From February 1 to February 27, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi posted 69 tweets, which were retweeted 9,56,400 times in total, at an average of 13,861 retweets a post. Yet Gandhi’s ostensible popularity on social media failed to win a single seat for the Congress in the recent Surat Municipal Corporation election. The party was dethroned from power in Puducherry last week, as it had also been, earlier, in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh. Out of 11 States that send 21 or more MPs to the Lok Sabha, the Congress is in power on its own in just Rajasthan and is a junior partner in Maharashtra’s coalition government.

It is not surprising that Gandhi’s tweets against Prime Minister Narendra Modi have failed to resurrect the fortunes of the Congress. After all, Gandhi’s 17.6 million followers on Twitter constitute an infinitesimal fraction of India’s 900 million voters. Gandhi’s tweets claim the Modi government is undemocratic, intolerant of free speech, subverts institutions, encourages the politics of hate, favours Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, India’s top business tycoons, and has severely damaged the economy.