New Delhi, India — In an unfurnished flat in a nondescript Ahmedabad neighbourhood in western India, a ۲۲-year-old digital content creator worked through the nights, designing posters and editing videos for a presidential campaign thousands of kilometres away — William Ruto’s ۲۰۲۲ bid for the presidency in Kenya.
Rajan Kumar’s content was not shared by Ruto’s official campaign. Instead, the ۵۰ social media posts he created for $۷ a day were shared on shadow social media accounts that conceal their identity to make coordinated messaging appear independent while backing Ruto’s campaign.
For content, Kumar said he would trim opposing leaders’ speeches or interviews to twist their statements, or create posters with false claims amplifying Ruto’s prospects and popularity ahead of the election.
“If there’s a woman politician, we simply link her to someone to damage her reputation. It’s one of the easiest ways to discredit,” Kumar told Al Jazeera, adding that “all controversial content” is diverted to shadow pages for “extensive distribution”.
Ruto won the ۲۰۲۲ election and became Kenya’s fifth president.
Four years later, as the United States heads into its midterm elections on Tuesday, researchers have found that Indian social media bots and accounts have been shadow-posting videos backing specific campaigns. The New York Times first reported such posts supporting US Democratic politician Haley Stevens ahead of the August ۴ Senate primary in Michigan, which she lost to Abdul El-Sayed, the party’s candidate for the midterm election.
But the US is only the latest theatre of electoral war where politicians are banking on Indian social media mercenaries-for-hire, who have fought shadow election campaigns in several countries in South America and Africa.
Nearly a dozen political consultants in India, who spoke with Al Jazeera for this report, say there are no limits, guardrails, or red lines in such shadow campaigns.
“We are manipulating elections; there is no other way to say it,” said Tushar Giri, a political consultant in New Delhi. “The concept of electoral democracy is so overrated. There is no free will for voters. Everything is manipulated.”
‘Hidden sources of power’
Political consultancies advise politicians and election campaigns on how to win public support and elections. Such specialised private companies selling political persuasion as a service emerged in the US in the ۱۹۳۰s.
With the boom in social media, dirty tricks have spread to online platforms to manipulate and attract voters, especially by running targeted advertising campaigns on Meta and Google platforms to reach millions of voters. Previous reports have found that Russia used similar tactics to influence voters in the US, for instance.
Strategies for dissemination of content deemed too controversial for official accounts during election campaigns vary, ranging from political consultancies taking over a party’s established shadow pages on Meta or Google to making new ones from scratch, rebranding existing pages to suit a campaign’s needs, or opting for pages for hire.
An Al Jazeera investigation in the run-up to India’s ۲۰۲۴ national election revealed a sprawling network of such shadowy pages on Meta and Google products like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube on sale — skirting the platforms’ policies against such misuse of targeted advertisements to influence voters.
Antibot۴Navalny, an anonymous group of disinformation researchers that investigates and exposes coordinated online influence operations, particularly those linked to Russia, told Al Jazeera that it found at least ۲۸ such accounts on X (formerly Twitter) sharing videos supporting Stevens’s campaign in the Democratic primary in Michigan, garnering more than seven million views.
At least ۱۵ of the identified accounts were posting from India, a review by Al Jazeera has found.
Researchers at Clemson University’s Media Forensic Hub have also identified similar tactics being used by for-hire Indian accounts and pages to support Stevens’s campaign against El-Sayed.
Amogh Dhar Sharma, author of Backstage of Democracy — a book on Indian political consultancies’ workings, said politicians like to keep voters’ focus ahead of elections “on things that happen in the public eye”.
“But sometimes the real power is being wielded, completely hidden from the public eye,” Sharma told Al Jazeera, referring to political consultancies. “The way it creates certain, hidden sources of power in a democracy is one of the biggest ethical concerns.”
In India, such political consultancies now make up the backbone of any election campaign, and their work serves as marketing material to lure politicians in other countries.
“We have a proven track record of delivering desired results in a complicated electoral democracy like India, which now attracts foreign campaigns too,” said Giri, the New Delhi-based consultant.
