

Brash young men in formal wear swarm the Bharatiya Janata Party's HQ at 11, Ashoka Road in Delhi. In a season of election campaigning, they’re the cogs in an intricate machine. The Gujarati techies, transplanted from Ahmedabad to coordinate the party's high-voltage media campaign, report to the uber-geek Vijay Chauthaiwale, molecular biologist and vice president (discovery research) at Torrent Pharmaceuticals. The digital cowboys are led by the suave Silicon Valley-returned Arvind Gupta.



“It's the most integrated campaign ever,” says Gupta, whose social media and Internet TV blitzkrieg has left the Congress floundering. It's certainly the most centralized.



All the elements of the BJP's 2014 ‘Mission Take Red Fort’ – from ticket distribution, strategy, money management, tour schedules, dispute resolution, deal-making, booth management and the digital, broadcast, print and field publicity – are handled by the controversial BJP general secretary and Narendra Modi sidekick-in-chief Amit Shah. Bypassing the traditional party structure, Shah's backops is managed by the likes of Chauthaiwale, a research scientist and ABVP member who is close to RSS luminaries Madan Das Devi and Raj Kumar Bhatia. The fact that he's managed to fly below the radar in an office visited by a couple of hundred mediapersons every day speaks volumes of his discretion. Visible proof of his presence is offered by a black-curtained enclosure in the backyard of the BJP's HQ, from where Modi's 3D appearances are streamed live via leased cables to a hundred locations across the country.



For all his shyness, Chauthaiwale is active on Twitter and counts Narendra Modi and RSS pracharak Ram Madhav among his followers. Not known for mincing words, he once wrote an essay in a Marathi weekly criticizing the RSS for becoming a ‘static organization’ and abandoning the principle of sarveshaam avirodhena (non-opposition to all). While the Indian media has yet to discover Chauthaiwale, he's been interviewed – on Modi and the RSS – by The Guardian and The Atlantic.



As for Shah, until a year ago he was known in Delhi only as the chubby former minister of state for Home in Gujarat, arrested for his alleged role in the 2002 riots. Later, he was famously caricatured in Internet campaigns as the rolypoly spy keeping tabs on Beauty in the ‘Snoopgate’ operation. Now, he is the stuff of media profiles and magazine covers. Open magazine lauds his ‘strategic skills and organisational acumen’ and adds, for good measure, that he is ‘as feared and admired’ as his mentor. It is widely rumoured that Shah actively solicited the publicity.



So where is the rest of the BJP, notably campaign strategist extraordinaire Arun Jaitley? Where is patriarch LK Advani? Where are Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj, firebrand Uma Bharti, the disgruntled Murli Manohar Joshi and once-powerful party manager Ananth Kumar? Where is Nitin Gadkari, the former party chief who so actively campaigned to have Modi declared prime ministerial nominee and was entrusted with drafting the party's vision document?



Party president Rajnath Singh is seen often at Modi's elbow, but all the other high-profile BJP central leaders have been marginalized. Gadkari, whose shenanigans in Maharashtra annoyed his chief rival Gopinath Munde (who complained to Modi), has been confined to Nagpur, where he takes on Congress heavyweight Vilas Muttemwar. Likewise, Jaitley, Ananth Kumar and Joshi face such tough contests that they have been pinned down to their respective constituencies, leaving the larger campaign to Modi's private army.



The campaign is being run in conjunction with the RSS. The genial Suresh ‘Bhaiyyaji’ Joshi, RSS Number 2 and the man in charge of BJP affairs, is supervising election preparations. As reported earlier, the Sangh Parivar is bringing all its human resources to bear on the campaign. In previous elections, RSS interest has been tepid, confined to obliquely suggesting that its cadres work to ensure the success of the BJP. In 2004, for instance, the much-hyped ‘India Shining’ campaign was a BJP-led affair handled by Venkaiah Naidu and Pramod Mahajan – it fell spectacularly flat.



Usually, the BJP organizing secretary is important because he coordinates with the RSS. But current incumbent Ram Lal has been sidelined by Shah, just like the high-profile BJP central leaders. Shah speaks directly to the RSS number 2 and to the senior pracharaks who have been given charge of individual states – such as Krishna Gopal in Uttar Pradesh or V Satish in Karnataka. Pracharaks in each district report on election preparations on a daily basis to the state-in-charge.



The campaign scene in the Congress is eerily like that in the BJP, with the veterans sulking and the leader's chief lieutenant taking over the reins. In fact, if there is one person with more at stake in the 2014 Lok Sabha poll than Rahul Gandhi, it is Jairam Ramesh, Union Minister for Rural Development.



