Youth Incorporated Magazine

We all have witnessed the power of social media during last general elections. This time is going to be no different.

Have you lately seen high profile twitter handles’ name with the prefix ‘chowkidar’? Were you baffled? You shouldn’t be. Its election time!

Our Prime Minister, Mr.Narendra Modi, on 16th March 2019, launched the ”Main Bhi Chowkidar” (I too am watchman) campaign more popularly known as the ‘Chowkidar Movement’. The main motive of carrying out this campaign is to send across a message of guarding the nation against corruption, dirt and social evil. After the PM announced the launch of this campaign, soon he and Amit Shah, the party president prefixed the word ‘Chowkidar’ to their names. This was then followed by the other union ministers too.

 The campaign was majorly launched on Twitter with the hashtag #MaiBhiChowkidar. It received immense support and is globally trending on Twitter. Modi, along with the launching tweet of the campaign, also shared a video inviting the entire nation to join in and stated that he is undoubtedly the ‘chowkidar’ of the nation but isn’t the only one.

Sources state that this campaign was launched by the BJP to counter the barb by Congress President, Rahul Gandhi that stated ‘Chowkidar Chor Hai’ (Watchman (PM) is a thief) referring to the Rafael deal. Reacting to the newly launched campaign, Rahul Gandhi tweeted ”You can keep trying Mr Modi, but the truth cannot be extinguished. Every Indian is saying it. #ChowkidarChorHai” Adding to this, Mr.Gandhi also left a note stating ” P.S: Do force Sushma Ji to add “Chowkidar” to her handle. It’s looking very bad.”

As a result of this, Shushma Swaraj, external affairs minister, got her Twitter handle’s name changed to ‘Chowkidar Sushma Swaraj’. Not just her, but all the BJP leaders and ministers like Arun Jaitley, finance minister, Piyush Goyal, railway and coal minister, Devendra Fadnavis, Maharashtra Chief Minister to name a few, too have prefixed their name with ‘Chowkidar’.

As per the statistics released by trusted sources, the hashtag #MaiBhiChowkidar has been tweeted 20 lakhs times till now and has received 1680 crore impressions. Calling it the people’s movement, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be addressing and interacting with people from over 500 places across the country, on 31st March 2019. With the campaign becoming popular, it will be quiet intriguing to see how it resonates with the masses.