“Bael Buddhi”- is the new jibe taken by the Congress hitting PM Modi in response to his remarks made indirectly at Rahul Gandhi when he called Rahul Gandhi a Balak Buddhi (Childlike Mind) in his speech last week when the parliamentary session got heated up starting with Rahul Gandhi’s fiery speech, for the first time as the leader of the opposition.
What is meant by Bael Buddhi?
Bael Buddhi is a commonly used slang in Hindi which means a dimwit. In a literal sense, it means one with the brain of an ox/bull i.e. low IQ but is certainly directed at insulting someone using their own exhibition of poor intellectual or common sense.
What is the context of Congress?
This jibe comes as a series of memes shared by the official handle of the Indian National Congress, where they mocked the prime minister with his absurd statements. Check out this article by News 18 for more details. The party highlighted instances where PM Modi claimed to have a photographic memory and shared clips of his other mistakes on stage. If we look at its face value, it may seem just a clap back only until you find out that it is a well-thought-out reactive campaign that the party is aiming to encash. We will unfold it for you to understand in depth.
Congress’s campaign cues
The congress wants to ride on the social media wave that has borne sweet fruits for the party as an opposition and hence is keen on targeting the government with the most effective ways to reach the youth. This is why Congress is heading for expanding its digital footprint. The intention is clear here, to counter PM Modi’s agenda to tarnish the opponent leader’s image by making the people believe of his immaturity.
Rahul’s latest speech and the aggression were not received well by the BJP and they used it as a tool to label Rahul Gandhi a non-serious and irresponsible politician. Hence, the Balak-buddhi tag after “pappu” is again a similar keyword in the political space. To counter this with another keyword, the congress came up with Bael Buddhi, which goes far beyond the childlike mind remark.
Is “Bael Buddhi” working?
Of course, it is. The Congress has strategically put this out through the Youth Congress to push these campaigns aggressively on social media by posting/reposting or sharing it like viral good news. The idea is to tap into youth voters. There are multiple agencies hired to ensure that Congress captures the youth’s attention by planting meticulously chosen narratives to step up the mind game, which has been working pretty well for the past three months. The recent election period data shows significantly rising insights for Congress’s digital presence be it YouTube, X(Twitter) or any other social media platform.
How do we know if it is working?
We might not have a digital analytics setup or resources to measure the success of a social media campaign but our team does hard work to find out what the people’s voice is with the help of a semantic analysis. This is not automated but done manually by understanding and categorizing the meaning of the comments, likes, dislikes and reactions on social media posts made by Congress and supporting handles.
It is easy to draw a line between positive and negative reactions which helps us understand the mood of those users who interact online.
Besides, polls on social media handles of news channels are also a good indicator to check. However, we cannot completely rely on these numbers to interpret the undercurrent and the reason is that many times we have found out that the accounts reacting to these campaigns include a huge number of fake accounts, bots or identities that do not actually exist.
BJP claims that these are bots but inside it knows that bots are here to do the job and they are doing it well.
It is not news for the ruling party though, since it has been making good use of this strategy in the past decade to win over a good majority and a skyrocketing hype for the most popular leader in the world – Narendra Modi.
Are we stooping too low here?
Well, we at ScoopDogDaily are not stooping at all! But the political parties out here, hell yes!
In the Lok Sabha 2024 elections, when the nation witnessed a surprising outcome, we had a ray of hope that a strong opposition would have a positive impact on the ruling government and would result in better outcomes for the nation’s interest since there would be a constant check of the opposition. It seems to happen but not neither for good reasons nor in better ways to be honest.
We were hoping that one would lift the other up, but here, that one has stooped lower than the benchmark set.
Be it Balak Buddhi or Bael Buddhi, we do not feel that this should be the talk of the nation in 2024. It is simply diverting the sensitive issues that are concerning the masses and leaving us with nothing but name-calling. We have mentioned other digs taken by the PM in his speech in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. Check it out here. But the final verdict that we have for you is – It is time to stop!
What do you think of this? Let us know in the comments!
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