Ramesh is indubitably the point man for the Lok Sabha 2014 Congress campaign. He has been close to the Gandhi scion ever since he joined active politics and owes his rapid rise in the party hierarchy over the last decade to this assiduously cultivated relationship. He is by no means the only Congress veteran in whom Rahul reposes his trust, but the others – notably CP Joshi and Digvijaya Singh – have gradually fallen away and left the stage to Ramesh. Rahul has, in fact, alienated virtually all the party veterans after taking over the reins of the party from Congress president Sonia Gandhi.



Ramesh is not merely chief campaign strategist, but coordinator and advisor as well. He coaches Rahul on media interactions, speeches, attacks and counterattacks, clears his tour schedule and supervises the party's media blitz. Ramesh first shot into promimence after the Congress’ highly successful ‘aam aadmi’ campaign in 2004. He was credited with having coined the slogan ‘Congress ka Haath, Aam Aadmi ke Saath’, which actually emerged from an off-the-cuff remark by Salman Khurshid. (That might explain why Ramesh hasn't come up with anything remotely as catchy this time around.)



The atmospherics in the Congress war room at 99, South Avenue in 2004 – a place where ideas were thrown around, presentations made, papers written, copious beverages drunk and the media corps trooped in and out – are radically different from those at the Gurudwara Rakab Ganj Road office which serves as campaign central this time around. It's all hush-hush and walled in, with the media kept strictly away.



Not surprisingly, Ramesh’s growing clout and penchant for blunt speech has won him more enemies than friends within the party. Many an office-bearer has expressed the hope that Lok Sabha 2014 will prove his Waterloo. To quote a hoary Congressman: “Jairam is the man behind the failure of the current publicity campaign of Congress, as he is the convener.”



Party insiders point out that Jairam decided to award the Congress campaign to Dentsu (and its boutique acquisition, Taproot) over the protests of senior leaders who wanted to go with JWT (which had handled the 2009 campaign). The wisdom of letting Taproot handle the creatives, when its founder Santosh Padhi is a Modi admirer, has been questioned. They hope that Jairam will be judged as he wants everyone else to be: “Performance must replace parikrama (sycophancy).” Rumour has it that Jairam does not see eye to eye with Gandhi family friend Deep Kaul, who has reportedly been asked to keep an eye on the campaign.



If Ramesh has a rival for Rahul's respect, it is Dr G Mohan Gopal, director of the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Contemporary Studies and former vice chancellor of the National Law School of India University in Bangalore. He is Rahul's go-to person on policy. Not having been an active politician, he does not concern himself with party matters but he helps strategize the campaign and structures Rahul's speeches. A former president of the National Students’ Union of India, he's been in charge of its training camps. He's big on social reforms and is left of center – we see that reflected in Rahul's speeches.



The once-powerful Ahmed Patel and his fixer-at-large Rajiv Shukla have faded, if not into obscurity, then at least into the backdrop of the campaign. Even family loyalist Janardhan Dwivedi is palpably disengaged (and disenchanted) and gives advice only when asked for it. Ghulam Nabi Azad and Ambika Soni, who enjoyed Sonia's trust, are contesting (this was Rahul's idea) and have been pinned down to their seats. That is the case with most of the veterans, like Kapil Sibal and Salman Khurshid, who are concentrating on winning their seats and are not involved in the larger campaign.



P Chidambaram, one of the few members of the old guard Rahul actually likes, fell out with him over a ticket from Sivaganga for his son, Karti. Chidambaram had to appeal to Sonia, and the controversial Karti was given the ticket only on her intervention. Thereafter, he has focussed on his son's campaign and is not to be seen in Delhi. Former Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot is reportedly upset with the denial of a ticket to his son.



Digvijaya Singh started by playing a significant role in strategizing and executing the campaign as head of the Congress Communications and Publicity Committee – but has withdrawn himself of late, perhaps because he felt let down by the party high command (which was vague about his son Jaivardhan getting a ticket so he had to file nomination papers from Raghogarh Assembly constituency in Madhya Pradesh pre-emptively before the Congress list was announced, without Form B – which he eventually got – which entitles him to the party symbol. Then, Singh’s son-in-law did not get a ticket from Panchmahal in Gujarat). His media and social media appearances have dropped significantly.



Perhaps the most significant missing link in the Congress campaign has been Manmohan Singh, who has all but vanished after February this year. For an incumbent prime minister to effectively disappear is quite an accomplishment. The fact that he was not seen standing behind Rahul and nodding approval of his heir apparent is seen as a critical shortcoming of the Congress campaign. But Rahul's advisors claimed that featuring the good doctor would recall the UPA2 scams and detract from the ‘change’ focus of the campaign. The trio of whistleblower books (The Accidental Prime Minister by Sanajaya Baru, former media advisor to Manmohan Singh; Crusader or Conspirator: Coalgate and other Truths by the former Coal Secretary PC Parakh and journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta's Gas Wars: Crony Capitalism and the Ambanis) projecting the PM as a weak and willing handmaiden of 10, Janpath may well have proved them right.



