NEW DELHI: # “Amazing transition from Beti Bachao to Beta Bachao’’# ‘’We finally found the only beneficiary of Demonetisation. It's not the RBI, the poor or the farmers. It's the Shahin-Shah of Demo. Jai Amit’’# PM Modi 's takeaway from #demonetisationdisaster: It don't matter if you're black or white. #JanKiBaat (sic)The political barbs are flying thick and fast and coming from the most unexpected quarters — the Twitter handles of the Congress party @INCIndia and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi @OfficeofRG.After a lackadaisical performance at both the hustings and in the virtual space, the grand old party seems to have shaken out of its slumber to rejig its communication strategy.The result is palpable: the party handle has increased its followers from 20 lakh to 27 lakh since May, while Rahul Gandhi’s followers have increased from 24.93 lakh to 37 lakh since July.The increase may be significant but pales in comparison to BJP and its president Amit Shah ’s twitter handles that have about 70 lakh followers each. And yet it is a start.Whether it is demonetisation, allegations of corruption, Gujarat’s development model, the party and its leader are on an overdrive.Congress communications chief Randeep Surjewala attributes this change to Gandhi’s personal engagement on social media."The Congress vice-president’s tweets reflects his thoughts and his personality. His tweets are political satire in 140 words.’’ The party handle, too, has seen a shakedown of sorts. Actor-turned politician Ramya or Divya Spandana took over in May as in-charge of the social media cell.A core group of less than 50 young people—of which 85% are women— who work as content writers, data analytics, videographers, translators, illustrators are now working 24X7 to counter a successful narrative laid down by the BJP—that of a floundering, corrupt party with a disinterested, reluctant leader.Spandana said, “We were putting out a message, but at some point, it wasn’t traveling. On Twitter, the party was reacting slowly to the big issues of the day. There aren’t as many people on Twitter as on Facebook, but it is the place to set the record straight. The content and messaging now is much freer. People are looking at us differently.’’The aim now is to check the fake propaganda. "We are not trying to control the narrative or say ‘vote for us’. We are only trying to tell people there are other perspectives to the idea of India and you must judge for yourself,’’ she says. This translates to quick factual points to counter false statements made by the government or BJP, memes, cartoons, blogs on issues. The most powerful tool in this political battle has been WhatsApp. "You can win or lose an election on WhatsApp,’’ says Spandana."We’ve got party members disseminating messages to their contacts who can then share them forward. It is organic, and sometimes the message goes viral. We don’t want to spam people and suddenly have them discover messages from unknown numbers on their WhatsApp. They’ll just block the number. It works better when you receive it from someone you know,” she says.The party has had some recent successes, like memes and messages in Gujarati with the hashtag #VikasGaandoThayoChe that went viral on Facebook groups and on WhatsApp. The phrase translates in English to “development has gone crazy.” “That was just something one of our workers from Gujarat said on our own internal WhatsApp group. It just took off from there, and went all over the place,” she says.Others include #AintnoCinderella after a BJP leader questioned why Varnika Kundu, a victim of stalking, was out late at night and #AmitShahkiLoot.But making an impact on the digital space is different ballgame to convincing people at the grassroots. Fuel prices, job losses, farmer distress, demonetisation, freedom of speech are issues that have resonated with the common man. ‘’Senior leaders have spread across the country and are travelling to cities to talk about this government’s fake promises. We are meeting people to build the narrative that this PM and government are faltering,’’ Surjewala says.