The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may be fine-tuning its digital tools in preparation for the general elections, but Arvind Gupta, national convenor of the BJP's information and technology cell, in an interview with Surabhi Agarwal and Akshat Kaushal, says the party believes this election will not be fought just on the technological platform. Edited excerpts:
The BJP is seen as actively pursuing digital media to attract voters. What is your overall strategy to exploit the digital media?
For us, the first aspect is how we make our party more modern internally. Second, how we can use technology for better co-ordination for reaching out to our volunteers. Third, how we can use technology for campaign purposes. We need huge infrastructure to support the internal working and for outreach. To do this, we have a core team of seven to eight people and three national convenors. Apart from this, there are volunteers, who send us a lot of feedback. We go through this feedback and pick relevant ideas.
What is the profile of these volunteers?
We have volunteers across the board. There are professionals, industrialists, young students, engineers, and even housewives. I have been surprised by the response we have been getting. The distribution in urban centres is higher but people are everywhere.
What is in it for them?
Better governance. The erstwhile system had a problem: that we were not involving common people in decision-making. In this system, if you give time, money and effort to the people, then they feel connected. For instance, people in the villages said they wanted to hear (Gujarat Chief Minister) Narendra Modi, but couldn't do so because they had no electricity or access to the internet. So, we started live streaming of Modi's speeches on mobiles.
Do you see this election being fought on a technological platform?
I don't think so. India holds three types of elections: One, pre-modern elections having door-to-door campaigning. Second, modern elections - with traditional methods of campaigning such as mass rallies. Then there is the post-modern election that involves the internet. In India, all the three are relevant.
People subscribing to the BJP's ideology are often accused of abuse on the internet...
There is no abuse from the BJP. The media creates a view that it is the right wing (which is doing it). This is totally wrong. Go into the history of all these abuses and all of it is very much on the surface (by) anonymous people.
One aspect is fake or fly by night profiles. There are a lot of dirty tricks departments at work. On social media, you need to understand who is what. The BJP has verified accounts so our leaders have verified accounts. Today, making a page for anybody is a five minute (job). So, anything official is linked to the website and verified. Finally, we have social media guidelines. We are the only party which released social media guidelines six months ago. But the BJP does not resort to abuse.
The abuse need not be from the BJP. It could be from BJP subscribers...
I am being very frank about this. This myth is created because of the number of young and educated people who support the right wing are just too high on social media. There is a lot of anonymity and, I think the government is also to blame for this. They come down so heavily on anyone criticising the government that people are taking up all these anonymous handles.
What's your strategy to deal with BJP bashing? You can either retaliate or ignore it…
It depends. If something merits an answer, we give it. There are a lot of trolls and dirty tricks department making a noise just to provoke you; one has to counter facts with facts. We have a small team of volunteers that has expertise in content and research. They do the research and counter misinformation with correct information in real time. There are hundreds of them. We don't even know most of them. We are not controlling any of it. People are self-initiated. You say something and people will dig out facts and give it.
You said the government policies encourage anonymity. What are the BJP's views on the policies around the internet that the UPA has formed or ought to have formed?
It's the other way around. It is not that the government encourages it. We believe that section 66A (of the Information Technology Act) needs to be relooked. It is completely against the basic principles of freedom of speech, and it's very draconian in nature. In some ways it shows the fascist mindset of the government.
The second point is that the government is paying a lot of lip service to issues that are actually of importance to national security, cyber security/crime etc. All these tools are being used to address the wrong issues - political criticism of the government and not the actual issues that face the country. Are we looking at the financial issues being created? Today markets are at a risk because misinformation can spread in a moment. Our national security, digital assets are at risk, there is so much risk out there in terms of cyber crime, cyber security etc.
But there is a fine balance between privacy and surveillance...
I totally agree with you. You don't have to do monitoring and surveillance to understand trends. Trends come from monitoring of open data such as blogs, news articles, etc. I will make a blanket statement that national security is paramount. But under the garb of national security you cannot compromise private and personal data, and that is what the government ends up doing. The government is using this pretext of national security to do a lot of things that are not national security issues such as curbing political criticism. So, let the government put its priorities right.
What are your views on UID? How will you deal with it if you come into power?
The Parliamentary Standing Committee, headed by Yashwant Sinha, has already given the best view on that. We are concerned about the citizenship issue. We are concerned about the federal structure that is being violated with the data gathering. On the other hand, we were the ones, who in our manifesto, proposed a unique identification project. So, we are in favour of using technology for better governance. But the way this project is being executed, we have doubts about it.
Does the BJP, too, support free distribution of laptops?
We believe in empowerment rather than entitlement. So, our policy is: how can we empower by creating skills, instead of just giving out freebies? You have to teach a man how to fish, not just give him fish once in a while.
How do you look at foreign direct investment (FDI) in e-commerce?
It is very inclusive in nature. The government was trying to promote FDI in multi-brand retail, and wanted to give it a shape of a state-specific subject. They banned e-commerce without understanding it. I think we need to look at this anew. E-commerce generates more jobs, it doesn't displace more jobs.
