Bengal’s traditionally tongue-in-cheek election campaign has got a snazzy digital makeover with AI-generated images, crisp Insta videos, quirky messaging and campy music that appeals to the K-pop generation complementing the old-school wall graffiti and slogans.
As politics embraces technology, parties are realising how complex messages can be delivered simply with a sledgehammer impact.
Referring to the Snake and Ladder game with a twist (see chart on left), a 38-year-old brand-management consultant from Manicktala said: “It is a good concept with a high recall value. It is a hit — or at least widely discussed. Children in the household who don’t understand politics love it. Smart and fun.”
She recalled being floored by Trinamool’s pre-election Unnayaner Panchali campaign in December 2025, which dipped into traditional, lyrical storytelling by women to showcase 15 years of Mamata’s welfare and development achievements.
Trinamool’s widely circulated video campaign — Jodi Ora Ashe (If They Come) — also appears to be resonating with the electorate. It uses AI-crafted animation videos to portray a dystopian future where Bengalis — farmers, students, women — are forced to give up everything they hold dear, from non-vegetarian food to the Nandan cinephile culture.
“This is an exercise in high-stakes JOMO (joy of missing out) — what Bengal does not have to face because the BJP isn’t in power here, set to catchy folk-pop beats designed to mobilise the masses through WhatsApp,” said a Trinamool backroom boy who was instrumental in fine-tuning the campaign.
In Khardaha, Trinamool candidate Devadeep Purohit has melded erudite slickness with grassroots connect. From his Poila Boishakh video lauding Bengal’s pluralistic, liberal spirit to his dance to the beats of Matua drums, from impromptu gully cricket with youths to getting people from all walks of life and from across the world to appeal to the electorate to vote for the Delhi School of Economics and IIM-Calcutta alumnus, local boy Purohit has straddled an eclectic campaign.
“Campaigns as a process have undergone a sea change with the proliferation of IT, smartphones and Internet accessibility.... I had planned to conduct my social media campaign in a way that helps me reach the young minds, especially,” he said.
“The waterbottle was not my idea, but a senior leader’s. It was launched at an Iftar gathering,” added the 51-year-old. “The Poila Boishakh message was essentially an appeal to the people to prevent the BJP from destroying Tagore-Nazrul’s Bengal....
“Because there is perhaps less hardcore politics in what I say or do, there could be a notion that I am attempting to be offbeat or fun or quirky, but these are simple outreach techniques to connect with as many people as possible and tell them the right things,” Purohit said.
Sharadwat Mukhopadhyay, the BJP’s Bidhannagar nominee, said his fish campaign was aimed at demolishing the narrative that the party would ban fish and meat if it came to power in Bengal.
“The chief minister — a serial, habitual liar — has been claiming that the BJP will ban fish and meat if it comes to power here. As a Bengali Hindu boy, I was raised on a diet of maachh-bhaat-dim-mangsho, and from inside the BJP I know how big a lie this is.
“So on my first day of campaign, I bought that fish and carried it throughout as a gesture of protest,” he said.
“...We are a new generation in politics... the roti-kapda-makaan, bijli-sadak-pani that Mamata Banerjee and her bandwagon keep talking about are basics. Under Modiji’s visionary, tech-savvy leadership, we want to take Bengal much further. High-tech, new age, educated... this is the vision for the people of 21st-century urban India, and my campaign has focused on these things,” Mukhopadhyay said.
The CPM’s Baranagar candidate, Sayandeep Mitra, an important part of the party’s new-age campaign, said they were inspired by New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani’s battle against President Donald Trump and the Republican establishment.
“There have been major changes in technology and tastes. A vast number of our voters are now fans of the South Korean boy band BTS, for instance. Their pop culture preferences are very different. We have tried to blend this into the traditional Left culture,” he said.
“Mamdani has been a major inspiration this time, with everything he did while discussing people’s basic needs in the world’s biggest city,” Mitra added. “We are communicating the real issues, which others are sidestepping, in an easy, understandable way. We are receiving a very encouraging response.”
An Alimuddin Street veteran, shown a video of teenagers headbanging to a new-age revolutionary ballad that is part of the CPM campaign, said dryly: “While the need for the new and the fresh cannot be denied, these things have turned the campaign into a season of Bengal’s Got Talent.”
“But these youngsters — such as our Afreen Shilpi Begum of Ballygunge — have also been releasing smart videos, directly addressing the audiences, discussing socioeconomics in an easily understandable way, proving how both the BJP and the TMC are bad for Bengal,” he added. “If these messages, coupled with heavy metal soundtracks for an Instagram audience, make Marx more relatable to the millennial Gen-Z voter, it’s an impressive feat of politico-cultural rebranding.”
Fashion designer and BJP politician Agnimitra Paul was earlier seen pedalling through Asansol Dakshin on a bicycle, a visual rejection of the high-security convoy.
Taking this “common person” theme forward, BJP’s Rama Prasad Giri in Narayangarh has visited local barber shops to give free shaves, while several other candidates have been spotted in cramped kitchens chopping vegetables or scrubbing utensils.
Beyond the funny memes, however, a shadowy world of AI-generated content has also emerged. Deepfake videos and hyper-polarised animations are being weaponised to stoke fear and communal tension. What starts as a lighthearted machh or muri promise often ends in a grim digital landscape of misinformation.