SHIVAM SHANKAR SINGH

HOW TO WIN AN INDIAN ELECTION

What Political Parties Don’t Want You to Know

PENGUIN BOOKS
 Contents

About the Author

Introduction

1. How It All Started

2. The Political Consultants
3. Technology and Data
4. Fake News and Propaganda
5. Winning an Election
6. Understanding the System
7. The Experiments

Notes
Disclaimer
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright
 About the Author

S hivam Shankar Singh is an election consultant who has managed political

campaigns across the country. He has worked in insurgency-affected districts
in the northeast and in some of the most affluent districts of Punjab. He
entered the field of political consultancy with Prashant Kishor’s team at
Indian Political Action Committee. He then went on to learn the fundamentals
of politics while working with leaders of the BJP under the party’s national
general secretary, Ram Madhav, in Manipur and Tripura. Singh has
pioneered the use of several new technologies and data analytics techniques
in election management. He writes on politics and policy for the Print,
Newslaundry, HuffPost, Indian Express and several other media platforms.
Before entering the world of elections, Singh worked on policy research as a
Legislative Assistant to Member of Parliament. He graduated from the
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with a bachelor of science in economics.
 Advance Praise for How to Win an Indian Election

‘How to Win an Indian Election by Shivam Shankar Singh is a gripping

account of the underworld of politics. The first-hand knowledge and
experience of the author make it a mine of insights into less use and more
abuse of social media to influence public opinion and behaviour. It dissects
the sinister processes behind the ugly phenomenon of fake news,
manufactured enemies and hate discourse. A must-read’—S.Y. Quraishi,
former chief election commissioner

‘This book by a young activist brings us face to face with the paradox of
politics in contemporary India. Politics is the yugdharma of our times. But
our political parties do not seem to be the right instruments to discharge this
dharma. Through his personal experience and insights into electoral
campaigns, Singh takes a young Indian through a tough but exciting journey. I
hope this book will encourage young Indians to take up politics as
vocation’—Yogendra Yadav, social activist and senior fellow, Centre for the
Study of Developing Societies

‘There has been much debate lately on whether arithmetic is key to winning
elections or chemistry. We tend to miss out on a crucial third element:
technology or electoral engineering. Shivam Shankar Singh is among the
early practitioners of this craft, where nothing is barred, from booth
management to mass media dirty tricks. This book is a brave insight, and an
essential reading for those following elections in India’—Shekhar Gupta,
senior journalist
Dedicated to you, the voters. You’re more important to a democracy than
most politicians will ever be.
 Introduction

S tanding outside the gates of a closed bus depot in the middle of the night, I
reflected on the life choices that had brought me to that point. I was at the
Bassi Pathana assembly constituency in Fatehgarh Sahib district in Punjab,
waiting for a consignment of posters to arrive from Chandigarh. Around me
stood a ragtag team of labourers I had assembled to paste posters around the
constituency. This had to be done at night because pasting posters over walls
owned by other people was illegal. I wasn’t worried about the police,
though. They had received phone calls from local politicians asking them to
not interfere with the operation. However, I was concerned about the
increasingly impatient labourers, who had been waiting for over two hours
now. The only option left was to buy the labourers their nightly fix, hoping
they’d be inebriated enough to stay, but not drunk enough to not be able to do
the job once the posters arrived.
People who go to the United States to study usually hope to stay on and
work at one of the giants there such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, or at a
leading consultancy firm like KPMG, BCG or McKinsey. Most people dream
of earning well, some think they’ll eventually come back to India to live a
comfortable life, or even to transform society, once they’ve accumulated
enough wealth in the US. However, the trappings of life in the US are such
that most people never come back to India.
After completing my bachelor of science in economics from University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, I too might have embarked on a similar trajectory but
for the fact that I had been accepted as a Legislative Assistant to Member of
Parliament (LAMP). It was an eleven-month-long fellowship that placed a
university graduate with a member of Parliament to do research work on
legislative and policy matters in India. 1 I had always been interested in
politics, but had never considered it to be a realistic career option. As far as
I knew then, most parties didn’t pay their workers. Also, it was unlikely for a
worker to rise through the ranks without spending at least a decade or more
working at the grassroots. With the LAMP fellowship, I had the opportunity
to work with an MP on policy matters that would be taken up in the nation’s
Parliament. This would put me in a position that would take most people
engaged in politics years to get to. It was an opportunity that I couldn’t miss.
That one decision directly resulted in me standing on a street in rural
Punjab, working out the logistics of getting an entire assembly constituency
covered overnight with 5000 posters. The LAMP fellowship is an excellent
platform to learn how the nation’s policies are formed and the work that
members of Parliament do. Once I had done it, I realized that I needed to
understand politics from the ground up. I wanted to know how people got to
Parliament in the first place.
After the fellowship ended in May 2016, I joined the Indian Political
Action Committee (IPAC), a company run by famed political strategist
Prashant Kishor. Kishor, or PK as he was called within the company, had
worked on Narendra Modi’s campaign for prime ministership in 2014 and
Nitish Kumar’s re-election campaign for the chief minister’s post in Bihar in
2015. 2 He had successfully led these campaigns to victory and I wanted to
learn how he had done it.
That is how I landed up on that street in Punjab.
After handling two successful election campaigns, Kishor was much in
demand across the political spectrum. He’d chosen to take on the Congress
campaign for the 2017 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab. I
asked to be posted at UP, but soon found out that there was no campaign
there. The party had not decided on a chief ministerial face and Kishor’s
methodology relied entirely on marketing a face to the voters. The teams in
UP were mostly sitting idle in their office in Lucknow, which made the
Punjab campaign sound substantially more interesting. I booked my tickets to
Chandigarh and joined the IPAC team running the campaign for Captain
Amarinder Singh’s bid for chief ministership.
 Through this entire journey, what I really wanted to do was to develop an
understanding of Indian politics. I had an almost obsessive desire to learn
about the Indian political landscape and the people who populate it. After
realizing the limitations of working with a private company involved in
political consultancy, I decided to resign and work directly with a political
party. I had been in touch with Rajat Sethi, the Harvard graduate who had
managed the 2016 Assam campaign for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Soon after quitting IPAC, Sethi asked me to manage the BJP’s campaign for
Manipur state elections. I moved to Imphal in October 2016, and was to be
on the ground until the election concluded in March 2017. At IPAC, I had
been one among a hundred people running the campaign. In Manipur, I was to
lead the team with Sethi, working under the guidance of BJP’s national
general secretary, Ram Madhav.
This seemed like an immense learning opportunity, especially with the
astute political strategist and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh stalwart,
Madhav, leading the campaign. I expected it to be election management work
similar to what I had done at IPAC. It turned out to be a life-altering
experience. Not only was I learning from senior politicians managing the
campaign, but also from the social dynamics of Manipur. The state’s three
major communities—Meitei, Kuki and Naga—had deep-rooted differences
and each of them had seen the rise of armed outfits and insurgent groups from
among them to fight for their demands. This intercommunity conflict came to
the fore in the middle of the election campaign when the incumbent chief
minister, Okram Ibobi Singh, announced the creation of seven new districts, a
move that the Naga groups saw as antithetical to their interests. This led to
the United Naga Council (UNC) announcing a blockade of the state’s
highways in protest, pushing the price of basic commodities like petrol to
over ₹300 a litre. Experiencing this ethnic polarization taught me how
politics shapes the relationships between diverse communities living
together. 3
I have come to realize that there is no clearly defined path for success in
politics and not many people truly know what it actually entails. Even though
the lives of everyone living in a democratic country are constantly impacted
by politics, very few understand how it functions and how politicians
succeed or fail. For most careers, there are guides that you can read and
people that you can talk to. For some, there are even coaching institutes that
train you to crack an exam and set you on your path to become a professional.
The only other career that comes close to politics in terms of uncertainty and
risk is entrepreneurship, and that too has an abundance of books, podcasts
and articles to guide people along the way.
It is this dearth of information on politics that led to the idea behind this
book. It is my sincere hope that it will help unravel some of the mystery that
surrounds politics and give readers an insight into how politicians think and
how the field really operates. An understanding of the tools used by
politicians and political parties is becoming even more essential now, when
narratives are being shaped through the use of propaganda, fake news, data
analytics and technological platforms offered by social media and mobile
connectivity. Such an understanding is crucial not only for journalists,
aspiring politicians and students of political science, but for every single
voter. To paraphrase one of America’s founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson,
the key to any good democracy is a well-informed electorate. 4 5
 1
HOW IT ALL STARTED

L ike many Indians who go to the US for higher education, I too had thought
I’d work there for a few years, earn enough money, and come back to India to
work on reforming the country by engaging in policy and politics. It is a plan
that doesn’t seem to work for anyone. Most people just get accustomed to an
American life and the high salaries they earn there. The thought of returning
is relegated to occasional wishful discussions with friends from the Indian
diaspora. Familial and work responsibilities take over and most people
accept that they will never go back, no matter how much they dream about it.
While studying economics at University of Michigan, I ended up taking a
lot of computer science classes only because a lot of my friends from India
were taking them. In hindsight, this was probably the most beneficial form of
peer pressure I had ever experienced, since what I learned then would prove
to be invaluable later when I got involved in political data analytics. But
what actually led me to politics was lunchtime. I usually ate lunch at the
university dining hall while listening to news from India on my phone or
iPad, mostly in Hindi. I wanted to know what was happening in India, but I
also just wanted to hear Hindi for a short while every day because of an
irrational fear that I’d forget the language if I didn’t hear it frequently. I had a
lot of Indian friends in college and we often talked in Hindi. Even so, the
shuddh Hindi on news channels during lunch became an integral part of my
daily routine.
If there isn’t a natural disaster, the Indian news cycle is dominated by
politics. From 2011–14, news was teeming with reports of massive
corruption and scams under the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance
(UPA-II) government. Even NDTV’s Ravish Kumar, who was later dubbed
an anti-BJP anchor, railed against the scams and raised issues over Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh’s silence on the accusations against his
government. 1 The report filed by India’s Comptroller and Auditor General
(CAG) pegging the losses in the 2G spectrum allocation scam at over ₹1.76
lakh crore 2 created another firestorm. Journalists across the nation informed
viewers of the details of other scams. For example, the 2010 Commonwealth
Games scam, where toilet paper rolls valued at $2 were purchased for $80,
$2 soap dispensers were purchased for $60, $98 mirrors at $220, and
$11,830 altitude-training simulators were purchased at an astonishing cost of
$250,190 3 4 —a markup of over twenty times the actual cost!
News of corrupt property deals of Robert Vadra 5 , son-in-law of then
Congress President Sonia Gandhi, and the loot of India’s coal resources,
reported as ‘Coalgate’, angered the entire nation. 6 For the first time in years,
the common people were angered enough to unify and step out on the streets
to protest. A movement against corruption led by Gandhian leader Anna
Hazare, under the banner of India Against Corruption, in 2011 saw the
participation of people from all backgrounds. It was a result of the frustration
that every common person in India felt.
At the end of 2012, the gruesome rape, torture and murder of a young
physiotherapy intern, who became widely known as ‘Nirbhaya’, served as
the last nail in the UPA government’s coffin for many people, 7 including me.
On 21 December, a large crowd of protesters gathered at India Gate and
Raisina Hill in New Delhi—an area where the Prime Minister’s Office
(PMO), Parliament and Rashtrapati Bhavan are located. They clashed with
the police and Rapid Action Force units. The visuals of those demonstrating
against a rape being lathi charged and shot with water cannons and tear-gas
shells were beamed across news channels. 8 Protests erupted throughout the
nation with people, such as Baba Ramdev, former army chief general Vijay
Kumar Singh, among others, leading non-political protests, many of which
were suppressed with the use of police action by the government. 9 Public
sentiment had turned against the government and many were ready to ‘do
something’, even if it was at the cost of their careers and personal safety.

Two Leaders Rise

It was against this backdrop that a number of professionals resigned from

their high-paying jobs and stepped into the political arena to help two
charismatic leaders from two very different political parties. One of the
leaders of the India Against Corruption movement, an IIT graduate and
former Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer, Arvind Kejriwal, launched a
new political party, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), on 26 November 2012 and
announced his intention of moving into electoral politics. 10 Social activism,
according to him, had failed to achieve the desired result and the anti-
corruption reform—the enactment of the Jan Lokpal Bill that was being
demanded by the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement—was no closer
to being a reality. He announced that the Aam Aadmi Party would be
contesting the 2013 Delhi legislative assembly elections. The face of the IAC
movement, Anna Hazare, wanted it to remain politically unaligned. Many
supporters of the IAC movement, however, were strongly in favour of
entering electoral politics. 11
The other leader who took centre stage at this time was three-time Gujarat
chief minister, Narendra Modi, of the BJP. Modi had a chequered past, with
the Gujarat government under him being accused of condoning violence
during the 2002 communal riots, and even initiating it in some areas by
supplying rioters with lists of Muslim-owned properties. 12 Many scholars
had equated the riots with ‘pogroms’ and ‘state-sponsored ethnic cleansing’
due to incidents like the Naroda Patiya massacre that took place right next to
a police training camp 13 and the Gulbarg Society massacre where a former
Congress MP, Ehsan Jafri, was burnt alive along with others. 14 Many
eyewitnesses and insiders, such as R.B. Sreekumar, who was the additional
director general of intelligence at the time, deposed before commissions
alleging that the police and ministers were ‘deliberately inactive during the
riots’. 15 In August 2012, a special court in Ahmedabad convicted thirty-two
people, including BJP MLA and former cabinet minister Maya Kodnani and
Bajrang Dal’s Babu Bajrangi. 16 However, that same year, a Special
Investigation Team (SIT) appointed by the Supreme Court of India cleared
Modi of any complicity in the violence. 17
This clearance from the SIT coupled with a pro-development image based
on the ‘Gujarat Model’, under which the state saw strong growth in
macroeconomic indicators and became a preferred destination for private-
sector investment, propelled Modi to the forefront. He beat other long-term
BJP chief ministers such as Raman Singh and Shivraj Singh Chouhan to
become the party’s prime ministerial candidate. Party workers, especially the
youth, rallied behind Modi’s dynamic leadership, relegating veterans, such as
L.K. Advani, to the sidelines during the campaign for the 2014 general
elections. 18
The political landscape was changing and so were the methods used by
political parties during election campaigns. The emergence of young
professionals who came into politics to support one of the two rising leaders
led to the introduction of several new technologies and innovative ideas in
the sphere of campaign management. I followed every news report, tweet and
Facebook post about political developments and became part of several
WhatsApp groups that brainstormed strategies for the upcoming elections.
While the general elections were still a few months away, in December
2013, Kejriwal became the chief minister of Delhi despite the Aam Aadmi
Party failing to cross the halfway mark of thirty-five seats required to form
the government. With twenty-eight AAP MLAs, thirty-one BJP MLAs and
eight Congress MLAs, Delhi rendered a fractured verdict where no party
could individually form the government. The hung assembly was resolved
when the Aam Aadmi Party accepted the ‘unconditional’ support offered by
the Congress and formed the government. 19 Kejriwal was egged on to form
the government by several opposition leaders, with BJP’s leader of
opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley, daring AAP to form a
government with Congress support and fulfil its ‘unrealistic promises’ rather
than avoiding power. 20 The government only lasted forty-nine days and
Kejriwal resigned on 14 February 2014, because of the minority
government’s inability to pass the proposed anti-corruption Jan Lokpal Bill.
21
While Kejriwal and the Aam Aadmi Party were busy figuring out the
politics in Delhi, Modi solidified his persona as the leader India needed. His
riveting oratory and energetic campaigns stood in stark contrast to the silent
demeanour of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The ‘chhapan-inch ki chhati
’ (56-inch chest), a phrase that Modi had used to describe himself during a
political speech in January 2014, displayed his bravado and gripped the
nation’s imagination. 22 Voters started to believe that he was exactly what
India needed to break free of the ‘policy paralysis’ that had plagued the UPA-
II government, which had failed to act on major corruption scandals and pass
key legislations in the preceding years. 23
For the 2014 general elections, the Narendra Modi–campaign made such
compelling use of new tools, such as social media advertising, rallies with
3D holograms and gripping messages on key issues, for example, corruption
and price rise, that the individual appeared larger than the party did. In
several constituencies, MPs were voted in despite a lack of local support,
only because the voters wanted to see Modi as the prime minister of India. 24
The appeal of an energetic leader, who would take India to a leadership
role in the twenty-first century, even as he cured the malaise of corruption
and nepotism that had plagued our politics for decades, was so powerful that
I officially joined the BJP in June 2013. I was visiting India and became
engrossed in the party’s campaign for the upcoming elections. My activities
were limited to being a part of events as a volunteer and supporting social
media activities. I wrote several articles and research briefs against the
Congress government and their leaders, some of which are still being used by
prominent Facebook groups that support Modi’s bid for a second term in
2019. None of us were on the payroll of the party or any other entity, but
many of us spent hours supporting the BJP’s campaigns solely out of our
desire to see Modi oust the corrupt Congress regime and become the nation’s
PM. It was only later, in 2016, when I worked under Kishor and Madhav, that
I understood how a personality cult was created and how an effective
campaign could transform a politician into a demigod and a saviour.
The BJP’s campaign in 2014 was spectacular, to say the least. The
branding and slogans—such as ‘Bohot Hui Mehengai ki Maar ’, ‘Abki Baar
Modi Sarkar ’ (Enough of Rising Prices, It’s Time for Modi’s Government),
‘Acche Din Aane Waale Hain ’ (Good Days Are About to Come), ‘Har Har
Modi, Ghar Ghar Modi ’ (Hail Modi, in Every Home There is Modi)—
were extremely effective in rallying the masses. I was in awe of the
brilliance with which the campaign was being executed. To be a part of it,
even in a small way, was exhilarating. I decided to head to Varanasi during
May 2014 to be a part of the most exciting electoral seat in the country. The
contest was a multi-cornered race between Modi, Kejriwal, and candidates
from the Congress, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Samajwadi Party (SP).
The INC, BSP and SP candidates were strong local leaders but it was
obvious from the outset that they weren’t even in contention.
I walked through the streets of Varanasi and played with children running
around wearing saffron caps and cheering for Modi. It became obvious to me
that the BJP was about to sweep the elections nationally and in a way that
few people were imagining. This flash of insight, that the success of a
campaign can be determined by how much people unconcerned and
uninvolved in politics—for example, children—have bought into it, has
served me well during the subsequent campaigns I’ve been a part of. I work
as a data analyst on campaigns, so I rely heavily on data to make claims, but
my experience on the field has taught me that the enthusiasm of children for a
particular candidate or party is as good an indicator as there can be to
predict the presence of a wave.
While in Varanasi, I also visited the Kashi Vishwanath temple to offer
prayers and to meet the head priest for his opinion on the election results. As
my native village is just 120 km from Varanasi, I had visited the temple often
and met the priest, Pandit Srikant Mishra, on previous occasions. I knew him
to be a man keenly interested in politics and one who was a repository of
information about the opinions held by several politicians, journalists and
bureaucrats who visited the temple.
On this visit, we sat in a room next to the main temple and even before I
could ask him the question, Mishraji started to recount the story of
Kejriwal’s visit. He said with a laugh that he had told Kejriwal, ‘Aashirvaad
lete jaiye, vote toh nahin mil payega. ’ (Take blessings, but you will not be
able to get the votes.) He was certain Modi would win Varanasi with a huge
margin. It wasn’t even a contest. He was equally certain that Modi would be
the next prime minister of India.
After this visit to Varanasi, I resolved to return to India as soon as
possible. The initial plan of staying in the US for a few years to earn money
was abandoned in the favour of looking for opportunities to work in Indian
politics as a professional. The experience of having worked during the 2014
election briefly had convinced me that politics was my true calling and that
nothing else would excite me as much.
When the results for the general elections were announced, the BJP
received a full majority on its own, winning 282 seats, while the figure for
NDA stood at a whopping 336 seats out of the 543 seats. 25 Modi was sworn
in as the fifteenth prime minister of India on 26 May 2014. The new
government started its work seemingly on a war footing, announcing
immediate measures such as clean-up drives and mandatory biometric
attendance systems for all government officials to ensure that they reached
their offices on time. 26 Several of these were short-lived, but they convinced
the nation that things were on the right track. It also convinced me that it was
a good time to get into politics in India. It would prove to be more difficult
than I had initially anticipated, though.

The CAG Phenomenon

The biggest name in the field of political consultancy in India at that time was
undeniably Prashant Kishor. In fact, he was the only one I was familiar with
back then. Kishor was a public health professional and had worked with the
United Nations in India and Africa. He came to Modi’s attention after he
published a paper on India’s malnutrition challenge and was invited by him
in 2011 to work on improving nutritional indicators in Gujarat. Thereafter, he
developed close ties with Modi, who was then a chief minister, and went on
to become an integral part of the BJP’s campaign for the 2012 Gujarat
legislative assembly elections. 27 As soon as that election was won, both
Kishor and Modi set their sights on something bigger. A nationwide branding
campaign was started to project Modi as the BJP’s best prime ministerial
candidate in the 2014 general elections and the nation’s only hope for a pro-
development government. A non-governmental organization named Citizens
for Accountable Governance (CAG) was created in 2013 to lead this
campaign.
Several people who have been a part of CAG since its inception have told
me how it came about. In 2012–13, scores of people who quit their jobs in IT
companies and consultancy firms to work on Modi’s bid for prime
ministership approached the Gujarat CM’s office with ideas on what could
be done and how they could contribute to the election campaign. With
proposals pouring in from qualified individuals, it was proposed that a new
entity should be formed to bring them all together and to give the campaign
strategic direction. Modi directed the young professionals to Kishor, who
clubbed them together under the umbrella of CAG and assumed its leadership
role. 28
This group went on to lead initiatives such as ‘Manthan’, which brought
together students from India’s leading colleges following a nationwide
contest for policy ideas, and ‘Chai pe Charcha’, under which Modi talked to
people through videoconferencing while they were served tea, thus
converting the ‘chaiwala’ jab by Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar into
something positive and presenting the INC as a group of elitists who had
never worked hard in their lives. 29 Although BJP leaders disputed the role
CAG played during the 2014 elections in the battle for credit after the
phenomenal victory, 30 it is evident that the group and Kishor himself did
handle several parts of Modi’s personal branding, converting his image from
a Hindu hardliner to a ‘man of development’, a ‘vikas purush ’. 31 In the
2017 Punjab legislative assembly elections, similar strategies were used to
convert Maharaja Amarinder Singh, a reclusive aristocrat, into Captain
Amarinder Singh, a hardworking leader who would bring Punjab out of the
abyss it was in.
After the BJP government was formed in 2014, Kishor was ousted from
his position as a confidante of PM Modi and he soon found himself with no
role in the new dispensation. 32 It is conjectured that the reason was Kishor’s
expectation of a political position. He might have felt that he deserved one
for all the hard work he had put into the campaign. CAG wasn’t a company
making a lot of money. It was a group of committed volunteers who had
stepped up for a cause, leaving behind salaries of lakhs a month to work on
meagre stipends of a few thousands. Many within the group had imagined,
just like most party karyakarta s do, that they would be rewarded for their
efforts after the party came to power. This never happened and the rift
between Kishor and the BJP widened. In an article for Firstpost, journalist
Shivam Vij wrote, ‘BJP President Amit Shah owes his elevation as BJP
president to the credit accorded to him for the election win, and Shah’s camp
seemed to feel threatened by Kishor.’ 33 The BJP’s decision to refuse Kishor
any position in the new administration left him with no choice but to leave.
CAG disbanded right afterwards. Many of its members went back to the
corporate sector; some went for higher education to the US and the UK,
while a small group stayed back with Kishor and looked for new
opportunities in political consultancy. Some went on to create their own
political consultancy firms, and today, several companies working in the
field can trace their founding to the dissolution of CAG.
I didn’t know any of this at the time, though. What I did know was that
there was no CAG left to join. If I wanted to come back to India to work in
politics, then I needed to figure out how. It made no sense to join a political
party and work as a karyakarta. Karyakartas are foot soldiers of a party. Not
only are they made to relentlessly do groundwork, such as distributing
pamphlets and erecting flags, but they are also disposable—no individual
karyakarta has any value within the party. Even people working in an IT cell
or at the central offices of a party are mostly volunteers. Almost all of them
are unpaid and the ones who are paid are paid just enough to cover rent in the
cheapest parts of Delhi. I had to come up with a better plan.

A Foundational Experience in Politics

A friend of mine who was planning to return to India to prepare for the UPSC
Civil Services Exam told me about the LAMP fellowship programme. It was
run by an NGO called PRS Legislative Research, which selected fifty-five
people every year and placed them with an MP for eleven months. People
spend years and even decades working in politics before they get a chance to
have such proximity to an MP. And here I was, at twenty-two years old,
being given the opportunity to work with an MP on policy matters. I’d be
involved in all the parliamentary work that an MP undertook and get a chance
to frequently visit Parliament. It was exactly the kind of opportunity I was
looking for.
I filled up the forms and wrote the policy essays required for the process
and qualified for the interview. Since I was in the US, it was a telephonic
interview. The call came at 4.30 a.m. in the morning, with three interviewers
on the other side of the line. Doggedly following the news had prepared me
well for the interview and I answered all their questions on policy, politics
and current affairs. I was selected for the programme, which not only
provided an amazing opportunity but also a stipend of ₹20,000 a month.
Nowhere close to the salary I’d have earned in the US, but enough to survive
without borrowing from my family. I decided to accept it instantly.
Out of sheer luck, I had stumbled upon what would turn out to be the best
foundational experience for a career in political consultancy. The fellowship
started with a month-long training, with professionals from India’s leading
think tanks and NGOs holding sessions on topics such as education,
economics, healthcare and policy formulation. We got an excellent overview
of where the nation stood on different parameters, even as the PRS staff
taught us the basics of the Constitution and of parliamentary procedures. The
batch of LAMP fellows included people from all possible educational
backgrounds—law, engineering, economics, political science, pure sciences,
and everything in between. There were people who’d joined the fellowship
after working in other industries for a few years as well as people who were
fresh out of college.
In the last few days of the training, we were assigned to our respective
MPs. The fellowship is supposed to be non-partisan so the MP allocation is
done randomly. The fellows don’t get to choose the party or the MP they have
to work with. PRS staff came into the hall and called out a few fellows, who
were then informed of the MPs they were assigned to. They were taken to
meet the MP along with a PRS staff member who introduced them. The
process took place in batches. The fellows waited in excitement until their
turn came.
Finally, it was my turn, and I was told that the MP I would be working
with was Prem Das Rai of the Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF), a Sikkim-
based party that was aligned with the NDA at that time but had been with the
UPA earlier. I later came to understand that the SDF was focused on the state
of Sikkim and would align with whatever coalition was in power at the
centre. National politics was not a major part of the party’s agenda. I looked
up the MP and two things instantly stood out. One, the SDF government had
ruled the state of Sikkim since 1994 under the same chief minister, Pawan
Kumar Chamling. 34 Two, Rai was one of the most active parliamentarians
and was the first MP who was a graduate from both IIT and IIM. He had
studied chemical engineering from IIT Kanpur and management at IIM
Ahmedabad. 35 It was clear to me that Rai was an excellent MP, but it was
also clear that there wouldn’t be too much politics to see in his office. His
party was secure in Sikkim without even the semblance of a strong
opposition. A party representing a state with just one MP constituency would
clearly not have much interest in national politics.
The office, though, turned out to be very different from what I had
anticipated. Parliament itself was dysfunctional for most of the year, with
constant disruptions by opposition parties. 36 It was entertaining to watch, but
frustrating to have so much work and research go to waste because issues
just weren’t being discussed in the house. The BJP, with its brute majority,
could bulldoze any legislation it wanted to through the house. Most LAMP
fellows came to the realization that Parliament itself wasn’t designed to be
tremendously effective. All parties issue whips on important bills that come
up for discussion. Under the provisions of the Anti-Defection Law brought in
by Rajiv Gandhi in 1985, all MPs must vote the way their party instructs
them to, no matter what their personal opinions might be. What this means is
that if the heads of a party have decided that their party will vote in support
of a bill, all MPs of that party have to vote in support, or they can be
removed from their posts. 37
The legislation was enacted because MPs changed sides and broke away
from their parties regularly for personal benefit. They often lent support to
any party based on what they were paid or the post they were offered. It was
a period of political instability when MPs just couldn’t be trusted to not sell
their votes to the highest bidder. The legislation must have made sense at that
time, but it also had the unintended consequence of making the entire process
of voting on bills in Parliament a largely meaningless ritual. Even if an MP
were to raise valid concerns while discussing a bill, and others from across
party lines were to agree with his or her observations, very little could be
achieved from it. All MPs are forced to vote as per the instructions issued by
their party, and their own understanding of issues is of little consequence.
Parliament and the issues raised there have only token significance.
Upon realizing this, I started to focus on other areas of interest.
Rai was a dedicated MP who’d also realized the limitations of Parliament
early on and had decided to use his influence to work on developmental
initiatives outside the confines of Parliament. He chaired several
organizations such as the Integrated Mountain Initiative (IMI) that looked at
sustainable development of mountain states; Sikkim government’s steering
committee on anti-drugs, which ran a program called SAATHI to address the
drug problem in Sikkim’s schools; and the steering committee on Educational
Quality Improvement Programme (EQUIP). He was also the secretary
general of the Northeast MPs Forum, a group consisting of northeastern MPs
from across party lines that had come together to raise common concerns of
the region.
 I was involved with these initiatives and worked on different projects with
governmental and non-governmental organizations. We started to work on
building an MP’s forum with the support of the Population Foundation of
India (PFI) that would look at addressing the challenges that India would
face with its growing population. Rai became co-convener of the initiative
alongside Sanjay Jaiswal, the MP from Bihar’s Paschim Champaran
constituency, of the BJP. Such initiatives gave me a perspective on how the
job of a politician was defined by a lot more than just their parliamentary
duties.
The stated job of an MP or MLA is to deliberate on and pass legislation,
but that is one of the least effective parts of the job. As I would later realize,
it isn’t even something that voters care about. In India, almost no one votes
for an MP or MLA because of their voting record in legislatures or because
of the kinds of bills they have supported. People vote for an MP or MLA
with the expectation that the politician will help solve their everyday issues.
That is the job of a legislator, even if they have no official powers to act on
most matters that their constituents bring to them. Working with Rai taught me
how an MP can be effective. Other key lessons I learnt from that office came
from the people I worked with.
Rai’s parliamentary office operated out of his government apartment near
Connaught Place in New Delhi. It consisted of three people, including me.
The other two were ex-LAMP fellows who had decided to continue working
with Rai after their fellowship ended. Divyashish Sharma was a BITS Pilani
graduate who had worked in a major pharmaceutical company before
resigning to join the LAMP fellowship. He continued to work for Rai after
his fellowship ended. I often asked him why he’d stayed back and what he
wanted to do in life, expecting political ambitions from someone who had
chosen to work with an MP instead of in the corporate sector, but I never
could figure out what motivated him.
The other person in the office was someone we could only really expect to
interact with after 3.30 p.m., when the markets closed. Vashishtha Iyer had
studied fashion technology at NIFT and had a career trajectory I’d never
heard of before. He worked at a textile plant before resigning and joining the
LAMP fellowship. He was a fellow in the 2012–13 batch and was the only
one amongst us who had worked on a full-fledged parliamentary election
campaign. He had disappeared soon after the 2014 elections, though, and
returned to Rai’s office after a one-year hiatus. In that one year, Iyer had
taught himself basic coding and read several books on the stock market. He
traded stocks and options in the office until 3.30 p.m., and engaged with
office work only after that. This was part of his deal with Rai.
The office was a transformational place where we brainstormed the
craziest political and policy ideas for entertainment. From the
conceptualization of new political parties (that would appropriate entire
caste groups, or hijack the BJP’s Hindutva agenda by expressing more
extreme views on issues such as the construction of the Ram Mandir at
Ayodhya and abolition of Article 370) to discussions of technology platforms
for social engagement, including an app called ‘Outrage India’ where people
could just record themselves venting on any issue of their choice to relieve
frustration, every idea was worth discussing. This constant brainstorming led
to a lot of hilarious ideas, but there were also some strokes of brilliance that
are still a relevant part of the work I do.
In the latter half of my fellowship, the office got busy working on the
Sikkim urban local body (ULB) elections, which were due in October 2015.
These municipal elections were important because the SDF had not
performed as well as expected during the previous assembly elections,
where they lost ten out of the thirty-two seats. 38 Since Iyer was the only one
with experience in managing elections, he led the initiatives and we helped
primarily with research and drafting. We wrote articles for the Political &
Economic Journal of Sikkim , a magazine edited by Rai, highlighting
achievements of the ruling SDF and the reforms the state was undergoing by
choosing to become fully organic.
While working on these elections, I realized how many of the Facebook
pages people believe to be neutral are actually managed by political parties.
Even pages that post just news articles can be used to subtly shape voter
mindsets based on which news they choose to publish and which they ignore.
Facebook pages published pro-SDF news while ignoring news stories
against the party so that the achievements were what most people saw while
the criticism reached a much smaller audience.
We were looking at these elections from afar, sitting in an office in New
Delhi, but even our little bit of involvement made it exhilarating when the
SDF swept the elections by winning all fifty-three wards. 39 Later that year,
around two months after these results were announced, seven of the ten
MLAs from the opposition party, Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM), broke
away and joined the ruling SDF. 40 A good performance in the ULB elections
had contributed to decimating the state’s opposition party.

