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2014 The Election That Changed India PDF
2014 The Election That Changed India PDF
2014
The Election That Changed India
Contents
Dedication
Introduction
1. Narendrabhai, the Man from Gujarat
2. Prisoner of a Family Legacy
3. A Government in ICU
4. I Want to Be Prime Minister
5. Battle for the Heartland
6. Kings, Queens and X Factors
7. Multimedia Is the Message
8. The Making of a Wave
Introduction
On a hot, steamy day on the campaign trail in
Varanasi, I was given another reminder of the
enduring attraction of an Indian election. Stopping
for a cool drink at the citys famous Pehelwan
Lassi shop, we asked the owner whom he was
going to vote for. Twirling his luxuriant
moustache, Pehelwan Chacha looked at us. Jo
Baba Jagannath aur dil kahe! (Whatever God
and my heart tell me.) I tried to press him further
Narendra Modi or Arvind Kejriwal? As he
lovingly laced the lassi with sinful dollops of
rabri, he shot back, Dekhiye, sir, vote hamara
hai, aap ko kyon batayein? (The vote is mine,
why should I tell you?)
For more than five decades now, millions of
Indians like Pehelwan Chacha have lined up
across the country to exercise their franchise with
transformation.
Yes, the BJP did get a substantial Hindu vote,
especially in UP and Bihar (see chapter 5 and
appendix 2), but this can be best described as the
result of identity plus politics. The party had a
core Hindutva vote, but to win a national election,
it needed a wider base. In a sense, Modi did a
Tony Blair. Like the former British prime minister
made a struggling Labour party more electable
by discarding its ideological dogmas and creating
New Labour, Modi, too, reinvented the BJP.
This was almost a new, freshly minted BJP
market-friendly, not pushing swadeshi economics.
Governance, not religious politics, became its
distinctive appeal for those Indians who remained
sceptical of the Bajrang DalVHP (Vishwa Hindu
Parishad) foot soldiers. Of the seventy seats where
voter turnout increased by 15 per cent or more, the
BJP and its allies won a staggering sixty-seven.
Modis other great success was in understanding
reporter first, only then a preachy editor or jacketand-tie anchor. As pen-pushers or sound-bite
warriors, we perhaps lack the conceptual base of
academics or the number-crunching skills of
pollsters. But what journalism does provide is the
best seat in the houseyou can meet, observe,
understand all kinds of people you report on. Your
sources share stories and anecdotes that years later
can actually be spun into a long narrative. This
book is built on the edifice which twenty-six years
of journalism have so kindly providedthe
chance to report the politics of this remarkable
country where no two days (at times, no two
hours!) are ever the same.
I am no soothsayer, even though journalists and
editors like to believe they can give you a glimpse
into the future. If you had asked me when I first
met Narendra Modi in 1990 whether hed be the
fifteenth prime minister of India, my answer
would have been firmly in the negative. If you ask
1
Narendrabhai, the Man from Gujarat
traces of narcissism.
The third lasting impression came from Modis
eyes. Sang Kenny Rogers in his hit song The
Gambler: Son, Ive made a life from readin
peoples faces, knowin what the cards were by
the way they held their eyes. In my experience,
those with wide twinkling eyes tend to play the
game of life gently, perhaps lacking the killer
instinct. Modi in those early days smiled and
laughed a lot, but his eyes at times glared almost
unblinkinglystern, cold and distant. They were
the eyes of someone playing for the highest
possible stakes in the gamble of life. His smile
could embrace you, the eyes would intimidate.
The dominant image of that period, though, was
the yatra itself. It wasnt just another roadshow
this was religion on wheels that was transformed
into a political juggernaut. Religion and politics
had created a heady cocktail. Mahajan and Modi
were the impresarios, Advani was the mascot, but
2
Prisoner of a Family Legacy
3
A Government in ICU
corridors of power.
