If 2014 counted as India’s Facebook election and 2019 its WhatsApp one, then 2024 feels like the moment the voter became something closer to a consumer. A thorough study by the Lokniti-Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, which appeared in The Hindu in August 2025, makes clear how the battlefield has moved from dusty rallies to the small screens in people’s hands. Digital advertising has turned into an absolute necessity for shaping voter behaviour.
The figures reveal more than a mere spending gap. They signal the arrival of a new political era, where capital and data have come to rival — and in places nearly eclipse — traditional door-to-door efforts. One sees a sharp strategic divide rooted in the deep financial differences between the parties. The BJP mounted an industrial-scale, micro-targeted saturation drive; the Congress, more limited, relied on a focused, narrative-driven approach.
This change builds directly on India’s longstanding grassroots machinery. The panna pramukh system, pioneered with success in Gujarat and later rolled out in places like Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, and West Bengal, remains the gold standard of ground-level organisation. One dedicated worker takes charge of every thirty to sixty voters, bearing full responsibility for the booth. Each panna samiti keeps regular contact, sorting people into supporters, undecideds, or opponents, then persuading, cajoling, and mobilising as needed.
Yet this model has now been digitally supercharged. The BJP’s SARAL app — Sangathan Reporting and Analysis — had amassed more than 2.9 million downloads from the Google Play Store by January 2024. It gathers remarkably detailed voter information: mobile numbers, addresses, age, gender, religion, caste, parliamentary constituency, voter identity numbers, professional and educational details, even photographs. The party used it to pinpoint booths where support was weakest and concentrate efforts through rallies and tailored campaigns.
Beyond that, the BJP has formalised the blend by appointing WhatsApp Pramukhs and Mann Ki Baat Pramukhs at the booth level to spread messages and keep in touch with scheme beneficiaries. This fusion of old organisational structures with new digital tools marks something of a fresh paradigm in Indian campaigning.
The Volume Chasm: Quantifying the Digital Divide
The Lokniti-CSDS data lays bare a dramatic chasm in advertising volume. On Meta platforms, the BJP launched 41,127 ad campaigns against the Congress’s 1,041 — roughly a 40 to 1 ratio. On Google and YouTube the gap stood at 24 to 1, with the BJP running 225,695 campaigns to the Congress’s 9,251.
Spending, however, tells a more nuanced tale. The BJP’s Google outlay of Rs 56 crore was only about 2.7 times the Congress’s Rs 21 crore. This mismatch between volume and spend reveals the heart of their differing strategies. The BJP relied on low-cost, high-volume ads; on Meta, 65 percent of theirs cost less than Rs 1,000. The aim went beyond mere efficiency. It was about saturating digital spaces and creating that powerful sense of inevitability — the online version of covering every wall with party symbols.
Congress, operating under scarcity, chose fewer but costlier ads. On Meta, 34 percent fell into the high-cost bracket above Rs 1,00,000. On Google the pattern held, with 27 percent budgeted over that threshold while 98 percent of BJP ads stayed well below it. Unable to flood the field, Congress had to be more inventive. To a degree this succeeded: 21 percent of its ads crossed 10 lakh impressions, compared with just 3 percent for the BJP.
Micro-Targeting and the Atomised Voter
The BJP’s effort stood out for its intense micro-targeting. In the critical first phase, 96 percent of its ads were micro-targeted; Congress managed only 32 percent. In essence, the party took its panna pramukh ground game digital, waging what amounted to 543 separate constituency-level contests. Congress, by contrast, fought one broad national campaign.
Platform choices reflected this too. The BJP directed 53 percent of its ads to Instagram alone, reaching younger audiences, while Congress ran 86 percent across both Instagram and Facebook simultaneously. The voter here becomes a consumer — a bundle of data points addressed with custom messages rather than a citizen reached through shared arguments.
Geographically and linguistically the BJP cast a wide net, targeting 35 states and Union Territories with ads in 12 languages. Hindi dominated at around 70 percent, but the rest reached into Odia, Bengali, Kannada, Gujarati, and others. Congress showed a narrower focus, active in only 20 states and Union Territories, with 92 percent of its Google ads in Hindi. BJP ads often drilled down to specific cities, districts, or pin codes. Nationwide generic appeals were rare. Congress, meanwhile, leaned heavily on broad all-India campaigns, with far less local tailoring.
The Data Infrastructure and Privacy Concerns
Underpinning all this sits a vast, lightly regulated data infrastructure. The SARAL app, released for download in early 2023, raised eyebrows over privacy from the outset. Users were asked for extensive personal details right at the start. The app could also log attendance at BJP events, giving the party and its workers considerable oversight. It forms part of a wider pattern where media power grows through technologies shaped around individuals as both data sources and targets.
This sits alongside other tools like the NaMo app for real-time tracking by age, caste, and turnout. Door-to-door drives, festival outreach, missed-call campaigns, and workshops all feed into centralised repositories. Critics, including Congress leaders, have voiced strong concerns, speaking of snooping, surveillance, and the creation of a surveillance state that seeks to control and monetise citizens’ data.
Institutional Capture and Financial Disparity
The BJP’s capacity for such a massive digital push cannot be separated from its hold on economic and institutional resources. Electoral Bonds data, prior to the scheme’s invalidation, showed the party encashing Rs 6,060.5 crore — nearly 48 percent of the total and more than four times Congress’s Rs 1,421.9 crore.
This edge extended even to the rules. During the 48-hour silent period before polling, the BJP out-advertised Congress by 22 to 1 on Google. Violations of the Model Code of Conduct occurred on both sides, though the BJP’s sheer volume produced far more absolute breaches despite a lower violation rate.
A New Political Paradigm and Its Democratic Implications
What emerges is a new paradigm. The BJP built a formidable digital machine of volume, velocity, and granularity. Congress, relying on sharp critiques, often found it hard to break through the carefully constructed bubbles. Political communication has been partly lifted from the public square and grafted onto marketplace logic.
The cost is significant. Strategies that deepen social divisions for electoral gain create a vocabulary of polarisation that can later be turned against the country by outside actors. The 2024 contest leaves a troubling trade-off: short-term gains alongside longer-term vulnerabilities for the nation.
Reclaiming elections as free, collective, conscious choices about our shared future will mean tackling the deep asymmetry in digital capacity, bringing regulation to the data marketplace, ensuring transparency around AI content, and holding platforms to account. In the digital age the panna pramukh has evolved into something of a data broker, AI operator, and micro-targeter. Whether Indian democracy can withstand its own electoral successes remains an open and rather pressing question.
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