Detecting a Bias

After the elections, we got back to the affairs of a dysfunctional Parliament

and prepared ourselves for the winter session of 2015. The parliamentary
responsibilities of an MP can broadly be classified under five categories—
discussion and voting on bills, raising matters of public importance through
different motions, participating in debates, asking parliamentary questions,
and keeping the system accountable through the use of parliamentary standing
committees. Asking parliamentary questions is a task that LAMP fellows
have to work on, and it is one of the best tools that MPs possess to keep the
government accountable. These questions provide MPs an opportunity to get
information from all ministries and evaluate their functioning.
I had talked to several LAMP fellows from the current and previous
batches, and all of them expressed dissatisfaction at the way the question
selection system in Parliament worked. Several MPs had themselves raised
the issue that there seemed to be an underlying unfairness and opacity to the
entire process. This nagging feeling that something unfair was taking place in
Parliament led to a defining moment in my fellowship, and which also
mapped out the course that I would embark upon after LAMP.
Each MP can submit a maximum of ten questions for each day of
Parliament’s sitting when question hour is to take place. The submissions are
made fifteen days prior to the date assigned for the answer, and a paper
signed by the MP listing the question must be submitted to the parliamentary
notice office. Parliament is considering sparing the trees and taking online
submissions, but this doesn’t seem to have taken off as of now.
Of the ten questions submitted by each MP, a maximum of five questions
will be chosen for response. There can only be a total of twenty starred
questions in a day to be answered orally by the concerned minister, and 230
unstarred questions, where written answers are provided by the ministry that
might not be satisfactory. Every MP wants a starred question, that too among
the first five in the list, as these are the only ones that will be answered on
the floor of the house by a minister and where MPs can ask follow-up
questions, called supplementary questions.
The biggest problem with the question–answer system originates from the
fact that more questions are submitted than can be answered, so which
question gets picked is decided by a ballot process, which is Parliament’s
term for ‘lottery’. It’s ridiculous to think that important matters to be debated
on in our Parliament are decided by lottery, but what’s worse is that looking
at the questions that do get asked day after day leaves one with the distinct
feeling that something is not right with the system. Some MPs get much more
than their fair share of questions, which would be almost impossible by
random chance. Our office turned out to be the perfect place to look into this
as, amongst us, we had all the skills required to investigate this phenomenon.
Iyer taught us how to write code in Python, which we used to scrape off all
the questions from the Lok Sabha website and automatically put them on an
Excel sheet to be analysed. I wrote formulae to figure out if what was
happening was statistically likely. Sharma ensured that we didn’t write
words like ‘Questions Scam’ and get ourselves into more trouble than we
were already going to be in! The Python script ran throughout the day and at
the end of it, we had all the questions that had been asked in the sixteenth Lok
Sabha, between May 2014 and March 2016.
We analysed the data and figured out that of the questions selected, the top
few MPs had a selection rate above 75 per cent, while MPs like Rai had
only 45.4 per cent, even though we filed the maximum permissible number of
questions. I called up other LAMP fellows working in the offices of MPs and
asked them about the number of questions they had submitted. Most MPs had
a selection rate of less than 50 per cent. It made no statistical sense for a
select group of MPs to have selection rates above 75 per cent, so we looked
into the data further. What we found next was convincing evidence that
something was indeed wrong with the system.
After adding the MPs’ states and political parties to the equation, we
found that eight MPs out of the top ten and twelve out of the top twenty were
from Maharashtra. It couldn’t be a statistical anomaly that all the MPs who
got more than their fair share of questions selected were from the same state.
Upon investigating the data further, we realized exactly how the operation
was running. The Lok Sabha secretariat clubs similar questions from
different MPs together and gives all of them credit for having asked the
question. This meant that if multiple MPs colluded and asked the same
questions, the probability of getting the question selected was much higher.
The collusion, though, was not along party lines, as we would have
suspected. There were two sets of MPs submitting the same questions on the
same dates, and most of them were from Maharashtra. The first group
included MPs from the Nationalist Congress Party, the BJP and the Congress,
while the second group had MPs from the Shiv Sena and a Samajwadi Party
MP from UP.
These MPs had more than 90 per cent of their questions clubbed with one
another. The average for MPs who have more than twenty questions is 68.83
per cent of the questions clubbed with a standard deviation of 13.226. This
means that there is a less than 6 per cent chance that any MPs have over 90
per cent of the questions clubbed. Factoring in the fact that there are multiple
MPs with more than 90 per cent clubbed questions, most of whom are from
Maharashtra, the probability of this happening by random chance is reduced
almost to zero.
We were familiar with the ‘Cash for Questions’ scam of 2005, for which
eleven MPs were expelled from Parliament. They were caught in a sting
operation accepting bribes from private interests who wanted specific
questions to be asked that would benefit their business interests raised in
Parliament. 41 We were also aware that preparing questions is often
painstaking work, and some MPs just outsource it to people who will
prepare the questions and submit them on their behalf. There was no way for
us to know if this rigging of the parliamentary questions system was by
design or an outcome of laziness, so we decided to refrain from speculating
and posted the data along with suggestions on how the system could be
improved.
We posted our findings in a Medium blog post and intended to send it to
other LAMP fellows and MPs, but it quickly began garnering widespread
attention. 42 The link of the post was tweeted by Congress MP Shashi
Tharoor, who has a Twitter following of over 6.7 million. 43 It was later
picked up and shared by HuffPost 44 and became a topic of conversation in
Delhi’s policy circles. After our findings went viral, we started to feel the
pressure mount.
PRS Legislative Research has a policy against the use of social media by
LAMP fellows, but it hadn’t ever been enforced. Several LAMP fellows
wrote Facebook posts or blogs and no one had ever been chastised for doing
so. I rationalized that this wasn’t us revealing some secret about our MP’s
office or writing about some encounter we had had with some politician as
LAMP fellows. It was a blog post on what we had found from analysing
publicly available data that was scraped from the Lok Sabha website. PRS
wasn’t happy, though, that we had written about a flaw in the parliamentary
system and had named the MPs that we thought were colluding to benefit
from the flaw. There were only a few weeks left for graduation from the
fellowship, so PRS decided to not take any action. And even Parliament took
no action on the issue.
We sent copies of the post to Prime Minister Modi, Parliamentary Affairs
Minister Venkaiah Naidu, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan and several
other officials of the Lok Sabha secretariat, but never received a response. I
had expected the new government to be happy to fix a decades-old flaw. But
it wasn’t an issue that any voter would care about, so the noise just subsided.
It did serve as a personal lesson, though, on what I wanted to do next.
I realized I was interested in data analytics and had the basic skills for it,
thanks to the computer science classes I had taken in college and the year I
had spent talking to Iyer about the code he was writing to analyse stock
market data. Our viral post highlighting flaws in Parliament’s question
selection system also made it known to prospective employers that we had
the knowledge to scrape, analyse and understand data. It was the perfect time
to combine my passion for politics with my knowledge of data analytics.
Meanwhile, Kishor had founded IPAC in 2015. It bagged the contract for
managing Nitish Kumar’s campaign for the 2015 Bihar legislative assembly
elections. With the formation of the ‘mahagathbandhan’ (grand alliance),
which was a coalition of Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD),
Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) and the INC, the BJP was routed in the
state. The NDA won just fifty-eight seats while the mahagathbandhan won
178 seats of the 243 seats. 45 After this triumph in Bihar, Kishor bagged the
contract to work on the Congress campaigns for the Punjab and Uttar Pradesh
state elections due in 2017. 46
I decided to apply for a job at IPAC and convinced Sharma to apply with
me. With our experience in politics, we both received offer letters from the
company within a few days and were all set to head to Punjab. Iyer, on the
other hand, held on to his love for capital markets and went on to work in
finance. In the quintessential way of how life operates in the twenty-first
century, Iyer got in touch with a finance whiz named Deepak Shenoy on
Twitter. Shenoy was the founder of a financial management and technology
company, Capital Mind, based in Bangalore. The Twitter interactions
translated into meetings and Iyer became the Chief Operating Officer (COO)
of the company.
After working in policy and interacting with leading parliamentarians and
public-policy professionals of the country, I was finally going to work in
electoral politics. The thrill of the elections that I’d experienced during the
2014 general elections and the 2015 Sikkim ULB elections was soon going to
become a part of my daily work routine.
 2
THE POLITICAL CONSULTANTS

A quote by former prime minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill

aptly covers one of the first realizations I had had about politics after meeting
hundreds of people who hoped to get a party ticket for state legislative
assembly elections.
‘A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen
tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability
afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.’ 1
There is never any certainty in politics, and a lot of strategy is made as one
goes along the way. Even the people contesting elections seldom know
what’s going to work and what isn’t. The narrative around an election is
usually constructed after the results come out. People marvel at how
brilliantly an election strategy was executed. Journalists, politicians and
election strategists often highlight a chain of events that led to victory. That
chain of events, however, hardly provides the full story and the explanations
are often an example of hindsight bias, a psychological phenomenon that
explains the tendency of people to overestimate their ability to have
predicted an outcome that could not possibly have been predicted. In reality,
there are several chains that can be formed and any result can be explained
using the same events that have occurred during an election campaign. In
effect, this means that a party’s loss can as easily be explained with these
events as its victory.
Soon after I completed the LAMP fellowship, I booked my tickets to
Chandigarh and reached IPAC’s office. The campaign was operating from a
bungalow that had been made available for the purpose by a big businessman
of Punjab who was supporting the Congress party. As soon as I arrived, it
was clear that the organization’s functioning was going to be a lot more
haphazard than an external observer would expect from India’s foremost
political strategy company. There weren’t enough chairs, so employees sat on
cardboard boxes and on tables, typing away on their laptops, preparing
presentations on what direction the campaign should take. The only
programme running at that time was ‘Coffee with Captain’, where the
Congress party’s chief ministerial candidate, Captain Amarinder Singh,
interacted with young people in events where coffee was served. 2 It was in
essence a rebranding of IPAC’s old campaign, ‘Chai pe Charcha’, that they
had organized before the 2014 elections for Narendra Modi.
After a few days of orientation, we were to be placed in the teams that we
would work with. I had initially thought of working on data analytics but it
soon became clear that it would be an operation that oversaw data entry
rather than any actual analytics. A major part of its energy was devoted to
digitizing phone numbers and lists of names that came in through attendance
forms at various events and from IPAC employees stationed across
constituencies. These numbers were later used to send SMSes and pre-
recorded phone calls called ‘IVRS [Interactive Voice Response System]
messages’. Data collation efforts and the analysis of prior voting data were
primitive at best, so I decided to sign up for the events team and see how
things functioned on the ground.

Creating a ‘Buzz’

It was clear that this was where IPAC and Kishor excelled. The organization
employed people who were brilliant at creating graphics and organizing
events that created a buzz. The first event that I was a part of was a one-time
event called ‘Captain Meets Captains’, where Singh interacted with college
students who had been designated as ‘College Captains’ and who would take
the campaign to the youth in their colleges. 3 At this event, I met Abhimanyu
Bharti who headed the events division of IPAC. Bhartiji, as he was called
within the organization, was a young man from Jharkhand who understood the
value of ‘buzz creation’. He knew that more than the event itself, what
mattered was the message that would be disseminated to the entire region
when Singh visited, and the consequent media reports.
Working with Bhartiji made me understand that one of the biggest
components of politics is marketing. Most successful politicians see
developmental activity and interactions with constituents as a tool to build a
brand. The goal isn’t the event or the developmental work; the goal is always
to build a brand. The expenditure on advertising has increased drastically
even in the very short time that I have been working in politics. Beyond the
expenditure incurred by political parties, the phenomenon has spilled over
into government expenditure. Under PM Modi, the government’s direct
advertising expenditure through the Directorate of Advertising and Visual
Publicity (DAVP) almost doubled, reaching an average of over Rs 1200
crore per year. 4
Most candidates handle branding on their own, involving a few close
associates from the party to help with the job. Earlier, advertising meant
putting up billboards and posters. Then the use of TV and radio advertising
became more popular during the noughties, emerging as the main medium in
the last five years or so. Modi’s campaign for the 2014 general elections
forever changed branding and advertising in Indian politics. Since then,
almost all parties have engaged professionals to handle at least the marketing
part of their election campaign. Professionals were given the reins of most of
the TV commercials, campaign songs, graphics for hoardings and newspaper
advertisements, on which parties and candidates spent a tremendous amount
of money. The results were beyond anything I could have estimated without
seeing the transformation in voter preferences first-hand.
At the beginning of the Punjab election campaign, Singh was addressed as
‘Maharaja’ Amarinder Singh. He had the persona of being an elite royal who
woke up late, worked very little and was out of reach of the common man. In
the early days of the campaign, most political commentators and news
channels were projecting the Aam Aadmi Party as the likely winner of the
elections. If the contest was framed as a battle between the Maharaja and the
‘aam aadmi ’ (common man), then the Maharaja might have lost. The team at
IPAC realized this early on and started the branding process that would
transform the Maharaja into ‘Captain’ Amarinder Singh, a designation
consciously chosen from his days in the army. 5
After rounds of brainstorming and running focus group discussions, where
party karyakartas, students and groups of people representing different
demographics were invited to test different campaign messages, the tagline
‘Punjab da Captain ’ was chosen as the central theme of the campaign.
Constant messaging asking people to support ‘Punjab da Captain ’ and the
catchy campaign slogan ‘Chaunda Hai Punjab, Captain Di Sarkar ’ (Punjab
Wants the Captain’s Government) broadcast through all possible medium led
to a drastic transformation of Singh’s image. People started to believe that he
would be an effective and strong leader who would take Punjab to new
heights. The image of a Maharaja disappeared over time, with both party
karyakartas and the voting population starting to address him as Captain.
To dispel the image of someone who was distant from the masses, a new
event called ‘Halke Vich Captain ’ was launched. ‘Halka ’ is the term used
for an assembly constituency in Punjab, and this event involved Singh
visiting every assembly constituency of the state and taking written
submissions from voters on the problems that they faced. He promised to
work on addressing all these problems within the first 100 days of his
government coming to power. 6 This gave people who had filled out the
forms a vested interest in supporting him during the elections and ensuring
his victory.
The launch of this series of events turned out to be a watershed moment in
the campaign and was one of the primary drivers that led to a complete
overhaul in the Congress machinery of the state. The stated plan was for
Singh to visit all 117 assembly constituencies in Punjab, but we estimated
that he could realistically cover only about sixty to seventy constituencies.
We surmised that this would be enough to turn around the election.
The effectiveness of ‘Halke Vich Captain ’ extended much beyond just
improving Singh’s image. Its actual success lay in the work that went into
organizing each of the events.
Preparations started with identifying potential Congress ticket contenders
from the constituencies that Singh planned to visit. These people would be
the primary force for drawing in crowds to the event. IPAC employees met
with the aspirants and convinced them that the larger the crowd they brought
to the event, the higher their chances of getting a party ticket. Their ability to
mobilize a crowd would be an indicator of their actual strength on the
ground. This strategy activated the candidates into action, who doubled their
campaign efforts and expenses once it was announced that Singh would be
visiting their constituency next. Many aspiring candidates agreed to spend
money for hiring vehicles to transport people to the event, and a lot of them
even offered refreshments to the attendees.
The next step was to brand the entire constituency with Congress posters
overnight, which would stay on till the elections. It was the first time that
such an initiative to paste posters overnight across an entire constituency was
undertaken by IPAC, and I was put in charge of it. As Bhartiji put it, people
waking up and seeing Congress posters everywhere in the constituency
would lead to ‘buzz creation’. People would instantly know that Singh was
about to visit their constituency and it would become the talk of the town for
the next few days.
The first time we did this, it was chaotic, and that is how I ended up
waiting for a batch of posters to arrive from Chandigarh at 2 a.m., while a
dozen workers got drunk. We had hired auto drivers and labourers who were
assembled into teams and given different zones of the constituency to cover.
Eventually, the posters arrived, and the results the next morning were exactly
what we had hoped for. Wherever we went the next day, people were talking
about the posters and the upcoming event.
After this success, I became the go-to person at IPAC for all queries
related to posters! I would often get phone calls from IPAC employees across
Punjab enquiring how ‘leti ’ was prepared. I had become somewhat of a
specialist at preparing ‘lai ’ or ‘leti’—a solution of flour and water cooked
over a flame that was used to paste posters. Leti was so effective that the
posters couldn’t be removed unless the entire surface of the wall was
scratched off.
Around three or four days before the event, we hired autos fitted with
sound systems, covered them with banners and sent them out with flyers to
distribute to people in all major villages of the constituency. The autos
played the campaign song and announced Singh’s impending arrival, ensuring
that the message reached everyone in the area. It was obvious that most
people would not attend the event itself, but just the fact that they were being
made aware of Singh’s visit to their halka was important. These activities
also transformed the Congress into being viewed as the most active party in
the state and I later realized how that in itself is a major electoral advantage.
A party pretending to be the most active and acting like the frontrunner, is
enough to make people believe that it is most likely to win, which often
translates into actual support and votes. This is why before every election,
all parties make grandiose claims of victory even when they know that they
won’t win.

Building a Brand

As I watched the events in Punjab unfold, I got a glimpse into how Modi’s
brand had been built. The nation knew that he was an extremely effective
chief minister who had transformed Gujarat. His background as a ‘chaiwala’
who had suffered a lot and risen from the ground up had also become a part
of his brand and a key galvanizer of support for him against a seemingly
nepotistic and elite Congress leadership. It became clear to me that the brand
that PM Modi had cultivated for himself was not an accident; it was
something that was crafted as part of a well-thought-out strategy.
Prior to the Punjab campaign, I had never believed that advertising could
have such a tremendous impact on an election. All of us like to believe that
we make rational choices based on facts, especially on an issue as important
as who our leader should be. As an external observer, I believed the same
thing. It looked like people made up their minds based on discussions with
others in their community or after an evaluation of factors like which leader
or party they would personally benefit the most from. While it is hard to
convert an ardent supporter of a political party or candidate through
advertising, the neutral voter, who plays the most significant role in an
election, often takes up a side purely through the magic of branding and
advertising.
With time, I also started to see the power that conventional media and
social media played in shifting public opinion and driving popular discourse.
For now, though, I was in awe of just how much influence old-school
advertising had on voter preferences.
It was clear that to build a successful campaign, it was crucial to build a
strong brand for the party or a leader. Observing how another state politician
was branded the kingpin of the drug trade in Punjab also taught me that if a
politician failed to build a strong brand for themselves, this left the door
open for the opposition to build one for them. 7 One of the prime examples of
this is the branding disaster represented by Congress President Rahul
Gandhi.
The Congress did not initially focus on building a strong brand for Rahul
Gandhi and kept him away from everyday politics for much of the time
before 2012–13. This gave the BJP the perfect opportunity to build his brand
instead, and with a much stronger social media machinery at its disposal,
they could ensure that its brand stuck. By making memes of every mistake and
ensuring every gaffe reached millions of viewers, the BJP transformed Rahul
Gandhi into ‘Pappu’, convincing people that he was too dumb to be a leader.
8 Several other politicians have made gaffes similar to the ones made by

Rahul Gandhi, but since they had built a strong brand for themselves
beforehand, the mistakes didn’t become a part of their public persona. Even
the fact that PM Modi wears designer clothing worth lakhs and spends crores
on his advertising or on trips abroad hasn’t detracted from his image of being
a ‘fakir’ (ascetic) who comes from a humble background. 9 That is the kind of
resilience a strong brand has in politics.
 The job of building a persona for a politician is what good political
consultants do and this is the primary reason for Kishor’s success. He not
only built brands for political leaders but also used the same skills to build
one for himself. The data analytics work that IPAC did was mediocre at best
and there isn’t much strategy work for the organization to do. But just the fact
that they could effectively build brands through event management and
advertising made them the largest political consultancy group in the country.
One of the most important tools for building a brand in politics is the
media. As former premier of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, said, ‘The
press is our chief ideological weapon.’ 10
A later chapter in the book covers just how political parties try to control
the media in order to frame the narrative that voters get to hear. In Chapter 6,
I discuss how a battle has ensued for control over the media in recent years,
leading to one party dominating the entire industry. For now, though, I only
saw how Kishor and IPAC used the media to define a small sliver of the
national discourse.
Social media has gained tremendous importance in Indian politics over the
last few years, which will only increase as a larger percentage of our
population gets connected to the Internet. For now, though, conventional TV
and print media still hold enormous power over the information that reaches
people, based on which they form their opinions. Since the creation of a
brand involves delivering a message to a large number of people, no
political consultant or party can ignore conventional media.
Hence, to transform Maharaja Amarinder Singh into Captain Amarinder
Singh in Punjab, we needed to get the media to start reporting on the
transformation. For this, IPAC hired several ex-journalists and
communications professionals who ensured that press releases could be sent
out on every incident, written in such a manner that journalists could copy–
paste the content without putting in much effort. These communications
professionals also cultivated relationships with some journalists and started
sending them stories on the hard work that Captain Amarinder Singh was
putting into the campaign. 11
 In some cases, though, this may not be enough, and the staging of media
spectacles that aren’t entirely authentic becomes unavoidable. For instance,
during one of the campaigns I was associated with, party karyakartas claimed
that fake FIRs were being filed against them by the ruling dispensation in an
attempt to silence them. We brainstormed solutions and came up with the idea
of a major party functionary getting angered during a public event when the
issue was raised and storming off to a police station to rectify the situation.
We carefully planned how this ‘spontaneous’ outburst would unfold, but as
is common in Indian politics, by the time of the event, the entire team knew
what was about to happen. People who got to know of the plan told others,
just to prove that they were part of high-level strategic discussions. Soon,
everyone employed in the campaign knew exactly what was going to happen.
On the predetermined date, during a public meeting, the party leader
received several complaints from citizens about the fake FIRs. He stormed
off the stage and led the crowd to a nearby police station to air his
grievances before a confused station house officer (SHO). The spectacle
achieved little in terms of resolving the complaints, but it created an
immensely positive image for the politician. The campaign teams used the
incident to spread the message that the politician simply couldn’t bear the
pain of the masses and was roused to take decisive action instantly. That was
what the state’s population got to hear through both conventional and social
media. Camera crews had followed the politician to the police station and
the video of him arguing with police officers for the rights of citizens gained
tremendous traction on social media platforms.
Theatrics that mould public perception are a common part of politics, and
I have witnessed many such instances of feigned outrage from leaders across
the political spectrum. I have also heard stories from political strategists
about how senior leaders would plan ahead to get teary-eyed and would cry
during political events in order to garner voters’ sympathy. Even incidents
that appeared to be aberrations, such as someone throwing ink on a leader or
someone attacking a politician for holding a certain opinion, were also at
times well-thought-out strategic ploys.
 I could never garner proof that a party was planning such incidents in a
concerted manner, but I have encountered several individuals engaging in
such behaviour with the hope that they will get media coverage and
recognition. Sometimes this backfired, where they were arrested or beaten up
without any political reward, but there have been times when it has worked
out well. I have met functionaries from political parties, and especially from
their yuva morcha (youth wing), whose only claim to fame was attacking
some prominent figure.
A man named Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga, who represented the BJP’s youth
wing on the national executive and has since gone on to become the party’s
spokesperson, claimed responsibility for the attack on prominent advocate
Prashant Bhushan. He tweeted, ‘He try to break my Nation, i try to break his
head. Hisab chukta . Congrats to all. operation Prashant Bhushan successful
[sic].’ 12 Bagga also claimed that he had attacked Hurriyat leader Syed Ali
Shah Geelani and activist Arundhati Roy in the past. In any other context, a
person claiming to have assaulted unarmed people would make little sense.
In the context of Indian politics, such claims can further a person’s career by
bringing them media attention. 13
I know of enough incidents that were scripted dramas intended for public
consumption and so I personally never form an opinion about any politician
based on them. It might seem cynical to disregard every incident because
some of them might be staged, but these instances really aren’t what a voter
should be basing their preferences of a leader on. It turns out that no media
coverage is as trustworthy as it ideally should be.
Working for Kishor taught me that most of the coverage required effort on
the part of the person getting covered, and that the media rarely reached out
to people who weren’t already making headlines. Kishor is the most famous
political strategist in the country today, thanks largely to the media coverage
that he received after the 2014 general elections and the 2015 Bihar
assembly elections. Such coverage rarely happens organically in India. Many
of those who receive it do so because they have cultivated a relationship
with people in the media who are willing to write about them, sometimes in
exchange for favours or cash. This is especially prevalent in politics where
the Election Commission has repeatedly raised concerns about ‘paid news’
and the relationships between media persons and politicians. 14
Simultaneous to the Congress campaign in Punjab, Kishor was also
responsible for the party’s campaign in Uttar Pradesh. It was clear early on
that the campaign in UP was not going well. This was the time when stories
about differences between Kishor and the Congress started appearing in the
media. These stories quoted unidentified sources as stating that the party was
not listening to Kishor or following his advice, thereby creating a strong alibi
for why Kishor was unable to win the election for the Congress in Uttar
Pradesh. 15
It was evident to me that managing media headlines and shifting the public
discourse in a specific direction through tools such as social media was
integral for winning an election. I’d also learnt what created a ‘buzz’ and
how a good campaign was built. There wasn’t much more to learn from
IPAC. The organization was more involved in PR and event management than
in political strategy. I’d also come to realize that the kind of direct political
work that I was hoping to get involved in could not be done through a
political consultancy firm. I would have to work with a party leader.

Back to Grassroots

I accepted the offer to work on the BJP’s campaign in Manipur and booked
my flight for Imphal. I reached the state six months before it was due to go to
the polls. I knew this would be a significantly different experience from
Punjab. IPAC had over 150 employees stationed in Punjab, deploying people
in every constituency and building teams for specific tasks such as events,
social media, research and data analytics. In Manipur, it was going to be just
Rajat Sethi and I from outside the state. We got to work, building a team that
would manage the campaign. We started with a few PhD students from
Manipur University who would conduct research on all that was wrong with
the incumbent Congress government. The idea was to create a ‘100-point
chargesheet’ against the Congress that would be released by BJP leaders in
the coming months. 16
 This chargesheet would also serve as a source for talking points for our
leaders across the state. It included hard-hitting statistics like, ‘There are
over 7 lakh educated people unemployed in the state. The unemployment rate
has more than doubled in the last ten years. The Congress government’s
corruption dissuades private industries and Ibobi uses government
recruitment to fill his own pocket.’ And, ‘Not a single student passed the
Class 10 exam in seventy-three schools this year. Less than half the students
pass Class 10 across all government schools in Manipur. The standard of
education is declining constantly under the Congress government.’
The document highlighted as many of the government’s failures as possible
on every front. It listed everything, from unemployment, corruption, the
government’s failure to provide basic infrastructure, the failed education
system, law and order issues and the cases of fake encounters filed against
the government. With the severe inefficiencies of the Congress government
over the last fifteen years when it had ruled the state, it didn’t take us long to
come up with the document. We got it read by a few locals and the feedback
was unanimous—reading the document made every Manipuri feel like the
state was in a worse condition than they could have ever imagined. It was
exactly what the BJP needed to frame the narrative for the upcoming
elections.
We hired a team of graphic designers, cartoonists and other campaign staff
to manage the BJP’s social media for the next few months. We took control of
all the party’s official social media accounts from the local IT cell and
started managing them from our office. We also got a few SIM cards and
started making WhatsApp groups from the database of numbers we were
provided. The small team and the lack of oversight that had initially shocked
me proved to be invaluable and I got to see just how a campaign is built from
the ground up. For the first three months, I was the only one from outside the
state who stayed full-time in Manipur. Sethi visited every few weeks and
senior party leaders such as Madhav and Himanta Biswa Sarma, Assam’s
finance minister and convener of the BJP’s northeastern coalition called
North-East Democratic Alliance (NEDA), visited once every month.
 The campaign initially seemed slow and there wasn’t much work to be
done on a daily basis. We started with data collection, research and
managing social media but since there was little ground activity, we had a lot
of free time. This deceptive calm ended as the election neared and it soon
turned into a frantic few months during which none of us got much sleep.
A phrase that one of the IPAC directors, Rishi Raj Singh, had told us in
Punjab, ‘It’s like the army, not the traffic police’, started to make a lot of
sense to me in Manipur. In the initial days of the campaign, there usually isn’t
much work to be done on a daily basis. Most people working in political
consultancy get frustrated because they’re kept preoccupied with work that
isn’t going to achieve any results by design. The tasks are assigned just so
that employees are kept busy and when they realize what they’re being made
to do is pointless, work satisfaction plummets. The reason why both political
parties and consultancies do this is because you never know when people
would be required. At certain stages of a campaign, there is a sudden need
for manpower and people need to come in and work on overdrive, just like
the army does during emergencies. The traffic police, on the other hand, have
to work every day to ensure that traffic flows smoothly.
Many IPAC employees had thus waited patiently, looking for an
opportunity to strike during the 2015 Bihar assembly elections. That
opportunity presented itself after a speech by Prime Minister Modi at an
election rally in Muzaffarpur, where he stated that there seemed to be ‘some
problem with Nitish Kumar’s DNA’. This is exactly the kind of opportunity
that people in politics wait for, and Kishor quickly twisted the remark into an
affront to the DNA of all Biharis. 17 The IPAC team had to respond quickly if
they wanted to capitalize on the situation, which they did by launching a
campaign where they sent the prime minister hair and nails of Biharis for
DNA testing, taunting him to tell them what was wrong with their DNA. 18
Meanwhile, Nitish Kumar wrote a letter to the prime minister, terming his
statement an ‘insult’ to all the people of Bihar. The remark allowed IPAC and
Nitish Kumar to frame a new narrative of Bihari pride, turning the race into a
fight between ‘Bihari versus Bahari ’ (Bihari versus outsider).
 Twisting statements for political gain takes place with remarkable
frequency in Indian politics and all sides wait for their opponent to commit
unforced errors. During the 2017 Gujarat assembly election, Mani Shankar
Aiyar called Modi ‘neech kisam ka aadmi ’ (a low-life) and the BJP quickly
twisted it against the Congress, claiming that Aiyar had used the word
‘neech’ (low) as a caste insult. A statement on PM Modi’s character was
turned into a statement about the prime minister’s caste and the media let the
distortion slide as it almost always does. 19
What was happening to us in Manipur was much worse, though. Chief
Minister Okram Ibobi Singh had outmanoeuvred us and we were losing the
battle of emotions. He had grabbed on to sensitive issues that resonated with
Manipuri voters and turned the tide against the BJP. PM Modi had signed a
framework agreement termed the ‘Naga Accord’ or the ‘Naga Peace Accord’
with the Nagaland-based separatist group National Socialist Council of
Nagaland (Isak-Muivah) (NSCN[IM]) in August 2015. 20 The terms of the
agreement were kept secret by the Government of India but it was well
known that the NSCN(IM) had a long-standing demand for a larger state that
comprised all Naga-dominated regions of states neighbouring Nagaland. This
would include large parts of Manipur. CM Ibobi claimed that under the
agreement with NSCN(IM), the BJP would break up Manipur and give away
parts of the state to Nagaland. 21
Our surveys showed that we were losing the support of the Meitei
community that occupied only a small area of land in the valleys of Manipur,
but constituted a majority of the state’s population, representing 53 per cent
of the people, and controlling forty of the sixty seats in the state.

Memorable Messaging

We realized that our campaign’s messaging needed to be crisp and

memorable. This is exactly why Prime Minister Modi’s campaign in 2014
had excelled. All BJP leaders repeated the same key points on the failures of
the incumbent government from the chargesheet that we’d prepared, so that
some specific ten–fifteen points were embedded in the minds of every voter.
Our campaign song was played continuously on radio and through video vans
that drove across Manipur, stopping at key places to show people a carefully
crafted seventeen-minute film that reinforced the same messaging. Our
newspaper advertisements were one-line indictments of the CM followed by
another line saying that the new government would transform Manipur. And
our slogans were just as gripping as BJP’s slogans in 2014.
The value of short and memorable messaging can’t be underestimated in
politics. Any political strategy that doesn’t account for this is bound to fail. A
binder full of facts isn’t memorable, and is definitely not something the
average voter would read. Most people don’t have the time or the patience to
read conflicting opinions to choose a side; they choose one based on the
popular rhetoric that they get to hear consistently. This makes it essential for
a party to be the one to frame the dominant rhetoric.
In the 2014 general elections, the slogans ‘Acche Din Aane Waale Hain ’
(Good Days Are About to Come) and ‘Abki Baar Modi Sarkar ’ (This Time
Modi’s Government) were as valuable a campaign tool for the BJP as any
fact at its disposal. Using a catchy slogan to get voters’ attention is as old as
politics itself. Indira Gandhi relied on it when she used ‘Garibi Hatao, Desh
Bachao ’ (Remove Poverty, Save the Nation) in her 1971 election campaign.
The lasting impact of such messaging can be estimated from the fact that the
slogan ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan ’ (Hail Soldier, Hail Farmer) remains etched
in the memory of every Indian since it was first used by India’s second prime
minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, in 1965 to rally support against the attack by
Pakistan and to enthuse farmers to tide over the food shortage that was
simultaneously plaguing India.
The only real difference is that there were fewer mediums available to
disseminate messages then. In that era, slogans reached the people via
speeches and broadcasts on All India Radio. Nowadays, parties hire
professionals to both create and disseminate the message. It takes a massive
PR exercise to ensure that the message cuts through not just competing
messages from political parties but also those from companies selling their
wares to reach the intended voters. The concept of messaging might be age-
old, but the media at the disposal of political consultants have grown to
include TV, radio, newspapers, speeches, and lately social media, messaging
platforms and automated voice calls.
The design of the message is important, though, and a part of a political
consultant’s work is to determine that they have the right message before they
release it to the world. A good message is calibrated to the audience it is
being sent to and it delivers something of value to the recipient. We
conducted in-person focus group discussions with participants from different
demographics and tested multiple slogans with soft releases on social media
and WhatsApp groups to determine what would work before deciding upon
our final campaign slogans.
‘Acche Din Aane Wale Hain ’ might be an example of a great slogan, but
there have been some terrible ones made by consultants in the past few years.
As soon as I heard the combined campaign slogan of the Samajwadi Party
and the Congress for the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections in 2017, I sent an
email to Steve Jarding, the Harvard professor who was handling Akhilesh
Yadav’s campaign, to tell him how bad their slogan was. It was ‘UP Ko Yeh
Saath Pasand Hain ’ to showcase the duo of Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul
Gandhi. The slogan clearly had little to do with what the masses wanted. It
fulfilled no aspirations, gave no hope for a better future, and wasn’t even a
call to action to the voter. It was a phrase that meant nothing to anyone other
than the people who had just entered into an alliance.
In Manipur, we came up with the slogan—‘BJP Laklagani, Ahunba
Suidenapuraklagani ’, a rhyme that roughly translates to, ‘BJP Will Come,
Changes Will Come’. This was broadcast through all possible media and
was included at the end of all TV commercials and videos that the party
released. This advertising blitzkrieg combined with last-minute manoeuvring
that involved several BJP candidates significantly outspending their
competitors prevented the Congress from getting the required number of seats
to form the government on its own. Since the BJP already had an alliance
with Naga People’s Front (NPF) in Nagaland and National People’s Party
(NPP) in Meghalaya, both of whom had won four seats each, it was able to
cobble together a coalition government by giving up all ministerial berths
except one to its coalition partners. N. Biren Singh, the former Congress
minister who had defected to the BJP months before the election, was sworn
in as the chief minister of Manipur. 22
Our preliminary surveys had shown that the BJP was poised to do well in
the state. The Congress party under the chief ministership of Ibobi had ruled
Manipur since 2002. The CM was commonly known as ‘Mr 10%’—a
confidential cable of the US Consulate in Kolkata leaked via WikiLeaks
referred to him as such. 23 Our surveys unequivocally showed that people
viewed the incumbent government as corrupt and several instances of
violations of human rights had turned off the voters. The data made it clear to
us that the BJP would do extremely well in the elections because of the
strong anti-incumbency wave. It seemed like the people were waiting for an
alternative to show up, and now that the BJP had, the Congress would be
ousted without much effort. This, we realized in retrospect, led us to severely
underestimate the incumbent chief minister. What he unleashed on us just a
few months before the elections was something none of us could have
anticipated.

Community Fault Lines

The CM’s brilliant political manoeuvre surprised us all. He issued a gazette

notification on 9 December 2016, creating seven new districts in Manipur by
bifurcating seven of the state’s existing nine districts. 24 Most of these
districts were bifurcated in such a way that it broke off Naga-dominated
regions and merged them with non-Naga areas. Ibobi took this decision after
he realized that his grip over the state was weakening. Veteran leaders N.
Biren Singh and Y. Erabot had left the Congress and joined the BJP months
before the elections. 25 The NSCN(IM) had also unofficially declared their
support for the NPF, basically guaranteeing that the Congress would not be
getting too many Naga votes. 26 To counter these, Ibobi decided that he
wouldn’t focus on Naga votes at all and would instead try to win some seats
in the tribal-dominated hill districts by fulfilling a long-standing demand of
the other large tribal community of the region, the Kukis, for separate
districts.
 Things spiralled downhill for the state and for the BJP’s campaign. The
United Naga Council (UNC), an organization comprising Nagas
predominantly from the hill districts of Manipur that is allegedly backed by
the separatist group NSCN(IM), 27 decided to protest the creation of these
new districts by blockading the national highways that brought supplies to
Manipur. The group was already protesting against three bills introduced by
the Manipur government for the implementation of an Inner Line Permit (ILP)
system in the state. The Inner Line Permit system would mean that non-
residents of the state would require a permit to visit Manipur. These bills
were supported by the valley-based Meitei population but opposed by the
tribals, many of whom have familial ties in neighbouring states. The
bifurcation of districts was the tipping point and it led to the longest
blockade of highways in the state’s history. 28 This closure of highways
caused a huge shortage of essential commodities in the state and the price of
petrol shot up to ₹300 a litre in Imphal. 29
The BJP was put in a tough spot as CM Ibobi accused the party of being
sympathetic to the Nagas and against the interests of the Meiteis. The party
also got blamed for its inability to end the blockade, since it was in power at
the Centre and there was a demand that Central forces be used to end the
state’s siege. The BJP’s alliance with the NPF in Nagaland, its refusal to
disclose the details of the Naga Peace Accord and to take any side on the ILP
issue, and its inability to act against a highway blockade that lasted 139 days
meant that the party was losing the emotional battle in Manipur. The results
were close to what we had predicted given the circumstances, with the BJP
winning twenty-one seats in the sixty-member assembly and the Congress
winning twenty-eight seats. 30
The vitriolic campaign had utilized the age-old animosity between the
Meiteis and the Nagas to make people forget about the misrule, corruption
and law and order situation under Ibobi’s watch. At first, we tried to counter
this campaign using logical arguments on why it was not in the BJP’s best
interest to be pro-Naga at the cost of the dominant Meitei community, and
how it was only an attempt by the CM to distract people from the more
pressing issues of Manipur. This obviously did not work. A negligible
number voted based on data or logic, even though most wanted to believe
that they were being logical. This bore out the dictum that voting rarely takes
place after thorough analysis of available options, and is essentially based on
popular emotion. People choose the side they believe to be the best, not one
that is objectively better.
That the BJP would never compromise the territorial integrity of Manipur
and no part of the state would be broken off were underlined in the speeches
of both Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Prime Minister Modi when they
visited Manipur. 31 This blunted the line of attack. We also launched an
enormous campaign to get the voters back on our side, asking the people to
end fifteen years of loot and destruction and save Manipur. We bombarded
them with that key message from all directions. Using social media,
WhatsApp, TV advertisements and front-page newspaper advertisements
every day, conveying the same set of messages in different forms until the
elections. This approach was a lot more successful than any appeal to logic
could have been.