As the prime minister revealed a muscular
refusal to bend, a worried Congress party decided
to send senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad and the
national security adviser M.K. Narayanan to
Chennai to negotiate with the DMK supremo.
Karunanidhi was equally unrelenting. I must
have the right to choose my ministers and
portfolios. Raja comes from a Dalit family, we
cannot remove him. When the negotiators tried to
broach the issue of corruption allegations, the
DMK leader reportedly shot back, Who is the
Congress to talk about corruption? You people
even protected Ottavio Quattrocchi (a reference to
the Italian businessman and Bofors accused who
was close to the Gandhi family)!
Keen not to lose a key ally, the Congress
buckled. With Sonia Gandhi giving the go-ahead,
the prime minister gave up. On 28 May, three
Cabinet ministers of the DMK were sworn in. The
ageing K. Rosaiah.
The meeting went far worse than expected.
When Sonia refused to meet Jagans demands, his
mother is reported to have hit back with, Would
you have said the same thing if it was your son
Rahul in Jagans place? Why is my son being
treated differently? The duo were asked to leave
at once. My mother and I were left feeling
humiliated after all my father had done for the
party, Jagan later told me. Jagan decided there
and then that he would form his own party, YSR
Congress, taking with him a large chunk of
Congress MLAs.
That wasnt the only Andhra blunder. More
bizarrely, home minister Chidambaram made a
sudden midnight announcement on a freezing
winter day in December 2009 that the process of
forming the state of Telangana was being
initiated, an impulsive decision that would
eventually mark the beginning of the end for the
4
I want to Be Prime Minister
but a puppet of the Gandhi family. The 2000strong cheering crowd chanted his name
repeatedly. A political meet had become a show of
strength.
That very day, Sushma Swaraj also spoke. Her
speech, too, was powerful but stateswomanlike, as
she reflected on the need to topple the UPA
government. Her speech was applauded, with L.K.
Advani even likening her oratory to Vajpayee. But
while the television channels aired Modis speech
without any advertising breaks (it would become a
familiar practice over the next twelve months,
causing loss in revenues to news channels!),
Sushma Swarajs speech was shown only
intermittently. In the TRP (television rating point)
war, Modi was already the winner.
He also won another battle that day. Who
amongst the BJPs Generation Next would
succeed the VajpayeeAdvani duo as the face of
the partythe issue had unsettled the BJP ever
The RSS has been often described as an extraconstitutional authority that lies at the apex of the
Sangh Parivar, a brotherhood in saffron. The
RSS claims it is apolitical, that it only acts as an
ideological guide to the BJP. The relationship
between the RSS and the BJP, though, is often
more intricatethe two are umbilically tied by
5
Battle for the Heartland
Chaudhary Charan
Singh.
HindiHindu
Hindustan had defined the politics of the Jan
Sangh and the BJP for years. The only BJP prime
minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, had been the pride
of Lucknow. In a sense, Narendra Modi was
fighting historynot only had no sitting chief
minister been prime minister, no BJP leader from
outside the Indo-Gangetic plain had made it to the
top.
No state had also witnessed the kind of tumult
in the previous two decades as UP had. Stretching
back to the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992
and the rise of Mulayam Singh and Mayawati, UP
had been the cauldron in which the politics of
caste and community were playing out in their
most ugly form through this period. With a
population of nearly 200 millionUP would have
been the worlds sixth largest country if it had
been independentpoor, overpopulated, badly
governed and riddled with socio-political conflict,
conference.
Womens
organizations
were
particularly irate and demanded Modis
resignation and Shahs prosecution. Why doesnt
Amit Shah tell us who the saheb is on whose
behalf he was snooping? asked the National
Commission for Women chairperson, Mamata
Sharma. The Central government promised to
appoint a judicial inquiry but didnt seem to make
much progress. No judge was willing to take up a
politically sensitive case, a senior minister told
me.
Worried about the fallout, the ShahModi duo
acted swiftly. The Gujarat government appointed
its own inquiry commission to look into the case.
