.jpg.image.160.84.jpg)
.jpg.image.160.84.jpg)
Rare insights into the presidential style poll campaign that catapulted Modi as PM make Ullekh N.P.'s War Room a must-read.The shock and awe of Narendra Modi’s victory over the Congress may not be too hot to read about any more – as the share market lingo goes, it has already been priced in and what lies ahead matters more.
Still, understanding the nuts and bolts of the presidential style campaign that the BJP under Modi’s leadership unleashed, its driving forces, and genesis are important to understand. Not only because Modi has changed electioneering in India, perhaps, forever but also because Delhi will belong to those who can successfully replicate it.
A read of ‘War Room - The people, tactics and the technology behind Narendra Modi's 2014 win’ will show you why replicating such a campaign is easier said than done. Ullekh N.P. does a brilliant job, pulling in and arraying before the reader a raft of factors that converged to craft the Modi win.
None of this may be new, but Ullekh has drawn them out, warp and woof, and shown how they wove and interwove to stitch together the biggest mandate for any PM in three decades. He shows how everything from the deep anger and disappointment against the Congress all over the country to the bubbling enthusiasm of young tech-and social media-savvy professionals were channelled together.
And all these, by a man whose determination to achieve his vision were forged in, first, the heat of political opponents within his own party and, later, by a so-called secular media sold out to a party that ruled India for decades on the “after me the deluge” threat.
Modi took the tide at the flood, but before that having a vision, he had a plan to achieve that vision, and he had a great executioner for that plan in Amit Shah.
The writer does a splendid job of putting the pieces of the puzzle together, and laying out in granular detail how each of these forces worked their way through India – village by village, town by town, city by city – for Modi’s victory.
For instance, the planning and data crunching that went into organising the hugely effective 'Chai pe Charcha', among other initiatives, is mind-blowing stuff. He also shows the power of data over old-fashioned poll campaigns that blindly relied on leaders, some who may be out of touch with the reality in a constituency but have managed to make their voice count in the party.
It is precisely this type of leaders that did the Congress in. There are many such in the BJP too, but Modi and Shah decided to go with data-mined insights rather than the opinions of dubious leaders.
Their vindication came when Citizens for Accountable Governance (CAG) that worked behind the Modi campaign predicted Shahnawaz Hussain’s electoral defeat in Bhagalpur, Bihar, and Poonam Mahajan’s huge victory in North-Central Mumbai, although BJP leaders in both constituencies insisted on a different outcome.
There is a crucial difference here in how the data was obtained. It was not done through sweeping in stats from various sources, but through proper field work. This excerpt from the book shows an instance of how this was done:
Another big task CAG undertook was a concept called ‘social listening’ in each of the forty Lok Sabha constituencies in Bihar. They sent trained people to track each caste’s political affinity in each PC (parliamentary constituency). These volunteers would visit different tea stalls, talk to local people and make a structured report. “That data was very crucial and useful in Bihar because elections were caste-based in the state much more than anywhere else,” says a BJP leader. “I think the contribution of this feedback to poll wins in Bihar was significant,” BJP’s Dharmendra Pradhan, now Union Minister, had told me just after the results came out. He was the central leader in charge of the state where the BJP alliance won thirty-one of the forty seats.
The same mentality to let the experts do their work and not allow egos of leaders erode the impact of that work comes through in the insights shared by ad veteran Piyush Pandey.
Without this new approach, the BJP victory may not have been so sweeping and complete. Ullekh’s success lies in bringing out those insights and placing them one by one before the reader, and gently but steadily guiding him towards the conclusions to be drawn.
Ullekh - the author
The writer draws on his extensive knowledge of political history and uses it in the right dose, wherever possible. Not surprising, as he comes from an illustrious political family in Kannur in north Kerala, where the so-called CPM party villages continue to exist. Ullekh is the son of the late Pattiam Gopalan, a former Lok Sabha MP from Kerala, one of the most erudite CPM leaders who passed away in 1978 at a young age.
The writer had a childhood steeped in politics, studied at the Kazhakoottam Sainik School in Thiruvananthapuram, and has had an inside view of the life and functioning of several senior politicians. Ullekh, who is well versed in Delhi politics, also uses his expertise as a journalist to contextualise the narrative.
But the book, in some parts, reads more like a text book of India’s recent political history. Foreign students of Indian politics will find that invaluable but for Indian readers, not much separated in time from the events it deals with, that may come across as a tad tedious.
Perhaps, it was unavoidable, considering the book’s subject. But then, it is a valuable addition to India’s political history, one that captures well the cause of inflection of a line of history, and one that every student of India’s political history must read.
The subject of the book is also more about a “war effort” than a “war room.” The real war rooms that the BJP operated, the generals and staff officers, who manned it and directed it, do not come across in as much detail as the title suggests.
For instance, while the main characters of the effort are identified, the books does not show clearly how they worked together or who strung together their efforts in the BJP’s war room; the writer has chosen not to flesh out in detail the men and women who coordinated everything so meticulously in the fog of war, how their days started and unfolded in the war room as the campaign progressed - except perhaps in fits and starts.
In short, there is a lot of reportage here, but very little New Journalism, which could have taken the book to a whole new level for the informed Indian reader, who is broadly familiar with the Modi campaign. Again, perhaps, one is expecting too much here; trying that could have made the book ponderous.
While the writer has been hugely successful in setting across to the reader a clear profile picture of Amit Shah, introduced in the book as the Shah of UP for his role in crafting the party’s success in the state, he has not been able to do the same with Modi.
True, Modi is not easily accessible, but the victory was Modi’s and a book on his war room needs some insight into how he directed it and interacted with his staff officers.
Still there are enough insights here that make the book valuable. For instance, you read about how a chart sheet was prepared for Modi before each rally, how the rally speech was immediately mined for the social media audience, and even more interesting, how Modi himself suggested a “don’t say” category in his briefing chart. The Congress and the ‘Shehzada’ stood no chance against this man and his war machine.
The War Room is a must-read for anyone who wants to have a deep knowledge on how a legend of an electoral victory was crafted.
Disclaimer
The comments posted here/below/in the given space are not on behalf of Manorama. The person posting the comment will be in sole ownership of its responsibility. According to the central government's IT rules, obscene or offensive statement made against a person, religion, community or nation is a punishable offense, and legal action would be taken against people who indulge in such activities.