Money Matters

The Manipur elections were an eye-opening experience for a key realization:

to dominate an election campaign, it was essential to dominate the narrative.
To dominate the narrative, it was necessary to be able to direct people’s
emotions. One can have all the data and facts in one’s favour, but if voters’
emotions are against a party, it can’t win. It was also a lesson on the
importance of money in politics, not just for advertising and running a
campaign, but also that which was distributed to the voters. The Manipur
election took place in February 2017 along with Uttar Pradesh, a few months
after the banknote demonetization was announced on 8 November 2016. 32
Demonetization played a major role in the elections, with all parties strapped
for cash right when it was needed the most. When we saw the prime minister
address the nation through television and announce demonetization, we knew
it would be a major problem to manage the elections without any cash. But
we also conjectured that this move might help the BJP win Uttar Pradesh by
cutting off the cash available to its opposition. The initial cash crunch was
debilitating and most party karyakartas, including us, had to stand in long
lines to get the allowed Rs 4500 by exchanging old notes for new ones, just
to function. The situation stabilized within a few weeks though and cash
seemed to become readily available to the parties again.
The fact that money didn’t evaporate from the electoral process due to
demonetization can be evaluated from the fact that the election commission
seized much more in cash, liquor and gold from the five states—Goa, Punjab,
Uttarakhand, Manipur and Uttar Pradesh—that went to polls in March 2017
than they had in the same states in 2012. The EC seized cash amounting to
₹184.85 crore in 2017 compared to ₹50.78 crore in 2012 along with 37.26
lakh litres of liquor estimated at ₹83.21 crore (this figure stood at just ₹2.82
crore in 2012). Gold, silver and other expensive articles worth ₹52 crore
were also seized. The higher seizures reflect better enforcement on the part
of the Election Commission as the body has confiscated larger amounts
across states that have gone to elections in recent years, but it also reflects
how money was still flowing through the electoral system just a few months
after demonetization. 33 The fact that many of the raids that took place during
this time led to seizure of crores of newly minted 2000 rupee notes
demonstrated that people had found ways to convert old notes and get the
new currency. 34
Observing the role of cash in politics changed my opinion of corruption. I
had always held that politicians were responsible for most of the corruption
in the nation. While working in Manipur, it seemed impossible to win an
election without spending a few crores on running a campaign and paying
voters directly, at least in some regions. Through years of mismanagement,
sections of the voting population had been made accustomed to corruption so
that they wouldn’t even consider voting for a candidate who didn’t pay them.
In such a scenario, an honest politician was unlikely to win and those who
did would invariably indulge in corruption to recoup their expenses and
build a corpus for subsequent elections. Corruption is as much a consequence
of voters’ temperament as it is of the greed of politicians. Nothing
demonstrated this better than the way votes were sold in Manipur.
 My experience there helped me understand some of the dark ground
realities of politics. It also whetted my appetite to learn more. I found
election management fascinating and started to realize the huge potential that
data analytics had for revolutionizing the way elections were fought in the
country. I had started working on analysing survey data and processing
constituency-level demographic data in Manipur, but I knew there was a lot
more to it than I had managed to do there. I didn’t know it then, but the
opportunity to really get involved in political data analytics was about to
present itself right after the Manipur elections ended.
 3
TECHNOLOGY AND DATA

U SA has been grappling with data privacy and social media platforms
being misused to influence electoral outcomes since the 2016 presidential
elections. As soon as the results were announced in November 2016,
concerns were raised regarding the influence of Russia. An investigation was
launched to probe Russian meddling that allegedly helped Donald Trump
become president. 1 According to rumours in data circles, the data of millions
of Facebook users was used to segment people into categories so that they
could be targeted with advertising that would appeal to their pre-existing
biases.
The Indian media covered these developments taking place halfway across
the globe but there wasn’t much outrage in the country. This changed in
March 2018, when a story broke explaining the role London-based data
consultancy firm, Cambridge Analytica, had played in the 2016 US
presidential elections. It was revealed that the firm had gained access to the
data of at least 87 million Facebook users and used it to influence voter
behaviour to help Trump’s campaign. 2
The company had used the personal data of individuals that it had obtained
through a Facebook app to profile people and map out their entire social
network. The app was ‘This Is Your Digital Life’, developed by Cambridge
University data scientist Aleksandr Kogan, which allowed the company to
create psychographical profiles of Facebook users. These profiles, based on
the person’s demographic details, Facebook likes and posts, allowed the
company to determine what kind of messaging would be most effective in
persuading that person to vote for a specific party. It was used to segment
people into categories so they could be bombarded with customized
messages that would appeal to them, and mould their opinion in a specific
direction over time. 3
Even though Facebook tried to distance itself from the controversy once
the scandal broke, what Cambridge Analytica did wasn’t entirely alien to
how Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg had envisioned the platform to be
used. Despite Zuckerberg’s apology and his calling the situation a ‘mistake’
and a ‘breach of trust’, the fact remains that the social media giant is in
essence an advertising platform that derives its value from being able to
target individuals based on their preferences. 4
Facebook knew the potential impact of such targeted advertising since
2012, when it had conducted an experiment to see if it could alter people’s
moods using targeted advertising. In the week-long experiment in January
2012, data scientists manipulated the posts that users saw on their feed.
Almost 7 lakh users were unknowingly made a part of this experiment and
were either shown posts with positive and happy words, or were shown
content that was sadder than average for an entire week. The company then
measured how often these users posted positive or negative messages on
their own timeline. The results made it staggeringly clear that Facebook
could manipulate the emotional state of its users through the kind of content it
chose to display to them. Users who were shown negative messages were
likely to post negative status messages, while those who were shown
positive messages posted positive status messages. 5 The result clearly
showed that people’s opinions and even emotions could be warped through
targeted advertising. Since 2012, the options for targeting advertising and the
amount of data that Facebook has on users have both increased exponentially.
Indian politicians got embroiled in the issue as soon as the scandal broke,
with both Congress and BJP politicians accusing each other of using the
services of the firm to further their electoral interests. They both alleged that
the other had tried to manipulate elections with the help of the firm and its
India partner, Ovleno Business Intelligence Private Limited. 6 Union
information technology and law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad alleged that
the Congress had used the firm’s services to try and win the Gujarat
legislative assembly elections held in December 2017 and that Rahul Gandhi
had personally met the CEO of Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix, who
had since been sacked from the company. 7 Prasad also launched an attack
against Facebook and addressed a press conference, threatening it with
‘stringent action’, including summoning Zuckerberg to India if the technology
platform attempted to influence the country’s elections. 8
News networks picked up the story and ran it with sensational hashtags
such as #ForeignHandExposed 9 and #BritishCasteConspiracy 10 but as
anyone working in political consultancy could have predicted, the entire
scandal died down within a week with no resolution. Every channel hosted
debates on the topic filled with political rhetoric, but it was a scandal that a
majority of viewers and voters neither understood much nor cared about. In a
nation where most voters are scrambling to secure basic necessities such as
food, water, electricity, healthcare and jobs, a scandal about data privacy just
didn’t grab attention.

Analysing Constituencies

Around a year before the Cambridge Analytica story broke, in March 2017,
we had returned to Delhi after managing a moderately successful campaign in
Manipur. Preparations started for the next phase of elections in the northeast,
due in February 2018. This time we were managing campaigns for three
states—Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland. We capitalized on the lessons we
had learnt in Manipur and established a data analytics team in Delhi to build
detailed constituency profiles and collect other data that would be helpful in
formulating strategy. Till this point, no one had articulated any of the harmful
effects of using data in politics and the national media remained largely
oblivious of how political parties were using it.
 We started by writing ‘scripts’, which are programs that can automate
tasks that would take hours to complete if done manually. Most of the coding
was in a programming language called Python, which was the same one that I
had previously used to extract data from the Lok Sabha website. These
scripts allowed us to download historic voting data, voter rolls and
demographic details from different websites and put them in databases with
just a few clicks. We also wrote scripts to analyse past data, combine it with
the data we got from on-ground surveys, and determine our likelihood of
winning each of the booths and constituencies.
The algorithm that we wrote rated each of the booths as ‘favourable’,
‘battleground’, ‘weak battleground’ or ‘difficult’, based on our assessment of
how likely we were to be the single largest party in that booth. A similar
exercise was undertaken to rate constituencies. This allowed us to figure out
where the party’s effort and resources should be directed during the election
campaign. The rating also remained dynamic and changed as we conducted
on-ground surveys throughout the campaign.
As we had realized in Manipur, surveys were one of the toughest parts of
the data collection process. We could build extensive sampling and
normalization methods that allowed us to choose exactly the number of
people we wanted from each demographic set, but if the on-ground surveyors
cut corners, the data would be far from reality. We specified how many
respondents we wanted from each area, tribe, caste, religion and age group
so that the survey data was a true representation of what the population was
thinking, but when the data collected did not have the sampling we wanted,
we used a process called normalization to balance it. Normalization allowed
us to give responses from some demographic sets more weightage than others
so that the entire set would be the closest to the true opinions of the
underlying population, and not a skewed representation where the opinions
of any particular community swayed the data more than their share in the
population would allow for.
All of this was relatively easy since we had already collected
demographic details for each of the constituencies. What wasn’t as easy was
finding a survey agency that wouldn’t just make up the data. Since agencies
were paid per respondent, without constant monitoring, a surveyor would
interview five people and fill in the data for twenty people by slightly
modifying the information he’d received from the five. Using mobile apps to
conduct the survey that would track the person by GPS also did not work
because responses to surveys need to happen in a conversational format.
Tests revealed that responses were much poorer if the respondent was made
to answer questions in a numerical order with the surveyor entering the
responses as the respondent spoke. What worked was a free-flowing
conversation where a person just talked about his or her preferences and the
surveyor framed questions as a natural part of the conversation. This
required the survey forms to be on paper so that the replies could be filled in
easily even in non-sequential order.
To overcome the problem of fake survey responses, we hired a survey
agency that we had figured out was trustworthy after a process of trial and
error. We also set up call centres that would call the respondents on the
numbers they had provided to check with them that a survey had actually
taken place. This system of random checks was usually enough to keep most
surveyors honest, and with a good survey company, we knew we could ask
for a resurvey in places where the data was suspect, without incurring
additional cost.
Armed with this data, I headed to Tripura in the first week of August 2017.
Tripura would be our prime focus in the next round of elections. The BJP
was bound to do well in Nagaland. It was already a part of the ruling
alliance in the state along with the NPF. The state’s lone MP and former chief
minister Neiphiu Rio had left NPF to form his own party, the Nationalist
Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP), and he too had invited the BJP to be
a coalition partner. 11 Meghalaya was a major challenge for the BJP, with a
74 per cent Christian population, and it was unlikely that the BJP would lead
the government in the state. 12 Our data showed that the best-case scenario for
the BJP at the time was to win six out of sixty seats and become a part of the
ruling coalition along with Conrad Sangma’s NPP.
Tripura, on the other hand, was a state in which the BJP was contesting on
its own, and it planned to win. The party had polled just 1.54 per cent of the
total votes during the 2013 assembly elections and had lost its deposit on all
but one seat of the fifty that it had contested from. This time, it was
determined to do well in Tripura. 13 If it did win, it would end twenty-five
years of uninterrupted rule by the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
(CPI[M]). The same chief minister had ruled the state for twenty years. CM
Manik Sarkar seemed to be a simple man and had built a strong reputation of
being honest and sincere. He was also credited with leading the state through
a gruelling phase of insurgency and of bringing peace. 14 The election would
be a formidable battle against an incumbent with a rock-solid reputation, and
also a fiercely fought one given the ideological underpinnings of the contest
between two parties on two opposing ends of the ideological spectrum. The
animosity ran deep within the ranks of both the parties and had often erupted
in violent clashes in the states of Kerala and West Bengal. 15 This was a
battle that the BJP had to win in Tripura.
While working on the data, we had focused on building visualization tools
that allowed us to plot the data over maps and represent it in other graphical
formats like bar graphs and charts. We had also worked with a private
company to develop a mobile app that could display the data in a format that
was easy for party leaders to use. The utility of both measures was instantly
obvious within the first few weeks that I was in Tripura. I met Madhav in
Agartala and was told to attend meetings with district-level party leaders in
four out of the eight districts during his visit. I briefed him on the data that we
had collated and the new mobile app that had been developed to display that
data. I assumed that having the data handy would be useful for leaders when
they discussed strategy, but the very first time he used the app, Madhav
transformed it into a tool to encourage party karyakartas to work harder.
The plan was to go to the farthest place on our day’s itinerary by
helicopter and then travel back to Agartala by road, attending meetings in all
districts en route. We boarded a twin-engine Pawan Hans helicopter that took
us to Dharmanagar, the northernmost city in the state. As the chopper was
about to land, I noticed the huge crowds gathered around the helipad waving
and waiting with garlands to welcome Madhav. With a mobile phone in my
hand to take pictures, it was obvious that I was the only one in the team to
find any of this amusing. It was normal for everyone else travelling with me.
Madhav marked the page that he had reached and handed me the book he had
been reading during the helicopter ride. His aide, Priyang Pandey, who later
headed the BJP’s campaign in Nagaland, was busy on the phone, making sure
our travel arrangements were in order. After the welcome, we made our way
through cheering crowds and got into our vehicles. A convoy of eight SUVs
made its way through Dharmanagar to the meeting venue.
Madhav presided over the meeting along with the BJP district president
while mandal presidents, who headed the party’s unit at the assembly
constituency level, enumerated the issues they were facing in preparing for
the elections. We took copious notes about the problems and any solution that
Madhav proposed. After everyone had spoken, Madhav took out a new tablet
with our app installed on it. He asked representatives from each of the
constituencies to stand one by one and quizzed them using the data on the app.
‘How many votes did you get at the booth you personally voted at during
the last assembly elections? How many Muslims are there in your
constituency? How many voters from the Chakma tribe?’
As I witnessed this, I realized how Madhav had found a utility for the app
beyond building strategy. This kind of quizzing allowed for instant
accountability of mandal presidents and other office bearers to know their
constituencies thoroughly. To be able to answer the questions, they would be
forced to study the make-up of each booth and carry printouts of such data to
all party meetings. This forced office bearers to work harder and to make
booth-level karyakartas work harder too, because they realized that they
would be expected to know the details of each booth that the senior leaders
of the party had at their fingertips. The ones who were active and informed
got recognition and those that didn’t know the answers got looks of
disapproval from the entire room, ensuring that they would all try to be better
prepared at the next meeting. The data we had compiled remained with the
senior leadership, so the constituency-level office bearers would have to
collect this data for themselves using booth committees who would manually
tabulate the results using local knowledge and electoral rolls. This gave the
entire machinery an important task to undertake months before the election,
and helped ensured that booth committees were formed across the state and
were active.
The task of writing down grievances in each constituency and the quizzing
continued as the entire convoy drove from one district to the other, finally
reaching Agartala well into the night. In one day, we had covered four
districts and were due to cover the remaining four during Madhav’s next visit
to the state. After he left, I started working on building a local team for the
election campaign and met all the top party leaders in the state. We had lost
the narrative battle in Manipur because we had allowed the incumbent CM to
frame the emotional issues that would be central to the elections. Hence, I
was especially vigilant to identify all such issues beforehand in Tripura.
A lot of groundwork had already been done by the state’s in-charge, Sunil
Deodhar. Deodhar was an RSS swayamsewak from Maharashtra who had
worked extensively in the northeast, especially in Meghalaya, during the
1990s. 16 He had already spent over a year in Tripura before I got to the state
and had built an extensive team to oversee different parts of the operation.
Most BJP state in-charges that I had interacted with up to this point had acted
as mentors of the local leadership, but Deodhar was different. He had
assumed command of the campaign and had become a familiar face for the
people of Tripura, often taking on Sarkar in his fiery speeches. He had
brought in a team of over thirty people predominantly from Maharashtra to
work with him. Most of them worked with his NGO, My Home India, and
had been instructed to stay in Tripura until the elections. 17 The presence of
My Home India staff was so disproportionate to the teams working with
every other leader in the state that closer to the elections, when mediapersons
would ask me about the prospects of the Congress in Tripura, I used to joke
that if My Home India contested on its own symbol in the state, it would
probably get more votes than the Congress.
Deodhar and his team had done tremendous work on the ground. They
were controlling the social media pages and strategic direction of the
campaign until we arrived. His team naturally owed more allegiance to him
than to the state leadership, so they often worked on bolstering his profile on
social and conventional media more than they did on strengthening the profile
of state-level leaders who were actually going to contest elections. Also, we
soon realized that Deodhar’s team did not have the strategic overview that
we had and to execute our planned strategies, we would have to assume
control of some of the party’s machinery. This created some internal friction
between Deodhar and me, but we both knew that we were acting in the
interests of the party. We eventually agreed upon joint control over social
media platforms with our team retaining some veto powers to decide the
direction of the party’s messaging.
Since we compiled and analysed survey and demographic data, we also
assumed control over the messaging that was delivered through the party’s
leaflets and advertising on TV, newspapers and other media, while Deodhar
retained control over on-ground cadre and conventional media. The approval
for all material before it was broadcast was taken from state BJP president
Biplab Kumar Deb and Madhav.
The BJP knew it needed tribal support to win. From our survey results, we
knew that the tribal population showed underlying dissatisfaction with the
incumbent CPI(M) government even though they had served as a strong vote
bank for the party in previous elections. This dissatisfaction had led to the
formation of a new tribal party, the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura
(IPFT), which demanded a new state for the tribals called ‘Tipraland’. 18 We
knew that an alliance with a tribal party was essential for the BJP and that
the other tribal party, the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Twipra (INPT),
which had previously garnered the most tribal votes, was a declining force.
Our alliance had to be either with the IPFT or with both the tribal parties. We
also knew that as soon as such an alliance was announced, Sarkar would
brand the BJP as a party that was supporting the division of Tripura. A
primary plank for the CPI(M) campaign was the fact that they had brought
peace to the state after decades of insurgency. They were insinuating that
their losing the election would again lead to an era of violence and, since the
BJP was supporting the tribals, it would be in the interest of the 70 per cent
Bengali population of the state to rally behind the CPI(M).

A Breakthrough
We conducted multiple rounds of surveys and focus group discussions where
we interacted with people from different communities and demographic
groups to get a sense of their opinion on issues. With information in hand, we
figured out how we could counter the narrative before it had a chance to flare
up. Our data showed that 15.1 per cent of the voters were between the ages
of eighteen and twenty-five years, while 43.1 per cent of the voters were
under the age of thirty-five. This was an aspiring age group that had not
completely bought into the message of the CPI(M) bringing peace to Tripura.
Since the insurgency had been on the decline 2004 onwards, those under
thirty-five had only seen it consistently go down throughout their adult lives.
19 They had come to see the decline as a natural phenomenon, and not

something the CPI(M) should be credited for.

This fact gave us a huge opening into the campaign. While Sarkar built his
campaign on his past laurels, the BJP’s campaign was shaped to focus on the
future. Our state president, Deb, was only forty-six years old, and was
ideally placed to appeal to the youth demographic. The lack of jobs in
Tripura, with almost 20 per cent of the workforce unemployed, represented
the highest unemployment rate in the country. This became a central message
of the campaign. 20 It was what everyone under thirty-five connected with.
We tried to make a 100-point chargesheet against the Sarkar government as
we had done in Manipur, but we realized that it was impossible to come up
with those many hard-hitting points against the government. For the most part,
it was a well-functioning and honest government; so, instead, we focused on
examples of massive failure. We moved beyond statistics and raised specific
instances of rape, murder and politically motivated attacks. We also raised
the Rose Valley Chit Fund scam, where a Kolkata-based company had
solicited investments worth over ₹15,000 crore, including from the poor and
tribal people of Tripura, and disappeared with the money. 21 The Congress
had raised it in previous elections and it had seemingly died out since then.
But we figured out that almost every fourth family in Tripura had lost money
in the scam. Using the imagery of Sarkar on stage with the management of
Rose Valley along with photos of receipts given out by the company to
investors struck a raw emotional nerve with the people of Tripura.
 Knowing how the CPI(M) would react allowed the BJP to frame a new
narrative before announcing its alliance with the IPFT. As soon as the
alliance was announced, we grabbed visuals of IPFT cadres and BJP
karyakartas campaigning together, and the visuals of people waving flags
from both parties were released through selective channels to deliver the
message that the BJP was in fact uniting the tribal and Bengali populations of
Tripura while the CPI(M) was trying to polarize them. 22 We were aware that
the alliance with the IPFT would not go down well with several Bengali
voters, especially those above the age of thirty-five. To limit the harm, we
ensured that the subject was talked about as little as possible and that the
IPFT did not mention its demands for Tipraland again during the campaign
period. 23 We also refrained from using the BJP and IPFT logos together in
Bengali regions, and only used them in the tribal-dominated constituencies.
The message of the alliance and the BJP’s support for tribal causes were
shared extensively on WhatsApp groups and Facebook pages that had a
majority tribal audience but was subdued in groups and pages where the
audience was largely Bengali. BJP leaders also didn’t comment on illegal
Bangladeshi immigration or animosity between Hindus and Muslims during
the campaign because it would have been harmful to the party’s message of
being a unifier of the people of Tripura.
We made eight specific promises in our manifesto that we knew the people
of Tripura would relate to. It included promises to provide jobs and housing,
and to give smartphones to the youth. However, the key promise that turned
the election was the one to implement wages for government employees
under the Seventh Pay Commission. The state had no money in its budget, so
it had maintained wages at the levels of the Fourth Pay Commission and had
increased only allowances, making the wages of Tripura government
employees at least 30 per cent to 50 per cent lower than that of employees in
states that had implemented the Seventh Pay Commission. Tripura had 1.6
lakh government employees and over 52,000 pensioners who would see their
wages increase 1.5 to 2 times if the BJP came to power. 24 This promise
alone netted the BJP the support of over 2 lakh families in a state with less
than 26 lakh voters. It provided an even greater benefit. The older BJP
karyakartas and the six MLAs who had joined the BJP from the Congress had
warned us about the CPI(M)’s hold over government employees. They
narrated stories of how the party had used the support of government
employees during elections and how they might have even been allowed to
rig prior elections. The move on the wages ensured that all state government
employees had a vested interest in seeing the BJP and not the CPI(M) come
to power. This promise was also such that it was credible only if it came
from the BJP. The CPI(M) couldn’t make the same promise. People knew that
the state’s revenues could not bear the burden and that money would be
required from the Central government for this, which was run by the BJP.
Every message that the BJP wanted to deliver reached lakhs of users
instantly, with the budgets for promoting posts over Facebook and the
WhatsApp groups that we had access to. We had bought telecom lists
containing numbers of lakhs of people across the state and used these to
broadcast SMS messages and IVRS calls in the voices of prominent party
leaders, especially Deb. Deodhar’s team had also undertaken a major
outreach programme and had collected lakhs of mobile numbers from
individuals to create WhatsApp groups. All of this far surpassed the efforts
that the CPI(M) had put into these mediums. They stuck to delivering their
message through physical meetings and speeches during most of the
campaign.

A Winning Slogan

Unlike Manipur, the communist culture of Tripura ensured that there wasn’t
much of a need to distribute cash to the voters, but the BJP spent several
times what the CPI(M) did on TV commercials, newspaper advertisements
and video vans. As a result, people were constantly bombarded with the
BJP’s messaging and attempts by any other party to shape the narrative were
simply drowned out. The slogan we decided upon, ‘Chalo Paltai ’ (loosely
translated as ‘Let’s Bring Change’), instantly reverberated throughout the
state. 25
 We had met several writers, poets and academicians and collected
different slogans over a period of a few weeks, but none of them tested
exceptionally well in our focus groups. Sethi and I had travelled to the
houses of several intellectuals late into the night and listened to Bengali
poetry for hours without much coming out of the exercise. Meanwhile, Deb
shortlisted a slogan that we weren’t thrilled with and since we had nothing
better to offer, we were prepared to go along with his suggestion.
While discussing the campaign with the party’s state general secretary
Pratima Bhowmik, we were lamenting the lack of a good slogan for the
campaign. That is when one of our local campaign associates, a young
engineering graduate, Rakesh Dey, nonchalantly proposed the slogan that
would soon be plastered across the state. Dey had decided to join the BJP in
2014, inspired by Modi’s electrifying campaign. This despite the fact that
both his parents were card-carrying CPI(M) cadres, and his father was a
booth president of the party. Dey had been following Sethi and me since the
Manipur campaign and had reached out to us over Twitter. He was the first
person that we took on for the Tripura campaign and he managed translations
and phrasing for social media posts. Bhowmik loved the slogan as soon as
she heard it and so did our graphic designer. He immediately designed a
graphic that we could post on Facebook and forward through WhatsApp
groups.
Before we knew it, people had extensively shared the slogan across the
state. Without much formal effort, ‘Chalo Paltai ’ had become the slogan for
BJP’s Tripura campaign. We got graphics of the slogan printed and pasted
behind autos, integrated the slogan in TV commercials and it formed the
theme of our campaign song that played through video vans across the state.
This serendipitous slogan was probably the best branding exercise
undertaken by the BJP since the vastly successful ‘Abki Baar Modi Sarkar ’
branding campaign of 2014.
The story of the slogan that swept Tripura like wildfire illustrates an
important lesson—that some things just happen in politics without much
planning, and their narrative is created much later. A lot of the success
attributed to effort or the strategic brilliance of specific people is often a
result of serendipity.
The party went on to sweep the elections, winning thirty-six out of sixty
seats on its own, and its alliance partner IPFT won an additional eight seats
of the nine that it had contested. 26 This election was won with positive
messaging. Just like people across India in 2014, the people of Tripura
believed that the BJP would fulfil the aspirations that had remained
unfulfilled during the previous regime. Data analytics had allowed us to
figure out what those aspirations were. Targeted messaging was limited to
informing different groups of what the party would do that would benefit
them directly. It showed that data could be an excellent resource that could
guide policies for a new government. The same data though, can also be
misused to fuel hatred and paranoia.

Micro-targeting

Technology has made micro-targeting a real possibility, where political

parties can show different people entirely different messages based on their
preferences. Such messaging can easily be done along religious or caste
lines, offering encouragement to voters to support a specific party because
that party would fight something that the voters have been told is a great
threat through repeated messaging. This isn’t something in the realm of
possibility; it is something that is already happening. After the Cambridge
Analytica story broke, governments in the USA, the UK, Germany and
several other nations launched investigations into the effect that Facebook
had on people’s voting behaviour and if the company was complicit in the
misuse of its platform. 27 28 29 India’s IT minister has also proposed that the
Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe the role of Cambridge Analytica
in influencing elections. 30
There is enough evidence to show that data analytics and social media
have both been key influencers of electoral outcomes. In a tweet thread in
March 2018, the former director of integration and media analytics for the
election campaign group ‘Obama for America’, Carol Davidsen, stated that
Facebook allowed them to ‘suck out the whole social graph’ to target
potential voters during the 2012 Obama campaign. She claims that once
Facebook found out, they were surprised but never tried to stop the
harvesting of data. 31 This data collection allowed Obama for America to
create a graph that showed which voter was connected to which other voters
and how they could be targeted via advertising.
Several journalists and researchers have argued that better utilization of
Facebook was one of the main reasons for Trump winning the 2016 US
elections. During the presidential campaign, Trump’s team outspent Hillary
Clinton’s social media advertising budget by over $16 million. According to
an internal white paper circulated by Facebook, Clinton’s campaign spent
$28 million on Facebook advertising while Trump’s campaign spent $44
million on the same. 32 Trump’s team didn’t just have the benefit of a higher
budget, they also had personal user data from Cambridge Analytica to be
able to better target advertisements to users, showing people the kinds of
advertisements they were likely to agree with and gradually getting the voters
to support them. Also, the Trump campaign ran 5.9 million different
advertisements, many of which were subtle variations of each other, to test
just what specific groups were responding to. 33 In advertising, this sort of
testing, where different variations of an advertisement are shown to different
groups consisting of people with similar characteristics to see what
messages they respond to favourably, is called Multivariate Testing.
Trump’s advertisements were action-oriented and 84 per cent of them
asked the viewer to undertake some kind of action, a method of advertising
that is proven to be more effective than one just explaining the benefits and
features of a product. The Clinton campaign on the other hand ran just 66,000
advertisement variations, which probably means that the algorithm used by
her team was either vastly inferior to the one used by Trump’s team, or that
the advertisements were manually crafted without the use of any kind of
algorithm at all. Her advertisements were also weaker in terms of content,
with only 56 per cent of them asking voters to take any specific action.
The fact that this data is from Facebook’s internal white paper clearly
means that the company closely studies how politicians are using its
platform. Facebook by its very nature is designed for this kind of advertising,
where advertisements can be tested and targeted at specific groups of
individuals based on their likes, interests and demographic details. The
millions of dollars in profits that social media platforms like Facebook
generate from political advertising is a major disincentive for them to enact
any changes. More worrying is the fact that Facebook might also be taking
sides in political battles.
This is substantiated by a claim by Davidsen, according to which
Facebook allowed the Obama campaign to do things it wouldn’t have
allowed another politician’s campaign to do. In a tweet, Davidsen stated,
‘They came to office in the days following election recruiting and were very
candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone
else to do because they were on our side.’This raises important questions
about the nature of democracy in a world where massive social media
platforms are central to how people’s opinions are both expressed and
shaped.
When I was in Michigan, I asked a programmer friend how so many US
technology companies were able to offer all their products for free. He told
me that I’m looking at the wrong thing as the product. The services they
offered to the user were just that—services. Their real product was the user,
whom they sold to the advertisers. If their platform could make advertising
more effective, then they got more advertisements and consequently greater
revenue. This realization that the commercial interests of all the companies
making money from advertisements lie in creating platforms that make
advertising more effective leads to the conclusion that micro-targeting and
the harvesting of people’s personal data are not going away anytime soon.
The use of social media platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, WhatsApp,
Instagram and Google in politics will continue to grow, especially when the
user base of these platforms expands. This exponential growth is being
fuelled in India by cheap Chinese mobiles flooding the market and low data
rates with the entry of Reliance Jio in the telecommunications sector. 34
Even though most parties have become active on social media and many of
the larger ones have hired companies to handle data analytics or have built
their own analytics teams, the first Indian party to realize the importance and
impact that these technologies would have on elections was the BJP. It
developed an extensive social media presence before the 2014 elections,
with Modi taking personal interest in how the platforms were used. 35 The
party spent several crores on data collection drives and on social media
advertising. Specific initiatives like the ‘Missed Call Campaign’, through
which people could join the BJP by simply placing a missed call, were
undertaken to collect phone numbers. Several Facebook groups were created
to support the party’s campaign, including pages run by supporters who
weren’t officially connected to the party. Both the official and unofficial
pages spent crores on Facebook advertising to ensure posts reached the
intended audience. Several people took to Twitter and Facebook to support
the Modi campaign in 2013–14 of their own volition, creating a massive
social media machinery that had a substantial impact in framing the narrative
for the 2014 Indian general elections.
An aura of negativity was created against the Congress with an effective
combination of on-ground and online campaigns. To an outside observer,
only the consequences were visible. The Congress was cornered in the 2G,
Coalgate and Commonwealth Games (CWG) scams, and allegations of
corruption made against Robert Vadra, Sonia Gandhi and P. Chidambaram,
which translated into hatred for the Congress party and the Gandhi family.
The result of branding Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a weak leader
who didn’t speak up for the interests of India was also evident and phrases
like ‘policy paralysis’ became part of people’s everyday conversations. 36 It
was only when I started working in politics that I realized that such a
narrative rarely forms organically. It takes great effort and constant repetition
for an idea to grip the minds of so many people.
The way the term ‘surgical strike’ became a part of an average Indian’s
lexicon showed me how propaganda takes hold. It was a term that almost no
one in the country had heard before, and yet in October 2016, it was a term
that everyone was talking about. Prime Minister Modi revealed to the nation
that India had conducted a ‘surgical strike’ against terror launch pads across
the Line of Control (LoC). It was presented as vengeance for the terrorist
attack at an army camp in Uri in Jammu and Kashmir in which nineteen
jawans were killed. 37 The surgical strikes gripped the entire nation’s
imagination with TV channels airing dramatized stock footage and graphical
simulations of how it would have been conducted. All social media accounts
that the BJP managed delivered this news with great pride and the nation
marvelled at the decisiveness of the prime minister. The Opposition
questioned the surgical strikes, leading to tirades from BJP leaders about
how the Congress disrespected the army and was a party full of anti-national
people. 38 The fact was that this wasn’t the first cross-border surgical strike
that India had conducted, but it was one that was branded like no other. 39 A
bombardment of information through news channels and social media
platforms convinced the nation that something truly extraordinary had taken
place.
A similar branding exercise was undertaken several times, and in all
instances, the BJP created a new enemy for the people to hate. At this time, it
was becoming evident that the BJP was losing the advantage that it once had
on Facebook and Twitter. Other parties had started to catch up and even
apolitical pages and Twitter accounts, like Beef Janata Party, India Resists,
Humans of Hindutva, Dhruv Rathee and several others, were becoming
popular. Online news portals like Wire, Quint and Scroll had also started to
break the BJP’s monopoly on opinion in cyberspace.

