Dravidian party digital push. Dravidian parties amp up digital war

The electoral battle for Tamil Nadu is being fought more fiercely on smartphone screens than street corners. The fears of a second wave of Covid-19, changing demographics, and a high smartphone penetration in the State in excess of 50 per cent, has forced the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and the opposition Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) to invest more than ₹100 crore, and an army of thousands of paid and volunteer warriors, on digital campaigns alone in a month leading up to the April 6, 2021 vote. The digital campaigns are slickly made (hardly a surprise, given both parties have access to talent form Kollywood), deployed and targeted with a great deal of sophistication, and as spicy as the best Chettinad fare.

Two-pronged narrative

The AIADMK’s campaign has two key themes. One, to trumpet the achievements of the Edappadi Palaniswamy with a sunny series of videos called ‘vetrinadai podum Tamizhagam’ reminiscent of the NDA government’s ‘India Shining’ campaign in 2004. Two, to constantly remind people of the “dark days” of DMK’s rule and the party’s “excesses” when both in and out of power. “There are nearly 89 lakh voters enrolled after 2010. They may not have an instant recollection of how bad DMK’s rule was. We need to constantly remind the young voters,” says K Swaminathan, the head of AIADMK’s IT wing who also runs an exam coaching enterprise and claims to be the first IIM-Bangalore graduate in the party. A new series of videos themed ‘Thillu mullu company’ or fraudulent company (a direct reference to the acronym DMK), shows a group of DMK men in starched white vesthi and shirt asking various groups of people—students, housewives, farmers and traders—to vote for their party, only for them to be shooed away because everything works swimmingly well under the AIADMK government. Swaminathan says, AIADMK’s one lakh strong IT wing, not counting thousands of freelancers it employs to create videos and memes that are edgier, runs nearly 75,000 Whatsapp groups or roughly one for every polling booth that allows the party to deliver content with great precision. For instance, several teams of the IT wing are at the ready every time DMK Chief MK Stalin speaks. “He is a gift that keeps giving. We make quick comedy videos and memes of all the gaffes. It is great material for us to reinforce the message that Stalin is Tamil Nadu’s Pappu,” adds Swaminathan.

The tag-team

“ No party in Tamil Nadu can match us when it comes to digital,” counters PTR Palanivel Thiagarajan, a former investment banker who is now the DMK’s IT wing chief, sitting MLA and candidate from Madurai Central. Thiagarajan is open in his admiration for the kind of communications platform BJP has built over the years. “Yes they have huge amounts of money but we are getting there with far less resources. According to Thiagarajan, he has built a digital team of 28,000 workers and mapped them out starting with the top to the booth level with the rigour, training and structure that would do a corporate house proud. Thiagarajan makes the startling claim that to train many of those 28,000 on-the-job in digital campaign management, the party fielded “independent” candidates in all the 39 Lok Sabha seats during the 2019 elections whose campaigns were run by DMK’s digital team.

Besides the in-house army, DMK has the services of IPAC, Prashant Kishore’s political consultancy firm. IPAC’s election war room on the eleventh floor of a swanky building a few hundred metres from Anna Arivalayam, DMK’s HQ, houses nearly 400 employees aged mostly between 25 and 35. IPAC’s office plastered in DMK’s red and black has larger-than-life posters of Stalin of various vintages beaming at you. In a sign of the changing times, IPAC’s war room is considerably busier than Anna Arivalayam. Young members of the team constantly feed DMK spokespersons appearing on TV with “attack” points. Social listening is key to mount digital attacks and counterattacks. IPAC’s teams keep an eye on social media conversations 24/7 and receive a steady stream of inputs from the ground on the issues people and journalists are talking about on the day.

App-ing the ante

Of the nearly 400 employees, 40 are video editors who churn out hundreds of videos every day that burnish Stalin’s image or rebut and punch holes in AIADMK’s claims. With a fee reportedly around ₹350 crore for the whole campaign starting in 2019, IPAC certainly seems to have lent a great deal of gloss to DMK’s campaign, be it creating some razzle-dazzle around the big rallies, Stalin Ani (Team Stalin), a dedicated app to showcase the leader or a clutch of websites such as WeRejectADMK, OndrinaivomVaa, the help and outreach portal for those affected by Covid-19 lockdown, a membership drive called 'Ellorum Nammudan' run on DMK’s official website, or simply shooting down campaigns AIADMK or BJP try to trend on social media. The Stalin Ani app is geared towards getting the DMK content go viral. The app subscribers are rewarded with good karma points every time they share a video or article. As the party faithful accumulate the reward points, they unlock newer levels of accomplishment. Crossing each of the 25 stages earns a reward, ranging from a certificate to the ultimate prize of a personal audience with “Thalapathy” Stalin. IPAC claims that nearly 48 lakh new members have joined the party online in the last 200 days. In comparison, AIADMK’s official website appears rather home-baked, and its guerrilla campaign website MuttrupulliForDMK (full stop for DMK) to counter WeRejectADMK often fails to load.

“IPAC and the party’s own IT team have a symbiotic relationship. In the next couple of days we will be launching a new campaign that’s nothing like anyone in India has seen,” adds Thiagarajan. Get ready for a spicier, and no-holds barred Dravidian political battle on digital.