Madhusudan Mistry was a key figure until the announcement of the Congress list. As Rahul's chief and most trusted aide, he travelled to every state in the country and came up with a panel of four names for each one of the 543 parliamentary seats. He and Rahul then sat down and prepared a list of nominees which, bizarrely, involved eliminating 60 percent of the sitting Congress MPs. However, the Congress party has a structure and procedures that even party president Sonia Gandhi cannot easily subvert. The result was that once the list went to the party’s Central Election Committee, virtually all the sitting MPs were repeated. Embarrassment ensued when some of the candidates selected via the panel process decamped to the BJP (notably, the Gautambudhnagar nominee Ramesh Chand Tomar, who publicly fell into Modi's arms four days before polling).



How important is Priyanka Gandhi in the Congress scheme of things? While she will inevitably play a significant role in future, her contribution in the current election is limited to campaigning for her family. She intervenes on occasion, but very selectively. For instance, she played a role in the allocation of the Congress ticket from Allahabad to Nand Gopal Gupta ‘Nandu’, a Bahujan Samaj Party turncoat. She also suggested Ajay Rai be fielded against Modi from Varanasi. Before the Rajasthan assembly elections last year, she had intervened to save Gehlot from being replaced by CP Joshi.



The Aam Aadmi Party, like the BJP, has no dearth of techies on board. It runs an effective social media and internet campaign but relies heavily on retro methods – reaching out to voters through door-to-door crusades. The campaign is highly systematic and decentralized, and the team small, with no excess flab and lots of multi-tasking. The key person – other than Arvind Kejriwal – is the Campaign Committee head, Yogendra Yadav. Back in January this year, Yadav-the-psephologist made a presentation to the political affairs committee of AAP, in which he projected 8 percent support for the party in the Lok Sabha elections. It was a question of converting the support into votes, he said.



This the AAP has attempted to do – as a deliberate part of its strategy to (a) highlight differences between established parties, (b) itself cultivate the feel of a participatory campaign and (c) save money – through old-style nukkad meetings and pressing the flesh, usually in teams of two. Party workers are accommodated in the homes of supporters. Campaign materials are solicited through donation where possible – laptops, posters, caps, and so on. Thus, the campaign is deliberately decentralized, as is the fund-raising. The system of feedback is solid and there is scope for trial, error and correction.



The state-level campaign committees are given talking points and broad guidelines, and otherwise left to their own devices. As are the candidates. The central AAP office had raised some Rs 29 crore (after the Delhi Assembly polls) through strictly documented donations – this is doled out as and when required – but candidates do their own fund-raising as well.



Yadav and Kejriwal are in close and constant contact. Yadav kept tabs on Delhi and attended party meetings through conference calls even when he shifted base to his constituency, Gurgaon, for a month. Prashant Bhushan – the legal brain who sets the agenda in terms of the corruption-releated issues taken up by the AAP, from Robert Vadra to Mukesh Ambani – is the fourth corner of the quadrangle that includes Kejriwal, Yadav and Manish Sisodia. All the documents brought out as part of Pol Khol are vetted by him. He is not a mass campaigner in the sense of participating in rallies etc, but is a large part of the AAP brain.



The once-important Somnath Bharti has lost some of his lustre after having come under attack by liberals for his shenanigans at Delhi's Khirki Extension (intemperate statements before and after have not helped him win any friends). This, despite popular support for his crackdown on alleged drug trafficking and the flesh trade in his constituency.



The AAP also has a human resource base of highly educated youngsters and social activists. None of them can be described as more ‘key’ than the other. There's Ashish Talwar, formerly associated with the Congress, Dileep Pandey, the AAP secretary for Delhi, who upped anchor from Hong Kong and shifted to Delhi with family in tow to work for the AAP and Atishi Marlena, a UK-returned social activist.



A typical AAP campaign manager would be, say, young Gopal Mohan – not to be confused with Rahul's favourite pundit – who is credited with scripting Kejriwal's spectacular success in New Delhi (he defeated Sheila Dikshit by over 25,000 votes). The 29-year-old son of a government employee was a PhD student at IIT when he joined the India Against Corruption campaign. He then became a founder-member of the AAP and is part of its national council. His phenomenal dedication to the party resulted in chronic absenteeism from IIT, which asked him to resume his education when he had more time.



In the past week, virtually all of the AAP has descended on Varanasi, to assist their fearless leader in his battle against Modi. And Gopal Mohan is doing what he does best – stretching a tight budget and marshalling several thousands of volunteers to structure a voter outreach programme that covers almost every household in Varanasi.



Bhavdeep Kang has been a journalist for 27 years. She has worked with The Times of India, The Sunday Observer, The Indian Express, The Pioneer, The Telegraph, India Today and Outlook. Today, she writes on politics, agriculture and food policy. Follow her at https://twitter.com/bhavkang

























































































