WhatsApp Elections

The BJP remained one step ahead of its competition, though, and found a new
weapon that offered much better targeting than Facebook ever could—
WhatsApp. Using it, a specific message could be sent to one group of people
and a completely different message to a different group of people. By making
use of people’s pre-existing biases, individuals could be turned into
supporters by a party through messaging that would make them believe that
the party had exactly the same goals as they did. The platform would allow
the BJP to appear vehemently anti-cow slaughter to voters in Uttar Pradesh
while making it appear ambivalent towards it to voters in the northeast. Or
aggressively pro-Hindutva to some voters and solely development-oriented
to others. Such was the magic of targeted messaging on WhatsApp.
During the 2014 general elections, WhatsApp was primarily used to create
a network of party supporters and karyakartas with only about 9000 to
10,000 WhatsApp groups nationally. At that time, Facebook and Twitter
were the primary social media channels that helped create the party’s
narrative, and the party’s energies and funds were directed towards these
platforms. The potential of WhatsApp seems to have struck them only in
early 2016, which is when the party began utilizing the platform for
campaigning during assembly elections in all the states that went to polls.
Today, WhatsApp has become a major part of the party’s arsenal, with the
party’s IT cell head, Amit Malviya, even telling the Economic Times , ‘The
upcoming elections will be fought on the mobile phone . . . In a way, you
could say they would be WhatsApp elections.’ 40
The BJP built a massive network of over 20,000 WhatsApp groups in just
the state of Karnataka before the state went to polls in May 2018, and the
party has built equally large networks in many states that have gone to polls
since 2014. 41 This means that the party has the capacity to send messages to
crores of people instantly through the lakhs of WhatsApp groups it has access
to across the country. This is where the BJP vastly outperforms its
opposition. The Congress and other parties continue to depend upon
conventional media to deliver their messages and as yet have a much smaller
footprint on social media than the BJP.
In August 2018, the following of the BJP and the Congress on their
national social media pages was:

BJP:
FB: 14.6 million; YouTube: 0.45 million; Twitter: 10 million

Narendra Modi
FB: 42.7 million; YouTube: 1 million; Twitter: 43.6 million

Rahul Gandhi
FB: 1.8 million; YouTube: 27,814; Twitter: 7.45 million
 INC
FB: 4.8 million; YouTube: 1,35,457; Twitter: 4.52 million

INC’s reach is even worse when state-level pages are factored in.
Meanwhile, the BJP is looking beyond WhatsApp and is aggressively
promoting its own app named the ‘NaMo App’ or the ‘Narendra Modi App’.
This would allow them to continue to deliver messages to people even if
some day WhatsApp were to change its policies in a manner that led to a
decline in the reach of WhatsApp messages.
The NaMo App had over 50 lakh downloads on the Android app store by
April 2018 42 and is one of the very few third-party apps available for
download on the Jio app store, with the Jio phones already having sold 4
crore units. 43 The party is also working on increasing the app’s reach by pre-
installing it in phones being distributed through government schemes. In July
2018, the Chhattisgarh government sanctioned a ₹1500-crore scheme called
the Sanchar Kranti Scheme, under which over 50 lakh mobile handsets will
be distributed. As per media reports, these smartphones will come pre-
installed with the BJP’s NaMo App and Raman Singh App, the latter named
after the state’s chief minister. 44 This kind of foresight has helped the party
trounce its competition in the technology and message delivery spaces. It has
ensured that it is the one framing the narrative, while the others are forced to
respond to issues raised by it.
In recent times, the process of forming WhatsApp groups is also
undergoing a transformation. In the early days, most groups consisted of
random numbers that a party bought from data vendors or consisted of
numbers that the party collected through its various campaigns. Nowadays,
parties are using data analytics to create groups based on demographic and
socio-economic factors for better targeting of their messages. 45
Since most of the targeting is based on information available in the public
domain, it is extremely likely that even those parties that aren’t utilizing such
methods today would eventually form their own teams to take advantage of
the potential offered by data analytics.
Determining Voter Behaviour

Starting with tools in the public domain and datasets that the Election
Commission itself provides, data analysts can build huge datasets that a party
can use for targeted advertising. With just the information on the electoral
roll that is publicly available, analysts can get a person’s name, his or her
father’s name, location (what booth they vote at), voter ID number and age. In
many large states of India such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the caste of over
70 per cent of the people can be determined simply by analysing their names.
46 With a relatively simple code, a political party can identify the caste and

religion of a large number of voters by analysing their last names (surnames),

but there are some major complications in the process.
Different communities in different parts of a state sometimes use the same
last name and some last names are not easy to classify. Certain last names
like Yadav, Paswan, Singh, Agrawal and Shukla are easy to classify in most
states but some are used by multiple castes in different parts of a state. For
example, in Bihar, both Bhumihars and Pasis use the last name ‘Choudhary’.
The solution to this is relatively easy for a political party. The party has a
resource that very few entities do—free labour. There are lakhs of
karyakartas who are thrilled to help out with anything that has them doing
something other than simply distributing pamphlets and putting up flags. They
can be tasked with manually classifying a few names in each constituency so
that an algorithm can assign a caste to the entire dataset using their input.
Local karyakartas usually know each family’s caste in their area, so this
exercise wouldn’t be a difficult one for them.
The BJP had an edge when it came to volunteer engagement for such
classification but the edge is slowly evaporating. A few years ago, the BJP
was the only one with the cadre strength to be able to undertake massive
initiatives like appointing ‘panna pramukhs’. A panna pramukh was an
individual karyakarta who was responsible for outreach and campaign
amongst all the voters listed on one double-sided page of the electoral roll
that was assigned to them, and which on average consists of sixty names. 47
The Congress too has caught on to the technique and has started the practice
of appointing such ‘page in-charges’. Experimenting with the strategy during
the elections in Punjab in early 2017, the party also used it during its
campaign for the 2017 Gujarat legislative assembly elections. 48
Once a party has most of the voters’ castes and religions mapped against
their names in the electoral roll through a combination of technological tools
and manual labour, the next step is to include phone numbers. Data protection
laws in India are basically non-existent for data other than financial, health
and some other sensitive ones. This means that obtaining phone numbers
doesn’t require the intervention of high-level employees of telecom
companies. It is available with data brokers who have probably obtained it
from low-level operatives of telecom companies or from SIM card dealers.
49
Other details that could play a role in determining voting behaviour can
also be added to the database against each name. One such detail would be
socio-economic status, which is a major determinant of the kind of messages
people would respond to and the way they’d choose whom to vote for. A lot
of datasets, like land records, BPL lists, surveys by the National Sample
Survey Organization (NSSO) and census data, can provide this information.
Much simpler proxies are also available, such as electricity bills, which can
be used to judge a person’s economic status.
A person’s electricity bill is directly correlated with their income since
people with high income often consume more electricity with gadgets and
appliances like air conditioners and geysers and hence have higher bills,
while the poor have relatively fewer electrical appliances to consume
electricity. The extremely poor voters can be identified through the Below
Poverty Line (BPL) list, so electricity bills are really useful for segregating
the rich from the middle class, especially in dense urban pockets. With this
data in hand, parties can create groups consisting of specific types of voters.
To most casual observers, the groups might seem to be of just random people
living in a specific area, but in reality they would consist of people selected
on the basis of their age, religion, caste and economic status. This would
allow for targeted messaging and micro-targeting in a way that hasn’t
happened in any other country in the world.
 As an example of what such groups could accomplish for political parties,
let’s take the case of Uttar Pradesh.
Assume that a party (Party 1) already has upper caste votes in Uttar
Pradesh but requires the support of other caste groups to win an election. The
OBC population of Uttar Pradesh comprises approximately 11 per cent
Yadavs and 31 per cent others. Let’s say the Yadavs strongly identify with
another party (Party 2) and they’re a group that is unlikely to change its vote.
The non-Yadav OBCs on the other hand could be convinced to vote for Party
1 if it could provide them with an effective reason to do so. The simplest
way to achieve this goal would be for Party 1 to instill a sense of victimhood
in the non-Yadav voters and alienate them from the Yadav voters.
WhatsApp groups can prove to be an effective tool to accomplish this. By
gathering adequate data, analysts can, for instance, create groups that consist
of only non-Yadav OBCs between the age groups of eighteen and forty, with
low to middle socio-economic status. A close approximation of this group
can also be targeted through Facebook and other social media platforms
through a little-known feature of Facebook that allows for targeted
advertising through the use of lists consisting of email addresses or phone
numbers. 50
If messages stating how the Yadavs had cornered all benefits of
reservation in educational institutions and jobs, thereby depriving other OBC
groups, were broadcast repeatedly in different forms over such a group, there
would eventually be an observable impact. Over a period of two to three
months, the arguments sent over WhatsApp would become a part of people’s
daily conversations and they would begin to get convinced that their rightful
share of benefits had been taken away by the Yadavs. After such priming,
they could easily be influenced to hold the opinion that this ‘injustice’ would
not be rectified unless they were to teach Party 2 a lesson by voting against
it, leading to an increase in the chances of Party 1 winning.
Cambridge Analytica probably couldn’t even dream of this level of
targeted advertising. And yet in India, it isn’t just possible but is actively
being done. This is also where fake news comes into the picture. Sometimes,
the actual facts are just not enough to convince a group that it is the victim
and that there is an enemy that it should unify against. Targeted fake news and
propaganda allows politicians to demonize particular groups. Parties drill
the message into target groups that they must support the party to protect the
group’s interest and that the party is the only one that would act against the
common enemy. It also helps if the opposition can be shown to be close to
the said enemy, ensuring that the target voter clearly knows which party to
support.
 4
FAKE NEWS AND PROPAGANDA

B etween January 2017 and May 2018, at least thirty-three people were
killed across India in incidences of mob lynching spurred by rumours that
child-lifters were on the prowl. 1 On 28 June 2018, three people were killed
in the state of Tripura on suspicion of being child-abductors, who were
alleged to have killed one child and removed his kidneys, according to the
rumours. The irony of the situation made it to national headlines because one
of the men killed was a thirty-six-year-old who had been hired by the local
administration to travel from village to village, making announcements to
dispel the rumours of child-lifting. These killings were a direct consequence
of rumours spread through social media, especially WhatsApp. 2
With over 200 million active WhatsApp users in India, the country
represents the largest market for the Facebook-owned messaging platform. 3
The application has become an indispensable part of several people’s lives,
and group chats on the platform have become one of the primary ways in
which political parties communicate with voters. Unlike Facebook and
Twitter, where messages often get drowned in the sea of information being
posted on timelines, messages sent on WhatsApp have a better chance of
being seen by people who are part of groups.
 I knew early on that WhatsApp would be an effective political platform
because it allows for targeted delivery of information to voters and is also an
excellent tool to organize and mobilize party workers. What I did not fully
comprehend was how different the WhatsApp experience was for an average
Indian voter as compared to the urban elite. I had been added to over a
hundred groups and I had stopped reading the messages on most of them
because of the sheer volume. Most people, I know, who work in election
consultancy dealt similarly with WhatsApp group messages, and almost all
of them had turned off the auto download of multimedia content to ensure
their phones did not fill up with pictures and videos. To us, being added to a
group was a nuisance. Which was why I was surprised to learn that this
wasn’t the norm, and that people across rural and urban India loved being
added to WhatsApp groups.
While travelling through villages on election work, first in Tripura and
then in Madhya Pradesh, I realized that most voters believed that being added
to a political WhatsApp group gave them access to some kind of insider
information. Instead of being irritated by the messages, they read them with
gusto, in the belief that they were receiving information from a credible
source. If they received a message on the increase in the speed of rural
electrification or on how the Nehru–Gandhi family had lied about their
educational background or citizenship, they read them with great interest. The
feeling was that they were receiving information that few others were aware
of. They then repeated the same information in their everyday conversations
with pride, shutting up people in political debates based on information that
they had received over WhatsApp. Belonging to political WhatsApp groups
was to belong to a community of likeminded people, where they could share
and receive information. This made WhatsApp even more potent for political
messaging.
Nazi Germany’s Reich Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, has
several quotable phrases on influencing public opinion. He’s credited for
saying, ‘If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will
even come to believe it yourself,’ and, ‘Propaganda works best when those
who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free
will.’ 4 5 Many in Indian politics may not have heard these quotes or may not
even know who Joseph Goebbels was, but the sentiments expressed in these
words are what most successful politicians intuitively understand.
Politics at its core is the art of influencing public opinion. Governance
requires a party or a leader to figure out what the best policy is and
implement it successfully. That is a task that can lead to winning elections,
but only when it translates into favourable public opinion. Without an appeal
to emotion, development and good governance are both ineffective tools in
politics. This is a sentiment that veteran politician and BJP leader
Subramanian Swamy expressed in his interview to the Quint in June 2018,
where he said that an ‘election is never won on economic performance . . .
elections are won on emotions’. 6
This means that winning elections requires a political party or an
individual politician to exercise some control over public opinion. Such
control is also required after winning an election, because reforming a
system requires a favourable public opinion, which can only be garnered
through constant messaging and propaganda. In recent years, social media has
emerged as one of the most effective tools in shaping public discourse and
influencing what people talk about. The BJP led the way in utilizing
Facebook pages, Twitter handles and WhatsApp groups to push through
messages that would shape public opinion on issues, and even decide what
issues would be discussed in the first place. They are now investing in
getting their proprietary NaMo App on as many phones as possible so that
they don’t have to depend on third party applications to deliver their
message.

Amplifying Existing Biases

The rumour about child-abductors that led to the killing of several innocent
people across India was most likely an accident. These messages could not
be linked to the political benefit for any party and are unlikely to have
originated from any planned operation. Yet, they elicited such strong
responses from readers that people were murdered based on them. This is as
clear a demonstration of the effectiveness of WhatsApp forwards as there
can be. IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad wrote a letter to WhatsApp and
issued several statements from June 2018 onwards, telling the company that
it ‘cannot evade accountability and responsibility’. 7 WhatsApp proposed
some changes to its application, like marking forwarded messages, starting
an informational campaign on fake news, and restricting the number of times
a message could be forwarded by one individual. 8
There is little doubt that the company would want to prevent fake news
and rumour mongering on its platform, yet the proposed solutions seem
inadequate. It’s very likely that WhatsApp also understands the kind of
engagement its groups have, and the kind of community they have created.
Perhaps it is due to this dilemma that the company hasn’t enacted swift
changes to curb fake news and instead chosen to implement incremental
reform.
In our experience, messages containing the language ‘if true’ and
‘forwarded as received’ do little to make the recipients question their
authenticity. The educational campaign WhatsApp has started in the country
is being disseminated via newspaper and radio ads, instead of through its
own messaging platform on which fake news actually spreads. 9 Neither of
these is likely to reach the audience that is the most vulnerable to WhatsApp
forwards. The third measure—of restricting the number of groups that a
person can forward a message to—is also unlikely to be effective because
most end recipients don’t have too many accounts to forward the message to
in the first place. They usually just forward it to their family and friends, and
can easily copy–paste the content. These users aren’t forwarding it out of
malicious intent; they’re doing it because they believe it to be true and they
want the information to reach a larger audience so that people can be more
informed. This level of trust on the information provided over WhatsApp has
its basis in people’s pre-existing biases.
For instance, right-wing WhatsApp groups often consist of people who
truly believe that Muslims are bad for India and that they harbour anti-
national sentiments towards the country. I’ve interacted with several such
supporters of the BJP over the years and if you ask them if they hate Muslims,
several of them would candidly say ‘yes’, and if you asked them if they
thought Muslims weren’t as loyal to the country as Hindus, they would almost
all say ‘yes’. In fact, several surveys reveal that a majority of the country’s
Hindu population has some level of distrust towards Muslims. A 2017
survey conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
(CSDS) showed that only 13 per cent Hindus thought of Muslims as ‘highly
patriotic’, while 77 per cent Muslims responded that their community was
‘highly patriotic’ in the same survey. 10
This pre-existing bias means that when people who already mistrust
Muslims receive WhatsApp forwards about Muslims shouting pro-Pakistan
slogans, murdering people, smuggling cattle, raping women and committing
crime, they will probably believe them without any kind of verification. The
information provided is in line with their existing worldview, so they have
no reason to question it. They forward it so that others can be aware of how
dangerous Muslims are to India, and they support the BJP vehemently
because they’ve come to believe that it will protect Hindu interests while the
opposition appeases Muslims for vote-bank politics. In this way, social
media can cause real damage because such messages are forwarded in silos
where everyone who gets them is likely to believe the information.
On 2 September 2018, @Imamofpeace tweeted a video with the comment
that the video was of a poor beggar being beaten up by Islamic extremists.
Actress Koena Mitra, with a following of 1.98 lakh, declared in a tweet that
the man being beaten up was a Naga sadhu. Soon after this, several ‘right-
wing’ accounts tweeted the video claiming that a Muslim mob had beaten up
a Naga sadhu in an incident in Uttarakhand. The senior superintendent of
police (SSP) of Dehradun took to Twitter to dispel the rumours, and fact-
checking website Alt News published an article clarifying the situation
within hours of the video gaining traction. 11
The SHO from the police station where the incident occurred and the SSP
of Dehradun both clarified that the man wasn’t a Naga sadhu but an addict
who was heavily intoxicated when the incident occurred. He had gone to a
house and begged for food, then entered it and molested the woman who
brought him tea and biscuits. The same man had been involved in such
incidents earlier too. The people who could be seen beating him up were the
woman’s brother, Shubham, and his friend. 12
None of the people involved in the incident were Muslim yet the video had
added to the narrative that Muslims are evil. Several thousand people had
retweeted the video without verification and expressed their outrage at the
incident. Police officials clarified the facts within hours of the viral tweet,
and clarification was posted by fact-checking websites the same day, yet the
damage had been done. These clarifications had no way of reaching the same
audience as that of the original video, since the people following right-wing
social-media handles are unlikely to follow Alt News and other accounts that
shared the police clarification.

Fake vs Real

Fake news is usually intermixed with real news and sent to people over
months to influence their opinion. There are obviously several crimes where
the perpetrators turn out to be Muslims, just as there are crimes where the
perpetrators are Hindus or Christians. The reportage of these actual crimes is
bunched along with fake videos and pictures that add to a false narrative. The
real incidents give credibility to the opinions that people have formed based
on the fake news and propaganda they’ve been fed for months.
Fake news is circulated in networks where no one is likely to question it,
whereas clarifications and the actual facts circulate in another network that is
unconnected to the one disseminating the fake news. People in the first
network derive the message that the nation must be protected from
‘unpatriotic’ Muslims and continue to believe it even as the second group
believes that they have undercut that message by catching and pointing out a
fake video. The ugly truth is fake news does its job even when it is identified
as fake. The feature of blocking people from commenting and viewing posts
on Facebook and Twitter and the option to remove people from groups help
cement these silos as dissenting opinions are simply erased from existence.
Most people only get to see the type of message that they are already primed
to accept as the truth.
 The algorithm that Facebook and Google use adds to the problem because
both websites will provide results based on a user’s past activities. If a
person has engaged with ‘right-wing’ websites and posts more in the past,
they are likely to see more of the same in the present and the future. They will
simply never get to see the corrections of facts that are circulating in a
network dominated by people with an affinity to ‘left-wing’ or ‘liberal’
politics. 13
The illustrations above are of fake news from the right wing because that’s
the ecosystem I’ve intimately seen. Hundreds of fake messages are shared by
thousands of users on WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter every week that
cause a rift between different religious groups, castes and identities. On
Twitter, many of the accounts that have engaged in trolling and spreading fake
news are followed by Prime Minister Modi, a fact those accounts brandish
with pride with a bio that typically reads ‘proud to be followed by
@NarendraModi’, 14 but this doesn’t mean that sharing fake news is the
exclusive dominion of the right. The left-liberal end of the spectrum has also
been caught spreading fake news and propaganda.
Some accounts that tweet or share fake information might not even be
aware that what they are sharing is fake, and might actually be sharing the
information because they believe it to be true. The problem with sharing fake
news online is that intent is impossible to prove, and therefore legal
penalties seldom enter the picture. Anyone can claim that they were duped
and never intended to share false information. The problem is that fake news
is such an effective tool for moulding voters’ opinion that if one side is using
it, it becomes incredibly difficult for the other side to think about winning
elections without doing the same thing. This means that barring major
technological changes, fake news is only going to become more prevalent. As
people continue to share fake content that agrees with their biases without
verification, the incentive for someone to keep creating fake news lives on.
On 17 August 2018, after former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee
passed away, Congress leader Brijesh Kalappa tweeted a laughing photo of
Modi, insinuating that the prime minister had been laughing after hearing the
news of Vajpayee passing away. As it turned out, Modi had visited AIIMS
once at 2.45 p.m., whereas Vajpayee was declared dead at 5.05 p.m. 15
Another example of non-right-wing social media accounts sharing fake news
was of a video that was shared on several Facebook pages claiming that the
UP police had lathi charged unemployed youth sitting on a peaceful dharna
outside Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s residence. It later turned out that the
video was of an incident that took place in Aligarh on 12 June 2018 and,
ironically, the people being assaulted by the police weren’t unemployed
youth but members of the Hindu Jagran Manch (HJM), a Hindutva outfit. 16
If the core problem of fake news is not addressed, and the debate remains
a battle of political rhetoric between the BJP and the Congress on who
generates more fake news, it might eventually turn into a virtual arms race.
Every party will work to create fake news on WhatsApp groups, Facebook
pages and as many media to reach a voter as possible. Party workers would
use these media to spread misleading and false content that supports the
narrative they are trying to frame, maybe even without realizing that the
content is false, just because of the amount of engagement that such content
ends up getting on social media. In a country where political violence,
blatant corruption, liquor and cash for votes, and the politics of intimidation
are all widespread phenomena, and where booth capturing was a legitimate
part of all parties’ election winning strategies not too long ago, expecting
parties to not use fake news to their advantage out of their own sense of right
and wrong isn’t realistic. India’s low educational standards, which have
been further declining in quality in the past decade, also mean there is little
hope that the problem of fake news will go away on its own as people start
to disregard the content they receive, even when it supports a narrative they
already believe.
The challenge of fake news is not an India-centric issue. Democracies
across the world are dealing with what has become an influential way of
framing the narrative during elections. The lack of fact-checking by
recipients of fake news has led to its unhindered propagation. Instances of
fake news are also getting harder to identify, with technologies that allow for
the doctoring of not just pictures and audio but also of video recordings.
‘Deepfake’ is one such technology that uses artificial intelligence to create
videos where people’s lips can be synced to any audio file, leading to
extremely realistic-looking doctored videos. 17 This increasing complexity in
the generation of fake content will only add to the menace and make it even
harder to address.

A ‘Dust Cloud of Nonsense’

Analysis from the 2016 US presidential election conducted by BuzzFeed also

shows that people share fake news without inhibition even when it comes
from non-reputable sources. Such content actually generated more
engagement on Facebook than stories from reputable media organizations in
the last three months of the US presidential election campaign. 18 Fake news
stories such as Hillary Clinton selling weapons to ISIS and Pope Francis
endorsing Donald Trump for president were widely shared over social
media at the time. 19 A survey showed that fake news headlines fooled
American adults 75 per cent of the time. Over 60 per cent of the respondents
believed that the headlines about Pope Francis endorsing Trump were
‘somewhat accurate’ or ‘very accurate’, but what was even more interesting
was that the survey revealed that only 46 per cent of Clinton voters thought it
was accurate, as compared to 75 per cent of Trump voters. People across the
board were likelier to believe fake news that was aligned with their pre-
existing opinion. 20 Former US president Barack Obama has said that the
phenomenon of fake news created a ‘dust cloud of nonsense’. 21 French
President Emmanuel Macron has said the world must ‘fight against the ever-
growing virus of fake news,’ in a speech at a joint meeting of the Congress in
April 2018. 22 The problem has widespread recognition and my
conversations with people in the technology community have convinced me
that the solution will come from technological advancement rather than
political will or social education.
Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter can easily implement
algorithms that go through publicly shared links and posts to vet them based
on reportage by trusted fact-checking websites. The problem is slightly more
complicated with WhatsApp, which claims that its chats and groups are
encrypted so it can’t read the content of messages. This can be solved with
relative ease if the platform passes a policy stating that chats where a
majority of people are unknown to each other—determined by the fact that
the group admin’s numbers aren’t saved on the phones of most people in the
group—the group will remain unencrypted and an algorithm will check
posted links and media for accuracy. If a group is created with hundreds of
members where over 80 per cent of the members don’t have the admin’s
number stored, one can be sure that most people in the group do not know
each other. Keeping such groups unencrypted would not represent a major
privacy concern, and to address any privacy issue, WhatsApp could offer to
encrypt them after verifying the admin’s identity.
The platform has already started a crackdown on group creation and it
now blocks numbers that create too many large groups without knowing the
people who are being added. This represents a problem if the policy isn’t
applied to groups that already exist, because it ensures that those political
parties who have already created several thousand WhatsApp groups in
many states continue to maintain their competitive advantage over parties that
have only recently started creating groups. In India, where the BJP dominates
the number of groups it has access to on WhatsApp, these new measures will
inadvertently ensure that other parties would just not be able to compete with
it in terms of message delivery.
The numbers of Facebook and Twitter followers I presented in the
previous chapter clearly show that the BJP has an advantage in delivering its
message to voters. If the BJP’s messages reach ten times more people than
the messages sent by the Congress, even quality arguments made by the latter
are unlikely to have much influence on the way people vote. It is a problem
that is similar to that of fact-checking websites reaching far fewer people
than fake news itself. This asymmetry in delivering their messages to voters
is not restricted to social media. The largely unprofitable business model and
the high capital expenditure required to set up news channels has meant that
many major news networks are owned by politicians and corporate houses
who have bought stakes in news networks in order to garner influence, and
not just for commercial interests.
Life of a Lie

On 12 February 2016, Delhi Police teams entered the campus of Jawaharlal

Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi. They had come to arrest JNU Students’
Union President Kanhaiya Kumar on charges of sedition. The charge against
him was that he had raised ‘anti-national’ slogans during an event on the JNU
campus against capital punishment for the 2001 Indian Parliament attack
convict, Afzal Guru. The evidence in the matter came from video footage that
had gone viral on social media and had been telecast repeatedly on Zee
News. His fellow JNU students, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya,
were also charged with sedition in the same matter and arrested. 23
Kumar was brought to the Patiala House court on 15 February for the first
hearing in the matter. What came next was a mockery of the entire judicial
establishment. A group of people dressed in lawyers’ robes were at the
courthouse shouting slogans against JNU. They manhandled journalists and
beat up students and teachers from JNU who had come to attend the hearing,
all the while referring to them as terrorists. The policemen who were present
took no action and BJP MP O.P. Sharma was among those seen beating a man
outside the court. He later claimed that he had been attacked first, so he
fought back. 24 Following this incident, the court extended Kumar’s judicial
custody by two days and he was brought back to court on 17 February. Once
more, the police remained mute spectators as another scuffle took place
outside the courts and men dressed in lawyers’ robes beat up journalists and
students. They attacked Kumar and videos show that two of them entered the
courtroom and continued to assault a JNU student. One of the two attackers
simply walked out of the courtroom even as Kumar pointed to him and asked
people to stop him from escaping. 25
The Supreme Court appointed a panel to look into these attacks. The panel
stated that despite being aware of the Supreme Court’s directions to provide
adequate security to Kumar, the police let two persons enter the courtroom
and allowed the assault to take place both inside and outside court. In spite
of video footage and several eyewitnesses, no action was taken. 26 In January
2018, the Supreme Court turned down a second plea asking for a probe into
the attacks. A bench of justices Ranjan Gogoi and R. Banumathi said ‘nothing
would come out of it’ and ‘we don’t want to flog a dead horse’. 27
Details of the episode have now largely been forgotten, though what
remains from the period is the widespread public perception that JNU
students are ‘anti-nationals’ and Kumar and his fellow students are enemies
of India. This incident was the start of a new kind of propaganda in Indian
politics, where news channels, politicians and social media came together to
create a perception based on flimsy evidence, and cemented that perception
even as a slow-acting judicial system failed to render any opinions on the
actual evidence. The brilliance of this form of propaganda was that it created
new enemies for the Indian masses to hate, and thereby focused public
attention on these so-called enemies instead of on issues that would affect
their everyday lives. In a dramatized fashion, then human resource
development minister Smriti Irani stated, ‘Nation can never tolerate any
insult to Mother India.’ 28 News channels played their part and some even
went to the extent of branding the entire student body of a university as ‘anti-
national’.
Kumar was released on interim bail on 2 March 2016. No conclusive
evidence was ever submitted against him. A special magisterial investigation
ordered by the Delhi government failed to find any evidence of his
involvement in raising anti-national slogans. The New Delhi district
magistrate said, ‘Nothing adverse could be found against Kanhaiya Kumar,’
and submitted his report that expressed doubts over ‘Pakistan Zindabad’
slogans having ever been chanted at the event in question. The report stated
that ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ was not heard in the raw footage obtained from Zee
News or in the transcripts of videos shot by JNU security staff, and yet the
channel had repeatedly broadcast that pro-Pakistan slogans had been raised
during the protest. 29 The probe panel constituted by the university also
concluded that provocative slogans were raised by a group of outsiders
wearing masks. The panel stated, ‘This act by outsiders has brought disrepute
to the entire JNU community.’ 30
The initial FIRs were filed and arrests made largely based on the
reportage by Zee News. Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP)
activists had invited a Zee News crew to the protest venue and the channel
had aired videos claiming students had shouted objectionable slogans calling
for the ‘destruction of India’ and ‘Pakistan Zindabad’. These videos had led
to the registration of an FIR. 31 Probes later found that several of the videos
were doctored, and Zee News misrepresented unclear audio in some of the
videos. In late February 2016, a Zee News producer resigned from the
channel after expressing reservation about the biased coverage of the JNU
protests. The producer, Vishwa Deepak, said in a letter, ‘The video, which
had no Pakistan Zindabad slogans in it, we played repeatedly to spread
madness. How did we establish that Kanhaiya and his associates were
chanting slogans when all we heard were voices coming from the darkness?
Our biases made us hear Bharatiya Court Zindabad as Pakistan Zindabad.’ 32
In April, the Delhi government filed a complaint in a Delhi court seeking
action against Zee News, NewsX and India News for broadcasting allegedly
doctored videos of the event. 33 It sent videos to Truth Labs in Hyderabad that
analysed seven video clips of the event and concluded that two videos were
‘manipulated’ where voices of persons not present in the clips had been
added on later.
All of this didn’t matter, though. The JNU arrests had introduced a new
enemy into national consciousness, and new terminology was coined to
construct a narrative around it. Terms like ‘anti-national’, ‘tukde-tukde gang’
and, more recently, ‘urban naxals’ proved to be more effective than actual
facts. Since politics is the art of influencing public opinion, and memorable
phrases become embedded in public consciousness much more easily than
facts, the party that wins naming rights in a situation usually wins the
narrative battle and, consequently, the electoral war.
No TV channel faced any consequence for airing doctored footage. No one
was arrested for attacking a person in police custody inside a court of law.
No police personnel were punished for the security lapse. Kumar has
managed to capitalize on the publicity he got from the events and is now one
of the voices against the Modi government. He is reportedly gearing up to
contest the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from the Begusarai constituency in
Bihar on a Communist Party of India ticket, supported by Lalu Prasad
Yadav’s RJD. 34 The only casualty of the episode seems to be truth. A lot of
people I meet continue to feel that JNU students, like Kumar, are anti-
national, and shout slogans against India while living comfortably on
taxpayers’ money.
Fake narratives built on the backs of misleading news reports and false
information shared over social media are often incredibly persistent.
Corrections and renditions of reality are often not enough to change
underlying beliefs, and people continue to believe the fake narratives. They
are often willing to accept that a particular incident or piece of information
has been misrepresented, but the larger narrative persists and becomes a part
of their worldview. Several instances across history have shown that people
are unable to recalibrate their beliefs in the light of new information if the
old wrong information is in line with their pre-existing biases and beliefs.
One of the most vivid examples of this phenomenon is demonstrated by the
persistence of the narrative formed by a psychological experiment conducted
at Stanford University, USA, in 1971. Popularly known as the Stanford
Prison Experiment, it was designed to show how perceived power influences
people’s behaviour and how people act according to the role they have been
assigned. The researchers, led by Professor Philip Zimbardo, assigned
college students to be either ‘prisoners’ or ‘guards’ in a simulated prison
built on the university campus. The experimenters reported that the students
quickly embraced their roles and started to act in consonance with them. The
guards enforced authoritarian measures and subjected some of the prisoners
to psychological torture, while the ‘prisoners’ passively accepted such
abuse. The experiment concluded that people’s behaviour is determined by
the circumstances and positions of authority they are placed in, and not by
their own nature. 35
Since then, the study has been taught in many introductory psychology
classes at colleges around the world and many people continue to believe in
its results. It has been quoted to explain, for example, the torture of prisoners
by the American military in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and has even been
turned into movies. The problem with all of this is that the results of the
Stanford Prison Experiment are not just inaccurate, they are most likely
fabricated. Several studies that tried to replicate the experiment, like the
BBC prison study, have come to a vastly different conclusion. In the Stanford
Prison Experiment, the behaviour of the guards was not a naturally occurring
phenomenon because of their position; it was behaviour coached by the
experimenters who also served as ‘prison wardens’, with the chief
researcher, Professor Zimbardo, taking on the role of the ‘prison
superintendent’. A recording of the experiment even shows one of the prison
wardens, David Jaffe, trying to influence the behaviour of the guards by
encouraging them to ‘participate’ more and be ‘tough’ for the benefit of the
experiment. Several of the ‘guards’ went on record to state that they acted the
way they did, in the stereotypical manner of an abusive guard, because they
believed that’s the behaviour the experimenters expected from them, and not
just because they were in a position of power vis-à-vis the ‘prisoners’.
Despite a plethora of evidence that calls for disregarding the results of the
Stanford Prison Experiment, its questionable results continue to persist in
popular culture and in introductory psychology classes. Why is this so? It is
largely because the results intuitively make sense to most people, and they
continue to believe it because it is in line with their pre-existing notions of
how people’s behaviours are shaped. Surveys conducted in 2014 and 2015
by Richard Griggs and Jared Bartels showed that nearly every introductory
psychology textbook available in the market included Zimbardo’s narrative
of the experiment, and most of these textbooks offered little to no critical
opinion of it. In this instance, like several others, new evidence and facts
have proved ineffective in correcting people’s perceptions. 36
Ben Blum, a computer science PhD from the University of California,
Berkeley, who has worked as an artificial intelligence researcher,
commented on the experiment in a Medium post titled ‘The Lifespan of a
Lie’:

The appeal of the Stanford prison experiment seems to go deeper than its scientific validity,
perhaps because it tells us a story about ourselves that we desperately want to believe: that
we, as individuals, cannot really be held accountable for the sometimes reprehensible things
we do. As troubling as it might seem to accept Zimbardo’s fallen vision of human nature, it
is also profoundly liberating. It means we’re off the hook. Our actions are determined by
circumstance. Our fallibility is situational. Just as the Gospel promised to absolve us of our
 sins if we would only believe, the SPE offered a form of redemption tailor-made for a
scientific era, and we embraced it. 37