The young womans father approached the
Supreme Court and asked the court to restrain the
Centre from ordering a parallel inquiry. The father
even issued a statement, interestingly released
from the BJP office, saying that it was he who had
asked for security for his daughter. Whether that
6
Kings, Queens and X Factors
complete fanboy.
Ashutosh eventually contested the Lok Sabha
elections on an AAP ticket, one of quite a few
journalists to take the bait. Kejriwal had, as Amit
Shah had suggested at Jaitleys lunch, once
offered me the lure of a ticket. We need good
people in politics, you must join us, he said
earnestly. This was not the first time a political
party had suggested that I make the switch. My
response each time was much the same. Thank
you, but no thank you. Happy to observe politics
from a distance. I loved journalism too much to
lose my independence. Besides, I didnt have the
thick skin that netagiri required and was far from
endorsing the Kejriwal brand of non-stop
agitational politics.
Despite the rising support for his party, I never
did believe Kejriwal would form the next
government in Delhi. The day before the Delhi
assembly election results, I was moderating a
comic programme, The Week That Wasnt . Standup comedians Cyrus Broacha and Kunal
Vijayakar would every week lampoon political
figuresSonia, Rahul, Modi, Mamata. No one
was spared (except Bal Thackeray because we
feared the Shiv Sena would then attack our
Mumbai office!).
Then we made the mistake of showing a
Jayalalithaa-like character, with a fun gag on her
wealth and relationship with onetime close friend
Sasikala. It was all meant to be good-humoured,
but Jayalalithaa clearly didnt see the funny side.
We had a legal battle on our hands. I asked a
Chennai-based lawyer to help. Whatever you do,
never mess with Jayalalithaa, was his friendly
advice (incidentally, the case is still being fought
in a Chennai court with our efforts at an out-ofcourt settlement not having succeeded).
Its a lesson many politicians and even wellwishers of the AIADMK leader have learnt over
7
Multimedia Is the Message
business executives like Sunil Alagh, rightleaning columnists Swapan Dasgupta and Ashok
Malik, and new BJP entrants M.J. Akbar and
Hardeep Puri.
With so many influential voices in one room,
there was bound to be some disagreement. Should
the campaign slogan be, as the ad agency was
suggesting, Abki Baar Modi Sarkar, or should it
be Abki Baar Bhajpa Sarkar? Sushma Swaraj
preferred the latter slogan because she felt that the
party must be kept ahead of any personality cult.
She was overruled by the ShahJaitley duo (some
insiders even credit Shah with the original Abki
Baar Modi Sarkar idea). Jaitley pulled out surveys
which showed Modis popularity well above that
of the BJP. This election is presidential, lets keep
it that way, was the overall consensus.
Three weeks later, party president Rajnath
Singh went ahead and tweeted, Time for Change,
Time for BJP, Bahut Hui Mehngai ki Maar, Abki
in a span of ten days. We shot them as black-andwhite commercials with real people speaking in
their local language. We wanted the idea that the
average man on the street was angry to resonate,
says Pandey. Phase one of the campaign had been
unleashed on the nation.
Then came a real brainwave. The World T20
was starting in Bangladesh on 16 March through
to 6 April. Pandey was a cricket addict, having
played Ranji Trophy for Rajasthan. Jaitley had
been involved in cricket administration for years.
Why dont we create a political campaign around
cricket and push it on Star Sports while the Cup is
on, was Pandeys suggestion. In a cricket-crazy
country, it was the perfect pitch.
Pandeys team got to work again. This time,
they came up with a series of animation
commercials that linked politics to cricket. The
first one was a classic. An umpire goes for the toss
with the captains, only to find one captain is
8
The Making of a Wave
pulled-up-by-my-own-bootstraps
achiever
compared with silver spoon-sucking bungalow
babies. Now, an elite Congressman, who
identified himself completely with the Gandhis,
was mocking his tea boy origins. This was too
good a chance to miss.
