Meet Sunchika Pandey, the woman behind Mumbai Police and BMC’s viral tweets

Sunchika Pandey’s daily screen time far exceeds that of the average millennial. The 38-year-old confesses that the only time she’s not looking at her phone screen is when she’s sleeping. When I nudge her to check her iPhone for stats, she sounds almost relieved: “It’s 17 hours a day this week, so it’s improved.”

But Pandey is not your average millennial who uses social media to document every minutiae of her life, neither is she driven to it by the all-encompassing quarantine boredom. Endearingly called ‘Twitter madame’, she is credited with giving Mumbai Police, as well as other institutions like BMC, a digital facelift by taking on their social media duties. “It’s not just digital but even communication via their videos or radio. Our job is basically communication through content,” explains Pandey, who runs HAT Media with a team of three content writers and two designers.

As Mumbai Police’s official tweeter-in-chief, Pandey has converted their image from stick-wielding disciplinarians into people’s cops. Even their most ardent fans might not know her, but she plays the arbiter of truth, whose tweets connect people to the police. Short, informative and most often, relatable, through her hands, official institutions that are often viewed as strict and authoritative suddenly seem more amicable and accessible. And in 280 characters or less, she carves for them a personality that is all about saving the world but also having a good time. “Around the end of 2015, when Mumbai Police launched its Twitter handle, there was a clear understanding that this was going to become an online control room where people would come with certain expectations. It was created to be an additional platform for the cops to come closer to people,” says Pandey, who also manages social media for Mumbai’s BMC and the Pune city police.

Laugh but listen

Social media today is nothing short of a popularity contest and for Mumbai Police that acclaim comes by how creatively they harness the dual power of the platform to inform and entertain. On Twitter, their five million followers are accustomed to seeing PSAs masked in humour which oscillates from the smart alec-brand of Amul ads of the ’90s to the cheesy but chuckle-worthy type you’d witness on a church banner. It helps, especially during a pandemic, to keep a cooped-up, screen-dazed audience captive yet informed.

With her friends in the forces, Pandey often brainstorms new approaches to the same problems—drugs, phishing and cyber crime and domestic violence. “From the start, the idea was to do something different. It’s a big step for the police department to come on a public platform, but they didn’t just want to be present on social media for cosmetic value. They wanted to dismiss the fear of the police and show people they were friends who could make them smile.” The decision also showed their willingness to move away from the old structures and hierarchies, and shake up the usual way of doing things—with Twitter, they empowered every netizen to reach out for help with just a simple tag.

Waging war on disinformation and fake news through memes and wordplay, this digitally-savvy account has a fan following not just from Mumbai, but across India. And like any good influencer, its success lies in how it seems to have cracked how people interact socially—using lines from iconic movies and trending shows, it appeals to a zeitgeist that has an appetite for jokes replete with pop culture references and millennial speak.

These days, levity may have taken a backseat in the face of sharing information on new restrictions and guidelines, but their content still remains uplifting, and one that goes beyond the sardonic newsmongering that you cannot escape on Twitter. “When the world is in pain, it’s important to also think about the importance of bringing a smile,” says Pandey, who sees the police department as her co-genius collaborator. In most interviews, she insists that the writing is not just showing off her team’s repertoire but often features clever content made by an army of quick-witted police officers. The viral tweet ‘If you roll, we will weed you out’, to mark Anti-Drugs Awareness Week, showcased former Commissioner of Police Ahmed Javed’s love for wordplay. “We understand that if there's good engagement on our platforms, people understand what's happening, and the communication becomes clear,” she adds.

The messenger

Pandey and team are well aware of social media’s civic impact. When people tweet relentlessly, the Mumbai police make sure no query goes unresolved. In this difficult time when the government is steadily rolling out new campaigns and schedules on the daily, accounts like theirs as well as @MyBMC have become a repository of official information. 

Always up-to-date and feverishly posting about vaccine slots and protocols, while dispelling myths, @MyBMC’s efficient COVID management model even won applause by the Supreme Court recently. For the newly-added vaccine-receiving demographic of 18-44-year-olds, their Twitter has become the dispenser of critical information. “Different platforms serve different needs. For us, Twitter is great for real time interaction. We have trained the team to check messages regularly and reply,” adds Pandey, whose personal account @policewalipublic also shows her amplifying news and furiously responding to inquiries.

The second wave may have brought most professions to a halt or transition once again to work from home, but the police department, just like their Twitter, carry on through the day. “On their account, the conversation is never dormant, it happens 24/7,” adds Pandey. These days she is leading her team on a tight schedule. Like any social conversation, much of the banter online revolves around the pandemic—is there a lockdown? What are the restrictions? Can you buy medicines without being fined? What about groceries? “COVID-19 is not exactly a police subject but we are talking about it constantly because that's the only threat in people's lives right now. The moment we think of deviating from COVID-19, there is news of some new guidelines to share.” 

Call of duty 

A former journalist, Pandey knows the news job too well and uses the same approach to dispense data and information meticulously for the benefit of people. Pandey’s past experience as first a broadcast journalist at NDTV and then as the social media executive for the Aamir Khan-hosted Satyamev Jayate prepared her for this. “I used to think that television was the industry where you spend the longest time at work, but when I got to digital, I realised my work was 24 hours. This is the most hectic work schedule I've had in my entire career,” she says.

Reporting crime in the city, she was already used to spending endless hours in the police stations. Now making videos and tweets for them—a process that can take up anywhere from two minutes to many hours—has also given her insight into the police’s psyche. Their uniform may obscure the idea that they are regular people, but they are just one of us: “Like us, they have families to go to, but to know that they put themselves at risk to do their duty to the people is something we should all realise,” says Pandey, who speaks as fast as she can probably tweet. “It makes you understand that if you want to change the system you have to become a part of it.”

As the pandemic’s ravages increase (only last week, India recorded 4,00,000 daily cases), their work as essential work comes with its own challenges. Last month, Pandey truly understood their role, when a tragedy hit close to home. “I was sitting and assigning hospital beds for those in need when I found out I’d lost my father-in-law to COVID,” she tells me. “After hearing this, I had to first think of how to manage my family while also figuring how I can help others battling for life. It made me closer to understanding what happens to the cops and all the public service people at a time like this. ”

Like most digital entrepreneurs, her work may keep her glued to the screen, but she hasn't ever considered a digital detox: “My detox is when people compliment the policemen, I take it personally,” she says. This also pushes her to move on: “My job offers scope for so many people to ask questions directly on the same platform to the police department. So I’d say our mission is the same—to make things better.”

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