Minds of the Masses

Even though social media has become a key weapon in the arsenal of
political parties to shape narratives and influence public opinion,
conventional media continues to be a primary determiner of what people talk
about and the facts that they receive. It is often called the ‘fourth estate’ or
the ‘fourth pillar of democracy’ because it is supposed to keep the other three
—the judiciary, the legislature and the executive—in check by keeping the
masses informed of any improprieties that take place. The power that the
media wields over public opinion means that it also has the responsibility of
keeping people informed.
African–American civil rights leader Malcolm X is credited for saying,
‘The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make
the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because
they control the minds of the masses.’ 38 This sentiment remains true to this
date.
If news channels choose to hold debates on ‘urban Naxals’ and ‘anti-
national’ JNU students while ignoring certain corruption scandals and
economic realities like the crisis of unemployment and the declining
standards of education, a large part of their viewership will concentrate on
the urban Naxal infestation instead of debating the downslide of the economy.
This gives media houses and their owners enormous political clout. In an
ideal world, this wouldn’t affect the reportage of news channels, but in the
real world, it has led to the formation of close ties between media groups
and political parties around the world.
Several commentators have written about the lack of neutrality in news
coverage in India and both the right and the left think the other side has an
advantage in terms of support from the media. 39 This is a perception that
both sides would want to maintain because it allows them to discredit any
unfavourable media report as part of the Opposition’s propaganda. The
reality is that while both sides have several online publications supporting
them, the control of conventional media has shifted decisively in favour of
the right.
The ownership of major media houses is especially problematic in India
with politicians owning several large media groups directly. Data supplied
by the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) shows that in August
2018, the five most viewed English news channels were Republic TV, Times
Now, CNN News18, India Today Television and NDTV 24X7. The top
Hindi news channels during the same period were Aaj Tak, News18 India,
Zee News, ABP News and India TV. 40 The owners of most of these news
channels were directly involved in politics.
One of the largest investors in India’s most viewed English news channel,
Republic TV, is a BJP Rajya Sabha MP, Rajeev Chandrashekhar. 41 He is
also the vice-chairman of the NDA’s Kerala wing and has a stake in several
news ventures in south India, including Asianet News Network in Kerala,
and Suvarna News and Kannada Prabha in Karnataka. 42 Dispelling any
notions that ownership would not translate into editorial interference, Amit
Gupta, the chief operating officer of Jupiter Capital through which
Chandrashekhar owns his media investments, sent an email to editorial heads
on 21 September 2016. It was to clarify what the chairman, Chandrashekhar,
wants from the networks. All editorial talent to be hired should be ‘right of
centre in his/her editorial tonality’, ‘pro-India, pro-military’, ‘aligned to
Chairman’s ideology’ and ‘well familiarized’ with the chairman’s thoughts
on ‘nationalism and governance’. The email ended with, ‘Offers being rolled
out shall be summarized and shared with Chairman’s office as regards the
credentials (only) and hiring managers have to ensure that the above has been
ticked appropriately.’ 43
Times Now is owned by the Jain family, owners of Bennett Coleman and
Company Limited that has commonly become known as the ‘Times Group’. It
owns the Times of India , Navbharat Times , Economic Times , Mumbai
Mirror and several other newspapers and channels, making it India’s largest
media group. Times Now developed a pro-BJP stance when Arnab Goswami
was its lead anchor, and has maintained it after Goswami resigned and
founded Republic TV along with Chandrashekhar. In what seems to be a bid
to retain its non-BJP supporting audience, the Times Group started a channel,
Mirror Now, that indeed operates like a mirror to Times Now, offering
content that often goes against the ruling party. 44 This new news
dissemination model where media outlets run multiple channels with varying
degree of biases, allowing their audience to choose the bias they want in
their reportage might just be the future of information consumption. As news
moves to a subscription-based model online, people will likely only
consume information from sources that agree with their existing political
beliefs.
CNN News18 and News18 India are both part of the Network 18 Group
that was acquired by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) in
May 2014. 45 The group also bought ETV Networks in a ₹2053-crore deal in
2015, giving it control over the many regional news channels that ETV
operated. The group now owns news channels that together broadcast in
fifteen different languages. 46
Zee News and India TV are both owned by people close to the BJP. Zee’s
owner, Subhash Chandra, won his latest nomination as an independent MP to
the Rajya Sabha in 2016 with the support of BJP MLAs in Haryana. 47 The
chairman of India TV is Rajat Sharma, who is reported to be close to
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley since their college days when they were both a
part of ABVP at Delhi University. Some of the investors in the media venture
include companies that are a part of Gautam Adani’s Adani Group and close
aides of RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani. A man named Mahendra Nahata,
who has come to control NDTV in recent years, also owns a company that
owns part of India TV. 48
Through a shady financial deal involving loans and call options, a Mukesh
Ambani-controlled entity called Vishvapradhan Commercial Limited (VPCL)
also seems to have attained controlling stake in NDTV. Even though control
hasn’t been asserted by VPCL, findings by the Securities and Exchange
Board of India (SEBI) have revealed that VPCL, headed by Mukesh
Ambani’s close associate and Reliance Jio board member Mahendra Nahata,
holds 52 per cent of shares in NDTV. The SEBI order into the matter
observed, ‘The elaborate mechanism adopted by the noticee (VPCL) and its
associates appear to be solely to deflect attention from this acquisition (of
NDTV) and thus covetously overcome the obligations imposed by the
takeover regulations.’ 49 Even though NDTV is known to not shy away from
being critical of the government of the day, this could change soon if SEBI’s
observations about the VPCL deal are correct and a company controlled by
the Reliance Group has indeed acquired control of the network.
India Today and Aaj Tak are both owned by an entity called Living Media
Group that was controlled by Aroon Purie. He passed on control of the group
to his daughter, Kallie Purie, in October 2017. The group itself has no
discernible political connections.
The ABP group was mired in controversy after one of its anchors, Punya
Prasun Bajpai, and managing editor Milind Khandekar resigned in August
2018. In his programme, ‘Masterstroke’, which aired on ABP News, Bajpai
had shown that a woman from Chhattisgarh who had interacted with the
prime minister through videoconferencing and claimed that her farming
income had doubled in the past few years had been tutored to make a false
claim. After the programme aired, senior BJP ministers criticized the anchor
and the channel for showing what they claimed was a misleading report. 50
The tussle resulted in the two journalists resigning from the channel that had
been known for its tough reporting against the Modi government. Since his
resignation, Bajpai has claimed that a 200-member media monitoring team
was established under the Information and Broadcasting (I&B) ministry to
monitor any channels airing anti-BJP content. In an article Bajpai wrote, he
says: ‘In the last four years, the entire paraphernalia of monitoring had just
one agenda—to see how Modi’s image could be amplified . . . As is evident,
the effort to tighten the noose around news channels through an unprecedented
level of monitoring continues unabated.’ 51 The channel is owned by
Anandabazar Patrika (ABP) Group headquartered in Kolkata and is an
example of a media outlet that has no discernible politics but has faced the
effects of partisan politics nonetheless.
With most TV channels owned by politicians or individuals close to the
BJP or groups like Reliance that have vast business interests that require
government favour, anti-governmental content might automatically see a
reduction along with a boost to any content that helps the government. As I
stated in an interview to Asia Times , ‘Punya Prasun Bajpai’s story doesn’t
even need to be true. Just that the story is out there is enough for most outlets
to abide by whatever the BJP says.’ 52 Ownership of the media by
individuals that have their political interests to protect, combined with the
perception that the government crushes dissenters and opponents, might result
in there not being a free and fair media even though the Constitution
guarantees it.
Everything that’s wrong with the media cannot be blamed on politically
motivated people owning media houses, though. Market forces have wreaked
havoc on the industry and ensured that it is forced to rely on opinion-driven
content and reality TV-worthy drama, rather than in-depth reportage. News
coverage has largely been reduced to TV debates, where guests from the
entire political spectrum are invited to deliver their opinions, which often
end up being slanging matches. Instead of experts, complex issues are
debated by party spokespersons with little knowledge of the subject matter.
People from the industry claim that this is a consequence of news networks
being cash-strapped, with debates being so much cheaper to produce than
actual reporting. 53 To produce an in-depth, informative report on issues like
farmers’ protests or the banking crisis, a news channel would need to engage
researchers who dissect the issue and send reporters and camera crews to the
field to conduct interviews. This would mean they need journalists qualified
enough to find new stories and cover it from the field. All of this would
involve multiple days of effort, transportation costs, hotel bills, not to
mention salaries for a skilled newsroom. Not something that news networks
can afford for a daily 24X7 telecast. All news channels occasionally cover
stories in-depth, but that is more an exception rather than the norm. The norm
is a TV debate with a panel that news executives hope will fight amongst
themselves and create some gripping drama for the audience.
The first time I was invited to a TV debate was on an NDTV panel to
discuss the non-performing assets (NPA) crisis with Sunetra Choudhary. I
was in Tripura at the time and initially refused the invite, but finally agreed
to come on-air via Skype, since the network needed someone from the BJP’s
side. On the day that the Tripura assembly election results were announced, I
was on TV from 10.00 a.m. to 10.00 p.m., and shuttled between the NDTV
and Rajya Sabha TV offices in Delhi throughout the day. I was on panels with
political analysts and politicians, and even did a solo interview on my work
during the Tripura assembly elections. Since then, I’ve been a part of panels
discussing parliamentary disruptions, results of bypolls in Uttar Pradesh,
fake news and policy proposals like the Election Commission’s idea to
restrict each candidate to contest from just one seat. Most of these were
issues that I was qualified to talk on due to my work, but every once in a
while, I was invited to TV panels just because they needed someone from the
‘right wing’.
I had stopped watching TV news a long time ago and preferred to read
news, or the news summaries my team prepared while we worked on an
election campaign. So, in order to prepare myself for the task, I watched
some panels to understand how it was done. One thing hit me as soon as I
started watching. The panellists often knew little to nothing about the issue
they were discussing. Some channels were better than others were and
invited experts to debate issues, but surprisingly, the ones with the most
viewership invited party spokespersons, retired army people with no subject
matter knowledge, journalists who hadn’t worked on the subjects at hand,
and people who had clearly been called just to shout down other guests and
create controversy. The knowledge level displayed on our nation’s TV
debates is what I can get after fifteen minutes of Googling. This realization
also convinced me that our news networks had abandoned their duty to
inform the audience and were instead producing a perverse form of
entertainment that masqueraded as news. An opinion I was happy to realize
is shared by at least one TV news anchor, NDTV India’s Ravish Kumar.
Kumar has commented on the dire state of TV debates repeatedly, and has
gone as far as to recommend that people should stop watching TV news
because of how perverse it has become. 54
By now, I have interacted with several people who have been regular
panellists on almost all major English TV channels. The fact that saddens me
is that their opinions in the one-on-one conversations I had with them were
never as extreme or as crazy as the ones they stated on camera. Off camera,
the BJP panellists often accepted that their party had been wrong on a
particular issue or that the government really wasn’t functioning well, but
once the cameras were on; they would mount a vehemently aggressive
defence of the government. Similarly, the Congress panellists would accept
past mistakes of their governments and the lack of strategic direction from
their leadership, but would turn around and defend everything that happened
in UPA-II, calling the coverage of scams a BJP conspiracy and unequivocally
stating that they would definitely win the next elections. Some panellists
seem to act crazy on camera because they know that being abusive to the
opposing side on TV gets them publicity and Twitter followers. It is rare to
meet panellists on TV debates who express their true opinions. This is truer
of panellists representing political parties, and especially so if they are
political operatives who come on TV under the garb of being neutral
commentators.
The sad reality is that much of what is presented as news in the country
today is propaganda. Politics doesn’t just happen through opinions people
express and whose side they take, it also happens through what issues they
choose to debate and what issues they ignore. It isn’t only through partisan
behaviour during debates that a news network’s allegiances become clear. If
a channel’s coverage ignores issues being raised against the government
while consistently covering any issue that will harm the Opposition, it is a
political stance and the viewers should recognize it as such.
I don’t trust opinions expressed by people on TV because I often find that
the same people hold very different opinions in person. What this means is
that TV debates today are akin to theatre, where panellists put on an act to
pass on their message to the audience. Viewers should know that the
conviction with which TV panellists shout at their opposition might all be an
act to instil the viewer with rage, and that the person might be putting on the
show just because it helps them further their own interests. I’d stick to what
Ravish Kumar has advised, surprisingly against his own self-interest, and
recommend that people should stop watching TV debates altogether. Maybe
stay off social media too, if possible. What is important to understand,
though, is that such propaganda and divisive narratives haven’t come about
because of some evil ideological conviction on either side of the political
divide. It is how politics works the world over.
 5
WINNING AN ELECTION

E verything politicians do is to fulfil one straightforward goal—to win an

election. This realization, which seems obvious in retrospect, is something I
only figured out after having worked in politics for over two years. There are
many politicians who want to do good work and help people in their
constituencies, but these are still ancillary functions. The primary goal of a
politician is always to win elections.
It used to surprise me to observe the lifestyles of some politicians known
to have amassed crores from alleged corruption and crony capitalism. A vast
majority of them lived deceptively simple lives, wearing cheap kurta–
pajamas or shirts, avoiding anything extravagant. There are obviously
exceptions to every rule, and there are politicians who live lavish lifestyles
funded by money that comes from unknown sources, but in my experience, the
ones who have accumulated ill-gotten wealth and yet live simply far
outnumber the ones who have built mansions and are seen holidaying in
foreign countries wearing clothes that cost more than an average Indian’s
annual salary.
A lot of what politicians do and say are inexplicable, especially when
you’ve met them and know of their personal opinions. I have often met
politicians who support Hindutva but have no animosity towards any other
religion. They only want to strengthen our own culture and religion.
However, these are the same politicians who deliver hate-filled speeches
against Muslims during election campaigns. Similarly, politicians who
weren’t the least bit casteist in their dealings and interactions with people
would appear to be embodiments of caste pride when on a public platform.
Even the money that many are reported to have made through scams isn’t
funding a lavish lifestyle for most of them. They’re all instruments utilized by
politicians and parties to garner votes, and often have little to do with what a
politician personally believes in.
As I met people who had been in politics for decades, I came to realize
how they viewed the world differently from the average person. Several of
them strongly believed that the end justified the means, but more than
anything, they understood the rules of the game. They understood exactly
what rising up in politics entailed and believed that if they didn’t play the
game the way it needed to be played, then someone else would and that
person would win. One of the most important things I learnt wasn’t about
caste, religion or money, though. It was about respect, and sometimes, about
sycophancy.
Right after results for the Manipur assembly elections were announced in
March 2017, I witnessed the scramble for credit—a phenomenon that takes
place after every election. I was relatively unknown, managing operations in
the backroom, so I wasn’t going to be a part of the scramble, which gave me
the opportunity to observe how things worked. Local leaders, national
politicians, karyakartas and strategists who’d worked on the campaign, and
some that had barely done anything at all, tried to get in front of as many TV
cameras as possible and get their names in as many newspapers as possible.
Karyakartas told each other stories about how their contribution to the
campaign had been integral to the party’s win. They rightly believed that they
had to do this in order to be noticed by party leaders because they wouldn’t
be needed until the next elections and risked being ignored by the party until
then. Party leaders wanted the higher-ups to note their inputs while strategists
wanted to create a brand for themselves so that they were noticed in the
marketplace. Everyone, even if they just wanted to talk of their own work,
ended up talking about how ‘PM Modiji’s leadership and Adhyakshji’s
strategy’ had led to the victory. From the unknown karyakarta to the top-party
leadership, everyone credited the victory to PM Modi and party president
Amit Shah.
The same phenomenon repeated after the results for the Tripura legislative
assembly elections were announced. This was a noticeable phenomenon in
other parties too. Congress leaders credited Rahul Gandhi for every success,
while shielding him from the failures. BSP leaders credited Mayawati, SP
leaders credited Akhilesh Yadav. It wasn’t even a north Indian phenomenon
and was in fact more prevalent in some southern states. AIADMK MPs from
Tamil Nadu wouldn’t dare to finish a single speech in Parliament without
lavishing praise on their ‘puratchi thalaivi Amma’ (revolutionary leader
Amma), referring to party supremo and then chief minister J. Jayalalithaa. It
was obvious that, internally, all parties operated as fiefdoms, where
everyone had to bow to the sovereign. Some parties are known for hereditary
transfer of power while in others, the top job is transferred after a tussle
between claimants; however, none of India’s political parties is a democracy.
All parties have a primary leader with a larger-than-life persona that
everyone else in the party must respect and bow to. This leader is the
primary decider of the course that matters within the party take, and no one
who wants to remain in the party can afford to cross them. The top leaders
have trusted lieutenants—people extremely close to them who have been by
their side for years and who also wield an enormous amount of power,
sometimes even without official position. For instance, Amit Shah, Arun
Jaitley, National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval, some bureaucrats
brought into the PMO who’d previously worked with the PM in Gujarat,
some key functionaries from the RSS and a select group of other politicians
are known to be among those in PM Modi’s ‘inner circle’.

Political Patrons

Rising up the ranks in a political party often requires the patronage of leaders
close to the supremo or people lower in the hierarchy who are close to them.
It was only through the patronage of other senior politicians that most people
have made it big in politics today; and every major leader will point to a
mentor. Without such support, it might just be impossible to succeed in the
field.
The story of former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav
illustrates this. He was taken on as a mentee by Nathu Singh, the then MLA of
Jaswantnagar, an Uttar Pradesh assembly constituency, who was impressed
with Yadav after watching him wrestle in an akhara. Nathu Singh later
proposed Yadav’s name to contest the election in 1967, giving up his own
seat so the young teacher could contest. 1 Thereafter, Yadav went on to count
socialist stalwarts Ram Manohar Lohia and Raj Narain as his political
mentors. 2 Modi, too, received the support of not only the RSS but also of
senior BJP leader Advani during a crisis that could have easily ended his
political career. After his failure in controlling the Gujarat riots and reports
of his complicity in the matter, the then prime minister, Vajpayee, reportedly
wanted to ask Modi to step down from the chief minister’s position. Insider
accounts suggest that it was only because Advani strongly argued his case
that he was retained. 3
It is no wonder, then, that people at the very top of a political party are
recipients of a lot of sycophancy from those who inhabit lower rungs. They
not only control people’s entry into politics but also all posts in a party. It is
only at their pleasure that the leaders below them get to serve on any post
within the government or the party, or even get votes during elections. There
are only a handful of politicians who can win an election from their
constituencies as independent candidates, and there are very few who can
win no matter which party they contest from. Regardless of what estimation
most MLAs and MPs give about their own strength in their region, they
usually know that they won’t win if they don’t get the ticket to contest from
the right party.
The 2014 Lok Sabha elections and most elections since then are prime
examples of how valuable a party’s ticket is. Many of the people who won
from the BJP during these elections had little or no local support or name
recognition. They are MPs and MLAs today only because the BJP gave them
a ticket to contest. The voters voted for the party to help Modi win. The local
candidate’s identity was of little significance particularly during these
elections. 4 I observed this phenomenon first-hand during the 2018 Tripura
assembly elections, when people outright stated that our candidate wasn’t the
best but they would still vote for the BJP so that a new party could form the
government in the state that had only seen CPI(M) rule for the last twenty-
five years. In Indian politics it is often the party that wins a seat, and not the
individual who contests.
Among the 543 elected MPs in the current, sixteenth, Lok Sabha, only three
have won as independent candidates. The UP legislative assembly with 404
seats also has only three MLAs who won as independent candidates in 2017.
These numbers are fairly low in all states across the country, and illustrate
the fact that the probability of winning as an independent candidate is
extremely low. Candidates who have widespread public support also lose
elections if they contest as independently. Voters believe that it would benefit
them to have an MP from a large party, especially the ruling one. The only
time it makes sense for a person to contest as an independent is when they
know they will get a large number of votes and affect the outcome, making
the candidate who would have come second otherwise win the election. This
move is also rarely tried as even the strongest candidate has little chance of
winning as an independent, but it does establish the credibility of the
candidate and ensures that the mainstream parties do not make the mistake of
refusing this person a ticket in future elections.
Since the senior leadership of a party makes all decisions regarding ticket
distribution, party members treat them with a mixture of reverence and
sycophancy. This is why so much praise is heaped upon the top leadership
after every success, and why even the most absurd of their actions are
rigorously defended by party members. There is virtually no space in Indian
politics to air dissenting opinions and deliver constructive criticism to party
leaders. I have heard spokespersons of parties in TV studios before debates
talking about what their leadership is doing wrong and what needs to be
fixed within their parties, but these opinions almost never reach the ears of
the party supremo. Critical feedback can easily be misinterpreted as blame,
and that would risk the messenger’s own political career. It is a risk that no
politician is willing to take. A lack of feedback often leaves party leaders
misinformed, and several of them end up overestimating their chances of
winning elections based on the overly positive feedback provided by people
close to them. It has harmed leaders during several elections, yet few ever
find a way to address their party workers’ fears so that they can get accurate
assessments of the ground realities.
The supremacy of a party leader’s directives is illustrated by a story told
to me by Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Dinesh Trivedi. Trivedi is a senior
leader who has been active in politics since the 1980s. He became a Rajya
Sabha MP for the first time in 1990 on a Janata Dal ticket and has been in the
Lok Sabha since 2009 representing TMC. 5 During my year as a LAMP
fellow, he invited a group of us for tea to his MP quarters in Lutyens’ Delhi.
The conversation veered towards the time when he had to resign from the
post of Union railway minister in 2012. The story is that he had raised rail
tariffs after giving hints to everyone that he would be doing so. No one
objected that when they initially heard about the hike, but once the railway
budget was publicly released, there was tremendous criticism from the
Opposition. The hike was condemned as being against the interests of the
common man, who would now have to pay more for train tickets. Due to the
widespread criticism, the head of TMC, Mamata Banerjee, asked Trivedi to
step down as railway minister. 6 He resigned immediately. I asked him why
he didn’t mount a defence, a question that was especially relevant then
because the Modi government had substantially increased the train fares and
there was no opposition to the move. The answer proved to be a valuable
lesson in politics. He told us that he’d become railway minister only because
‘Mamata Di’ had given him the portfolio. It really wasn’t his post. Since the
leader of his party had entrusted it to him, when she became convinced that
the right move was for him to resign, there was no point in mounting any kind
of a defence. 7
Most MPs, MLAs and even cabinet ministers get their positions because of
the backing of their party and its leadership, and not simply because the
public voted for them. There is tremendous lobbying for portfolios, but most
politicians realize that it isn’t something that is in their hands. They can only
request the party leadership to give them a particular role, but the decision
rests ultimately in the hands of senior party leaders. This concentration of
power explains why even those who enter politics with dreams of
transforming the system end up becoming a part of it. The system is just too
entrenched and no one seems to be able to succeed without bowing to it.
The system is such that it tries to ensure that rebellious people don’t rise
too high, and success comes only to those who respect party hierarchy. This
system isn’t just a relic of old parties created decades ago; it takes hold as
soon as a party is formed. A need to quash dissent took over the AAP soon
after it won sixty-seven out of seventy seats in the Delhi assembly elections
in 2015. Even though it had won the elections with an image of a people’s
movement, to actually run a party requires discipline and top-down control.
Some of the first steps after the victory that party head and Delhi Chief
Minister Arvind Kejriwal took were to consolidate power within the party.
Senior leaders Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan were ousted within
two months of the government being formed in Delhi. 8
Since then, some AAP MLAs and MPs have expressed their
dissatisfaction with the AAP leadership and have called Kejriwal a
‘dictator’. 9 The reality is that Kejriwal isn’t any more or less of a dictator
than the head of any other party in the country. The criticism comes from the
immense and unrealistic expectation that people had from the AAP that it
would be a different kind of party, but then the system persists perhaps for a
reason. Without exercising control over key decisions, it would be
impossible for a leader to keep the cadre in check. The idea of a committee
running a party seems good on paper, but the quickness with which cliques
form within political parties, with groups of karyakartas pledging support to
different leaders, a committee-led party is bound to swiftly turn into multiple
parties.
The first step to becoming a successful politician for anyone, it seems,
would be to build proximity to an already successful politician so that they
can get a party ticket to contest. During the Tripura legislative assembly
campaign, this led to distinct groups forming within the party. Some
prospective candidates believed the state election in-charge, Deodhar, would
be their best proponent for getting a ticket, while others believed that the
backing of the state president, Deb, would be their means to getting a ticket.
When the opinions of Deb and Deodhar differed, one could see the entire
party taking sides based not on the issue but on the camp with which they had
chosen to align. This factionalism within the party continued until much after
the election, and news of rifts between the two groups kept surfacing time
and again. 10 These were usually minor disputes, settled swiftly with the
intervention of Ram Madhav. The same sort of dynamics operates at the very
top in most political parties and explains why party leaders want no other
leader to have a similar stature as them.

Identity Dynamics

Once this battle for tickets is over, the next step is to actually win elections.
In Indian politics, a key component of victory is ‘identity politics’. The caste
and religious dynamics at play are central to most elections. So are regional
and linguistic sentiments in some states. Like most people, I hated the fact
that caste and religion played such a major role in politics but I never
grasped how ingrained these identities were across much of India before I
started working in politics. The divide in society along caste and religious
lines doesn’t seem like something that’s going to disappear anytime soon and
I’ve come to accept that it’s a persistent part of Indian politics, and maybe
even politics across the world.
The instinct of forming a herd has survived in human population since
prehistoric times, and any politician who taps into this sentiment is likely to
be massively popular within a group. Divisive politics, where one group is
pitted against another, is a means of consolidating a group and has been
hugely successful historically.
When I was working in Punjab, the most obvious flaw that anyone could
identify with the AAP campaign was a lack of local leadership. The face of
the campaign was Delhi CM Kejriwal, a non-Sikh and an Agarwal (baniya)
from Haryana. Tall local leaders, like the party’s convener Sucha Singh
Chhotepur, left the party just a few months before the election. 11 It was an
obvious sign that the AAP’s profile was dwindling in the state. With the
historic animosity between the states of Punjab and Haryana, the message that
the AAP’s primary leader was a non-Punjabi from Haryana was bound to be
viewed unfavourably by the voters. 12 The conflict over water sharing
between Punjab and Haryana through the Satluj Yamuna Link Canal or SYL
intensified during the election. 13 It should have been obvious to the AAP that
a few strong local leaders were required for it to do well in the elections.
A similar sentiment was utilized by Prashant Kishor in Bihar when he
successfully branded the remark that Modi made about Nitish Kumar’s DNA
into a slight against the entire state. Though the caste equations strongly
favoured the Mahagathbandhan of Nitish’s JDU, Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD
and the Congress, the campaign narrative of ‘Bihari versus Bahari ’ created
regionalist sentiments that contributed to the rout of the BJP. 14 There was an
obvious lack of local leadership and cohesion in the Bihar unit of the BJP at
the time, with most posters featuring huge images of PM Modi and Amit Shah
with no local faces alongside them. The Mahagathbandhan campaign
successfully asserted that the BJP was a party of outsiders with no local
leaders, while both Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav were locals. The
regionalist sentiment in Bihar, though, is negligible compared to that in some
other states of India.
The anti-Hindi agitations led by Erode Venkatappa Ramasamy, commonly
known as Periyar, in 1937 in what is today the state of Tamil Nadu created
regionalist sentiments that have dominated the state’s politics ever since.
Periyar started the agitations after the Congress government headed by C.
Rajagopalachari made Hindi education compulsory in schools. The
movement soon extended beyond language and led to the creation of regional
parties that embodied Tamil pride. Periyar founded the ‘Dravidar Kazhagam’
that insisted on a separate nation for Dravidians, further solidifying
regionalist sentiment. Later, attempts to impose Hindi as the national
language in 1965 only strengthened the anti-Hindi movement and
consolidated voters across south India against the political domination of
what they viewed as a north Indian party. 15
 Today, most parties in India are identified with a particular community or
group. Most regional parties embody the causes of a particular caste group,
while some have consolidated a vote bank by appealing to religious
identities. Parties such as the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and Asaduddin
Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) have a religion-
based identity. The major problem with such parties is that they often have to
rely upon a sense of victimhood to keep their voters unified.
Unity within a community rarely happens spontaneously. Some additional
factor is needed to make people aware of their identities and to bring them
together as a voting bloc. Communities that have strong parties that represent
their interests today have all had charismatic leaders who were able to unify
people on common issues of the community. The swiftest means to creating
such a vote bank is to instil a sense of victimhood. Periyar’s anti-Hindi,
Tamil pride agitations were a success because people felt aggrieved. The
SAD became a political force in India on the backs of the Punjabi Suba
movement that demanded a state with a majority of Punjabi-speaking people.
16 Both movements presented their community as victims of some form of

oppression. It was this feeling of having been denied justice that brought the
community together and allowed for it to be consolidated into a political
force.
The feeling of being victims of oppression leading to the creation of a
strong and often permanent group of supporters is a worldwide phenomenon.
To create this feeling of victimhood, leaders identify an enemy against whom
the group can unify. This is where a large part of US President Donald
Trump’s political success comes from. He successfully consolidated votes
from Americans who had suffered the most due to the worsening economy
and who felt that mainstream politicians had let them down. He gained
widespread support from America’s ‘rust belt’, a region that had seen rapid
industrial decline and job loss, by giving them someone to blame for their
economic troubles. 17
The Trump campaign worked to unify its supporters against immigrants,
who could easily be blamed for Americans losing jobs. The viral tagline
‘Build That Wall’, which was often chanted at Trump’s rallies, affirmed his
promise to his supporters of a wall between the United States and Mexico to
prevent the influx of illegal immigrants and became a rallying point for his
supporters. 18 The campaign also identified the fear that Islam produced in
the minds of Trump’s core supporters and magnified the threat that Muslims
posed to the ‘American way of life’. 19 Trump doubled down on the campaign
rhetoric even when he received widespread criticism from liberal
Americans because he knew that his message resonated with the people who
were going to vote for him, and that liberal Americans wouldn’t vote for him
even if he dropped such rhetoric from his campaign. This is a strategy often
used in Indian politics, where winning elections requires much less than half
the total votes polled.
The Dalit vote bank in India represents one of the strongest voting blocs in
the country. It became a major force with Kanshi Ram founding the BSP in
1984, a party that primarily espoused causes of the Dalit community. Dalit
unity strengthened in Uttar Pradesh and the community rallied behind the BSP
under the leadership of Ram’s successor, Mayawati, propelling her to the
post of chief minister for the first time in 1995. A major cause of this
consolidation was the strong discontent in the community due to historic
injustices and a strong and persistent feeling of victimhood. 20 Even though
the BSP failed to win a single seat in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, it still had
the third highest vote share in the election, winning 4.2 per cent of the votes
nationally, due to its strong appeal to the Dalit community. The BJP, which
swept the elections and won 282 seats, had a vote share of just 31.3 per cent.
21
The OBC community, which accounts for at least 41 per cent of the
country’s population, presents another strong vote bank. Although further
fragmented into different caste groups that support different parties, vote
banks within the OBC group can trace their formation to the same event—the
demand for reservation, which came to be represented by the Mandal
Commission set up by the Janata Party government in 1979. 22 The demand
for reservation was a clear goal, and carried the underlying message that the
community had been denied its rights. This simple message, combined with
an attainable goal, led to massive political consolidation and several
regional parties now count OBCs as their primary vote bank.
To beat regional parties that had a stronghold over caste-based vote banks,
the BJP started establishing an entirely new ‘Hindu’ vote bank through
participation in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. It gained momentum in the
later part of the 1980s, leading to the demolition of the Babri Masjid in
Ayodhya on 6 December 1992. 23 Since a vote bank usually consolidates
through a feeling of common victimhood, the Babri Masjid issue was used to
rake up a historic wrong against the Hindu community. The message that the
mosque was built by Mughal General Mir Baqi in 1528 over a Ram temple
that he destroyed sparked discord between Hindus and Muslims, which still
persists.
Since then, the BJP has shaped itself into a party that espouses ‘Hindu
causes’ while branding its opposition as parties that indulge in ‘Muslim
appeasement’. The 2014 general election was fought on a plank of
development with only subtle undertones of religion, but 2019 might see the
religious messaging amplified. The results of the 2017 Uttar Pradesh
legislative assembly elections, where the BJP and its allies won 325 out of
400 seats without fielding a single Muslim candidate, has renewed the
party’s faith in the political merit of appealing to majoritarian sentiments. 24
The strategy of unifying communities that might be a small minority
nationally but have a significant presence in specific regions is widely
prevalent across India. The NPF that was in power in Nagaland, which won
a few seats in the neighbouring state of Manipur, has consolidated the Naga
community as a vote bank based on a feeling of being victimized by the
Indian state. The party’s stated objectives support the creation of a ‘Greater
Nagaland’ where all Nagas can live in a politically integrated unit. 25
Movements to mobilize other castes have also gained momentum, with the
Patidar agitation for reservation in Gujarat and the Jat agitation for
reservation in Haryana being recent examples. 26 The country is witnessing a
resurgence of reactionary upper caste movements too because of the
government’s new legislation strengthening the SC/ST Act after the Supreme
Court had weakened it through a judgment. 27
 A weak economy allows politicians to create a narrative of migrants
taking away jobs from locals, leading to consolidation. The strategy has
worked for leaders across the world and has now been tried by politicians in
the UK, Germany, Italy, France, the USA, Greece, India and several other
democracies. The Shiv Sena, under the leadership of its founder Bal
Thackeray, began in the 1960s by raising the concerns of Marathi people and
taking an anti-migrant stance at a time when Maharashtra was witnessing a
massive influx of south Indians who took up employment in the state. Later,
people from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar replaced south Indians as the major
group migrating to Maharashtra and became the new enemy. 28

Vote-Bank Politics

The conventional discourse on the subject holds that identity and politics
intermixing increases the divide between communities and causes conflict.
This is a simplification of a far more complex phenomenon. Sometimes the
intermixing of caste or tribal identities with politics is just what a community
needs to make its issues a part of the political discourse.
During the Manipur election, I’d seen Chief Minister O. Ibobi Singh use
the historic differences between the Nagas, Kukis and Meiteis to his
advantage. He’d fuelled the animosity between the groups, telling the
dominant Meitei population that the BJP was siding with the Nagas who
wanted the state to be divided. Tripura showed that this was not always how
identity politics played out.
Tripura is a state that has witnessed a major demographic change in the
past century. The princely state had maintained a tribal majority population
for the first half of the twentieth century, but that changed rapidly with India’s
independence in 1947. The state’s proportion of tribals declined from over
50 per cent to 31 per cent owing to two major influxes of immigrants to the
state. The first wave arrived due to Partition, when Hindu Bengalis from
erstwhile East Pakistan migrated to Tripura. The second wave, again
comprising predominantly Hindu Bengalis, migrated from the same region
around the 1971 war that led to the creation of Bangladesh.
 These demographic changes that reduced the tribals from a majority to a
minority created major conflict in the state. 29 It was ravaged by an
insurgency that started in the 1970s and did not begin to subside until 2004.
Given the violent history between the tribal and Bengali populations of
Tripura, I would have assumed that identity politics would play out only in a
divisive manner during the 2018 election campaign, but what emerged
changed my perception of identity politics. The tribals had served as a loyal
vote bank to the CPI(M) for over two decades, but major resentment had set
in during that period.
Only 4 per cent of tribal households had members who held coveted
government jobs and less than 3 per cent of the state’s tribal population
earned more than ₹10,000 a month. The decline in tribal language and culture
could be estimated from the fact that the state’s main tribal language,
Kokborok, had already lost its script and was now written using the Bengali
or the Roman script. 30 The dissatisfaction of the tribals had real socio-
economic causes, and it manifested in the form of a demand for a separate
state of Tipraland. As the BJP allied with the state’s major tribal party, the
IPFT, I got the opportunity to meet tribal cadres of the party, some of whom
had also been a part of the armed struggle against the Bengali population
decades ago. Through them, I understood that their tribal identities allowed
them to form an effective pressure group and aligning themselves into a
strong vote bank gave them a voice in politics. Most of them understood that
their demand for a separate state wouldn’t be met, but they also saw it as a
means of carving out a tribal vote bank that could assert demands specific to
the state’s tribal population.
Caste and tribal identities are a central element of politics in India and
aren’t going to disappear anytime soon. There isn’t a single party that
contests elections without paying heed to the caste arithmetic operating in
each constituency. What I realized in Tripura was that the existence of vote
banks isn’t negative per se. It’s only negative when two groups are pitted
against each other for political interests. These identities themselves are
often an effective means of community support for people and a key element
in the distribution of resources.
 The poor and marginalized across castes and tribal groups barely have a
voice in governance. People are often subject to the whims of the local
administration and are often left feeling like victims of the system. In a
country as complicated as India, social groups such as a caste or a tribe are a
support system to navigate the mess that is governance, where the individual
is insignificant and has no voice. An individual voter may be irrelevant, but a
vote bank is invaluable. By associating themselves with a caste- or tribe-
based voting bloc, voters are able to amplify their demands and voices.
Political parties are forced to take the demands of the group seriously
because they represent a bloc of votes that could change electoral outcomes.
Identity politics in India provides a basis for the formation of strong
pressure groups that can pressurize the government to act. Most caste groups
and voters have similar problems—of unemployment, lack of proper
remuneration for agricultural produce, delivery of government schemes and
oppression from administrative officials. They could, in theory, organize
themselves into pressure groups by region or across professions, but caste
and tribe often serve as a close proxy to represent the collective issues of a
group of people. The historicity of these identities and the close familial
networks that have formed over thousands of years also make them one of the
easiest parameters by which people can organize themselves into a pressure
group.
The successes achieved by the OBCs in getting the recommendations of the
Mandal Commission for 27 per cent reservation in educational institutions
and government jobs successfully implemented, and by many caste and tribal
groups in garnering benefits through agitations, have ensured that people will
continue to align themselves along these lines. Dalit vote banks have also led
to the call for drastic social change and assertion of its rights by the
community. Parties like the BSP have played a key role in strengthening the
Dalit community and providing it with self-respect. Politicians have come to
realize the benefits of a core vote bank and often bestow special favours on
specific groups in the hope of getting the votes of the entire community, thus
forming a mutually beneficial arrangement with voters.
 The mention of identity politics often conjures up images of discrimination
and conflict, but that is because, living in urban areas, we’ve lost touch with
the realities of caste identities that remain deeply entrenched across India.
Examples of such politics being misused might be a lot more vivid than
examples of empowerment, but the fact remains that the alignment of Dalits
and OBCs into voting blocs has done a lot to emancipate these groups. They
have acquired a voice in the nation’s governance only because they were
able to become a political vote bank. Identity politics isn’t just a divisive
tool used by politicians, but also a tool for the voiceless masses to organize
themselves and get themselves heard in a system where they would otherwise
remain ignored.
After working on analysing caste data and preparing constituency profiles
for many elections across India, I am convinced that identity politics cannot
be ended through legislation or by the Election Commission. It can be ended
only if the individual is empowered and has such a strong voice in
governance that he or she does not require the refuge of their caste to assert
their rights.
This positive empowerment, unfortunately, hasn’t translated to identity
politics based on religion, where the key messaging remains focused on the
evilness of the other community. Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM and Badruddin
Ajmal’s All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) are examples of parties
that have unified Muslims based on their fear of Hindus instead of a message
of socio-economic upliftment of the community. 31 32 In recent years, many
opposition parties have used the fear that Muslims have of the BJP to unify
them into a vote bank. In a similar vein, the BJP has attempted to consolidate
Hindu voters through messaging based on a fear of Muslims. Multiple BJP
leaders have publicly made statements such as, ‘Hindus should have at least
five children to save Hindutva’ 33 and ‘at the rate the Muslim population is
growing, we will see the creation of another Pakistan’. 34 It hasn’t mattered to
the framers of this narrative that the Muslim population’s growth rate has
declined more than that of the Hindu community according to the 2011
census, nor that the findings of the Sachar Committee report have said
Muslim population growth will reach replacement rate by the end of the
century. 35
The narrative persists with WhatsApp forwards about how the Muslim
population will overtake that of Hindus in the next twenty-five, thirty, fifty
years, even though all available data suggests that it is impossible. Even if
we forget that the Muslim population growth rate is declining faster than that
of Hindus and assume that it stays as it was in 2011, at 24.6 per cent per
decade, and the Hindu growth rate stays at 16.8 per cent per decade,
Muslims will only equal the population of Hindus in the year 2274. And that
would mean that the combined population of India would be around 130
billion people, or 18 times today’s world population. The best estimate from
scientists today is that the earth will fail to support a population in excess of
11 to 15 billion due to resource limitations, 36 so we can safely assume that
the Muslim population isn’t going to exceed that of Hindus even in 2274.
In order to continue to win elections, the BJP would need to maintain its
Hindu vote bank. Studies have shown that the party benefits electorally due
to increased polarization. 37 That is how we got to witness Union ministers
from the BJP publicly felicitating those convicted of mob lynching. In an
unprecedented display of solidarity with the extreme Hindu right wing, BJP
minister Jayant Sinha felicitated eight people in July 2018 who were out on
bail after appealing their conviction in a case of mob lynching. All eight
people garlanded by the minister had been awarded the death sentence by a
fast-track court for killing a man named Alimuddin on the suspicion that he
was transporting beef in his vehicle. 38 In the same month, another Union
minister, Giriraj Singh, visited people in Nawada Jail who were in custody
for inciting communal riots the year before. He later accused the state
government in Bihar of trying to suppress Hindus. 39
These were some of the visible elements of the BJP’s larger attempts at
consolidating the Hindu vote bank ahead of the 2019 elections. The other part
were party functionaries and supporters using the media, social media and
speeches to perpetuate the propaganda that Muslims would take over India if
the BJP was not elected back to power. This clear message forms the
backbone of the BJP’s social media strategy. Most other parties push
messages about rallies that their leaders attended and criticism of the
opposing party without any idea as to the larger narrative they are trying to
frame. The BJP on the other hand realizes that the message of development
will not win them another election, as Subramanian Swamy has admitted.

