Modi's gen Z reels miss mark

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is back on the photo and short-form video-sharing platform Instagram, which is popular among the youth. The honourable Prime Minister is evidently determined to crack the code and win over the disgruntled youth he lost to the Cockroach Janata Party and other discontents of democracy. 

He and his team appear to be quick learners. In the latest Instagram Reel, the 75-year-old Prime Minister has cleverly used National Handloom Day to reach out to the Instagram audience.

He went so far as to urge people to make Reels, suggesting the popular GRWM format. In the "Get Ready With Me Reels”, users film themselves dressing up or wearing a garment.

The youth may not have forgotten how many cussed right-wing handles criticised young women who made GRWM Reels as a vulgar show of skin.
When it comes to outreach through social media, it is well-known that the BJP takes it very seriously.

This is evident in the near-total dominance it achieved on platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook and X. The party’s well-funded IT Cell and its army of volunteers ran orchestrated campaigns to build the PM’s image of invincibility and infallibility, alongside smear campaigns to target political opponents. Recent youth protests, however, dismantled the former and defanged the latter.

In the past, the party neglected Instagram, which it thought was apolitical and frivolous. Moreover, the content seemed antithetical to its idea of "Indian ethos" and “sanskari values”. After a rude awakening, the party is now on overdrive to fix it. Even the RSS patriarch recently held a conciliatory public interaction with the youth.

The right-wing ecosystem at large lacks the "coolness quotient" that is critical to succeed on Instagram. BJP’s “boomer uncle” type leaders are unlikely to appeal to Instagram youth, who are beginning to see Rahul Gandhi in a new, positive light.

The harder these leaders try, the more contrived and ludicrous they look. For instance, their recent Reels come across as “cringe” — something that is uncool and embarrassing.

The pro-BJP, Bajrang Dal-type youth are also wired differently from their politically sensitised and socially progressive peers. Dancing in front of mosques to Hindu Pop offline and having a perpetually angry, hateful and regressive persona online can be repulsive to many. Their crude, abusive political rhetoric and vile, misogynistic abuse are not particularly endearing to younger voters who appreciate irreverent, humorous and meme-driven communication. Moreover, there is a qualitative difference between targeted personal abuse and the youth movement's political profanity against the system. The latter is used to oppose fear and subvert a rigid and oppressive political grammar.

The larger issue is that the right wing is locked in a cultural war with freedom- and fun-loving, idealistic youth who are opposed to its authoritarian impulses and governance failures. The youth find these “sanskari values” regressive in content and hypocritical in practice. Women in particular, who took to the streets in a big way, find themselves at odds with restrictive moral and cultural policing. The BJP’s centralised, top-down communication style worked on WhatsApp and Facebook with older generations. However, its overall lack of aesthetics and uncool content is not going to vibe with the Instagram generation.