Election 'Commission of IndiaNAME OF THE NEWSPAPER HINDUSTAN TIMES " DATE:

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Thanks to Twitter, I've now learned anew word: Feku. Even as Gujarat chiefminister Narendra Modi addressed

meetings in New Delhi, the first at theFICCI Ladies Organisation and the secondat CNN-IBN's Think India festival, thehashtag, 'Feku' (boaster, teller of tall tales)began trending on the social network site.

Feku came on the heels of anotherhashtag, Pappu (the closest Englishequivalent would be dolt, but feel free tocorrect me) that popped up as Congressvice president Rahul Gandhi spoke to Cll.Neither Modi nor Gandhi have declaredtheir prime ministerial intentions. But thathasn't stopped their supporters - anddetractors - from launching a full-scalewar on social media It's a battle that foundreflection in mainstream media with Fekuv Pappu as flavour of the day.

The Feku-Modi association is beingbeen attributed to a Congress strategy,although the party has not claimed owner-ship. Sanjay Jha ofHamaraCongress.Comtweeted: "Team Congress, your feku wasa stroke of genius." By one account 'Feku'generated 45,000 tweets over 'PappuCll's'40,000 - yes, there are people who keeptrack of this sort of thing.

First-mover advantage on social mediagoes to the BJP. It was the first party to

The stage's virtually setElections in India are not decided by Twitter trends or 'likes' on Facebook

have a website in 1998, leaders like LKAdvani have been blogging since 2008 andNarendra Modi is the first Indian politicianto host a Google Hangout. The event lastSeptember was such a success that thesite crashed due to heavy traffic.

The BJP has a clear-cut 'cyber constitu-ency'. Arvind Gupta who heads the party'scyber cell says 2014 will see12crore first-time voters, ofthese 40 per cent has accessto a mobile or the internet."We've been building ourcyber constituency for fiveyears with genuine follow-ers," he says.

The Congress, by con-trast, is a social media new-bie. Recent moves such asblocking the websites ofjournalists opposed to it or using Section66A to arrest people for Facebook postshave not won it friends. Rahul Gandhi isstill not on Twitter though several of hisparty's ministers like Shashi Tharoor havebeen active for years. More recently, even

the PMO and Planning Commission havejumped in.

But late entrant or not, the Congressseems to be making up for lost time. InKolkata, Narendra Modi complained thatthe PMO account was responding to issuesraised by him in his speech even before itwas over.

Perhaps this awaken-ing has something to dowith social media becom-ing a barometer of middleclass opinion and a toolfor change. The recentstreet protests triggeredoff by the December 16gang rape in Delhi andthe lAC's mass mobilisa-tion on corruption, forinstance, were bolstered

by virtual protests on the internet.But the Pappu/Feku battle points to two

worrying trends. The first is the utter dete-rioration in the level of public discourse.While 140 characters are not exactly con-ducive to in-depth discussion, the virtual

." .

tu tu main main that has emerged over thelast few da)'S has both sidss competing inthe lowest denOminator stakes. Feku isreplaced by Internet Pappus. Abuse passesas comment. And on it goes.

The second is the appropriation ofan .open democratic space by organisedpolitical ~ropaganda The Congress deniesIt has paid and organised SUpport. TheBJP insists its followers are 'genuine'.~egardles~, .a s~ace that held the prom-m.~of partiCipative opinion is now beinghlJ~cked by a simple binary: with us/against us. Subtleties of argument are lost.And those w~o OC~upya middle-ground,Iffipressed With neither alternative faceabuse from both sides. '

With 137 million active internet usersand, a~c?rding to the Internet and Mobilef\ssoclatl?n of India, just 18million TwitterIds,.electlOns in India are not about to bedecided by the trends on Twitter or thenumber of 'likes' on Facebook. But in therun-up ~ 2014 one thing now is clear: It'sa lon~, slippery road downhill all the way,abusive tweet for abusive tweet pejora-tivs for pejorative. No one can possiblywelcome that.

• namita.bhandare@gmaU.com. • Twitter. (!lnamitabhandare

The views expressed by the author are personal

Nirvachan Sadan, Ashoka Road, New Delhi - 110001

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