Old Narrative, New Enemy

Though the party will continue to focus on its development track record
overtly, social media pages that support the party are building a campaign
that props up Hindutva as its primary poll plank. The party needs voters to
emotionally connect with it and feel like it is the only option for Hindus. One
of the largest BJP-supporting groups on Facebook, ‘WE SUPPORT
NARENDRA MODI’, which has over 3.1 million members, changed its
cover photo in June 2018 from the BJP symbol to a graphic that had pictures
of PM Modi, Lord Ram and a Shivling. The graphic read ‘Save Hinduism—
Save India. NAMO for PM 2019’.
The members of these groups are so well primed to believe that Hinduism
is under threat and only the BJP can save it that instead of sparking any
outrage against a graphic that blatantly uses religion to seek votes, the group
reverberated with comments of ‘Jai Shree Ram’. 40 Since then, TV channels
have gone on to debate if Rahul Gandhi is a ‘good Hindu’, including a show
titled ‘Asli Hindu vs Dhongi Hindu’ (Real Hindu vs Impostor Hindu) that
aired on News18 India to discuss whether Rahul ate non-vegetarian food in
Nepal when he’d gone for the Mansarovar yatra in September 2018. 41
Shows about how Dalits, Naxalites and Muslims are uniting to take on PM
Modi in 2019 have also been aired. Zee News’s show, ‘Taal Thok Ke’,
discussed the topic ‘Maoists Dalit-Muslim alliance against PM Modi’ while
the screen read ‘Bharat ke khilaaf Naxali Atanki Bhai ?’ (Against India,
Naxalites and Terrorists united?). 42 All debates on anti-nationals, urban
Naxals, intellectuals and students who are terrorist sympathizers have
worked to create a custom-made enemy for each group that can potentially
support the BJP.
 For those who believe they are nationalists, a new enemy has been created
in the form of anti-national intellectuals who are supposedly colluding with
Naxalites and terrorists to weaken India. The coining of descriptive and
easy-to-remember phrases like ‘urban Naxal’ and ‘Tukde Gang’ has led to
the widespread propagation of these ideas. For the poor, there was an
attempt to build the narrative that they were poor because of the corruption of
the rich, and the BJP had delivered a decisive blow to black money hoarders
through demonetization. In essence, the best way for BJP supporters to be
consolidated was for them to be presented with an enemy that could be seen
to be working to undermine whatever they believed in. A massive
information and disinformation campaign was waged for this purpose that
declared several people de-facto enemies of the state with terms like ‘anti-
national’, ‘urban Naxal’ and ‘Tukde Gang’ in a campaign that bore
resemblance to the McCarthyism of the 1950s in the US.
In a vociferous campaign led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, several people
across American institutions were accused of being communists without any
proof. These alleged communists or ‘communist sympathizers’ were detained
and questioned by both the government and private industry panels. Several
thousand people lost their jobs and had their careers destroyed based on
speculative theories that were perpetuated through a fear-mongering
campaign mounted by the senator. The term McCarthyism has since become a
noun that means ‘the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason
without proper regard for evidence’. 43 This branding exercise that took
place in the US in the 1950s isn’t too different from the campaign being
undertaken in India today where people are branded anti-national, urban
Naxal or anti-Hindu without any conclusive proof.
Soon after the Tripura election, I realized that the campaigns I had been
working on for the BJP weren’t the kind of campaigns that would lead to the
party’s victory in 2019. In the northeast, the states had been governed by
long-time incumbents and could be won on the message of hopes and dreams
of a better future under the BJP, a replay of the 2014 general elections
message. For the rest of India, the party was now the incumbent. Either it had
to convince voters that it had indeed brought about significant transformation
in the country, or it had to craft a message different from that of development.
With the actions of Union ministers and other functionaries who publicly
supported lynching and riot-accused, and the divisive rhetoric in the
speeches delivered by PM Modi during the Gujarat and Karnataka elections,
the narrative that the party had chosen became obvious.
During the Gujarat campaign, PM Modi alleged that the Congress was
working with Pakistan to defeat the BJP in Gujarat. He accused Congress
leaders of meeting Pakistani officials in secret to conspire against the
interests of India, but did not say why even with the might of the entire Indian
government behind him, he failed to order an inquiry into the matter. 44
During the Karnataka election, the prime minister claimed that no Congress
leader had met Bhagat Singh in jail, even though a quick search on Google
would have revealed that Jawaharlal Nehru had indeed visited both Bhagat
Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt in jail. 45 These statements could have been a
consequence of the prime minister not knowing history, but they achieved a
much larger political purpose for the BJP. They created a distraction from the
core narratives that were dominating elections at that point. Instead of the
failures of development, the high fuel prices, the falling rate of the Indian
rupee, the problem of unemployment and the declining standard of public
discourse, such remarks shifted focus to an issue that wouldn’t harm the BJP
in the slightest. Twitter users and the media took the bait and pointed out how
the prime minister had messed up on a historical fact instead of focusing on
the corrupt image of the BJP’s chief minister candidate, B.S. Yeddyurappa,
who had been tried and arrested in corruption cases in the past that were
later quashed. 46 In Gujarat, too, the media’s focus shifted from the BJP
government’s failures to the story of Congress leaders meeting Pakistani
officials as soon as the prime minister mentioned it. These strategies were
working and BJP spokespersons were dragging any debate into binaries of
Hindu vs Muslim, national vs anti-national, and India vs Pakistan.
For me, the negatives of the BJP had overtaken its positives. I decided to
resign from the party and communicated my decision to Madhav. He patiently
listened to the reasoning and realized that it wasn’t a situation in which he
could convince me to stay, so we parted ways on good terms. This was about
two months before the post I wrote, ‘Why I Am Resigning from BJP’, went
viral. During these two months, very few people knew that I’d left the party
because I didn’t think it was something that needed to be declared publicly. I
did write articles and Facebook posts on rising fuel prices and the police
firing at protesters during the anti-Sterlite protests in Tamil Nadu that
resulted in the death of thirteen people. Every time I wrote anything that
could be construed as being anti-BJP, I received phone calls from friends and
people I’d worked with in the BJP to enquire why I was angry with the party.
I’d have to explain my reasoning to them, which became extremely tiring
after the fifth or the sixth time I did it. That was when I decided to write a
post stating my reasons for resigning from the BJP, which I posted on my
Medium blog. 47 From there, the post was picked up by Print, Wire, Scroll,
Quint, Youth Ki Awaaz, Janta Ka Reporter, ABP News, HuffPost India, Asia
Times and several other news portals. Links to the article were tweeted by
leaders from across opposition parties and the post was translated into
Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu, Bengali and Marathi.
The post wasn’t a planned ‘branding exercise’, and the genuineness of its
sentiment resonated with a lot of people and it went viral. Since then, I’ve
met several hundred supporters of the BJP who’ve agreed with what I wrote
and who say they too feel disillusioned with the promise that PM Modi
offered in 2014. I’d expected support from the Opposition, but what
surprised me was that several people in the BJP, the ABVP and the RSS
agreed with what I had expressed in the post. People who’d supported the
government zealously before 2014 had been left wondering what choice
India had and whom they could support in 2019 if they decided to not vote
for PM Modi. The reversion in the BJP’s messaging from development to
Hindutva and its failure in enacting major reforms formed a part of the reason
why many people were disappointed. The root cause, however, seemed to be
that a man that many believed would transform the system had ended up
becoming a part of it. He learnt to exploit it more than those who came
before him and had learnt to influence the voters with caustic propaganda
spread through conventional and social media. The system had won.
Reproduction of blog post ‘Why I Am Resigning from BJP’ first published on 17
June 2018 [sic].

Political discourse is at it’s lowest point in the country, at least in my lifetime. The
partisanship bias is unbelievable and people continue to support their side no matter what the
evidence, there is no remorse even when they’re proved to have been spreading fake news.
This is something that everyone—the parties and the voters/supporters are to be blamed for.
BJP has done a great job at spreading some specific messages with incredibly effective
propaganda, and these messages are the primary reason that I can’t support the party
anymore. But before we get into any of that, I’d like everyone to understand that no party is
totally bad, and no party is totally good. All governments have done some good and messed
up on some fronts. This government is no different.

The Good:

1. Road construction is faster than it was earlier. There has been a change in methodology of
counting road length, but even factoring that in it seems to be faster.
2. Electricity connection increased—all villages electrified and people getting electricity for
more hours. (Congress did electrify over 5 lakh villages and Modi ji finished the job by
connecting the last 18k so, you can weigh the achievement as you like. Similarly the
number of hours people get electricity has increased ever since independence, but it might
be a larger increase during BJP).
3. Upper level corruption is reduced — no huge cases at the ministerial level as of now (but
the same was true of UPA I :/ ). Lower level seems to be about the same with increased
amounts, no one seems to be able to control the thanedar, patwari et al.
4. The Swachh Bharat Mission is a definite success—more toilets built than before and
Swachhta is something embedded in people’s minds now.
5. UJJWALA Yojana is a great initiative. How many people buy the second cylinder remains
to be seen. The first one and a stove was free, but now people need to pay for it. The cost
of cylinders has almost doubled since the government took over and now one costs more
than Rs. 800
6. Connectivity for the North East has undoubtedly increased. More trains, roads, flights and
most importantly—the region is now discussed in the mainstream news channels.
7. Law and order is reportedly better than it was under regional parties.
Feel free to add achievements you can think of in the comments below, also
achievements necessarily have caveats, failures are absolute!

The Bad:

It takes decades and centuries to build systems and nations, the biggest failure I see in BJP
is that it has destroyed some great things on very flimsy grounds.
1. Electoral Bonds—It basically legalizes corruption and allows corporates & foreign powers
to just buy our political parties. The bonds are anonymous so if a corporate says I’ll give
you an electoral bond of 1,000 crore if you pass this specific policy, there will be no
prosecution. There just is no way to establish quid pro quo with an anonymous instrument.
 This also explains how corruption is reduced at the Ministerial level—it isn’t per file/order, it
is now like the US—at the policy level.
2. Planning Commission Reports—this used to be a major source for data. They audited
government schemes and stated how things are going. With that gone, there just is no
choice but to believe whatever data the government gives you (CAG audits come out after
a long time!). NITI Aayog doesn’t have this mandate and is basically a think tank and PR
agency. Plan/Non-Plan distinction could be removed without removing this!
3. Misuse of CBI and ED—it is being used for political purposes as far as I can see, but even
if it isn’t the fear that these institutions will be unleashed on them if they speak up against
anything Modi/Shah related is real. This is enough to kill dissent, an integral component of
democracy.
4. Failure to investigate Kalikho Pul’s suicide note, Judge Loya’s death, Sohrabuddin murder,
the defense of an MLA accused of Rape who’s relative is accused of killing the girls father
and FIR wasn’t registered for over an year.!
5. Demonetization—it failed, but worse is BJP’s inability to accept that it failed. All
propaganda of it cutting terror funding, reducing cash, eliminating corruption is just absurd.
It also killed off businesses.
6. GST Implementation—Implemented in a hurry and harmed business. Complicated
structure, multiple rates on different items, complex filing… Hopefully it’ll stabilize in time,
but it did cause harm. Failure to acknowledge that from BJP is extremely arrogant.
7. The messed up foreign policy with pure grandstanding—China has a port in Sri Lanka,
huge interests in Bangladesh and Pakistan—we’re surrounded, the failure in Maldives
(Indian workers not getting visas anymore because of India’s foreign policy debacle) while
Modi ji goes out to foreign countries and keeps saying Indians had no respect in the world
before 2014 and now they’re supremely respected (This is nonsense. Indian respect in
foreign countries was a direct result of our growing economy and IT sector, it hasn’t
improved an ounce because of Modi. Might even have declined due to beef based
lynchings, threats to journalists etc.)
8. Failure of schemes and failure to acknowledge/course correct—Sansad Adarsh Gram
Yojana, Make In India, Skill Development, Fasal Bima (look at reimbursements—the
government is lining the pockets of insurance companies). Failure to acknowledge
unemployment and farmers crisis—calling every real issue an opposition stunt.
9. The high prices of Petrol and Diesel—Modi ji and all BJP ministers + supporters criticized
Congress for it heavily and now all of them justify the high prices even though crude is
cheaper than it was then! Just unacceptable.
10. Failure to engage with the most important basic issues—Education and Healthcare. There
is just nothing on education which is the nation’s biggest failure. Quality of government
schools has deteriorated over the decades (ASER reports) and no action. They did nothing
on Healthcare for 4 years, then Ayushman Bharat was announced—that scheme scares
me more than nothing being done. Insurance schemes have a terrible track record and this
is going the US route, which is a terrible destination for healthcare (watch Sicko by Michael
Moore)!
11. It has discredited the media, so now every criticism is brushed off as a journalist who didn’t
get paid by BJP or is on the payrolls of Congress. I know several journalists for whom the
allegation can’t be true, but more importantly no one ever addresses the accusation or
complaint—they just attack the person raising the issue and ignore the issue itself.
12. It has peddled a narrative that nothing happened in India in 70 years. This is patently false
and the mentality is harmful to the nation. This government spent over Rs 4,000 crore of
 our taxpayer money on advertisements and now that will become the trend. Do small
works and huge branding. He isn’t the first one to build roads—some of the best roads I’ve
traveled on were pet projects of Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav. India became an IT
powerhouse from the 90s. It is easy to measure past performance and berate past leaders
based on the circumstances of today, just one example of that:
You can add some and subtract some based on personal understanding of the issue,
but this is my assessment. The Electoral Bonds thing is huge and hopefully the SC will
strike it down! Every government has some failures and some bad decisions though,
the bigger issue I have is more on morals than anything else.

The Ugly:
The real negative of this government is how it has affected the national discourse with a
well considered strategy. This isn’t a failure, it’s the plan.
1. It has discredited the media, so now every criticism is brushed off as a journalist who didn’t
get paid by BJP or is on the payrolls of Congress. I know several journalists for whom the
allegation can’t be true, but more importantly no one ever addresses the accusation or
complaint — they just attack the person raising the issue and ignore the issue itself.
2. It has peddled a narrative that nothing happened in India in 70 years. This is patently false
and the mentality is harmful to the nation. This government spent over Rs. 4,000 crore of
our taxpayer money on advertisements and now that will become the trend. Do small
works and huge branding. He isn’t the first one to build roads—some of the best roads I’ve
traveled on were pet projects of Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav. India became an IT
powerhouse from the 90s. It is easy to measure past performance and berate past leaders
based on the circumstances of today, just one example of that:
Why did Congress not build toilets in 70 years? They couldn’t even do
something so basic. This argument sounds logical and I believed it too, until I
started reading India’s history. When we gained independence in 1947 we were
an extremely poor country, we didn’t have the resources for even basic
infrastructure and no capital. To counteract this PM Nehru went down the
socialist path and created PSU’s. We had no capacity to build steel, so with the
help of Russians the Heavy Engineering Corporation (HEC), Ranchi was set up
that made machines to make steel in India —without this we would have no steel,
and consequently no infrastructure. That was the agenda —basic industries and
infra. We had frequent droughts (aakaal), every 2–3 years and a large number
of people starved to death. The priority was to feed the people, toilets were a
luxury no one cared for. The Green Revolution happened and the food shortages
disappeared by the 1990s —now we have a surplus problem. The toilet situation
is exactly like people asking 25 years from now why Modi couldn’t make all
houses in India air conditioned. That seems like a luxury today, toilets were also
a luxury at some point of time. Maybe things could have happened sooner,
maybe 10–15 years ago, but nothing happened in 70 years is a horrible lie to
peddle.
3. The spread and reliance on Fake News. There is some anti-BJP fake news too, but the
pro-BJP and anti-opposition fake news outstrips that by miles in number and in reach.
Some of it is supporters, but a lot of it comes from the party. It is often hateful and
 polarizing, which makes it even worse. The online news portals backed by this government
are damaging society more than we know.
4. Hindu khatre mein hai—they’ve ingrained it into the minds of people that Hindus and
Hinduism are in danger, and that Modi is the only option to save ourselves. In reality Hindus
have been living the same lives much before this government and nothing has changed
except people’s mindset. Were we Hindus in danger in 2007? At least I didn’t hear about it
every day and I see no improvement in the condition of Hindus, just more fear mongering
and hatred.
5. Speak against the government and you’re anti-National and more recently, anti-Hindu.
Legitimate criticism of the government is shut up with this labeling. Prove your nationalism,
sing Vande Mataram everywhere (even though BJP leaders don’t know the words
themselves, they’ll force you to sing it!). I’m a proud nationalist and my nationalism won’t
allow me to let anyone force me to showcase it! I will sing the national anthem and national
song with pride when the occasion calls for it, or when I feel like it, but I won’t let anyone
force me to sing it based on their whims!
6. Running news channels that are owned by BJP leaders who’s sole job is to debate Hindu-
Muslim, National-Antinational, India-Pakistan and derail the public discourse from issues
and logic into polarizing emotions. You all know exactly which ones, and you all even know
the debaters who’re being rewarded for spewing the vilest propaganda.
7. The polarization—the message of development is gone. BJP’s strategy for the next election
is polarization and inciting pseudo nationalism. Modi ji has basically said it himself in
speeches—Jinnah; Nehru; Congress leaders didn’t meet Bhagat Singh in jail (fake news
from the PM himself!); INC leaders met leaders in Pakistan to defeat Modi in Gujarat;
Yogi ji’s speech on how Maharana Pratap was greater than Akbar; JNU students are anti-
national they’ll #TukdeTukdeChurChur India—this is all propaganda constructed for a very
specific purpose—polarize and win elections—it isn’t the stuff I want to be hearing from
my leaders and I refuse to follow anyone who is willing to let the nation burn in riots for
political gain.
These are just some of the instances of how BJP is pushing the national discourse
in a dark corner. This isn’t something I signed up for and it totally isn’t something I
can support. That is why I am resigning from BJP.
PS: I supported BJP since 2013 because Narendra Modi ji seemed like a ray of
hope for India and I believed in his message of development—that message and the
hope are now both gone. The negatives of this Narendra Modi and Amit Shah
government now outweigh the positives for me, but that is a decision that every voter
needs to make individually. Just know that history and reality are complicated. Buying
into simplistic propaganda and espousing cult like unquestioning faith are the worst
thing you can do—it is against the interests of democracy and of this nation.
You all have your own decisions to make as the elections approach. Best of luck
with that. My only hope is that we can all live and work harmoniously together—and
contribute towards making a better, stronger, poverty-free and developed India, no
matter what party or ideology we support. Always remember that there are good
people on both sides, the voter needs to support them and they need to support each
other even when they are in different parties.
 6
UNDERSTANDING THE SYSTEM

‘S o, you’re interested in politics . . . How much money do you have in the

bank?’ This was the first question that veteran politicians and strategists
asked me after I came back from the US. It soon became obvious why this
was the case. Indian politics is expensive, for candidates and for political
parties, but much before a person can think about contesting elections they
need to figure out how they will survive while working in politics. Parties
don’t pay their karyakartas, except occasionally providing them some money
to spend close to elections. Anyone who is interested in politics has to have
some other source of income to sustain themselves. I would have to work for
a decade to build a career or a business that would generate sufficient
income for me to think about entering the political space. Or, I would have to
figure out a way of earning a living while working in politics. Luckily, I
found out about the LAMP fellowship, which then translated into a job in
political consultancy, a field that opened up in the country only in 2012–13.
The glitz and technological sophistication of Modi’s campaign for prime
ministership had transformed how election campaigns were managed in
India. Several companies had formed to manage things from social media,
speech inputs, data analytics, constituency profiles, SMS and IVRS
messaging, campaign videos and songs, graphics, video vans to managing
complete campaigns for political parties. All of this literally created an
entirely new sector for young Indians interested in politics, and many people
have built a career in political consultancy since then.
After I resigned from IPAC and started working directly for the BJP, I
realized that private companies such as IPAC weren’t competing with other
political consultancy firms; they were competing with the political parties
themselves. All major parties had started building in-house competencies for
the work that political consultants did so that the services of private firms
would no longer be required in the years to come. Parties had also started to
realize that they had been duped by political consultancy firms who spent
crores on things that could be accomplished by a few lakhs, and often
defected to the opposition with tons of data. This model, where a company
works for the BJP in one election and the Congress in the next, coming back
to BJP in the one after, was simply not sustainable. Not only were parties
losing their data, they were also losing other resources like mobile apps and
even social media pages that had been created and boosted to reach lakhs of
likes using the party’s money. Direct employment that parties offered had
benefits for consultants too. They not only got a competitive salary, but also
the opportunity to be more involved with the campaign, working directly
with political leaders. This newly opened space not only allowed me to
work in politics without worrying about earning an income to survive, but
also dissuaded me from electoral politics itself.

Cost of an Election

While working in Punjab on the ‘Halke Vich Captain ’ programme, I got to

see what it took to organize just one political event. The posters, hoardings,
autos with audio systems to make announcements for the meeting, the rent for
a venue, rental for chairs and fans, printing of flyers, the arrangements for
refreshments and water, sound systems, LED screens, taxi rentals and the
salaries of people to manage all of this—everything added up quickly. A
back-of-the-envelope calculation showed that each of these events cost ₹12
lakh–₹15 lakh. The sixty to seventy such events we organized were only one
of several campaign modules running to propel Captain Amarinder Singh to
the post of the chief minister of Punjab. Apart from on-ground events, the
party also spent crores on advertising on digital platforms. The cost of TV
advertisements, newspaper ads often on the front page, radio broadcasts,
social media advertising and the expenditure in creating all of these would
shock most voters.
According to filings with the Election Commission of India, the BJP spent
₹714.28 crore (over $100 million) on the 2014 general election campaign
while the Congress spent ₹516 crore. 1 This figure does not include amounts
spent by individual candidates within their constituencies and it obviously
does not include any expenditure using black money. Other sources estimate
the same expenditure to have been multiple times higher than what was
reported to the Election Commission. An article in the Hindustan Times ,
after quoting party sources and media experts, deduced a figure of about
₹5000 crore (830 million) for just the advertising campaign for the BJP
during the general election. 2 An Indian think tank, Centre for Media Studies,
estimated the total expenditure by all parties in the 2014 general elections to
be ₹30,000 crore ($5 billion). 3 Even if we disregard unofficial estimates
and focus solely on the filings made by political parties, it becomes clear that
at least ₹2 crore is required per constituency. The calculation of expenditure
for just one state assembly election that took place on 12 May 2018 would
lead to the conclusion that this estimate is too low, though.
The Karnataka legislative assembly election was a close contest between
the BJP and the Congress, where the BJP ended up winning 104 seats in an
assembly that required 113 seats for a majority. A coalition of Congress and
Janata Dal (Secular) (JDS) formed the government, having won seventy-eight
and thirty-seven seats respectively. JDS’s H.D. Kumaraswamy was sworn in
as chief minister on 23 May 2018 after a dramatic eight days during which
the BJP laid claim to forming the government and the Congress and the JD(S)
worked hard to keep their legislators locked up in resorts to prevent them
from being ‘bought’ by the BJP. 4 Since the BJP failed to prove its majority
on the floor of the house, its chief minister, B.S. Yeddyurappa, had to resign.
This happened after the Supreme Court ordered a floor test to be conducted
within twenty-four hours, leaving the BJP with little time to garner support
from MLAs of other parties. The events culminated with an emotional speech
and resignation by Yeddyurappa on 19 May 2018. 5 This paved the way for
the JD(S) chief ministerial candidate to be sworn in to head the state’s
government.
This election was of tremendous importance to the Congress, which would
have been left governing just two states, Punjab and Puducherry, if it had
failed to forge an alliance with the JD(S). India is no stranger to political
parties levelling allegations of money power and horse-trading against their
opposition in closely contested elections, but with the advent of 24X7 news
channels broadcasting visuals of MLAs being locked up in hotel rooms and
being whisked away in buses against their wishes, one was forced to wonder
just how corrupt our politicians really are. The Congress and JD(S) were
worried that the BJP would purchase their legislators even as the entire
nation watched the saga unfold. Some talking heads on TV questioned the
morality of the BJP trying to buy MLAs while others questioned the morality
of the MLAs who were willing to be bought. However, the voters on the
ground just didn’t seem to care. They already believed that politicians were
corrupt and didn’t need any new evidence to convince them of this. Since the
India Against Corruption (IAC) movement ended in Delhi and transformed
into the Aam Aadmi Party, very few people even talked about corruption. It
felt like the faltering image of Kejriwal and Modi, who were both anti-
corruption paragons of hope for the Indian masses until 2015–16, had
convinced the people that the problem of corruption in India couldn’t be
fixed. The entire election in Karnataka seemed to be a testament to that fact.
Ground reports suggested that the BJP managed to surge ahead of the
Congress in the last few weeks of the campaign. 6 The charismatic speeches
of Prime Minister Modi and the party’s aggressive advertising during this
time could have played a role, but the key lies in a topic that politicians and
political pundits seldom touch upon. We might want to believe the best about
the Indian voter’s rationality; the truth is that votes are still bought in many
parts of the country and no party wins an election without tremendous
expenditure. This was true when I was working on the elections in Manipur
and in Karnataka as well. Beyond the money spent on advertising and in
campaigns, crores are distributed directly to voters in the form of cash,
precious metals and liquor. It is not just a commonly stated adage; it is a fact
that is proven by the Election Commission every time an election takes place.
By 10 May 2018, the combined efforts of the Election Commission, the
Income Tax department and the police in Karnataka led to the seizure of
liquor, cash, gold and silver worth over ₹170 crore.
‘#Karnataka: Cash worth ₹80,91,00,073 seized by the IT dept & police.
Liquor worth ₹24,35,99,918.32 seized by Static Surveillance teams & excise
department. Gold and silver worth ₹44,26,26,717 were seized by the IT
dept. ₹1,70,88,14,720.32 crore has been seized till now.’—ANI 7
There is no ceiling on the amount of money a party can spend on elections
in branding and advertising, but there is a limit to the money that each
candidate can spend. In Karnataka, each candidate was allowed to spend a
maximum of ₹28 lakh on the assembly election according to the Election
Commission. 8 For a state with 224 assembly constituencies, this would mean
that all candidates combined could legally spend a total of ₹62.72 crore. The
police had seized goods and cash worth almost three times this permissible
limit up to two days before the election.
What comes as a major surprise to many people who are new to the field
of politics is that no party is too bothered about such confiscations. It
happens during every election and parties have come to view it as a normal
part of the election process. During every election cycle, the Election
Commission and the police seize crores in cash and liquor from the state
going to polls, yet there are no news stories of the consequences faced by
people transporting and distributing these bribes. The arrested drivers and
handlers are often let out on bail as soon as the election is over and no one
bothers to pursue these cases once the election results come in. Conviction in
these matters is rare, and even if it happens, just the fact that they aren’t
widely reported leads to there being no deterrent to people engaged in
bribing voters. The only explanation for parties not caring about these
confiscated amounts, like the ₹170 crore seized in Karnataka, is that these
represent a fraction of the total amount being spent on the elections.
According to estimates from election consultants working on the ground, the
total expenditure for the Karnataka assembly election was somewhere above
₹5600 crore, while some think tanks estimated it to be between ₹9500 crores
and ₹10,500 crore, 9 making the seized ₹170 crore seem insignificant.
Even if the direct bribery of voters can be prevented through an enormous
effort by the Election Commission and overhauling of the state machinery, the
fact that parties can spend an unlimited amount on advertising and branding is
worrying for a democracy because it gives a huge advantage to the party with
more money. This is a worldwide concern and movements like ‘Occupy Wall
Street’ 10 and ‘Wolf PAC’ 11 have raised concerns on political funding in the
USA. Reporting on an analysis of 467 congressional races (equivalent to
India’s parliamentary elections) that took place in 2012, a Wall Street
Journal headline read: ‘91 per cent of the time the better-financed candidate
wins.’ 12 With new campaign methods and advertising platforms like social
media and television, expenditure by parties during elections is only rising. It
is clear to most people working in politics that the Election Commission is
failing to prevent the use of tremendous amounts of money in politics. In fact,
many acknowledge that the quantum of money spent by political parties in
elections has become so huge over the past few years that there seems to be
no way for a party to remain honest while still managing to win elections.

