How IT professional from Punjab is using Twitter to support farm protests & counter criticism

38-year-old Ludhiana IT professional wants to counter the narrative on social media that Khalistani agenda is being propagated under the garb of the farmers’ agitation.

The delegation of farmers unions at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi, for talks with the government over the new farm laws on 1 December 2020 | Suraj Singh Bisht | ThePrint File photo

New Delhi: Thousands of farmers have been camping around Delhi’s borders since last week to protest against the central government’s three new farm laws. As protests intensified, youth from Punjab decided to back the farmers and counter allegations through social media.

One such campaign, started by 38-year-old Ludhiana IT professional Bhavjit Singh, aims to gather support for Punjab farmers and to counter the narrative that Khalistani agenda is being propagated under the garb of the farmers’ agitation. The campaign on Twitter, with the hashtag #Tractor2Twitter, was among the top trends Thursday.

Several Twitter users, including Punjabi artistes, Congress leaders, official account of Aam Aadmi Party unit in Punjab, as well as Akali Dal leaders, posted tweets using this hashtag.

The Twitter page that started running this hashtag gained over 7,000 followers, while the hashtag itself generated over 20,000 potential impressions on Twitter till Friday.

Singh says he may have started the campaign, but people have taken it forward.

“Though our target was to get 25,000 users yesterday (Thursday), we had about 1 lakh users using the hashtag. It’s not an organised movement, rather it is an organic people’s movement. I may have started it but the people have taken it forward and made it trend,” Singh told ThePrint.

Thousands of farmers from Punjab and Haryana reached the national capital last week as part of their ‘Dilli Chalo’ rally. The protesting farmers, who braved water cannons and tear gas shells by the police, have refused to accept the government’s offer to move to North Delhi’s Nirankari Ground in Burari. They have been camping at the Singhu border since then.

How the campaign started

Last week, Singh decided to counter the narrative on social media against the farmers by encouraging people to join Twitter. “Narratives around the issues in our country are set through two media — national media and social media. While national media has its own pressures and affiliations, on Twitter too, there are organised IT cells setting the narrative. For a while, Punjabis have been out of social media. While they use Facebook to interact, Twitter is not popular. So we thought the youth should be told about why this social media (platform) needs to be used to build support,” Singh said.

The campaign started 27 November on Facebook with Singh asking Punjab’s youth to join Twitter and use the hashtag to highlight farmers’ issues.

“I personally felt that the narrative they (political parties) are running, we can’t compete with them. So I can’t call it reactive. It’s more of a proactive movement about convincing people to come and join the conversation. Our fight is on two fronts. First is on the ground with protesting farmers and second on is on social media to gather support for the farmers,” he said.

Since the start of the campaign, multiple hashtags are being used to post tweets in support of the protesting farmers, Singh said.

The hashtags have since been used by AAP leaders, the AAP Punjab’s official Twitter account, lawyer HS Phoolka, as well as Punjabi artistes like Jazzy B, Ammy Virk. Several Congress members have also shared the posts.

Experts that ThePrint spoke to said that for such hashtags to trend, it usually takes someone to keep posting tweets using the hashtag for a few hours. Then, if people with substantial followers start using it, it trends faster. “Whoever wants to get a hashtag trending, they either create new accounts or change their display picture and they start tweeting with a hashtag. Since so many tweets and opinions are coming on Twitter on this topic it becomes easy for them to trend because normal people are already talking about it,” said Sagar Vishnoi, a political consultant.

For such imprint, Vishnoi added, it helps if people with large followers also tweet using the same hashtag. “It needs to have been tweeted by some politicians or big influencers to trend,” he said.

‘No political affiliation’

Singh also said that allegations of being supported by the Congress or the AAP only makes him feel proud. “I can only take these allegations positively when people say we are fielded by the Congress. But they are not understanding that it has become an organic movement after conceiving it, it has been developed by people now.”

“We have got calls from several non-BJP parties saying let us help you manage this movement. But we have said no, because that is our unique selling point — that we are novices and are trying to spread awareness,” he said.

Congress’ social media cell has denied any involvement in the management of the campaign. “Whenever there is a hashtag that’s trending, our ecosystem picks it up and starts tweeting using those hashtags because we stand by this issue. We do the same when there’s any issue that the party is standing by. That’s why leaders have been tweeting on it. Congress has not ideated or executed it,” said Saral Patel, national convenor, Congress social media cell.