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When Modi Hai Toh Mumkin Hai dropped on September 21 — celebrating Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “vision”— it had all the makings of a blockbuster: Bollywood faces (Varun Dhawan, Rajkummar Rao, Arshad Warsi, Vikrant Massey), glossy visuals of highways and temples, and producer Meet Bros’  trademark pop beats. This is the same brother-duo who gave us "Baby Doll".

Weeks after the song’s release, it’s all over my feed, in its various forms. The song has become an earworm and spawned numerous memes.

Instagram reels paired the song's upbeat chorus with cratered roads. YouTube videos set it to traffic jams and waterlogging. The line meant to celebrate progress became shorthand for "look at this mess."

The song itself—lyrics by Nadaan, vocals by Meet Bros alongside Adarsh Shukla and Divya Bhatt, released under T-Series—is essentially a repackaged version of the BJP's 2019 election campaign. 

Remember "Modi hai to Mumkin hai"? In 2019, the phrase was the BJP's shorthand for Modi's leadership—the idea that the impossible becomes possible. It dominated rallies, campaigns, and social media.

But that version didn't have bold graphics, bright fonts, or Bollywood actors.

This time, Manmeet Singh and Harmeet Singh, the brothers from Gwalior, cranked it up several notches.

A little about the producer brothers: When they are not making catchy Bollywood tunes, they talk about “indian culture” on social media. Their relationship with PM Modi goes back to at least 2023, when they composed the Navratri Garba anthem Maadi, based on a poem written by Modi himself. In interviews, they had said that the Prime Minister was personally involved—making lyrical edits, approving the final composition. Perhaps that is what got the musicians who composed ‘Chittiyaan Kalaiyaan’ (fair wrists) the title of Cultural Ambassadors for the Africa India Economic Foundation.

They have also composed the music for the soon-to-be-released biopic on Yogi Adityanath.

Back to the song: Within days of release, the “Modi…mumkin” song reportedly accumulated over 100,000 dislikes on YouTube, which grew to over 300,000. The number became a focal point for political debate.

Congress leader Supriya Shrinate called out the ‘dislikes’ as proof of public disapproval. Amit Malviya, head of the BJP IT cell, shot back on X: "In its desperation, the Congress has now resorted to using fake screenshots." He reminded his audience that YouTube stopped displaying dislike counts in 2021.

Here's the thing: despite YouTube hiding dislike counts publicly, third-party browser extensions and analytics tools (like "Return YouTube Dislike") estimate numbers by collecting data from user databases and feedback patterns. My colleague Anmol tracked them. The numbers were real.

Digital India Vs Digital Reality

But there's more to the irony than YouTube dislikes.

Between zoomed-in shots of Modi's face, temple visits, and railway speed boasting, there's a few-second clip showing a collage of people using UPI on their phones. The song praises "Digital India" and boasts about a future-looking government.

But Digital India is a lot more than UPI.

Incidentally, the day this song was released, I was in Jharkhand discovering that the Modi government's latest ambitious digitisation project—billed as "One Nation, One Student ID"—has collided with the messy reality of India's earlier digital identity scheme, Aadhaar.

I wrote about it on Decode.

The reality of digital India is a bureaucratic labyrinth where a single misplaced letter, a placeholder birthday, or a typo made years ago by an overworked teacher can derail a child's education. 

In the anthem’s world, roads gleam, and India becomes a superpower. In the real world, parents queue up to change their kids' names according to what officials hear. Systems crash and biometrics fail.

This is one of the latest cases of bureaucratic harassment:

And whether those YouTube ‘dislike’ numbers are right or not, the gap between "Modi Hai Toh Mumkin Hai" and "Please Try Again" is where most Indians now live.

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