A
Muslim shoe seller in Agra
and a ‘saffron clad’ sadhu in Etah, a hub of Lodhs and Yadavs, actually summed
up the differences in content, style and quality of campaign strategies of BJP,
Congress and other parties.
“The
Congress can revive itself in UP provided it has a ‘Amit Shah’ and someone who
is also less seen on television,” remarked shoe-seller Javed Ali. His argument
was in the face of a resurgent BJP onslaught it is the Congress alone which
could fight and stem the rise of the saffron party as two other forces
Samajwadi and BSP were too weak and too small.
However, his regret was Congress
never tried to give a fight. Congress leaders, he says, wanted to fight Narendra Modi with Arvind Kejriwal even as several leaders only thought mere appearance on television could help the Congress.
Agra Shoe-seller Javed Ali |
The decision not to project Rahul Gandhi as
PM-candidate was a blunder to the extent that you were starting a football
match with two goals already scored against you, said Ali.
I
tried to argue with him that the efforts on the part of the Congress leadership
and especially Rahul’s mom was to ‘protect him’. I repeated the same argument
when I spoke on these lines with a motor mechanic in Aligarh .
The day I visited Aligarh , elections were over and so the motor
mechanic Aslam Ayoob Khan sounded more candid. His diagnosis while BJP foot
soldiers interacted intensely since January 2014, no other party cadres were
seen in action till March. “I was trying to follow Modi’s rallies from December
itself. The feedback even I had given BJP team was apparently being referred by
Modi in his speeches. Like he would ask, whether in last 10 years, any
youngster got a job. I am a Muslim and would hate to vote for Modi, but it is
also true, we did not get jobs,” he had said.
Subsequently,
the hermit at Etah with a BJP campaign material around his neck, Sadhu Jaydev
Prakash (see photograph) also spoke at
length of BJP’s campaign style in Etah, Etawah and Hathras regions. “I am a
sadhu but they used me to be their booth worker. We also traveled into remote
villages in ‘Modi-vans’ and spent time with villagers”. Thus, he claims, it was
in one of those villages (Hussainpur) that he first heard, “aaj se hamara
slogan hoga…..acchey din aney waley haen (Good days are coming)….That simply
electrified workers as well as voters”.
Master
Strokes:
#
The slogan ‘acchey din aney waley haen (Good days are coming)’ generated hopes
across the citizenry.
#
Modi’s targeted strategy to appeal to youths whether they got jobs in last 10
years also paid dividends.
#
Party coined different slogans and unlike the general feeling these appealed to
all sections.
# Varanasi was a tactical
endorsement of Hindutva sentiment
#
Booth level planning by Amit Shah’s team helped
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZz
The
hermit admits, Modi and BJP played ‘dream merchants’ at a time when people’s
mood was downslide and everyone even in villages were feeling demoralized.
Thus,
he says, BJP campaign managers also cleverly coined different slogans aimed at
different sections. In retrospect, one can only give credit for such detailed
and meticulous planning to work hard and hours and days of interaction at the
ground zero.
Now,
what is vitally important is Narendra Modi himself and hundreds of his admirers
knew that 2014 general election was not only a mere opportunity, it was the
ONLY opportunity to strike. There would not be a second chance with him. If he
failed to deliver 2014 mandate to party, BJP would not only deny him
permanently another opportunity to be party’s Prime Ministerial candidate yet again,
but perhaps his continuation as Chief Minister of Gujarat would be
unsustainable. Modi was thus never going to let this opportunity go wasted.
Hence
an elaborate and multi-pronged campaign strategy was worked out in details.
Firstly,
the electoral success of Gujarat was always at
the backdrop. In Gujarat , Modi has been an
image of Hindutva, a development man with no non-sense approach in guiding the
bureaucracy and someone associated with the parochial but essential Gujarati
pride.
So
the primary task was to have that ‘image’ planned well at the national scale.
Of course, the Congress-led government of the day in the centre and various
state governments gave ample opportunity to Team Modi to make the maximum of
the given situation.
Narendra Modi,
Amit Shah, Arun Jaitley and BJP president Rajnath Singh spent hours trying to
evolve a concrete and near fool-proof plan for each state, each regions in the
case of large states like UP and Andhra Pradesh and also district and at later
stage booth-level management plans. In October 2013 itself, Modi had underlined
the need of booth-level planning to turn the anti-Congress mood into BJP’s
favour.
Most
of its rivals if not all have clamoured against use of ‘huge corporate funding’
to build up Modi’s image, but none really matched the hard work and meticulous
planning worked out by Team Modi.
So
how the plans were executed? A near free hand was given to Amit Shah and even
party president Rajnath Singh, according to BJP workers, readily played second
fiddle for matters related to Uttar Pradesh. Party insiders say contrary to an
impression created Rajnath Singh was trying to push his fellow caste-leaders
like Jagdambika Pal and Gen (Retd) V K Singh, the leadership had moved only
after due consultations between Rajnath, Amit Shah and Narendra Modi.
For
UP, particularly, after initial round of trial and error strategies; ultimately
the party banked on region/district wise planning. In the process, in western
UP, the party made good use of polarized atmosphere after Muzaffarnagar riots.
About a lakh RSS foot soldiers were fanned across the state and asked to focus
on booth level works. And perhaps our protagonist Sadhu Jaydev Prakash figures
in that list.
Amit Shah and Modi himself collected caste-creed details from
every constituencies and booths. The party played Jat card to the hilt and even
thought it should give a sincere fight against RLD chief and union minister
Ajit Singh. Thus Satyapal Singh, the then Mumbai police commissioner, was
zeroed upon. In Mathura ,
it played ‘Dream girl’ Hema Malini against Jat scion Jayant Chaudhary – another
instance of minute planning, BJP claims.
BJP
also focused on floating voters and tried to address each sections – like
farmers, students, women separately. In public speeches and otherwise, the
party never dwelt at caste or Hindutva issues and rather focused on economic
issues like jobs. This brought in dividends as even the party was able to make
dent among Yadavs (Mulayam’s caste bastion) and Dalits and other OBCs those
were close to Mayawati.
At
the same time, it never gave up Hindutva per se. Our hermit protagonist would
confirm that when he said, “humey toh bataya gaya hae, Ram Mandir banega (we have been
told that Ram temple will be constructed)”.
Selecting
Varanasi for
Modi was only aimed at polarizing Hindu votes especially in eastern UP where
socio-religious sentiment is prevalent strongly.
ends
Muslims in UP seem to have split in a big way, which in the end would benefit the BJP only.
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