Paying for Patronage

The problem with money in politics isn’t just that a richer candidate or party
will win, it is also that this money has to be paid back in some form or
another. At the local level where MLAs and MPs receive much of their
funding from individual donors, at times in the form of black money, the
amount is often repaid by way of government contracts or by protecting the
donor, who might be involved in illicit activities like illegal mining, alcohol
smuggling, and so on, from law enforcement agencies. Jennifer Bussell, an
assistant professor of political science and public policy at the University of
California, Berkeley, wrote an article in the Hindustan Times about a survey
in which she had collected responses from over 2500 incumbent politicians
between 2011 and 2014 to assess how much they spent on elections and
where they got the money. The politicians were from Bihar, Jharkhand and
Uttar Pradesh, three politically competitive states but with relatively
‘cheaper’ elections as compared to, say, the southern states. Jennifer
reported that almost 60 per cent of the incumbent politicians had received at
least some financial support from their party. The survey also found that a
vast majority of funds spent in MLA and MP elections was black money,
comprising about 45 per cent of the total spending. 13
Milan Vaishnav, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace and author of the book When Crime Pays: Money and
Muscle in Indian Politics , said in an interview to Reuters:

There is a very clear nexus between crime and politics in India that is being fuelled by two
sets of factors. First, as elections have grown costlier, parties are desperate to identify
candidates with deep pockets. This has led them to embrace wealthy individuals with often
dubious reputations. Second, voters have their own reasons to support candidates with
questionable pasts. Where government is unable to fulfil its basic responsibilities and social
divisions are rife, voters seek refuge in strongmen who can deliver what the state cannot. 14

The model of election financing, where criminals and contractors funded

politicians in exchange for patronage, has changed over the years because
gradually the contractors and criminals have entered politics themselves and
parties have embraced them, as moneyed candidates have become a
necessity. According to his research into the backgrounds of candidates who
have won elections to the Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly, Vaishnav said,
‘Our best estimates suggest that fewer than 10 per cent of UP state legislators
elected in 1984 were the subject of ongoing criminal cases. That proportion
has skyrocketed to 45 per cent in the last election in 2012.’
A slow judicial process where cases don’t progress for decades has
ensured that India can’t enact a law preventing people being investigated for
serious offences from contesting elections. Any incumbent government could
just eliminate the opposition with the registration of fake cases that will
prevent people from contesting elections for years if such a law was enacted.
The current law, which bars politicians from contesting elections for six
years after being convicted, rarely comes into effect because such
convictions are a rarity and often take decades. Even though the spending
required by individual candidates to win elections is a worrying issue, an
even larger problem facing the nation is how political parties are funded.
The corrupt or criminal MLAs and MPs would lose influence if
government services were delivered efficiently. If the nation’s education,
healthcare, water and electricity reached people, law and order prevailed,
and they had opportunities for employment, they would be a lot less likely to
elect local strongmen. A faster judicial set-up would also reduce the number
of criminals in politics. In August 2014, the then chairman of the Reserve
Bank of India (RBI), Raghuram Rajan, delivered an extremely interesting
speech titled ‘A Hypothesis on the Persistence of Crony Capitalism’. The
speech was an attempt to explain why the ‘good’ people who stood for
elections often lost their deposits and explained how the problem is not one
of individual ethics but of systemic failure. Rajan said:

While the poor do not have the money to ‘purchase’ public services that are their right, they
have a vote that the politician wants. The politician does a little bit to make life a little more
tolerable for his poor constituents—a government job here, an FIR registered there, a land
right honoured somewhere else. For this, he gets the gratitude of his voters, and more
important, their vote . . . perhaps the system tolerates corruption because the street-smart
politician is better at making the wheels of the bureaucracy creak, however slowly, in favour
of his constituents. And such a system is self-sustaining. 15

This explains exactly why corrupt and criminal politicians win elections
while honest ones complain how the system is against them. Rajan’s
hypothesis explains exactly why some politicians want to keep their
constituents dependent on them and fight any reform that would help deliver
services more easily to people in their constituency.
There are politicians in India who have understood the value they provide
to voters and consciously made their constituents dependent on them. They
slowly dismantle the police and the judiciary in their region so that people
have to come to them for justice, and all public services for the region are in
their control. If the process of getting ration cards or the ration itself became
easier, then they would lose a part of the power they wield over their
constituents. It is in their interest to patronize corrupt police and
administrative officials who don’t do any work unless they receive a bribe or
a call from the politician. Contrary to popular belief, this broken system of
governance strengthens the politician’s chances of winning elections because
people become dependent on him for getting even basic government services.
Through my discussions on political strategy, I came to know of a
particular politician who seems to have built one of the finest systems of
keeping his voters dependent on him. The MLA in question has taken the
nexus of business, politics and bribery of voters to a different level. He won
the elections as an independent candidate a few years ago and is reported to
distribute a monthly amount of ₹1000 to ₹2000 to about half the people in his
constituency. In the extremely impoverished region, this means that most of
the voters in his constituency are dependent on him for sustenance. Creating
this level of dependence in the local population ensures that he will remain a
political force to reckon with in the region and will probably continue to win
elections till he can afford to keep paying the voters. He reportedly funds this
entire operation by supporting mining companies in the district where his
constituency is located and is backed by a contract miner whose company has
become the largest in the region with an increase in turnover from ₹90 crore
to over ₹1300 crores in fifteen years. 16 ‘Public hearings’ are a necessity for
obtaining environmental clearance from the government and no mining
activity can take place without it. By distributing monthly stipends to several
villagers, the MLA and the contract miner have ensured that they control
mining activities in the area. This form of crony capitalism, with local
politicians helping businesses and the businesses funding them in return, is
how a lot of Indian politicians get funds.
In his address, Rajan went on to explain how the circle is completed. ‘The
crooked politician needs the businessman to provide the funds that allow him
to supply patronage to the poor and fight elections. The corrupt businessman
needs the crooked politician to get public resources and contracts cheaply.’
17 The answer to end such corruption at the local level is clear, at least in

theory—better delivery of government services and financial empowerment

of the voters. There are no such obvious solutions to the problem of party
funding, though.
Crony Capitalism

The required election expenditures have created a scenario where no party

can function solely with donations from the general public. Those rich
enough to fund a party and its electoral expenses are industrialists and
business houses who are all too happy to buy their way into having some
influence in policymaking. Once a business house funds a party, it aims to
recoup the investment after the party comes to power. This doesn’t just
happen in the form of government contracts and tenders like it does at the
local level, but as policy changes it creates an unequal playing field for
businesses. Such benefits being bestowed upon ‘preferred’ businessmen is
what has led to the current crisis in banking. Most public sector banks, which
are entities backed by the government and are bailed out using taxpayers’
money when they fail, are facing a major crisis of non-performing assets on
their balance sheet. NPAs are loans that banks made to businesses that the
businesses were unable to repay.
A certain level of NPA is a natural part of banking, and business loans
involve the same level of risk as a business. If a business fails, it might be
unable to pay back its loans, but that is why banks are supposed to assess
repaying capacity and the collateral that can be sold if the business defaults
on loan payments. It is now becoming obvious that in the past few decades,
many businessmen who lived lavishly and delivered sermons in conferences
on how to succeed in business were in fact funding their lifestyles not from
profits from their businesses but from the money they had borrowed from
public sector undertaking (PSU) banks. In other words, money that the
taxpayer will have to repay. How many of these loans originated explains
exactly the kind of damage crony capitalism can do.
Maheshwar Peri, a chartered accountant by training and chairman of
Careers360.com , wrote in an Asia Times article what he had experienced at
a PSU bank many years ago. While sitting with the chairman of the bank, he
witnessed a phone call between the chairman and a minister. The chairman,
under the impression that Maheshwar didn’t speak Telugu, spoke in that
language. ‘The person at the other end of the call was a minister who was
asking the bank to approve a loan to a company whose promoter had doubtful
credentials. He also had a terrible record of repayments. All that I could hear
from the chairman translated into “it will be done”.’ 18
This is just one of thousands of instances that have been reported of loans
being sanctioned to businesses without proper collateral and vetting due to
political pressure. An Ernst and Young (EY) report from May 2015 was
titled ‘Unmasking India’s NPA Issues—Can the Banking Sector Overcome
This Phase?’ It stated, ‘While corporate borrowers have repeatedly blamed
the economic slowdown as the primary factor behind it, periodic
independent audits on borrowers have revealed diversion of funds or wilful
default leading to stress situations.’ 19
Even though the likes of Nirav Modi and Vijay Mallya are prominent
offenders who have absconded from the country after defaulting on thousands
of crores of bank loans, almost all of India’s major corporate houses are
heavily in debt. According to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), in
2018, there were thirty-one individuals who collectively owed banks
₹40,000 crore in fifteen separate cases and who were absconding from the
country. 20 Essar Steel, a major business, also owes banks over ₹49,000
crore. 21 The company, though, was admitted to the National Company Law
Tribunal (NCLT) in August 2017 for bankruptcy proceedings and it is
believed it will be sold with banks suffering a loss of only a few thousand
crores. This is a better scenario than the over 60 per cent loss that banks
have to absorb in many other loan default cases. 22 The present government
under Prime Minister Modi has claimed that the NPA crisis is a legacy issue
inherited due to crony capitalism under the earlier UPA government, and that
such loans are not sanctioned any more. Since loans take years to turn into
defaults, only time will tell how accurate this claim is.
The Rafale Scam, on which the Opposition has tried to corner the
government, is a defence deal for buying thirty-six jets from French company
Dassault Aviation for a price of ₹58,000 crore. The deal was inked between
India and France in September 2016. The original deal that the UPA
government had proposed in 2012 was to buy eighteen ‘ready-to-fly’ jets
from France, with another 108 others being assembled in India by the state-
run Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). This deal was changed by the
Modi government in 2016 to thirty-six ‘ready-to-fly’ jets with none being
manufactured in India. The Congress started calling it a scam as soon as it
was signed owing to the offset clause of the agreement. The offset clause
mandated France to invest 30 per cent of the €7.8 billion in India’s military
aeronautics-related research programmes, and 20 per cent in local
production of Rafale components. It was no longer HAL that would be
partnering with Dassault; it would be Anil Ambani-led Reliance Defence
Limited. 23
The Modi government has refused to release any details of the deal and the
jet prices citing national security. Jaitley accused the Congress of ‘seriously
compromising’ the country’s security by seeking details of the deal. 24 In what
appears to be a first for India, the public, already primed with sermons on
nationalism and a daily dosage of messaging from social media and
WhatsApp, seems to have bought the national security argument even though
that wasn’t the case for earlier controversial defence deals. India has a long
history of alleged scams in defence procurement, starting with an alleged
scam right after Independence in 1948. This was a small contract for the
supply of 200 Jeeps from England, where only 155 Jeeps were delivered.
Investigations into the ‘Jeeps scam’ were finally closed in 1955.
In 1987, another major defence deal came under widespread scrutiny, the
‘Bofors scam’, where allegations of corruption reached Prime Minister
Rajiv Gandhi. In 1999, the news magazine Tehelka revealed how army
officials and political leaders were involved in taking bribes during arms
deals. The sting operation showed that bribes were paid in at least fifteen
defence deals and the news portal caught former BJP president Bangaru
Laxman taking a bribe of ₹1 lakh. 25 In 2013, the ‘AgustaWestland scam’ hit
news headlines in which the then defence minister, A.K. Antony, was forced
to say, ‘Yes, corruption has taken place in the helicopter deal and bribes have
been taken. The CBI is pursuing the case very vigorously.’ 26
This backdrop of a propensity of scams in defence procurement, and the
fact that the offset clause benefits Reliance instead of the state-owned HAL
as initially planned in the Rafale deal, raises serious questions that should
have been a matter of investigation. With a narrative of national security and
support from news channels that have debated the questions of a scam more
as an issue of mudslinging between parties, a serious investigation seems
unlikely.
Another business group with allegedly close ties to Prime Minister Modi
has been accused of benefiting from crony capitalism ever since he was the
chief minister of Gujarat. In 2014, the Gujarat High Court found that twelve
units of Adani Group’s Mundra SEZ were being operated without the
necessary environmental clearance. These were running despite a high court
order of May 2012 ordering all units in the zone to be shut down due to lack
of environmental clearance. Local villagers had filed a petition alleging
‘almost 20,000 fishermen will be affected’ due to the SEZ. The group was
able to get an environmental clearance from the Ministry of Environment and
Forests (MoEF) within two months of the BJP forming a government at the
Centre. 27 Several activists and politicians alleged that the Gujarat
government gave land to the Adani Group at throwaway prices to set up the
SEZ near the Mundra port, losing ₹6546 crore in the process, according to
estimates. 28
In a separate matter, veteran journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta alleged in
an article published in the Economic and Political Weekly that the Adani
Group might have evaded ₹1000 crore in taxes and the Ministry of Finance
was reticent in pursuing the matter. 29 Thakurta also published an article in
June 2017 claiming that the Central government had ‘amended Special
Economic Zone rules to facilitate duty reimbursements for raw materials to
Adani Power Limited, leading to a benefit of ₹500 crore’. The article that
was also published in Wire was taken down by both platforms after the
Adani Group filed a criminal defamation case in the matter. The articles are
now back online since a Gujarat court order in July 2018 stating that the
summoning order passed by a magistrate against Wire and others ‘lacked any
cogent reasoning’. 30
In October 2017, the Times of India reported, ‘Two information officers
who helped make public RTI document on land allotment to Baba Ramdev’s
Patanjali Ayurveda in March this year, were transferred less than a fortnight
later, raising questions on whether the officials were penalized for their
actions.’ News outlets had reported earlier in the year that the IAS officer,
Bijay Kumar, was shunted from the finance department after he questioned
the basis of a 75 per cent discount in land rates given to Patanjali Ayurveda
Ltd. The land belonged to the Maharashtra Airport Development Company
(MADC) and was transferred to Patanjali to build a food park. Several
officials of the MADC were also transferred after the information became
public, along with the public information officers who had disclosed the
information under RTI. Commenting on the matter, Shailesh Gandhi, a former
central information commissioner, said, ‘It is a clear case of victimization for
following the law. It will discourage officials from providing information
and set a bad precedent.’ 31
In his book, The Billionaire Raj: A Journey through India’s New Gilded
Age , James Crabtree, former Mumbai bureau chief for the Financial Times ,
covers how many of India’s businessmen have grown their empires not
through business innovation, but through their ability to manage the
government and the politicians. 32 The BJP alleged that the Congress indulged
in crony capitalism and now the Congress has a chance to allege that the BJP
is worse. The reality, though, is that it is a system and a mindset older than
the current governments that keep the cycle going. Most Indian businessmen
have a deep-rooted conviction that they can only grow through the support
and favour of the government. In the pre-economic liberalization era, the
government ran a Soviet-style system of quotas that came to be known as the
Licence Raj. Under this system, which lasted until 1991, the government
determined what a private business could produce, how much it could
produce, and even the prices at which the goods could be sold. 33 To prosper
in this system, a businessman had to compulsorily depend on favours from
bureaucrats and politicians to get permissions for higher quotas, higher
prices or to enter new domains. The low wages of government employees at
the time ensured that corruption was rampant.
Since 1991, a lot has changed in the country. The country has opted for a
free market system and any businessman can enter any business domain. That
doesn’t mean that the government’s propensity to choose ‘winners and
losers’ in business has disappeared. In what I see as a direct consequence of
the Licence Raj, most Indians seem to believe it is impossible to become
wildly successful without gaming the system. Seeking favours from those
who wield political power to rise in business has become a part of the
nation’s character, a tendency that political parties are only too happy to
encourage. Politicians require ever increasing amounts of money to win
elections. This means that they have had to find things that they can deliver to
business interests in return. This manifested itself as corruption in the
allocation of natural resources like mining rights, telecom spectrum
allocations, or natural gas licences, and in the allotment of government
contracts for procuring anything from bed sheets for railway berths all the
way to the procurement of fighter jets or the construction of highways and
dams. In the policy sphere, business interests are willing to pay huge sums to
politicians to enact policies that would favour them. From increasing the
price of natural gas to imposing import tariffs and anti-dumping duties on key
chemicals to benefit specific domestic industrialists, governments have been
accused of all sorts of market manipulations in the last few decades.
In Gas Wars: Crony Capitalism and the Ambanis , Thakurta writes of the
policy level corruption that has propelled Reliance to becoming the largest
private corporation in India. He explains how under the first BJP-led NDA
government’s disinvestment programme, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL)
acquired the PSU Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Limited (IPCL), which
gave Reliance priceless real estate and a near-monopoly in the production of
several chemicals. The group also almost succeeded in getting the
government to privatize Bharat Petroleum, Hindustan Petroleum and parts of
Indian Oil, but the plan was stalled due to court intervention. Subir Raha,
former chairman of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), told Thakurta
that he believed that the petroleum ministry deliberately laid the ground for
endless disputes in the pricing of gas through a badly drafted production-
sharing contract. This meant that the contract could later be interpreted in
favour of Reliance, giving them undue benefits. During their family dispute,
Anil Ambani alleged and provided evidence to show that people close to his
brother, Mukesh Ambani, were at key positions in both the ministry and
petroleum regulators. 34
The requirement of money in politics and the requirement of political
patronage for business have ensured a nexus between politicians and
business houses. Another link in the chain would be bureaucrats. When
bureaucrats had terrible wages, this was relatively easier. The wages have
since improved considerably and since the Sixth Pay Commission that was
implemented in 2008, government officers get salaries on which they can live
comfortably. 35 Even so, those who were corrupt continued to be so while
those who resisted were handled through other means. Politicians wield
several tools to keep bureaucrats in check. They can be transferred to
‘hardship postings’ if they fail to comply with the directives of politicians. 36
Several officers saw their careers take a hit for opposing corrupt politicians
and never rose to the ranks that they deserved. The stories of frequent
transfers and intimidation of honest officials has been a recurring
phenomenon that’s been reported by the media intermittently. 37
The Modi government has increased the authority that politicians have
over bureaucrats by introducing a new process for the promotion of civil
servants called ‘360 Degrees’ in April 2015. The earlier process gave
senior bureaucrats and politicians less discretion in promotions, which had
to be done based on the Annual Confidential Reports (ACRs) filled by
seniors during previous postings. It wasn’t possible for an ACR to be
changed retrospectively. Under the new 360 Degrees process, however,
promotions can be denied on arbitrary grounds without any transparency.
In August 2017, a parliamentary committee criticized the new system for
its subjectivity and opacity, noting how it was ‘susceptible to being
manipulated’. An IAS officer, Vineet Chawdhry, challenged the system
before the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), saying that it was ‘neither
reasonable nor rational, a whimsical exercise of arbitrary executive authority
far in excess of any delegated legislation, neither resting on any legislation
nor any rules and neither transparent nor fair’. In interviews to reporter
Nileena M.S. from the Caravan , several bureaucrats have expressed their
concerns with the system. It has made the careers of bureaucrats more
dependent on politicians. It became clear to me just how susceptible the
system was to manipulation when I heard a senior minister talk about how he
had recommended a bureaucrat for a promotion and ensured that the officer
was promoted even though he knew it wasn’t deserved and wouldn’t happen
based on the previous system. He’d pushed for the promotion solely because
he had a good relationship with the officer. 38
In the past, I have been a major proponent of ‘lateral entry’ in the nation’s
bureaucracy. I used to believe that if competent subject matter experts could
be brought in to work as senior bureaucrats, then many of the problems
plaguing the system could be solved. I was forced to change this opinion
after looking at how people were appointed to positions that already allowed
for lateral entry, like the boards of PSU companies and the posts of vice
chancellor or director of academic institutions. The appointment of TV-actor-
turned-BJP-politician Gajendra Chauhan as chairman of the Film and
Television Institute of India (FTII) and the appointment of M. Jagadesh
Kumar as vice chancellor of JNU were examples of why lateral entry could
backfire. Both the appointments led to protests by students and in some cases
even the faculty for what they felt were impositions on the institutions. 39 40
I have been privy to several instances where people were given a post just
because of their proximity to people in a political party or based on their
ideological leanings, instead of their qualifications or their ability to handle
the post’s responsibilities. In all likelihood, politicians would use the lateral
entry route to place people close to them, or even people chosen by
industrialists close to them, at key positions in the bureaucracy. As lateral
entry posts would also likely be temporary, the loyalists would not disobey
the politicians who could choose to not renew their appointment or remove
them at will. They wouldn’t be able to take tough decisions against the
industries because they might hope to go back to the private sector after the
end of their governmental tenure. This would mean that lateral entry would
only work to strengthen the nexus between politicians, businessmen and
bureaucrats.

Gathering Intelligence
Another way in which corporate houses strengthen their grip over the
nation’s polity is by collecting data and information, often through less than
legal means. It was during the time between the Manipur and Tripura
legislative assembly elections, when we were working on building data
analytics tools, that I started to wonder if my phone was being tapped. It was
just one of those strange feelings that most people working in politics
eventually feel. I started looking into electronic surveillance tools and
spyware that could be installed on mobile phones and computers. I never
found out whether my own phone was tapped, but I did figure out how easy it
is for phone conversations to be tapped.
At a party, I happened to meet a gentleman who had retired from the field
of security and intelligence. He told me stories of how many of India’s
largest corporate houses had illegally imported telephonic surveillance
equipment and were now capable of tapping mobile phone conversations on
their own, without the need of governmental support. It sounded like the
storyline of a corporate espionage novel, and I expressed my reservations
about it. The security specialist’s response surprised me. He told me to just
‘Google it’. I did as he’d advised as soon as I got home, and landed upon an
India Today story from June 2016 titled ‘Essar Snoop Diaries: All You Need
to Know About the Phone-tapping Controversy’. The story revealed how an
Essar executive had tapped VVIP phones allegedly on the company’s orders.
The man, Albasit Khan, a security chief at Essar, was fired from the company
and had turned whistleblower in 2011, handing over CDs of taped
conversations and logbooks that showed just how extensive the operation had
been. The list of tapped phone numbers included those allegedly belonging to
India’s top businessmen, politicians, bankers and bureaucrats. 41
Based on this evidence, Supreme Court lawyer Suren Uppal had submitted
a twenty-nine-page complaint to the PMO on 1 June 2016. Since then, Khan
has denied that he carried out illegal surveillance for Essar and has claimed
that a senior Mumbai crime branch officer gave him the audio tapes. The
Essar Group has also denied any wrongdoing and the SIT formed by the
Ministry of Home Affairs in July 2016 to probe the matter has submitted its
report in 2018 claiming that there is no trace of corruption or threat to
national security in the phone conversations. 42 There has been no media
follow-up in the matter and it is not clear whether the SIT continues to
investigate the illegal wiretapping of phones or the origins of the CDs with
audio files of phone conversations.
Corporations ranging from payment banks like Paytm to mobile operators,
all collect huge amounts of data on users. The government itself has
embarked on one of the largest data-collection exercises in the world with
Aadhaar. There have also been several reports of data leaking from secure
databases and the processing power available today has made it relatively
easy for those with the financial strength to compile all the available data. 43
There might be few people who see the potential for the misuse of this data
today, but as historian and author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
, Yuval Noah Harari, says in a TED Talk:

In ancient times, land was the most important asset in the world. Politics, therefore, was the
struggle to control land. And dictatorship meant that all the land was owned by a single ruler
or by a small oligarch. And in the modern age, machines became more important than land.
Politics became the struggle to control the machines. And dictatorship meant that too many
of the machines became concentrated in the hands of the government or of a small elite.
Now data is replacing both land and machines as the most important asset. Politics becomes
the struggle to control the flows of data. And dictatorship now means that too much data is
being concentrated in the hands of the government or of a small elite. 44

The Indian electorate is far from understanding the harm that data aggregation
can do, and how conventional and social media combined with data is
influencing their thinking in exactly the way that the powerful want. Our news
media has also played a role by dropping several stories about powerful
business and political interests indulging in unethical activities and shifting
debates to less relevant issues. Complicity of the institution that is often
referred to as the fourth pillar of democracy is the final component that
allows the politician–businessman–bureaucrat nexus to operate.
By making the media a component of the nexus, the nation’s politicians and
businessmen have ensured that there is no one to report the wrongdoings and
the illicit deals. The ultimate check and balance in a democracy is the voter
who can vote a corrupt government out, but if information of the corruption
never reaches the voters, then would we still qualify as a democracy? If the
decision of voters is based on the information fed to them by media houses,
and the media houses themselves are controlled by political interests and
business interests that are backing a specific side, democracy starts to
transform itself into something called a ‘plutonomy’.

A ‘Plutonomy’

The term ‘plutonomy’ originates from three reports that Citibank wrote for
some of its wealthiest investors in 2005 and 2006. In these reports,
plutonomies were defined as economies ‘where economic growth is
powered by and largely consumed by the wealthy few’. The Citigroup
analysts went on to state that this trend towards nations becoming
plutonomies would continue, especially due to ‘capitalist-friendly
governments and tax regimes’. 45 Just how far along India is in becoming a
plutonomy, with an entrenched nexus of politicians, business interests,
bureaucrats and the media, is sometimes revealed in unexpected ways. In the
years 2008–09, the Income Tax department got permission to tap the phone
lines of a political lobbyist named Niira Radia, who ran a public relations
firm, Vaishnavi Communications. The 300 days of electronic surveillance
resulted in 5851 recorded conversations that, when made public, provided a
small glimpse into the nexus that operated behind the cauldrons of power. 46
The taped conversations were between Niira Radia and journalists,
politicians and major corporate houses. The transcripts that are in the public
domain seem to suggest that Radia was trying to broker a deal in relation to
the 2G spectrum sale 47 (mentioned in an earlier chapter). It seemed that
Radia attempted to use prominent mediapersons like Barkha Dutt, who was
group editor of NDTV at the time, to influence the decision to appoint A.
Raja as telecom minister. 48
The coverage was mostly subdued, with G. Sampath, deputy editor of
Daily News and Analysis , commenting, ‘The complete blackout of the Niira
Radia tapes by the entire broadcast media and most of the major English
newspapers paints a truer picture of corruption in the country.’ 49 There were
a few notable exceptions, as debate mounted on social media sites Twitter
and Facebook, which eventually led to coverage by foreign press, with the
Washington Post reporting, ‘Twitter has played an important role in
launching what has become an international conversation on the issue, with
the Indian diaspora weighing in.’ 50
In an article titled ‘Billions for a Few, Few for the Billions’ that was
published by the Asian Age on 21 November 2010, it was written, ‘The
“Radia tapes” may have torn the veil off the nexus between information
hungry journalists, lobbyists and industrialists, and opened everyone’s eyes
to what has long been suspected—the ability of a small but powerful group to
use their connections to influence policy.’ The article also carried a quote
from an interview that the ‘Prime Minister’s own economic advisor’
Raghuram Rajan had given, stating:

Too many people have gotten too rich based on their proximity to the government . . . I
wouldn’t so much call it crony capitalism as oligarchic capitalism . . . there is a danger that
if we let the nexus between the politician and the businessman get too strong, it could slow
us down tremendously and also maybe create questions eventually for our democracy. 51

The Citigroup memos do mention a possible backlash that could impede the
rise of a plutonomy. Since ‘political enfranchisement remains as was—one
person, one vote, at some point it is likely that labour will fight back against
the rising profit share of the rich and there will be a political backlash
against the rising wealth of the rich’. 52 That means if the masses begin to
realize just how much the system was rigged against them and just how
entrenched the nexus was across parties, they would rebel against the system.
To ensure that this doesn’t happen, politicians realize that people must be
kept distracted. This could be through handouts in the form of jobs under
MGNREGA, houses under Indira Awaas Yojana, subsidized rations through
the Public Distribution System (PDS) and other schemes. The current
government has added propaganda to the mix in an attempt to redirect the
energy of the anti-corruption movement that gripped the nation before 2014.
That hatred was against the corrupt system, and the same hatred would be
directed towards this government if it failed to dismantle the nexus. The
simplest way to keep the people from railing against the system was to
redirect their anger towards other enemies, such as anti-nationals, urban
Naxals, Pakistan, Muslims, Congress leaders past and present, and so on.
A report jointly prepared by the Association for Democratic Reforms
(ADR) and National Election Watch (NEW) released in 2018 showed that
the total donations declared by national political parties (amount above
₹20,000) increased from ₹102.02 crore in 2015–16 to ₹589.38 crore, out of
which the BJP received ₹532.27 crore, or over 90 per cent of the amount.
The Congress received a comparatively paltry amount of ₹41.90 crore. ADR
further stated that 95.56 per cent of these contributions (amounting to ₹563.24
crore) came from corporate/business sectors and only 4.25 per cent came
from individual donors. 53 The data on legal and declared political
contributions makes it evident that the BJP has become the party of choice for
corporate donors.
There is tremendous corruption and collusion in India. In spite of it, there
is always hope for a brighter future. The nation’s democracy has proven to be
resilient and full of surprises. Even the strongest of leaders and the richest of
businesses have in the end failed to completely control political outcomes in
India. Voters have prevailed in circumstances when the entire world was
betting against Indian democracy. Even the state of emergency imposed by
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975 failed to damage democracy in India.
After a twenty-one-month period of repression, arrest of Opposition leaders
and media censorship, India went into general elections in March 1977.
Indira, her son, Sanjay, and all Congress leaders in the states of Uttar
Pradesh and Bihar lost their Lok Sabha seats and Morarji Desai of the Janata
Party became the nation’s first non-Congress prime minister. 54 In what is an
even bigger testament to the surprises that the Indian voter can throw, when
elections were announced in January 1980, the Congress swept the polls and
Indira Gandhi was again sworn in as prime minister. 55
 7
THE EXPERIMENTS

O n 11 March 2017, the counting of votes began in the states of Manipur,

Punjab, Goa and Uttar Pradesh. After spending six months on ground in
Manipur, I was eager to see how the results would stack up alongside our
estimates. While watching the results on TV and continuously refreshing the
counting reports online, more than the BJP, I wanted to see how a little-
known party called Peoples’ Resurgence and Justice Alliance (PRJA) would
do. It was a new party, founded just months before the election by human
rights activist Irom Sharmila, who had become an internationally known
figure owing to her sixteen-year-long fast to get the Armed Forces (Special
Powers) Act (AFSPA) repealed in Manipur. During this time, she was made
to ingest liquids and nutrients through a tube in her nose. 1 The AFSPA, which
gave the armed forces sweeping powers, had reportedly led to countless
human rights abuses, including at least 1528 cases of alleged fake encounters
that are still pending in the Supreme Court. 2
Seeing that her fast had failed to achieve anything other than international
awards and media coverage, she decided to end it in July 2016 and
announced that she would be contesting the upcoming state elections. In a
move perfected by Kejriwal, she announced her candidature from the
constituency of the incumbent chief minister, O. Ibobi Singh.
Irom Sharmila and PRJA

Throughout our time in Manipur, several journalists would contact me to

organize interviews with BJP leaders like Madhav. Almost everyone who
came to Manipur wanted to know how PRJA would impact the upcoming
election. The national media’s coverage of Sharmila’s electoral battle was
impressive, to say the least. She had received the support of two idealistic
former colleagues of mine from IPAC, who had supercharged her media
campaign and fundraising efforts, raising over ₹17 lakh through a vastly
successful crowdfunding campaign. 3 The media frenzy over her candidature
was getting tiring for us, though, as we had seen the data on how
inconsequential her party would be in the election. In an attempt to explain
this, I penned an article for Huffington Post titled ‘Don’t Be Misled by the
Media’s Coverage of Irom Sharmila in the Manipur Polls’, explaining just
how massive the difference was between the ground reality and media
reportage. 4
This led to a small conflict between me and my former IPAC colleagues,
Anand Mangnale and Geetika Sehmay, who had quit their jobs and were
working for the party without pay because they believed in the kind of
politics Sharmila represented. In my irritation with the national media turning
PRJA’s foray into electoral politics as an event that would transform
Manipur politics when that was clearly not the case, I’d inadvertently
accused her strategists of focusing on the national media spotlight instead of
trying to garner actual votes. Ultimately, Irom Sharmila, a woman who had
fasted for sixteen years for people’s rights, received a total of ninety votes
from the people of her state. 5 Another candidate of the party, a Muslim
woman named Najima Bibi, who had fought court cases for the rights of over
a thousand women of her locality and ran a shelter home for the victims of
domestic violence and destitute women, received just thirty-three votes. The
Harvard-educated convener of PRJA, Erendro Leichombam, who had
previously worked with the World Bank and UNDP, did a little better and got
573 votes. These numbers were a sobering reality check of just how
electoral politics worked.
 After the results came in, Mangnale and Sehmay wrote in an article for
DailyO, ‘In December last year, we decided to quit our jobs and leave for
Manipur. At that time, had anybody said Irom Sharmila would only get ninety
votes, we would have dismissed it.’ 6 Even though I had the data in my hand
that predicted exactly this, I too would have dismissed it. It was
disheartening to realize that people who had dedicated their lives to serving
others did not even get votes from the people whom they had directly helped.
A person who was called the ‘Iron Lady of Manipur’ 7 and had been referred
to as an ‘icon of public resistance’ in the New York Times 8 getting ninety
votes came as a shock to me, even when I knew the results would be
somewhere in that range.
During my time in politics, I have come to realize just how brutal the field
is and how entrenched the existing system is. Self-interests align in ways
such that all of them come together to suppress any attempts at disruption.
PRJA hadn’t received so much national coverage while receiving so little
attention in the state of Manipur because of the focus of its strategists; it was
because that’s how the self-interests were aligned. To the national media, she
represented an attention-grabbing story of struggle. To the people of Manipur,
she represented a spent force who knew little about politics and had
somehow betrayed the cause by ending her fast. As Mangnale and Sehmay
put it, ‘People wanted a martyr’, and would rather see her die than believe
she could bring about any change by engaging in politics.
Over the decades, several individuals with remarkable passion have
hoped to disrupt how politics is done in India. They have tried to win
elections without the use of money and muscle power, without appealing to
people’s castes and religions, and without compromising the ideals of their
movement. In most cases, they have failed just as miserably as Irom Sharmila
did.

Prodyut Bora and LDP

I’d heard of an IIM Ahmedabad graduate—who went on to study at the

London School of Economics (LSE) and Yale University—who had entered
politics. Prodyut Bora was a thirty-year-old professional from Jorhat,
Assam, who joined the BJP in 2004. He founded the party’s IT cell in 2007.
He moved to his home state of Assam in January 2010 and took charge as the
state general secretary of the BJP’s Assam unit and become a national
executive member of the party in 2013. He contested his first election from
the Jalukbari assembly constituency in 2011 against Himanta Biswa Sarma,
who is now a BJP leader and convener of the BJP’s northeast alliance, and
who was then a minister in the state’s Congress government. Bora lost the
election, winning a little over 16,000 votes while Sarma won over 90,000,
but this was considered a good performance on a BJP ticket in Assam at the
time, especially against a stalwart like Sarma.
Bora resigned from the BJP in early 2015 and founded his own party,
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), that was gearing up to contest the assembly
polls in April 2016. 9 At the time of his resignation, he had talked about how
the BJP had transformed under Prime Minister Modi and party president
Shah, losing its democratic traditions. 10 He was also critical of the menace
that the party’s IT cell had become. The difference between Bora and
Sharmila was that Bora was an experienced politician. He’d seen the
workings of the BJP from the national executive to its local state units and
knew exactly how a large party operated. He realized early on that the
biggest challenge to get a new party off the ground would be financial.
Bora came up with a unique fundraising model where he embarked upon a
mission to find 1000 like-minded and honest people who could give him
twelve postdated cheques of ₹1000 each. This would lead to a corpus of ₹10
lakh per month coming into the party coffers and would be enough to get the
party started, though not enough to fund district offices or an election
campaign. Even before the party was formally registered, Bora told
journalists from the Economic Times that he had found 1000 such people and
started the process of registering the party with the Election Commission.
The LDP contested on fourteen seats and got a total of 11,888 votes. Bora
himself got 499 votes while the party’s best-performing candidate, Kiranban
Deori, got 2456 votes from the Dhemaji assembly constituency, constituting
1.5 per cent of the votes polled. 11 Even before the results were announced,
Bora realized what they would be. He took to Facebook and wrote a post,
saying, ‘Now that the elections are over, people would be speculating on the
coming days on who would win. My answer is: money.’ He talked of how
journalists had become one-sided, how news had become propaganda, how
absolute ‘non-issues’ became the topmost issues for several days and how
the same people who were ministers in the Congress government had now
joined the BJP, ensuring that nothing in the state would change even if a new
party were elected. 12 The crushing defeat of the LDP was a case study in
why new idealistic parties don’t work, even when politically experienced
and capable individuals head them.

Dr JP and LSP

Not all such experiments in politics have failed so thoroughly, though. A new
political party espousing the ideals of clean politics and good governance
was founded in the state of Andhra Pradesh in October 2006 by a trained
physician and former IAS officer, Nagabhairava Jaya Prakash Narayana. Dr
J.P., as he is popularly known, founded Lok Satta Party (LSP) after he had
already done a lot in the political and policy domains. He had become an
IAS officer in 1980, qualifying in the highly competitive Union Public
Service Commission (UPSC) civil services exam. After a sixteen-year-long
career as a bureaucrat, he went on to build a policy think tank named
Foundation for Democratic Reforms (FDR).
His NGO and the Lok Satta movement that he led achieved considerable
success early on. It successfully lobbied for political reform such as the law
for compulsory disclosure of criminal antecedents of candidates, laws to
limit the size of the cabinet, creation of the National Judicial Appointments
Commission (NJAC) for the appointment of judges that was later quashed by
the courts, and the enactment of the Right to Information Act in 2005. 13 The
Lok Satta Party made its first foray into electoral politics by contesting in
four Andhra Pradesh assembly seats going to by-elections in 2008. Though
the party didn’t win any of the seats, it performed well and stood second. 14
This led to the party contesting 246 of the 294 seats in the Andhra Pradesh
assembly during the 2009 elections. Though not phenomenal, the party got a
respectable 1.8 per cent vote share with over 7.3 lakh votes. What was
extraordinary was that Narayana won his own election from the Kukatpally
constituency and became the party’s sole MLA. 15
What followed was an important lesson on how hard things are even once
a candidate representing alternative politics wins an election. Narayana
made several contributions to legislation and discussions in the assembly, but
failed to achieve as much as he had during his time heading the Lok Satta
movement. His proposed bills like the one he drafted for the amendment of
the state’s Prevention of Corruption Act of 1988 to ‘empower institutions to
function independently, to eradicate corruption, seize and attach property or
assets during investigation, and prosecute wrongdoers without undue delays,
in furtherance of justice, equity and good conscience’ failed to garner
legislative support and never saw the light of day. 16 Being the sole MLA
from his party meant that he could voice his opinions on issues in the
assembly but every other MLA and the government could simply ignore him,
leading to a period that I presume would be incredibly frustrating for any
politician who wants reform.
Instead of seeking re-election to the legislative assembly, Narayana
decided to contest the Lok Sabha elections in 2014, a move that would give
him a chance to present his opinions and policy solutions to the nation’s
public directly. The fact that the proceedings of the Lok Sabha are telecast on
TV while those of the legislative assembly remain in obscurity meant that
expressing his ideas in the Lok Sabha could give them the momentum they
required to produce actual policy changes. However, Dr J.P. stood fourth in
the election from Malkajgiri, which was now included in the state of
Telangana. 17 In 2016, Narayana decided to step down from electoral politics
and announced that LSP would not be participating in the coming elections
and would instead continue as an NGO. Some of the party’s supporters have
expressed the belief that they achieved more in terms of actual reform in the
ten-year period when they operated as a movement than in the ten years they
operated as a political party. 18 In his book, India Grows at Night —A
Liberal Case for a Strong State , author Gurcharan Das wrote about the LSP,
saying, ‘In India among the 177 political parties, it is difficult to think of one
that stands single-mindedly for good governance, reform and performance.
The Lok Satta Party of Dr Jayaprakash Narayan might be one, but it has not
met with any real electoral success so far.’ 19
The critical lesson from the experience of the LSP is that it is difficult to
bring about the kind of reform that anyone supporting alternative politics
wants unless the party is able to get a significant number of seats. A lone
MLA from such a party will only be frustrated in his or her attempts to
transform the system, as established political parties simply ignore outsiders.
Although the limited funds available to new parties contribute to their failure,
another fact is that many people who believe such a party would be the best
option also don’t vote for the party because they don’t want to waste their
vote. Voters want their vote to matter, and so they want to vote for a party that
has a reasonable chance of winning. With their much smaller footprint and
visibility, new parties just aren’t able to create the perception that they have
a reasonable chance of winning, and that prevents them from getting votes
from even those who might believe in them.
We observed this phenomenon in the surveys that we conducted in both
Manipur and Tripura, and I realized that it was a major reason for the failure
of these new parties. This might also be the reason why so many parties,
including the major national ones, release fake surveys showing they would
win and sometimes influence media outlets to report biased surveys too.
Before the Karnataka election, screenshots with the BBC logo were
circulated, claiming that the BJP would get majority in the state with 135
seats while the Congress would only win thirty-five seats. 20 Though there is
no research to suggest so, in my own experience, such surveys seem to also
work in shifting some of the undecided voters towards the party that is
thought to be winning. Voters’ desire to not waste their vote is so strong that
in some cases when a voter doesn’t have a strong preference, they just vote
for the party they think will win.

