Reelpolitik : How Marathi social media influencers are riding the election wave

Marathi content creators use songs, memes, PSA-style posts, and more often than not, humour to talk about the political activity underway in Maharashtra

The Instagram reel shows a middle-aged woman in nightwear, with a notebook and pen. She appears frustrated – something has slipped from her memory. She’s trying to remember the candidates representing her Lok Sabha constituency. She can’t recall the parties in the running. Needless to say, matching a politician’s face to party symbol is a tall order. The reel is funny – as amusing as the alphabet soup of factions contesting elections in Maharashtra; two NCPs, two Senas, BJP, INC, VBA. She is confounded.

Neha Thombre collaborated with the EC to create voter awareness. Picture Courtesy: Neha Thombre

The woman is Thombre bai. She speaks in the Varhadi dialect, native to Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region. She is a creation of Neha Thombre, a micro influencer from Nagpur, who’s among several Marathi social media influencers who’ve turned the argot of the medium to create content specific to the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.

They use songs, memes, PSA-style posts, and more often than not, humour to talk about the feverish political activity underway in Maharashtra.

Sarang Sathaye, co-founder of BhaDiPa (Bhartiya Digital Party), is among those who uses gags as his mainstay. In a sort of John Oliverish fashion of satire, he addresses questions like: What is the actual job description of an MLA? What sits in voters’ minds? His content is part of VishayKhol, a separate YT channel started by BhaDiPa.

“The MLA topic is one of the many episodes where Sarang talks about civic or any other issues that frustrate him and picks it apart,” explains Paula McGlynn, CEO and co-founder, BhaDiPa. VishayKhol has 126K followers on Insta, 343K followers on YouTube and 226K followers on FB.

Thombre (31) too uses humour. She has a 1.25K following on Instagram and nearly one lakh followers on YouTube and Facebook. But unlike many of her cohorts, she actively works with state machinery to achieve her ends. She collaborated with the Election Commission (EC) about 10 months ago. “I was approached by political candidates to do content for them but I didn’t want to be associated with anyone. When EC approached me to create awareness about voting, I readily agreed as it was a safe space,” she says.

Like Thombre, Vishnu Manohar (53), a Nagpur-based celebrity chef, has also collaborated with EC to encourage people to come out and vote. Earlier this month, Manohar, who owns restaurants in Nagpur and the US, made a 15 foot x 5 foot cake to encourage first time voters to head for the polling booth.

Although the chef maintains that his content is neutral, he has posted a couple of videos of a public gudi padwa celebration where he was a guest along with BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis. “I am not trying to promote any political party. I have welcomed leaders from all the parties in my restaurant. In fact, during an event of Vikas Thakre (the Congress candidate who is contesting against BJP’s Nitin Gadkari) I provided water. Everyone is smart and can make up their mind. All I want to say is: ‘don’t take it casually. Vote karo’,” he says. Incidentally, just before becoming the district icon, Manohar was asked by EC officials to take down a post where he had praised Gadkari’s work.

For the EC, micro influencers serve a valuable purpose. “In non-metro cities, many of the content creators come from lower socio-economic background and they speak in a colloquial way that is more relatable and impactful,” says Ayush Prasad, district election officer, Jalgaon. Besides wanting to do something for their community, Prasad says that working with EC on voter awareness drive also helps them get visibility with the administrative authority, which in turn increases their social weight with the community.

While the content creators associated with EC have to adhere to putting out neutral content, there are those who are not averse to doing promotion for any political candidate.

In the last few weeks, Nanded-based content creator Kalpana Khansole (29) has put out two videos to promote Congress and BJP candidates. Captioned ‘shejari vs shejari’, the first video caricatures a middle-class housewife, who complains to her neighbour about inflation. She then states how the Congress candidate Vasantrao Chavan will help solve the problem. The other performance, delivered in a Nandedi accent, shows a housewife talking to a neighbour praising the development she’s seen in her town, and plugs BJP candidate Pratap Chikhalikar.

“I did Congress and BJP videos as they are my relatives. But the posts don’t represent my political view. Also, I have not taken money from either of them. I am a content creator and whichever political candidate comes to me I will do promotion for them. Ultimately, people can make up their own opinion,” she says.

In some cases, the creators have put out content that unintentionally feature a political leader. Sanket Patil, a food and lifestyle blogger from Pune, posted a reel from an event, organised by Punit Balan Group for content creators in Pune. The chief guest of the event was Murlidhar Mohol, the BJP candidate from the city. Balan, a well-known entrepreneur, has collaborated with Mohol, when he was Pune’s Mayor, for various public outreach activities. Was it a promotion reel? Patil emphasises that he made sure the tone was non-political. “My Insta page is related to Pune city travel and food. I don’t want to dilute it by promoting any political candidate,” says Patil, who has close to 128K followers on Instagram.

Similarly, Pune-based creator Rucha Apte’s interview with BJP veteran Madhav Bhandari, she insists, is just a coincidence. Bhandari was her first guest in her newly launched Rucha Apte podcast on YouTube. “Some of my friends, who are radical about their political positions, asked why I had interviewed him. But my interview was not related to current politics. It was about his personal journey as a politician,” says Apte, who is friends with Bhandari’s daughter-in-law.

But party media planners are of the view that content by influencers who produce lifestyle-related material won’t quite work. “I have seen a big shift in these elections with the rise of micro content creators. Each political party is trying to capitalise on their reach,” says Vishal Muttemwar, who heads the social media strategy for Maharashtra Congress

According to him, content related to the election that is gaining traction is mostly created by YouTube journalists, given that they record the opinions of people. “It’s spontaneous and gains traction organically. Food or travel bloggers putting out political posts, kaun unko seriously lega,” he asks. In fact, the state Congress has been piggybacking on the content of YouTube journalists and has also been sending its own volunteers on the ground to capture opinions of people on the streets. “We don’t have the budget that BJP does. In a limited budget we have to make do. So, we relied on our own volunteers on ground, who have become content creators and they catch hold of housewives, farmers, labourers and get them to speak about their concerns,” he says.

State BJP and NCP spokespersons were unavailable for comment.