Opposition and govt supporters now communicate in guerilla warfare mode

Govt should reduce its dependence on social media and revert, if not wholly then in large measure, to older forms of communication, at least on non-political matters

In May 2013, when Narendra Modi was still chief minister of Gujarat and hadn’t yet been anointed as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, the Hindu Business Line invited him to launch its Ahmedabad edition.

Mr Modi spoke for about 30 minutes and made it clear that social media—which was yet to fully catch on in India as a political tool—would be his preferred method of getting his messages across.

His early recognition of the potential of Twitter and Facebook gave him a huge advantage in a rapidly digitising country. The BJP’s IT cell soon ruled the airwaves.

But his political adversaries have caught up over the last couple of years. They are using social media just as effectively. Mostly they ridicule Mr Modi, sometimes to great effect. Obviously, the BJP doesn’t like it. But nor can it do anything about it. Once you weaponise something, your adversaries will also learn the tricks.

So, the BJP has started responding to almost every criticism of the government, especially of Mr Modi. As a result, nearly all political debates are conducted on Twitter now. A lot of it is about defending Mr Modi now. 

But there’s a problem: no government can be irresponsible in its tweets and other forms of riposte on social media. It’s got to get its responses precisely right. Nothing less will do. But this doesn’t apply to the vast army of its supporters, who are told to tweet rubbish. They are then countered in equally nonsensical kind by the supporters of the opposition parties.

And so, on and on.

Each time the government takes to social media to correct the record, the attempt is Sisyphean. Often, outright lies are more believable than the unvarnished truth. 

And so, more often than not, the facts put out by the official handles of the government are washed away by the torrent of inaccuracies and distortions from both sides of the road. The government looks on bemusedly.

This is guerilla warfare, pure and simple, where the guerillas set the agenda and governments merely respond.

This might be okay in politics, where slant, innuendo and outright lies are accepted as normal tradecraft. But in science and economics, they are utterly ridiculous. Yet they go on, with all kinds of rubbish floating around on social media, some more harmful than others.

This method of ‘debate’ has now assumed absurd proportions. The government no longer seems to make consolidated statements about major issues and appears content with ephemeral tweets with their threads.

That doesn’t help its case because how can you measure effective governance by the number of times a ministry tweets? Can a thousand tweets be a substitute for a well-argued statement in Parliament? It’s no argument that no one reads the latter.

There’s another problem with this method of engagement. It has blurred the line between government and party on the one hand, and government and nut cases, on the other. The credibility of the government is suffering as a result. And, if I may make so bold, the credibility of Mr Modi too. Very few people believe him anymore.

The short point is that the BJP rode social media successfully for a while but is now fighting a rearguard battle. Letting go of social media control would risk losing control of the national discourse, but, on the other hand, it would also elevate it.

So, what should the party and the government do? First of all, they should reduce their dependence on social media. It just makes them look non-serious. Second, they should revert, if not wholly then in large measure, to older forms of communication, at least on non-political matters.