India elections: Modi’s BJP and opposition put the beat down with hopes hip-hop will sway first-time voters

About 85 million young people will be eligible to vote for the first time in this year’s Indian elections

As home-grown rap music takes the airwaves by storm, could hip-hop help the country’s politicians connect with the younger generation?

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A still from the Bharatiya Janata Party’s 'My first vote to the one, one and only one who has got everything done’. Source: YouTube

Published: 9:00pm, 24 Apr 2019Updated: 12:29pm, 25 Apr 2019

It’s election season in India and the winds of hip-hop are blowing through the country’s political system as parties battle it out to entice some of the nation’s 85 million first-time voters.

With more than half of India’s population under the age of 25, rap has emerged as a universal language that politicians hope to use in their attempts to converse with the younger generation.

Young dancers in neon-coloured trainers and baseball caps remind viewers to vote for Modi in a BJP music video. Source: YouTube

That’s doubly true given the recent increases in campaign spending. Incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spent a whopping US$115 million on its general election campaign in 2014, making it the most expensive in India’s electoral history.

Across all parties, a cumulative US$300 million was spent on a veritable blitz of advertising campaigns that year, with political consultancies and ad agencies trying to reach out to the country’s massive digital audiences.

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This year’s general elections are expected to be even costlier – the most expensive on Earth, in fact, with an estimated US$7 billion being spent on party campaigns, surpassing even the United States, which spent US$6.5 billion on its most recent electoral races.