New Delhi: The comrades in India have finally boarded the digital bandwagon. From times of fierce opposition to late Rajiv Gandhi’s vision of computerised India to this era of Modi government’s Digital India, it has taken a little more than a quarter of a century for Communist parties to realise the potential of social media.
Having realised their past mistakes, comrades now have gone full throttle, with Twitter being the new mantra for them. And it’s already showing results. A tweet from CPM’s official twitter handle @cpimspeak, a day before Yogi Adityanath’s Kerala visit, inviting him to visit hospitals in the southern state to learn how to effectively run public health services, has already been retweeted more than 3000 times and got 4500-plus ‘likes’ in less than 24 hours.
A quick glance through Twitter, and one will notice the new digital footprint of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and its leaders. Not only the party, but also its frontal organisations are now active on social media.
Praveer Purkayasth, president of Indian Science Forum and senior functionary of the Party told News18, “We decided to go big on Twitter around six months ago since it’s a strong medium for reaching out to the middle class and youth, and countering RSS-BJP propaganda and trolls.”
“Click activism is also activism. We are now in process of making our leaders and workers understand the importance of social media,” Purkayasth added. So while individual leaders and workers were already on social media, efforts now are to channelise them collectively on select issues.
But how do the comrades go about the social media business? A youth leader, who is part of the Party’s core team for digital media said, “There is a central team of around 50 people. It’s a countrywide group, with representation from each state. Kerala, Bengal and Tripura each have five members in this team.” He further explained that this group decides on the issues and campaigns to be taken up.
There is an additional team of 55 people to assist the central team. They fish out fake news and propaganda, prepare counter-narrative and help with research work. IT experts, mostly from Kerala, are part of this team. However, the Party claims these workers are volunteers and not employees like other political parties.
The party has off late organised three training camps, the most recent one being in Delhi last month, for the social media team, which is headed by Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat.
The impact of this new strategy is not just confined to Left bastions like Kerala, Bengal and Tripura. Leaders from states like UP and Bihar, where the Left no longer has significant presence, are also active on Twitter and other social media platforms.
For example, Pradeep Sharma, Lucknow district secretary of CPM, who has now logged into Twitter, said, “We successfully countered several lies being spread against us, including the campaign against Kerala CM by linking him to Godman Ram Rahim.”
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