Excerpt from: The Election That Changed India

Multimedia is the message
Narendra Modi joined  and Twitter in late 2009. It wasn't the kind of spectacular big-bang entry that the BJP leader normally likes. For the first two years, Modi didn't set the popular social networking sites on fire. In 2011, he still had barely 6 lakh followers on his Facebook page. His twitter following, too, was well behind that of someone like Shashi Tharoor's, who was really the first Indian politician to join the Twitterati.

By the time the elections were over in May, Modi had staggering 1.5 million 'likes' on his Facebook page, second only to US President Obama in terms of his fan following.

Through 2014, Modi had, according to a Facebook spokesperson, the fastest growing page of any politician worldwide. 'Facebook was our mother site which drove our social media campaign', says a Modi aide. Several individuals set up their own Modi Facebook pages-for example, a volunteer called Vikas Pandey set up an 'I support Modi' page, another had a 'Namo for PM' page, all of which became aggregators to the Modi social media machine.

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On Twitter, too, the Modi base kept increasing. By the time the elections were done and dusted, Modi had 4.27 million twitter followers. According to Twitter India, five of the top ten election tweets had been sent from Modi's account. They included a selfie with his mother and a victory tweet.

Contrast it with Rahul Gandhi. The Congress's 'youth' talisman wasn't even on the world's two most popular sites for youth interactivity. I asked a Congress social media cell member why. 'You know, Rahulji doesn't like impersonal communication. If he is to get on Twitter, he would like to handle his account himself and, frankly, he doesn't have the time for it', was the explanation I was given.

Modi didn't handle his own Twitter and Facebook page. That was done by a team of hired professionals based out of Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar and smaller centres. Leading them was Hiren Joshi, a computer science lecturer in a college in Bhilwara, Rajasthan, who had been assigned as OSD to Modi. It was this team that ensured a constant engagement on Twitter.

Joshi first met Modi when he attended a function for computer engineers which had been organized by the Gujarat government in 2009. Apparently, a technical glitch developed at the meeting which Joshi solved instantaneously. Modi was impressed enough to recruit Joshi to lead his social media outreach - one more evidence of his talent-spotting skills. It was Joshi who would provide Modi a daily late-night update on his Twitter messages, supervise all Twitter interactions, and help translate Modi's Twitter account into half a dozen regional languages.

'We had a clear goal-don't allow the buzz around Modiji to drop through the election, keep our leader and what he says and does trending all the time', says a Modi social media team member.

Statistically, it was as one sided as it could get. According to Twitter India, during the elections a total of 56 million election-related tweets were sent out. Modi was mentioned in 11.1 million tweets, almost 20 per cent of the total traffic. Arvind Kejriwal was next with 5 million (9 per cent) and Rahul Gandhi well behind with just 1.2 million tweets (or 2 per cent).

Kejriwal was at least giving Modi a fight on the social media meter. A small team working out of the party headquarters in Delhi and wired to NRI supporters would work tirelessly to take on the BJP media machine or raise funds for the party through crowdsourcing. 'We found social media a relatively cheap and effective way to take our message forward', is how Kejriwal put it to me.

That a party which was just a year old was scoring better than the Congress on the social media meter reflects just how ill-prepared Rahul's team was. In the 'pappu' (Rahul) versus 'feku' (Modi) hashtag war, there was again only one clear leader. Every time Rahul spoke, BJP supporters would swarm all over the social media and start trending 'pappu' to ridicule him. The Congress then hit back by labelling Modi a 'feku' (braggart), but it was more of a reactive move.

'The BJP had a head start over us and started well before the Gujarat election campaign of 2012. We really focussed on social media only at the end of 2013', concedes Congress MP Deeepinder Hooda who was in charge of the party's social media cell, while also fighting his own election from Rohtak.

Hooda says while the BJP successfully 'personalized' their social media campaign around Modi, the Congress strategy was to make it about the organization instead. 'One big learning for us is that individuals invariably draw more traction than organizations on the social media,' is how he put it. Admits another Congress media cell member,' We treated this as some kind of a mechanical exercise without attempting any kind of real innovation to engage with more people.'

The BJP's social media team, by contrast, was innovating all the time. On every voting day, they would send out personalized messages on Twitter encouraging people to go out and vote. 'We used Facebook and Twitter to make micro messaging part of our election strategy, a bit like what Obama did in the US,' is how a Team Modi member described it.

The BJP's social media team, by contrast, was innovating all the time. On every voting day, they would send out personalized messages on Twitter encouraging people to go out and vote. 'We used Facebook and Twitter to make micro messaging part of our election strategy, a bit like what Obama did in the US', is how a Team Modi member described it.

Social media collapsed the distance between voter and politician. The personal connect worked. For example, just ahead of a rally in Hyderabad, a Modi follower tweeted how his elderly mother was a great fan of the BJP leader and wanted to meet him. The local BJP unit was asked to contact the woman-she was brought on stage and Modi sought her blessings. 'It was just the kind of human touch we were looking for', says a Modi aide.

The Modi selfie when he went out to vote was another good example. 'A prime ministerial candidate putting out a selfie-what could be a better symbol of a tech-friendly leader? It was bound to be a super hit', says the aide. The selfie with the black-and-white lotus had another function. By holding up the election symbol designed to look exactly the way it looked on the EVM (in black and white and not saffron) and by associating his face with it (for those voters keen to vote for Modi, if not the BJP), Modi had put into the public space an image both viral-worthy and politically communicative (in fact, Modi would use the black-and-white lotus symbol as a lapel on his Kurta in all public interactions from 7 April 2014, the first day of polling, if only to reinforce the party's logo in the eyes of potential voters).

Modi has always liked technology as much as he likes wearing designer kurtas. He had started his website back in 2002 when few politicians even glanced at the Internet. An old Modi associate recalls how the seasoned politician was almost childlike when he was gifted an electronic diary once. 'He just likes to play around with some new tech device. He may not have the time to learn it always, but he just likes to be seen with it,' is how the friend describes Modi's tech-savvy avatar.

See interview: Chronicling elections 2014