The Union government’s latest move to rope in India’s top YouTubers to “popularize government’s schemes” has surprised many and been dubbed as a big shift in the communication strategy of the government.  So far, only private companies roped in influencers for marketing purposes, and the public sector largely depends on media and social media platforms to popularize their work.

Setting a new trend, senior Union ministers Rajeev Chandrashekhar, S Jaishankar and Piyush Goyal, among others, recently appeared on YouTube channels of influencers Ranveer Allahbadia and Raj Shamani.

Apart from interviews, on June 23, Piyush Goyal invited over 50 top-performing YouTubers to talk on various issues like popularizing handicrafts, benefits of millets and consumer awareness.

The high-profile interviews that appeared on influencers’ YouTube channels with the tag “Co-presented with MyGov” gathered millions of views but drew the ire of social media users.  Critics and netizens questioned the rationale behind picking influencers to interview senior cabinet ministers. They also wondered about the selection process for the job and asked whether influencers were chosen by a tender process, a norm for government spending.

Allahabadia, who is popular as BeerBiceps and has 5.6 M subscribers on his YouTube 2.5 million on Instagram, and 528,700 on Twitter, interviewed Rajeev Chandrashekhar over ban on PUBG and Tik Tok and Jaishankar on Indian youth and brain drain. He also put out another video “Indira Gandhi’s Untold History” a few days ago which netizens dubbed as political propaganda.

Some netizens also alleged Allahabadia was the one who spoke against the beef ban in 2015.

Raj Shamani, another popular YouTuber with 1M subscribers, has so far put out video interviews with Union minister Nitin Gadkari and Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan. His interview with Vikram Sampath on “Gandhi versus Savarkar” uploaded four weeks ago is being dubbed as the BJP's promotional content.

Unpaid collaboration?

Questions are also being raised about the use of public funds to finance interactions between influencers and senior government functionaries as well as the terms of these interactions.

“Most influencers work on paid assignments and they declare the same along with their videos, posts and podcasts as per rule. However, these interviews were labelled as “co-presented”, though changed later which suggests that it was a paid collaboration,” a marketing executive said.

Apar Gupta, the founding director of Internet Freedom Foundation, wondered about the selection process for influencers as most government purchases are done through tenders or inviting bids.

“This voluntary, unpaid partnership focuses on active public engagement,” Allahabadia and Shamani’s YouTube channels declare as of now.

Response awaited

Allahbadia and Shamani responses were awaited till the time of writing the story.

Allahabadia and his colleague Viraj Sheth however told NewsLaundry that they didn’t receive any payments from the government for the series. They also claimed that their platform will soon invite representatives from other political parties too.