In Tulsi, a village in central India, social media has sparked an economic and social revolution. It's a microcosm of YouTube's effect on the world.

As villagers head into the fields of Tulsi, a village outside Raipur in central India, on a muggy September morning, 32-year-old YouTuber Jai Varma asks a group of women to join him for his latest video. They gather around him – adjusting their sarees and sharing a quick word and a smile.

Varma places an elderly woman on a plastic chair, asks another to touch her feet and a third to serve water, staging a scene of a rural village festival for fans who will enjoy his content from cities and countries thousands of kilometres away. The women, familiar with this kind of work, are happy to oblige. Varma captures the moment, and they return to their farmwork.

A few hundred metres away, another group is busy setting up their own production. One holds up a mobile phone, filming as 26-year-old Rajesh Diwar moves to the rhythm of a hip-hop track, his hands and body animated in the expressive style of a seasoned performer.

Tulsi is like any other Indian village. The small outpost in the central state of Chhattisgarh is home to one-storey houses and partially paved roads. A water storage tank peers out above the buildings, overseeing the town. Banyan trees with concrete bases serve as gathering spots. But what sets Tulsi apart is its distinction as India's "YouTube Village".

Some 4,000 people live in Tulsi, and reports suggest more than 1,000 of them work on YouTube in some capacity. Walk around the village itself and it's hard to find someone who hasn't appeared in one of the many videos being filmed there.

The money that YouTube brings has transformed the local economy, locals say, and beyond financial benefits, the social media platform has become an instrument for equality and social change. The residents who've launched successful YouTube channels and found new streams of income include a number of women who previously had few opportunities for advancement in this rural setting. Under the banyan trees, conversations have turned to technology and the internet.

February 2025 marks the 20th anniversary of YouTube. Approximately 2.5 billion people use the platform per month by some estimates, and India is one of YouTube's biggest markets by far. Over the decades, YouTube has changed not only the web but the entire way we think about creating and consuming human culture. In a way, Tulsi village is a microcosm of YouTube's effect on the world itself, where for some, their entire lives revolve around online videos.

"It is keeping the children away from bad habits and crime," says Netram Yadav, 49, a farmer in Tulsi and one of the many admirers of the village's burgeoning social media scene. "These content creators have made everyone in the village proud for what they have been able to achieve and do."

Tulsi's Youtube transformation started back in 2018, when Varma and his friend Gyanendra Shukla launched a YouTube channel called Being Chhattisgarhiya."We were not content with our routine lives, and wanted to do something that would allow our creative juices to flow," Varma says.

Their third video, about a young couple being harassed on Valentines Day by members of Bajrang Dal, a right wing Hindu nationalist group, was the first to go viral. The mix of comedy and social commentary struck a chord. “The video was humorous, but it also had a message, and we left it open for viewers to interpret," Varma says.

The duo gained tens of thousands of followers in a matter of months, a number that's since spread to over 125,000 subscribers and a cumulative viewership exceeding 260 million. Their families' concerns about dedicating........

© BBC