Rules set by Meta, Facebook’s parent firm, disallow users from any “attempt to or successfully sell, buy, or exchange” accounts, or from operating under false or stolen identities. In general, both Meta and Google’s policies require political advertisers to verify their identities and disclose who paid for election advertisements, though specific rules vary from country to country.
But Indian consultants tell Al Jazeera that these community standards are routinely violated.
“These platforms have long pages of such rules, but when you read between the lines, there are several loopholes one can exploit,” said Giri. Premium virtual private networks (VPNs) are the go-to tools for such consultancies when they face restrictions in one geography. Sometimes, changing an account’s country of origin simply does the job, enabling a person sitting in a foreign country to run targeted political advertisements.
Giri recalled meeting representatives of a presidential campaign in Suriname last year, although negotiations ultimately fell through. Sharma, the author, told Al Jazeera that he found Indian consultancies working in Australia and Germany as well during his research. Consultants told Al Jazeera that they have similarly worked on campaigns in India’s neighbouring countries, including Nepal and Sri Lanka.
Kumar, who worked for Ruto’s campaign for the Kenyan presidency in ۲۰۲۲, said he was paid about $۷ a day under a monthly contract and was asked to deliver up to ۱۰۰ creatives on some days, coordinated via groups on Telegram.
He said he never worked directly with any of Ruto’s representatives, and that content creators like him are never informed of the identities of all the individuals involved in the supply chain that leads up to senior officials in a campaign.
“One always needs to be careful and hide footprints nonetheless,” he said. Chats are deleted, and SIM cards are destroyed frequently.
The risks are real.
Two Indian political consultants, Zulfiqar Ahmad Khan and Mohamed Zaid Sami Kidwai, who were working for Ruto’s campaign, went missing in Nairobi in July ۲۰۲۲ ahead of the election. They were found dead in October, allegedly abducted by an elite police unit in Kenya. After winning, Ruto disbanded that unit. Fifteen officers were accused of murder, but in August ۲۰۲۶, Kenya’s High Court terminated those charges after the prosecution requested that the murder investigation be discontinued.
The shadowy nature of the work that consultants like Kumar do extends to payments, several political consultants explained.
“Black money is a pillar of political consultation,” one consultant told Al Jazeera, requesting anonymity, fearing for their safety. “We have companies abroad that hire a person on paper for random work to make payments, but it is just a front to funnel money.”
Several consultancies rely on hawala networks — an informal, trust-based money-transfer system that allows people to send funds across borders through brokers, bypassing conventional banking channels.
At least three consultants identified export-focused businesses in Old Delhi’s sprawling Chandni Chowk market in the national capital territory as one such hub. A consultant who spoke with Al Jazeera for this report on condition of anonymity recalled a dramatic business deal two years ago.
The consultant carried an Indian banknote bearing a specific serial number, which served as a code to identify and collect the payment. “I saw people use ۱۰-rupee notes to collect millions in cash,” they told Al Jazeera. “It was like I’m in a movie.” They refused to disclose the country or campaign that paid for this particular transaction.
‘What are the limits?’
Giri, the consultant, told Al Jazeera that in the last couple of years, India has turned into “a big wholesale market to run these shadow political campaigns”.
“It is like you buy toys from China; similarly, you can manipulate elections anywhere in the world at the cheapest cost in India,” he said.
Author Sharma had a similar analogy to explain the nature of India’s political consultancies.
“This is perhaps an extension of the global outsourcing industry that has been central to India’s economic growth,” Sharma argued. “Just as India became a hub for business-process outsourcing in the ۲۰۰۰s”, the country is now seeing the rise of political consultancies that campaigns can hire to outsource their less transparent operations.
Sharma added that the physical distance of those behind these shadowy social media promotions and the campaigns they work for gives everyone involved “plausible deniability” if operations are revealed.
Giri, the consultant, argued that what makes consultants successful is how far they are willing to go to help a campaign.
“What are the limits? If one agency can execute filthy tricks to manipulate a voter — and think beyond the political party’s own imagination — they are rewarded accordingly,” he said. “The dirtier you can get, the more money and opportunities there are.”
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