Hyderabad: At around lunchtime Monday, Anuj Gurwara, a professional who dons many hats in the media industry, put out a video message in which he likened the city of Hyderabad to its signature dish, biryani.
In the three-minute video, Gurwara used the complex process of making biryani as a metaphor to explain how so many ingredients come together to give the dish its distinct flavour. “Our Hyderabad city is also like this biryani. It’s a wholesome all-in-one dish…a wholesome all-in-one city. You cannot separate us and govern nor can you maximise our potential. It’s in our nature to live together. That’s the city we are,” he says.
Gurwara’s message for the voters of Telangana: reject hate politics and vote for the party that believes in preserving the “love, harmony and peace that Hyderabad stands for”.
Less than three hours after he posted the video message on X, Telangana minister and Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) working president K.T. Rama Rao (KTR) reposted it with the comment, “Well said Anuj”.
Hum Biryani Hain! ❤️#Hyderabad #Telangana#HumBiryaniHain#TelanganaElections2023 #TelanganaElection2023 #TelanganaElections pic.twitter.com/gRa8DIGPnb
— Anuj Gurwara (@AnujGurwara) November 27, 2023
For KTR, son of two-time Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao (KCR), it was an opportunity to claim the narrative as an endorsement of the kind of inclusive politics espoused by the BRS.
Speaking to ThePrint Tuesday, Anuj Gurwara said he worked on the biryani metaphor for over three years and decided to record the video message Monday. Without naming the BRS, he maintained that the video was not meant as a seal of approval for any one party.
“Unfortunately, we are living in a time where you are labelled as being aligned with a party,” he told ThePrint.
His intention, he said, was apolitical but the video was seen in conjunction with similar content posted by social media influencers — which opposition leaders claimed was not ‘organic content’ but part of the ruling party’s online strategy. For instance, Telugu actress Sreemukhi posted a video on Instagram in the run-up to the assembly polls praising the KCR-led BRS government, which the Congress claimed was surrogate advertising.
ThePrint reached Sreemukhi for comment but had not received a response by the time of publication. This report will be updated if and when a response is received.
“We also approached some of these influencers to ask them to be part of our campaigns but BRS had already bagged their services. Some of them were charging anywhere between Rs 2-3 lakh per post and sometimes as high as Rs 7 lakh,” said a member of the state Congress social media team, requesting anonymity.
Both key players in Telangana — the incumbent BRS and its principal rival, the Congress — have upped their social media game, though there is little to indicate that viral content would convert into votes. Among those roped in by the two parties are social media influencers, YouTubers, Big Boss contestants and those from the comedy show, Jabardast.
The two parties also spared no opportunity to go after each other with memes, videos and songs, as can be seen on their social media handles.
Also Read: Why KCR’s adopted village in Telangana is upset with him
Content wars
On Tuesday, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi met gig workers in Hyderabad, besides groups of sanitation workers and auto-rickshaw drivers. He was also photographed wearing an auto-rickshaw driver’s uniform before taking a ride on a three-wheeler to Jubilee Hills on the final day of campaigning.
Not long after Gandhi wrapped up his engagements in Hyderabad, the Congress’s social media team got to work, processing several gigabytes of footage to churn out byte-sized videos to be shared on social media. These were shared shortly after the party posted a video message on X from former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, for the people of Telangana, which was viewed nearly 3 lakh times in the first hour.
While most other parties in the fray in Telangana have now taken this approach, the Congress has been trying to remain ahead of the competition.
Accompanied by his team, Sunil Kanugolu, the party’s elusive political strategist, has set up camp in Hyderabad ahead of voting Thursday. “From around 3,000 dormant WhatsApp groups, we scaled up to over 50,000 groups within a couple of months,” said one person directly involved with the state Congress social media team.
With social media becoming an effective tool to keep the public from forgetting leaders’ faces and promises, the concept of a ‘social media war room’ has become an essential feature in most election campaigns.
Krishank, a BRS spokesperson part of the party’s social media team, told ThePrint that the party is relying on pro-KCR sentiment, which is why it has not hired a “strategist like the Congress”.
“There is no official or unofficial content…there are a lot of AI images,” he said.
Krishank added that KTR, after he has fulfilled his campaign commitments, spends around four hours each night with the social media team to chalk out a strategy. Over the past few months, the social media-savvy minister also took potshots at the Congress government in Karnataka while reacting to pictures and videos of traffic snarls and flooding in Bengaluru.
Asked about KCR, Krishank said he too is active on Facebook but not so much during the election season.
‘Converting the converted’
Deep in the heart of Hyderabad’s old city is Goshamahal — a BJP bastion which elected T. Raja Singh to the assembly as the party’s sole MLA in the previous assembly elections.
At Singh’s residence cum party office, Shwetha Chandra instructs women over the phone and those sitting in front of her. “Didi, aap ek WhatsApp group banao and logon to add karna start karo,” she says.
(Sister, you make a WhatsApp group and start adding people to it)
Speeches by the BJP MLA, especially those targeting minorities, are often shared on these WhatsApp groups to project him as the sole torchbearer for Hindutva in Muslim-dominated parts of the old city.
“I am part of around 30-40 groups. People ask me for my number and start adding me to various groups,” Chandra, who heads the Golconda unit of the BJP’s youth wing, told ThePrint.
However, despite its robust social media presence in parts of the country, the BJP’s digital footprint in Telangana is limited.
The Congress, on the other hand, trained its guns at BRS, putting out parody videos on corruption and memes targeting KCR. “The content was created after mutual discussion and we were able to sharpen it because all of us were working seamlessly,” said Ajoy Kumar, head of Telangana Congress’s social media wing.
“Karnataka was very good (in terms of response to the party’s social media strategy) but in Telangana, it was an uphill task because in Karnataka the vote difference was 2-3 percent but here, we were starting from the last election at minus 20,” said the former MP.
How effective is this strategy? There is little to indicate that online engagement will convert into votes but all parties are in agreement that not investing enough on social media could damage their electoral prospects. As a state Congress leader put it: “WhatsApp is not the most effective tool. It is essentially converting the converted.”
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)