Double Standards? Yogi Adityanath Draws Flak For Influencer Incentives While Similar Congress Initiatives Receive Quiet Support

The Yogi Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh (UP) government announced a social media policy to reward influencers for sharing positive stories about the government's schemes and initiatives on their platforms.

Though it is normal for state governments to spend hundreds of crores of rupees on advertisements every year, the UP government is being singled out for sharp criticism.

Akhilesh Yadav, the national president of the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) main rival in UP, the Samajwadi Party (SP), criticised the policy by calling it a form of "bribery" and "corruption" of using taxpayer money for promotion.

YouTuber Dhruv Rathee called it "legalised bribery from taxpayers' money" and called for "public shaming" of any influencer who makes use of this scheme.

Interestingly, Rathee is often seen supporting the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which allocated Rs 557 crore for advertisements and publicity in the financial year 2023-24. This amount, too, was taxpayer money, but Rathee did not express concerns then.

Moreover, the AAP government may be the only government in the country rapped by the Supreme Court for extravagant advertisement spends.

Now, one might argue that traditional advertising is different from the use of social media influencers for advertising.

In that case, let me take you back to June 2023 when Ashok Gehlot announced a similar scheme in Rajasthan.

A few months ahead of the November 2023 assembly election, the then Rajasthan chief minister announced paying social media influencers up to Rs 5 lakh per month depending on the content they post and their following.

This is similar to what the Adityanath government has announced now. YouTubers can earn a maximum of Rs 8 lakh per month, while X, Facebook, and Instagram influencers can make up to Rs 5 lakh, Rs 4 lakh, and Rs 3 lakh per month, respectively.

This decision by the UP government has come after the setback in the 2024 Lok Sabha election. The BJP won 33 seats, down from 62 in 2019, while the SP won 37 of the 80 seats in the state.

When the party reviewed the reasons for its losses, many observers opined that the BJP was trailing behind the INDI Alliance in the social media game. Perhaps this feedback has reached the top, and this policy is an attempt to correct the course.

While the UP government's decision has drawn a lot of flak, there has been radio silence on a similar decision by the Congress-led Karnataka government.

Rolling out the Karnataka Digital Advertising Guidelines 2024, the Siddaramaiah government made social media influencers eligible to get government advertisements in the form of long- and short-form videos, banners, pop-ups, audio, static images, and so on.

Other initiatives by the Karnataka government to control media, like establishing a fact-check unit, are also proceeding without hindrance, while the Supreme Court stayed the Centre's fact-check unit.

Karnataka's fact-check unit completed a trial run of 90 days last month, doing 537 fact-checks and registering at least 18 first information reports, mostly for posting against the Congress party.

This unit started operations 'quietly during the Lok Sabha election', and politics and elections accounted for more than half of its fact-checks, Deccan Herald reported.

One reason why the Karnataka government was allowed to have a fact-check unit while the Centre was not may be that the former outsourced the work to five private companies, while the Centre wanted to do it through the Press Information Bureau, a government nodal agency.

Nonetheless, buoyed by the success of the trial run, the Karnataka government is planning to formalise its fact-check unit, which will be a first-of-its-kind government-run programme, while the swords are out for the UP government.