Prime time on the night of Rahuls best public
speech should have been dominated by the
Congress leaders coming of age moment.
Instead, the BJP got an opportunity to hijack the
debate by targeting Aiyars insulting remark about
their leader. A new narrative snaked out to cut the
ground from under Rahuls feetRahul, the
shehzada (prince) versus Modi, the chaiwallah
(tea boy). In an aspirational, highly socially
competitive India where there is growing rage
against elite and entitled privilege and where
sensitivities on westernized condescension
towards desi mores run high, Mani had just scored
another self-goal for his beleaguered party.
leader.
Chai pe Charcha was the perfect answer to
correct any impression that Modi was not an aam
aadmi. A tea stall where a potential prime
minister sits with his fellow citizens drinking chai
what could be a greater equalizer? There was
always, of course, the subtext of Modi having
grown up in poverty that would also play out.
Team Modi, it appeared, had hit upon another
winning formula. Mani Shankar Aiyars unwise
snobbery had been superbly marketed to win
public sympathy for the so-called social pariah.
Ironically, on the many occasions I had chatted
with Modi, I had never heard him speak about
selling tea at a railway station. In fact, in all his
political campaigns as Gujarat chief minister,
Modi had never referred to his early years in
Vadnagar. His politics had always been fashioned
around the present and the future, not about his
past. A senior Gujarat journalist told me the tea
election campaign. He came out of the two-hourlong meeting convinced that Rahul was totally
out of it. It was just one long crib session. He
kept telling me how he is just a cog in the wheel,
and how difficult the UPA-II government had
made life for the Congress, how he was having
difficulty finding the right people for the party,
the analyst recalls. Rahul apparently even felt that
inflation wouldnt hurt the Congress chances
because only the rich complained about price rise,
the poor had food security. I really dont know
which planet Rahul is living on, the analyst told
me.
Interestingly, Rahul had spoken a very different
language after the partys debacle in the December
2013 assembly elections. Then, he had strode
defiantly to the Congress headquarters and told
the waiting media, I am going to transform the
Congress organization and I will do it in ways you
cannot even imagine. Now, just two months later,
time political guru Digvijaya Singhs son-inlaw, Paranjayadityasinh Parmar, scion of the royal
family of Santrampur in Gujarat, who had been
pushing for a ticket from Gujarat, was also struck
off the final list. It was almost as if the spectre of
looming defeat had pushed Rahul into a selfimposed cocoon of aloofness where he trusted very
few people. We are told that leadership demands
that when the going gets tough, the tough get
goinghere just the opposite was happening, is
how a Congress MP summed up Rahuls plight.
Senior journalist Coomi Kapoor relates a
delightful story which perhaps exemplifies the
widening gap between Rahul and the party.
Apparently, Rahul had come to campaign in
Devgarh Baria in the tribal-dominated Dahod
constituency of southern Gujarat. The party
candidate, Prabha Taviad, was prevented from
sitting on the stage when Rahul was speaking by
the SPG even though she tried to explain to them
9
The Big Fight: Amethi and Varanasi
leader.
Now, in the general elections, the Gujarat
experiment was taken nationwide. While in April,
Modi would do a 3D rally once every three to four
days, in the last stretch, he was doing nearly one a
day. As a result, he was able to touch over 1300
locations, 325 of which were in UP alone. 3D was
also used to reach out to remote places. We even
managed to get to the upper reaches of
Uttarakhand. It was a logistical challenge, but we
did it, says a Team Modi member.
This was quintessential shock and awe
campaigning, Modi-style. Two studios were set up
in Delhi and Gandhinagar for Modis outreach.
A crew of 2500 members handling 125 3D
projector units were involved and more than 7
million people reportedly witnessed the 3D shows
over twelve days. In the 2012 assembly elections,
Modi would appear in 3D in an almost static
position on a flat screen; this time, the technology
10
Its a Tsunami!
