through a 3G connection has grown to round 22 million, to put things in perspective, compare this with the 15 million fixed line broadband connections accrued over the last 17 years.
• There are over 36 million smartphone users as against 60 million PC users.
 • 9% of overall Internet page views in India come from mobile devices.
• Over 40% of searches on Google originate from mobile device.
• 30% of Facebook users in India are mobile-only Internet users and 30% of new registrations are coming through mobile
 • LinkedIn ranks India among its top 4 growth markets for mobile usage

The institutionalization of Modi’s image building may be a more recent phenomenon,

but he had been fascinated with the power of the Internet to increase his popularity for

a long time. As early as 2001 Modi was freely granting interview to internet sites with

his PRO following public reactions to the same says Ramesh Menon who interviewed

him for rediff.com in 2001.

Of late, the Internet, in this context more specifically meant Social media which has

formed an integral part of all of Modi’s PR strategies. Says Harshit Gupta, key

campaigner of Modi’s PR team, “Modi had started using social media from 2009

onwards. I remember having conversations with rival politicians at that time. They

laughed and commented, ‘Are elections won on Facebook? I wonder what they will

say now.”7

Modi’s election strategy too has not been restricted to traditional methods of

canvassing and campaigning. Sources say he has learnt a lot from following the

political strategies adopted by other world leaders, specifically US President Barrack

Obama. Modi was among the first chief ministers in India who understood the power

impact and outreach of social and new media.8 His PR agents stepped up support and

public mobilisation for him through the use of these tools through popular platforms

such as Facebook and twitter. Apart from the multitudes of videos tom-tomming

Modi and his persona on YouTube, he also set up his own website;

www.naredndramodi.in where all his speeches and activities were documented by a

battery of PR agents.

Blogworks, an agency which monitors social networking index of Indian politicians

puts Modi way ahead of others on its list. His competitors grudgingly admit that no

other leader has managed to do with PR, social media and technology what Modi has

accomplished.

Time and again Modi had stressed in internal party meetings that social media would

play a crucial role as a game changer in 2014 elections. In a special India Today

edition to mark the 67th Independence Day of the nation, Modi wrote: “Social media

is an egalitarian medium that has created a level playing field. It is now possible for a

common man to talk to, question and challenge any public figure if they disagree with 

him or her. On social media we are all netizens first and everything later! Social

media has emerged as a great tool for empowerment.”

He was about to be proved absolutely right. He calculated there would be about14

crore mobile Internet users by the time the nation went to polls again. It was not just

propaganda he was looking at.; he wanted to build a new-base among first-time

voters. Who formed 20%of the electorate in 2014. To bring this new , young, urban

voter into the BJP fold., his managers came up with a volunteer mobilization

programme called India 272+, complete with a mobile phone app, the catchphrase

reminding the voter that India needed a party in power with a full majority so that in

government too there would be the easy rhyme of his four-word campaign slogan—

Abki Baar, Modi Sarkar (This time- Modi government)

Modi’s social media campaign was not the work of one man alone but an entire team.

There was a brigade of back-room officials constantly working on him and marketing

him to the country. These included a principal secretary, two additional principal

secretaries, two officers on special duty, one of them to exclusively manage IT and

the other to manage meetings. He had four personal assistants, one public relations

officer and an additional public relations officer in his office. Regular feedback was

provided to him on what people were talking about, audience reaction to his speeches

and what BJP workers were saying about him.

Piyush Gupta (49) Rajya Sabha MP (Member of the Upper House of Indian

Parliament) headed the BJP’s Information and Communication campaign subcommittee

that oversaw all outreach efforts via the web, mobile phones and social

media. The sub-committee in turn helped the party’s IT cell with an alumnus of the

Indian Institute of Technology BHU (Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi) Arvind

Gupta as convenor and a communication cell headed by Anupam Trivedi an MBA

degree holder from the Indian Institute of foreign Trade.

The IT drive included a third arm outside the party for which Modi handpicked two of

the company’s sharpest IT minds, Rajesh Jain (post graduate from Columbia

University in the US and an Internet revolutionary who is credited with

revolutionizing Internet use in India through IndiaWorld web portal—a collection of

India centric websites. The second man on this team was tech-entrepreneur B.G.

Mahesh (post graduate from Alabama University and founder of Greynium

Information technologies private Ltd, the owners of OneIndia, one of India’s finest

regional language news portals. Apart from Goyal, Jain and Mahesh, the fourth

prominent backroom strategists for Modi was K. Kailashanathan, known as K.K a

1979 batch retired bureaucrat and a close confidante of Modi. Last but in no0 way the

least was Modi’s controversial former minister of state for home, Amit Shah, who had

to step down in face of charges of ordering fake encounter killings in Gujarat. He has

been the brain behind the BJP’s Social Media campaign.

Modi has appointed Rajesh Jain and BG Mahesh to orchestrate and drive his social

media campaigns. The Indian internet industry is aware of the success stories of the

two, who are often recalled as “The Original Dotcom poster boys.” Rajesh is well

known for selling IndiaWorld to Sify for Rs. 499 crore and Mahesh has been

successful in founding companies like IndiaInfo and OneIndia. The successful duo are

now making sure that BJP comes into power in next elections and for that they are 

putting together a 100-member content and technology team in Bangalore to drive

Modi’s internet campaign. Modi has also held “virtual rallies” such as the one on

November 18 wherein he addressed rallies simultaneously from four separate stages

across Gujarat—Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat and Rajkot at a whopping cost of Rs 40

crore. As per a December 20 online poll 17:15 IST, as of 88% of 39491 surfers had

hit LIKE on Narendra Modi. Whether it is with creating a presence on social networks

or conducting the most successful Hangout by any Indian politician, Modi has done it

successfully. Recently he was again in the news for a statement he made while

interacting with the BJP Maharashtra cell – “Get me 48 lakh social media id’s from

the 48 Lok Sabha seats in the state.” Both Rajesh Jain and BG Mahesh have declined

to comment on the story but it is clear that with the coming elections, political fights

will not happen only in offline spaces but social media too. 9

Together this crack team of IT professionals promoted Modi’s vision and his

developmental model and a blitzkrieg dedicated to portraying how India needed Modi

to stem corruption and bring positive change in an era that would choose development

over dynasty.

His campaigners ensured SMS Whatsapp texts and voice mails were made to over

130 million people. In the last phase 3D rallies were organized, beginning from April

10, one month before the last day of campaigning. Modi’s experiment with 3D

hologram rallies earlier in 2012 Gujarat Assembly elections had bagged him a place

in the Guinness Book of World Records for delivering a speech to 53 locations

simultaneously. The hi-tech campaign had touched 14 million people through such

virtual rallies.

As Lok Sabha Elections 2014 wound down to a historic close, the BJP-led NDA

claimed a landslide victory, making huge gains across the country. As results for all

543 Lok Sabha seats were announced, the NDA looked set to win 336 seats, not only

far ahead of the half-way mark but also relishing a victory whose scale they had not

themselves anticipated. For, incredibly, the BJP crossed the 272 mark comfortably on

its own, without allies, winning 282 seats, a gain of 166.

In the more recent Chhatisgarh and Jammu and Kashmir polls too, BJP made a clean

sweep of the former and delivered an impactful surge in the latter. It is also all set to

sweep away the fight for Delhi where earlier the anti-incumbency wave had brought

dark horse Arvind Kejriwal to power.