Sunday.
Finally, at around 10.30 a.m., the chief minister
called back. Should I be congratulating Indias
next prime minister in advance! was my first
response. I could hear a slight laugh on the other
end. Our big post-poll survey results were to be
out the next evening and Modi was anxious to
know the findings. Kya number de rahe ho,
Rajdeep? (What number are you giving?), he
asked. My sense is our final number will be
anything between 270 and 280, sir, I told him
reassuringly.
Modi didnt seem too pleased. We will reach
300 seatswave hai, wave, he said. I agreed
with him. Yes, I also feel 300 is the likely figure,
you are sweeping north and west India, sir. Yeh
jo Dilli main baithe political pundit hain, inko
kaho studio ke bahar jaaye! (Ask your Delhibased experts to move out of the studio), he
suggested. And then he suddenly broke into
with Pawar.
Some Congressmen were still living in denial.
When I spoke to a Union minister and suggested
that 300 seats for the NDA couldnt be ruled out,
he laughed: You guys will never learn. You got it
wrong in 2004 and 2009, you will be proven
wrong yet again. A New York-based banker
friend had a similar concern. Waiting anxiously
for your exit poll tomorrow night, Rajdeep. I just
hope you guys wont do a 2004 on us!
Ah, 2004! The election that had virtually buried
the science of psephology, or poll forecasting. No
one had predicted that Vajpayee and Shining India
would lose power and the Congress would form a
coalition government. Frankly, by the last phase
even then, there were signs that the NDA was on
the decline, but no one wanted to stick their neck
out and actually predict a Vajpayee defeat. Two
states in particularAndhra and Tamil Nadu
had swayed that verdict. This time, the locus of
will take ten years, not very long. As the everfaithful crowd in their Modi caps cheered him on
and screamed, Modi, Modi, the showman was in
full form. Achhe Din, he said loudly. The nearhysterical crowd bellowed back, Aa Gaye!
A little after 8.30 p.m., he had his last public
function of the day, and as it turned out, as chief
minister tooa speech to another crowd of
admirers in Ahmedabad. In 1971, Modi had come
to the city to work in the anonymity of his uncles
small canteen before moving up the political
ladder. Now, he was back. This was another
homecoming to remember. His tired voice was
beginning to crack but he was determined to have
a final word. Desh chal pada hai, hamein kadam
milana hai (The country has begun to march
ahead, we have to match its steps).
The mood at the Congress headquarters was in
sharp contrast. The party had put up small tents
with coolers for journalists to protect them from
Epilogue
Narendra Modi was sworn in as Indias
fifteenth prime ministerand the first to be born
after Independenceon 26 May 2014, dressed in
a cream kurta and brown sleeveless jacket. The
swearing-in ceremony had a typica l Modi touch.
Rather than holding it in the stuffy Durbar Hall
which can barely accommodate 500 guests, Modi
chose the grand forecourt of the Rashtrapati
Bhavan for the occasion. Rajpath was lit upit
was a public spectacle played out on live
television. The professional event managers in
Team Modi were told to work closely with the
Rashtrapati Bhavan to ensure that the ceremony
went off flawlessly. Clearly, the new prime
minister wasnt convinced that the government
officials alone would get it right!
In his moment of ultimate triumph, the guest
Appendix 1
2014 Election Result: Some interesting aspects
based on Election Commission of India (ECI)
figures
Out of the 282 seats that the BJP won, in 137 it
secured more than half of the total votes polled;
moreover, in 169 seats the partys vote share
was greater than the vote shares of parties that
finished second, third and fourth put together.
73 per cent or nearly three out of four BJP
victories were by margins of over one lakh
votes.
BJPs success was mainly against the Congress
as nearly three out of five BJP victories were
against it.
For the first time the BJPs national vote share
was greater than that of the Congress. Even in
the national elections held during the Vajpayee
years, the Congress had been ahead of the BJP
Note
ECI figures and CSDS Survey data analysed and
compiled by Researchers at Lokniti, Centre for the
Study of Developing Societies. ECI figures for the
2014 Lok Sabha election accessed and
downloaded from http://eciresults.nic.in/. Survey
data is from the following election studies
conducted by Lokniti, CSDS:
6.
7.
8.
9.
During all the above-mentioned surveys, face-toface interviews with randomly selected voters
from the most updated electoral rolls were
conducted by specially trained field investigators.
All National Election Study Post Poll data sets
have been weighted by the actual vote shares
Appendix 2
Tables based on actual results (Election
Commission of IndiaECI) or survey data
(Centre for Study of Developing Societies
CSDS)
It was a comfortable victory; 73 per cent or nearly
three out of four BJP victories were by margins of
over one lakh votes.
Victory margins (votes)
42
22.99 lakh
74
11.99 lakh
90
50,00099,999
44
25,00049,999
17
10,00024,999
Total
282
(percentage points)
1984
+40.61
1989
+28.17
1991
+16.60
1996
+8.51
1998
+0.23
1999
+4.55
2004
+4.37
2009
+9.75
2014
-11.74
Gujarat
58.7
Uttarakhand
55.3
Rajasthan
54.9
Madhya Pradesh
54.0
Goa
53.5
Himachal Pradesh
53.4
Gujarat
26/26
Rajasthan
25/25
Delhi
7/7
Uttarakhand
5/5
Himachal Pradesh
4/4
Goa
2/2
Madhya Pradesh
27/29
Uttar Pradesh
73/80
Chhattisgarh
9/10
103
109
12
58
Total
282
Seats
Contested
464
Won
44
Came second in
223
Came third in
65
Came fourth in
117
1996
14
34
1998
14
28
1999
14
30
2004
13
27
2009
12
27
2014
24
19
1996
21
42
1998
21
32
1999
22
46
2004
28
37
2009
24
38
2014
38
28
2009.
1996
23
1998
28
1999
27
2004
25
2009
22
2014
36
Narendra Modi
36
Rahul Gandhi
14
Sonia Gandhi
Mayawati
Arvind Kejriwal
Manmohan Singh
Others
No opinion
29
-1
+7
+10
+11.8
Want
Narendra Modi
as PM (%)
Want
Rahul Gandhi
as PM (%)
Men
41
16
Women
30
13
Year
WomenMen voting
gap for BJP
(percentage points)
1996
-3
+1
1998
-5
+3
1999
-3
+5
2004
-1
+1
2009
-2
+1
2014
-4
1825
42
16
2635
38
15
36+
32
14
1822
36
17
2325
33
20
2635
33
20
3645
30
18
4655
30
20
56+
27
20
NO
2004/NDA
48
30
2009/UPA-I
54
45
2014/UPA-II
23
54
Election
414
411
Less than 5%
397
Less than 2%
355
Less than 1%
265
260
Appendix 3
Acknowledgements
Writing a book is a bit like a political party
attempting to win an election: it cannot be a oneman show even if the authors name is
emblazoned on the cover. This book wouldnt
have happened without the dynamic Chiki Sarkar
of Penguin asking me to write it and my
remarkably poised editor Nandini Mehta ensuring
that I stayed the course. Journalists are used to
deadlines, but we usually write 1000 words; a
100,000-plus-word book is very different. Without
Chiki and Nandinis gentle prodding, Id have
been lost.
A special thanks to all my journalist friends and
colleagues who so readily shared information and
insights. Whoever says we have lost the spirit of
camaraderie in this ruthlessly competitive world?
To the many others who agreed to part with their
THE BEGINNING
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First published in Viking by Penguin Books India
2014
www.penguinbooksindia.com
Copyright Rajdeep Sardesai 2014
Author photograph by Surinder Nagar
Cover design by Aparajita Ninan
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