Arvind Kejriwal and the AAP

There has been one experiment in India’s recent political history that has
found unprecedented success in winning elections while sticking to the
principles of alternative politics—the Aam Aadmi Party. The widespread
public support that the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement received
convinced Delhi’s voters that the AAP was a credible bet and could win the
elections. The movement also generated frenzied support for the party and
gave it a huge volunteer base that could campaign for it and a supporter base
that could help the party monetarily. In a five-year period, from its founding
in 2012 to 2017, the party had received over ₹130 crore in donations. 21
After its brief forty-nine-day stint as government, the party went on to sweep
the 2015 Delhi assembly elections, winning sixty-seven of seventy seats.
Even though it did not have much of an impact during the 2014 national
elections, the party conclusively decimated both the BJP and the Congress in
Delhi. With a strong mandate like it received, it seemed that the party would
be in a position to enact major reforms in the governance of Delhi.
Since 2015, the Delhi government has been able to enact reforms in health,
education and service delivery to citizens. The mohalla clinics pioneered by
the party—primary health centres set up in neighbourhoods across Delhi—
aimed to deliver basic medical services to people near their homes. The
initiative received praise from people the world over, including the former
secretary-general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, and former
Norwegian prime minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland, who has also served as
the director general of World Health Organization (WHO). Both visited the
clinics on their India tour in September 2018 and complimented the Delhi
government for its focus on primary healthcare service to the poor and the
vulnerable. 22 The educational initiatives of the government have also
received similar praise, with the modernization of government schools and
the creation of a fee anomaly committee to keep a check on the increase of
fees by private schools. 23 The government has also kept its promise of
‘doorstep delivery’ of government schemes by partnering with global visa
processing giant VFS to handle requests for the delivery of forty
governmental schemes to people’s homes. 24 It has also achieved success on
the front of fulfilling its populist promises of giving free water and reducing
electricity bills by half, by giving a subsidy to those who consume less than
400 units a month. 25
These successes have been dismissed by its opposition as meagre. Some
have even called the mohalla clinics a scam and alleged that the scheme is a
way to benefit AAP leaders with rental income. 26 I’ve often found people
express mixed sentiments about the AAP, with most residents of the opinion
that the party is trying to bring about reform but some of them fail due to
implementation issues or the interference of the Central government. The
reality of how much the residents of Delhi benefited will probably only
become obvious at the time of the next state elections in 2020, but fissures
within the party tell a story of how hard sticking to alternative politics is.
The ouster of prominent AAP leaders Yogendra Yadav and Prashant
Bhushan within two months of the government being formed in Delhi was the
first indication that things were not as good as they seemed from the outside.
AAP seemed to be faltering in the battle between idealism and practicality
that any party hoping to engage in honest politics has to fight. In a piece for
Firstpost, Yadav wrote, ‘The first promise of honest politics was abrogated
in the process of winning the 2015 election; it became public soon after the
victory . . . As a moral project, AAP was dead in 2015.’ 27
Since Delhi does not have full statehood, the Lieutenant Governor (LG)
nominated by the Central government has vast powers over the state’s
governance. The LG’s power was never exercised, at least publicly, during
the fifteen-year tenure of Sheila Dixit, especially because most of it
coincided with the Congress also being in power at the Centre. With the AAP
at the helm, the LG took to issuing orders and transferring officers without
much consultation with the elected government. 28 This led to several
standoffs between the LG and the chief minister, and presented a major
hindrance to pet projects of the AAP government and stalled some poll
promises like the installation of CCTV cameras in neighbourhoods and
slowed down the implementation of all schemes, including setting up of
mohalla clinics and the doorstep delivery of services. 29 The bureaucracy
also got involved in the conflict with government officers not attending
meetings called by AAP ministers and refusing to follow orders after Delhi’s
chief secretary alleged that he had been manhandled by AAP MLAs at a late
night meeting at the chief minister’s residence in February 2018. 30 Without
the power to transfer bureaucrats, there was little the Delhi chief minister
could do to enforce his orders. If the Central government even dropped hints
that they would back the bureaucrats, it was likely that the bureaucracy
would refuse to obey directives from Delhi’s elected government.
This battle finally culminated after three years of the AAP government,
with the Supreme Court concluding that the LG has no independent power to
make decisions and was bound by the advice of Delhi’s elected government.
31 This was a major victory for the AAP, but the tussle had already caused

enormous political damage. The Congress, the BJP and its former allies such
as Yadav alleged that Chief Minister Kejriwal had chosen to engage in drama
and blame games instead of governing. Allegations mounted that the AAP
only knew how to engage in ‘dharna politics’ and was unfit to govern. This
narrative spread like wildfire and tarnished the party’s image across India.
The practical realities of running a party and being politically competitive
were also starting to weigh on the party’s ideals. When the AAP got the
chance to nominate three members to the Rajya Sabha in early January 2018,
its choices drew criticism from all quarters. Out of the three names
nominated to the Rajya Sabha, only one was familiar to the party cadre—
Sanjay Singh, who was a founder member of the party. The other names—
Sushil Gupta, a Delhi-based businessman, and Narain Dass Gupta, a
chartered accountant—didn’t belong to the AAP core group and many people
had heard their names for the very first time after the party selected them to
represent it in Parliament.
The criticism from former AAP leaders, who had gone on to found a new
political party called Swaraj India, was especially harsh. Prashant Bhushan
said that this ‘is the final denouncement of a party which started with such
promise and is now totally degenerate’, while Yadav said, ‘I used to say,
whatever his other faults, Arvind Kejriwal can’t be bought. Speechless,
ashamed and numb.’ Opposition leaders also made similar remarks alleging
that the AAP had sold its Rajya Sabha nominations instead of giving them to
leaders who supported the party and believed in its ideology. 32 In private
conversations, several AAP supporters also exhibited their dissatisfaction,
stating that leaders like Kumar Vishwas and Ashutosh should have been sent
to the Rajya Sabha. A few months later, Ashutosh resigned from the party and
alleged that the party indulged in caste politics just like the others. On 29
August 2018, he tweeted, ‘In twenty-three years of my journalism, no one
asked my caste, surname. Was known by my name. But as I was introduced to
party workers as Lok Sabha candidate in 2014 my surname was promptly
mentioned despite my protest . . . ’ He claimed he was told that as there were
a lot of people of his caste in a particular constituency, revealing his caste
would have helped him get votes. 33
On 19 January 2018, the Election Commission disqualified twenty AAP
MLAs on the grounds that they held ‘offices of profit’ because they had been
appointed as parliamentary secretaries to ministers in the Delhi government.
President Ram Nath Kovind approved the dismissal two days later. A two-
judge bench of the Delhi High Court later ruled that the disqualification of the
AAP MLAs was bad in law, and restored their status as MLAs. The court
also observed that there was a ‘violation of natural justice’ as no
opportunities for oral hearing was given to the AAP MLAs to present their
case before disqualification. 34
In another controversy that grabbed media headlines, the LG of Delhi
ordered the state’s chief secretary to recover ₹97 crore that had been spent
by the Delhi government on advertisements from the AAP. The order came
after a Central government-appointed panel found the Delhi government
guilty of ‘misusing’ taxpayers’ money on advertisements based on a May
2015 Supreme Court ruling that said government ads could only carry the
photographs of the president, prime minister and chief justice of India. A
CAG report also claimed that out of this amount, ₹29 crore was spent on
advertisements outside Delhi, which was ‘beyond’ the state government’s
responsibilities. 35 Nothing came of the matter but it again served to malign
the party’s image in the eyes of the voters and the public. The matter was
likely not pursued because all state governments would possibly be found in
contravention of the same Supreme Court guidelines.
 In another let down for the party, Kejriwal tendered public apologies to
Akali Dal leader Bikram Singh Majithia, BJP leaders Nitin Gadkari and
Arun Jaitley, and Congress leader Kapil Sibal’s son. A slew of civil and
criminal defamation suits had been filed against him and several other AAP
leaders by the politicians, whom he had accused of various crimes from drug
smuggling to corruption in the functioning of bodies like the Delhi and
District Cricket Association (DDCA). 36 Once they apologized, either these
cases were withdrawn or the AAP leaders were acquitted.
The home ministry also voided the appointment of ten advisers,
consultants and aides in April 2018 who were working with AAP ministers
or had previously worked with the ministers. Though there were some
advisers drawing monthly salaries upwards of ₹50,000 a month, the
cancellation of appointments included some AAP workers who had drawn
salaries of as little as ₹1 per month, including Atishi Marlena who worked
with deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia on the government’s education
projects, and party spokesperson Raghav Chadha who was employed for
forty-five days to help with the budget preparation in 2016. MHA officials
said that the appointments were cancelled because proper procedure was not
followed. The MHA letter stated that the posts hadn’t received sanction from
the Central government and ‘creation of posts by Delhi cabinet for
accommodating these appointees is void ab-initio, being done by an agency
not competent under the law to do so’. 37
In another matter, the IT department sent a ₹30-crore notice to the AAP for
allegedly violating norms on collecting donations in 2014–15, including
‘hawala entries’ worth ₹2 crore. Since then, the Election Commission has
also sent a show-cause notice to the party for alleged discrepancies in the
party’s contribution report for 2014–15. 38 The party has complained of bias
and misinterpretation of accounting by the IT department to victimize it, and
said that bank transfers to the party’s state units were being counted as
separate donations.
Though the allegations levelled against the AAP and Kejriwal are of
things that either all mainstream political parties have engaged in at some
point or the other or are of cases that were finally quashed, these have
harmed the AAP more than they would any other party. The party came to
power with the promise of transforming politics, and compromises made for
practical considerations have dented its aura of pioneering alternative
politics and fighting corruption. For instance, the nomination of rich
businessmen to the Rajya Sabha by a party dependent on raising funds
through donations would have been an acceptable move, but not in the case
of the AAP.
In fact, there are several rich businessmen in the Rajya Sabha who have
been appointed by parties across the board. The now economic offender and
fugitive, Vijay Mallya, was a Rajya Sabha MP for two terms, receiving the
support of the Congress for the first term and that of the BJP for the second. 39
The accusation of appealing to caste sentiments that Ashutosh made against
the party is hardly even a criticism in a country where caste is a reality,
especially in politics. Because the AAP was seen as an idealistic political
movement that would revolutionize Indian politics, it has perhaps been
judged more harshly as well. Yet it is entirely likely that had the party not
made the compromises it did during its rise to power, it would have met the
same fate as Sharmila’s PRJA or Dr J.P.’s LSP. The party can work to
transform all of these issues that plague Indian politics over time, but given
the reality of present-day India, mere idealism might have meant that they
remained an NGO or a mass movement.
The question that now remains to be answered is whether the party will
stay true to its ideals and bring about at least incremental change in Indian
politics, or will it just become a party like all the others. The first election
was easy because the party had just emerged from a mass movement. People
donated generously and volunteers were available in plenty. How the party
fares after the euphoria has faded will be an interesting experiment that will
demonstrate if alternative politics has any future in India.

Thinking Ahead

Since I resigned from the BJP and declared so publicly in June 2018, I have
received emails and calls from several people who are interested in politics.
Most just want to discuss politics and want to know how to get involved, but
some of the calls are from people who want to contest elections. A smaller
proportion of this consists of accomplished individuals who have attained
some success in their business or professional lives, so they have the
financial base to actually be able to achieve something in politics. They seek
help for their election campaigns or ask me what the results for 2019 are
likely to be and which party they should join. In this process, I have come to
realize that most people outside politics know very little of how the field
operates. They see the national spokespersons and leaders of parties getting
tremendous media attention and clout, but they rarely get to see the machinery
that’s led to the party being in power. It is extremely important for the nation
that educated people who want to do something positive for the country enter
politics, but it is also extremely important that they know what they are
getting into.
Politics will undoubtedly determine the direction that India progresses in.
It not only defines policy but it also influences national character. The
political rhetoric and the ethics it espouses are central to determining the
traits the nation values. Will India be a pluralistic, inclusive society, or will
it descend into conflicts between various groups that comprise our
population, is something that will be determined by the prevailing political
discourse in the country. Will we value education and intellect, or will we as
a society belittle and mock it, this will also be determined by the narrative
our politicians shape.
Since Independence, we have debated corruption, development and
welfare policies under the ruling government and the alternative that the
Opposition offers. This is no longer the case across most of the world. The
debate has now shifted to normative values that our parties claim to
represent. The advent of technology, especially the Internet, has made fake
news and propaganda defining elements of electoral outcomes, and a war has
been waged between parties to control voters’ emotions through any means
necessary. There will be parties who base their electoral strategies on pitting
communities against one other, and spread misinformation to demonize
opposing communities in an attempt to consolidate its supporters. Some of
them would use religion, some would use caste, some would use language,
and others would use divisions that aren’t even apparent yet.
The continuously increasing prevalence of money in politics will ensure
that the nexus between politicians and businessmen remains as strong as ever,
and an honest politician finds it difficult to compete. It is extremely likely
that our politicians will continue to be people who would not have got as
good a job anywhere else because politics is a domain that the educated have
left wide open. The risk it presents and the fact that it involves spending
money instead of earning it without any guarantee of success means that the
people who would be best suited to govern will shy away from the field long
before they have a chance of success. The educated who don’t come from a
political background will prefer to join corporate India at as high a salary as
they can command so that they can make a comfortable living for themselves,
even when their true passion might be to help people and even if they’d be
best suited to working in politics.
The only ones left to engage in grassroots politics, from the ones
representing the parties at the booth level to even MLA and MP candidates,
would be people who don’t have much to lose even if they spend their entire
lives in politics without achieving anything. The thousands of karyakartas and
booth presidents from across party lines whom I’ve interacted with over the
years are in politics because it gives them a sense of purpose and power.
Many of them are happy roaming around in their areas with their party’s flags
on their cars, deriving a sense of self-importance just from the fact that the
local thana (police station) listens to them or because they don’t need to pay
tolls on the highway any more. Many of these people will turn to being
middlemen to finance their lifestyles—they will use the connections that they
have made while engaged in politics to get people government contracts or to
get their work done in government offices for a commission. The ones who
get higher up the hierarchy will be able to deliver more favours, especially
as they get the local bureaucracy on their side by paying commissions or
helping organize transfers and postings for some of the local officials. These
are all people who would have little interest in a systemic overhaul because
as the system improves, they lose a part of their power, and consequently, a
part of the respect they command. In at least the near future, these are the
people who will continue to dominate electoral politics in India.
I have often pondered how something so entrenched and systemic can be
fixed or improved. If politicians at the top of the pyramid need to depend
upon the karyakartas at the bottom, who would vehemently be against any
system where people’s work gets done without a need to call them, how does
any political party improve governance and continue to win elections? I have
also wondered if some parties are better at handling this than others, and also
where might an educated, well-meaning person wanting to do some good fit
into our political system. The conclusion that I’ve come to is that anyone who
wants to do anything positive in politics has to be willing to stick with it for
a long time without expecting results. When there are only a few good people
trying to bring about change, they will be frustrated at their inability to
accomplish any meaningful work like Dr J.P. was when he was the sole MLA
from his party. The only way forward seems to be to persist and help others
with good intentions. It is only when the number of people who want
widespread systemic change builds to a critical mass that positive change
will happen. If a majority of MLAs or MPs support a systemic overhaul,
there is little doubt that it will be achieved.
Over the last few years, I have seen the inner workings of both the BJP and
the Congress, and met people from most regional parties of north India. The
only conclusion that I’ve been able to draw on the question of which party is
the best in terms of governance or corruption is that a party hardly matters.
Contrary to popular belief, a party’s ideology is mostly immaterial when it
comes to governance. Ideological considerations are limited to speeches and
drafting of party documents. What defines the actions of a party are the
communities they must cater to in order to win elections. For instance, given
the number of people who survive below a liveable wage in the country, all
parties will compulsorily be socialistic in their character. The right wing and
the left wing of India will both believe in welfare schemes as a means of
helping the poor, and state intervention will be part of government policy in
any party.
 For anyone who wants to achieve something positive through politics, the
right question is not which party is the best. The logical question is, in which
party can they survive for the longest time. All of India’s parties have done
something good for the country and all of them might have done some
absolutely terrible things to win elections. There isn’t an absolute ‘good’
party and the nation’s politics makes it hard for such a party to achieve
success in any case. The right way to choose a party, therefore, is to evaluate
which party’s rhetoric and actions are the least offensive to them so that they
can stay in it long enough to reach a position of influence to bring about
change.
It is only through this process, where success comes before an attempt to
transform the system, that an individual or even a new party can hope to
achieve anything. The only question that remains is whether the critical mass
of qualified, well-meaning people required in politics will actually choose
to enter politics, and whether they’d retain their desire to do good after
joining the system and reaching a position of influence.
 Notes

Introduction
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http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/TSJN.html , accessed
November 2018.

Chapter 1: How It All Started

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Chapter 2: The Political Consultants

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Chapter 3: Technology and Data

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21 . https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/rose-
valley-case-ed-seizes-precious-stones-gold-worth-rs-40-
crore/articleshow/62282513.cms , accessed November 2018.
22 . https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/tripura-assembly-
election-bjps-extreme-choices-indigenous-peoples-front-of-tripura/ ,
accessed November 2018.
23 . https://indianexpress.com/article/north-east-india/tripura/ipft-will-not-
raise-demand-for-separate-state-bjp-leader-5034560/ , accessed
November 2018.
24 . https://indianexpress.com/article/north-east-india/tripura/amit-shah-
promises-7th-pay-panel-salary-to-tripura-govt-staff-5015497/ , accessed
November 2018.
25 . https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/opinion/blogs/tripura-elections-
bjps-slogan-chalo-paltai-and-a-money-fuelled-campaign-are-
challenging-cpm/articleshow/62886456.cms , accessed November 2018.
26 . https://www.businesstoday.in/current/economy-politics/tripura-election-
results-2018-bjp-ipft-alliance-majority-cpi-marxist/story/271827.html ,
accessed November 2018.
27 . https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-under-investigation-by-4-
federal-agencies-over-cambridge-analytica/ , accessed November 2018.
28 . https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-cambridgeanalytica/uk-
investigates-facebook-over-data-breach-to-raid-cambridge-analytica-
 idUSKBN1GW0WX , accessed November 2018.
29 . https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/facebook-under-
investigation-over-data-mining-in-germany-1325330-2018-08-28 ,
accessed November 2018.
30 . https://in.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-india-cbi/indias-cbi-to-
investigate-facebook-cambridge-analytica-data-theft-idINKBN1KG1SI ,
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31 . https://nypost.com/2018/03/20/obamas-former-media-director-said-
facebook-was-once-on-our-side/ , accessed November 2018.
32 . https://slate.com/technology/2018/07/zuckerberg-called-trump-to-
congratulate-him-after-winning-the-election-because-facebook-is-an-ad-
u.html , accessed November 2018.
33 . https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2018/07/22/how-agile-
helped-elect-donald-trump/#350a86466316 , accessed November 2018.
34 . http://www.cmrindia.com/with-83-mn-subscribers-rural-india-had-35-
of-4g-subscriber-base-as-of-dec-2017/ , accessed November 2018.
35 . https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/Election-2014-is-all-about-
social-media/articleshow/33835014.cms , accessed November 2018.
36 . https://www.news18.com/news/politics/modi-on-pm-missing-modi-on-
pm-modi-on-2611-modi-on-weak-pm-modi-on-scams-312333.html ,
accessed November 2018.
37 . https://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/surgical-strikes-when-
pm-narendra-modi-decided-to-avenge-uri-attack-teach-pakistan-lesson-
indian-army-loc/398739/ , accessed November 2018.
38 . https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/slideshows/nation-
world/controversial-political-statements-of-2016/rahul-gandhi-on-the-
surgical-strike/slideshow/56186750.cms , accessed November 2018.
39 . https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/2016-surgical-strike-was-
not-indias-first-here-are-the-previous-ones/313158 , accessed November
2018.
40 . https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/how-
the-mobile-phone-is-shaping-to-be-bjps-most-important-weapon-in-
elections/articleshow/65508743.cms , accessed November 2018.
41 . https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/270418/bjps-
war-room-equipped-with-20000-whatsapp-groups.html , accessed
November 2018.
42 . https://www.newsclick.in/namo-app-your-data-now-bjps-electoral-
weapon , accessed November 2018.
43 . https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/mobile-tabs/nearly-40-
million-jiophones-have-been-sold-so-far-report-5152257/ , accessed
November 2018.
44 . https://www.huffingtonpost.in/2018/09/04/bjp-is-distributing-50-lakh-
phones-in-chhattisgarh-with-narendra-modi-and-raman-singh-apps-on-
them_a_23516769/ , accessed November 2018.
45 . https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/tech-
startups-crunch-voter-data/articleshow/63707960.cms , accessed
November 2018.
46 . http://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/India2012.pdf ,
accessed November 2018.
47 . https://scroll.in/article/666344/bjps-panna-pramukh-strategy-in-up-
yields-the-ultimate-dividend , accessed November 2018.
48 . https://scroll.in/article/849272/panna-pramukh-strategy-in-poll-bound-
gujarat-the-congress-attempts-to-take-on-bjp-at-its-own-game , accessed
November 2018.
49 . https://www.ndtv.com/business/the-booming-business-of-buying-and-
selling-mobile-number-database-38898 , accessed November 2018.
50 . https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/facebook-admits-using-users-phone-
number-to-provide-targeted-ads-1923624 , accessed November 2018.

Chapter 4: Fake News and Propaganda

1 . https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/69-mob-
attacks-on-child-lifting-rumours-since-jan-17-only-one-before-that-
118070900081_1.html , accessed November 2018.
2 . https://indianexpress.com/article/north-east-india/tripura/tripura-
lynching-police-fake-news-social-media-north-east-5240292/ , accessed
November 2018.
3 . https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/technology/whatsapp-now-
has-1-5-billion-monthly-active-users-200-million-users-in-
india/1044468/ , accessed November 2018.
4 . https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/joseph-goebbels-on-the-quot-big-
lie-quot , accessed November 2018.
5 . https://www.azquotes.com/quote/823348 , accessed November 2018.
 6 . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JciOSox-swY , accessed November
2018.
7 . https://www.outlookindia.com/newsscroll/moblynching-cases-prasad-
demands-accountability-from-whatsapp/1343503 , accessed November
2018.
8 . https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-44897714 , accessed
November 2018.
9 . https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/social-
media/whatsapp-launches-ad-campaign-to-tackle-fake-
news/article24378213.ece , accessed November 2018.
10 . https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/only-33-of-hindus-count-a-
muslim-as-a-close-friend-survey/articleshow/58018664.cms , accessed
November 2018.
11 . https://www.altnews.in/viral-false-video-claims-naga-sadhu-thrashed-
by-muslims-in-uttarakhand/ , accessed November 2018.
12 . https://www.altnews.in/viral-false-video-claims-naga-sadhu-thrashed-
by-muslims-in-uttarakhand/ , accessed November 2018.
13 . http://theconversation.com/social-media-is-changing-the-face-of-
politics-and-its-not-good-news-54266 , accessed November 2018.
14 . https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-41549756 , accessed
November 2018.
15 . https://www.thequint.com/news/webqoof/viral-photo-of-pm-modi-with-
doctors-is-it-from-aiims , accessed November 2018.
16 . https://www.altnews.in/did-up-police-lathicharge-youth-sitting-on-
dharna-outside-cm-yogi-adityanaths-residence/ , accessed November
2018.
17 . https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/14/lawmakers-concerned-deepfake-
technology/ , accessed November 2018.
18 . http://uk.businessinsider.com/fake-news-outperformed-real-news-on-
facebook-before-us-election-report-2016-11 , accessed November 2018.
19 . http://uk.businessinsider.com/fake-presidential-election-news-viral-
facebook-trump-clinton-2016-11 , accessed November 2018.
20 . https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/fake-news-
survey , accessed November 2018.
21 . https://www.businessinsider.com/obama-fake-news-facebook-creates-
dust-cloud-of-nonsense-2016-11 , accessed November 2018.
22 . http://thehill.com/homenews/media/384820-macron-we-must-fight-ever-
growing-virus-of-fake-news , accessed November 2018.
23 . https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/jnu-feb-9-incident-raw-
footage-given-by-tv-channel-genuine-finds-cbi-lab-2848058/ , accessed
November 2018.
24 . https://www.thehindu.com/specials/in-depth/JNU-row-What-is-the-
outrage-all-about/article14479799.ece , accessed November 2018.
25 .
https://www.livemint.com/Politics/uLX8WqkugNolvzV1D0tjiK/Kanhaiy
a-Kumar-sedition-case-SC-restricts-entry-to-Patiala.html , accessed
November 2018.
26 . https://www.livelaw.in/sc-slams-police-attack-kanhaiya-inside-patiala-
house-courtroom/ , accessed November 2018.
27 . https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-
nation/supreme-court-no-to-sit-probe-into-attack-on-jnus-kanhaiya-
kumar/articleshow/62637082.cms , accessed November 2018.
28 . https://www.deccanherald.com/content/528465/nation-not-tolerate-
insult-mother.html , accessed November 2018.
29 . https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/no-evidence-kanhaiya-kumar-made-
anti-national-speech-delhi-government-inquiry-1283508 , accessed
November 2018.
30 . https://www.theweek.in/content/archival/news/india/provocative-
slogans-were-shouted-by-outsiders-jnu-probe-panel.html , accessed
November 2018.
31 . https://www.frontline.in/cover-story/in-defence-of-
jnu/article8298534.ece , accessed November 2018.
32 . https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/zee-news-
producer-quits-video-we-shot-had-no-pakistan-zindabad-slogan/ ,
accessed November 2018.
33 . https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/jnu-doctored-
video-delhi-aap-govt-takes-news-channels-to-court-2767616/ , accessed
November 2018.
34 . https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/jnusu-ex-president-kanhaiya-
kumar-to-contest-ls-polls-from-bihars-
begusarai/articleshow/65637990.cms , accessed November 2018.
35 . https://www.simplypsychology.org/zimbardo.html , accessed November
2018.
36 . https://medium.com/s/trustissues/the-lifespan-of-a-lie-d869212b1f62 ,
accessed November 2018.
37 . https://medium.com/s/trustissues/the-lifespan-of-a-lie-d869212b1f62 ,
accessed November 2018.
38 . https://www.elitedaily.com/life/quote-civil-rights-activists/1370706 ,
accessed November 2018.
39 . https://www.huffingtonpost.com/committee-to-protect-
journalists/indian-journalism-under-i_b_4556499.html , accessed
November 2018.
40 . http://www.barcindia.co.in/statistic.aspx , accessed November 2018.
41 . https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/mp-rajeev-
chandrasekhar-biggest-investor-in-arnab-goswami-s-republic-
117011300345_1.html , accessed November 2018.
42 . http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/rajeev-chandrasekhar-editorial-
policies-suvarna-news-kannada-prabha , accessed November 2018.
43 . https://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/did-
chandrashekhar-owned-company-sign-contract-with-defence-ministry-
asks-congress-118050900847_1.html , accessed November 2018.
44 .
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/media/entertainment/medi
a/times-network-launches-second-english-news-channel-mirror-
now/articleshow/57782109.cms , accessed November 2018.
45 . https://www.forbes.com/sites/meghabahree/2014/05/30/reliance-takes-
over-network18-is-this-the-death-of-media-independence/ , accessed
November 2018.
46 .
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/media/entertainment/medi
a/network18-finishes-rs-2053-cr-deal-to-acquire-etv-
stakes/articleshow/29215772.cms , accessed November 2018.
47 . https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/subhash-chandra-independent-
candidate-rajya-sabha-election-13666-2016-06-11 , accessed November
2018.
48 .
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/media/entertainment/medi
a/rajat-sharma-how-owner-and-face-of-india-tv-became-one-of-indias-
most-powerful-editors/articleshow/46257240.cms , accessed November
2018.
49 . https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/who-really-owns-
ndtv/article24323637.ece , accessed November 2018.
50 . https://scroll.in/article/889026/resignations-of-two-journalists-at-abp-
news-cause-disquiet-in-newsrooms-and-far-beyond , accessed
November 2018.
51 . https://thewire.in/media/narendra-modi-amit-shah-media-watch-punya-
prasun-bajpai , accessed November 2018.
52 . http://www.atimes.com/article/bjp-will-suppress-media-until-2019-
says-former-party-member/ , accessed November 2018.
53 . https://www.mid-day.com/articles/revealed-how-tv-news-channels-
prepare-for-prime-time-panel-discussions/15288163 , accessed
November 2018.
54 . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lQUs4K0eog , accessed November
2018.

Chapter 5: Winning an Election

1 . https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/mulayam-singh-yadav-his-
biggest-battle-ahead/story-EvI6n1Qp6akjsGUWvuR6NM.html , accessed
November 2018.
2 . https://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-the-mulayam-dynasty-is-
mulayam-s-downfall-2269422 , accessed November 2018.
3 . https://www.firstpost.com/politics/modi-has-to-go-post-2002-gujarat-
riots-atal-bihari-vajpayee-wanted-then-cm-to-step-down-3191210.html ,
accessed November 2018.
4 . https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/It-is-Modi-not-BJP-that-won-
this-election/article11640727.ece , accessed November 2018.
5 . https://archive.india.gov.in/govt/loksabhampbiodata.php?mpcode=4487
, accessed November 2018.
6 . https://indianexpress.com/article/india/politics/dinesh-trivedi-agrees-to-
resign-as-rail-minister-mamata/ , accessed November 2018.
7 . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOScrpp3RJ0 , accessed November
2018.
8 . https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/aap-expels-four-rebel-
leaders/article7123615.ece , accessed November 2018.
9 . https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/kejriwal-a-dictator-says-rebel-
mla/article5584622.ece , accessed November 2018.
10 . https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/owing-to-cm-biplab-deb-s-
outrageous-remarks-tussle-in-tripura-bjp-worries-party/story-
hv3X2lyPXzi9RVjElXdWUN.html , accessed November 2018.
11 . https://www.hindustantimes.com/punjab/chhotepur-formally-quits-aap-
to-launch-own-party-on-oct-1/story-fpDxIxS0vwIvriXXrEl1jI.html ,
accessed November 2018.
12 . https://www.indiatoday.in/assembly-elections-2017/punjab-assembly-
election-2017/story/arvind-kejriwal-haryanvi-akali-dal-punjabis-
954454-2017-01-11 , accessed November 2018.
13 . https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/why-satluj-yamuna-link-
canal-is-a-bone-of-contention-between-punjab-and-haryana/story-
1p703sMa93r2ogqrf0ni3I.html , accessed November 2018.
14 . https://www.business-standard.com/article/elections/bihar-elections-
bihari-vs-bahari-debate-115101900223_1.html , accessed November
2018.
15 . http://www.tamiltribune.com/03/0101-anti-hindi-agitation-history.html ,
accessed November 2018.
16 . https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/punjabi-suba-what-s-
there-to-celebrate/292265.html , accessed November 2018.
17 . https://www.macleans.ca/politics/washington/why-rust-belt-voted-
trump/ , accessed November 2018.
18 . https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-heats-up-rhetoric-on-
border-immigration-as-some-supporters-grow-
impatient/2018/04/02/88d5353e-3690-11e8-acd5-
35eac230e514_story.html , accessed November 2018.
19 . https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/trumps-anti-
muslim-retweets-shouldnt-surprise-you/547031/ , accessed November
2018.
20 . https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1409054 ,
accessed November 2018.
21 . https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/bsp-gets-third-
highest-vote-share-but-no-seats/ , accessed November 2018.
22 . https://www.livemint.com/Politics/Dvm7dfo9RcFi3cbDjZCN7N/The-
politics-of-reservations-and-the-OBC-vote.html , accessed November
2018.
23 .
https://www.livemint.com/Politics/DMH9dZ2cO44c0g9hZ7zGwO/How-
 Babri-Masjid-demolition-redefined-politics-of-social-ide.html ,
accessed November 2018.
24 . https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/no-
tickets-for-muslims-in-up-polls-rethink-in-bjp-
now/articleshow/57407677.cms , accessed November 2018.
25 . http://e-pao.net/GP.asp?src=3..120112.jan12 , accessed November
2018.
26 . https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/jat-struggle-like-patidar-
agitation-is-a-volcano-waiting-to-explode/story-
h2tDXww6L4kYiKXJte8VrM.html , accessed November 2018.
27 .
https://www.livemint.com/Politics/9WWo49rmDDIXSM3K1OvENM/O
BCs-upper-castes-protest-SCST-Act-in-Madhya-Pradesh.html , accessed
November 2018.
28 . https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/special-report/story/20121203-bal-
thackeray-death-shiv-sena-harvester-of-fear-760815-1999-11-30 ,
accessed November 2018.
29 .
http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/22930/9/09_chapter%2
04.pdf , accessed November 2018.
30 .
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322232886_UNDERSTANDI
NG_TIPRALAND_MOVEMENT_THROUGH_MIGRATION_IN_TRIP
URA , accessed November 2018.
31 . https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/Akbaruddin-in-
trouble-for-hate-speech/articleshow/17803821.cms , accessed
November 2018.
32 . https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/aiudf-chief-draws-flak-for-
asking-muslims-to-unite-against-hindus/story-
SEMz9GX13inPpztkWPTU6J.html , accessed November 2018.
33 . https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/have-5-kids-to-preserve-
hindutva-bjp-mla-surendra-singh-to-hindus/articleshow/65147464.cms ,
accessed November 2018.
34 . https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/rising-muslim-population-
needs-to-be-curbed-is-reason-for-increase-in-lynchings-says-bjp-mp-
hari-om-pandey/articleshow/65158314.cms , accessed November 2018.
35 . https://www.firstpost.com/india/bjp-leaders-warn-of-demographic-
shift-but-census-shows-fall-in-muslim-population-growth-rate-steeper-
than-other-groups-4883791.html , accessed November 2018.
36 . https://www.livescience.com/16493-people-planet-earth-support.html ,
accessed November 2018.
37 . https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/bjp-
gains-in-polls-after-every-riot-says-yale-
study/articleshow/45378840.cms , accessed November 2018.
38 . https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/union-minister-jayant-sinha-
garlands-8-convicted-for-ramgarh-mob-lynching-1279601-2018-07-06 ,
accessed November 2018.
39 . https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/giriraj-singh-meets-riot-
accused-bajrang-dal-vhp-activists-in-bihars-nawada-
jail/articleshow/64903345.cms , accessed November 2018.
40 .
https://m.facebook.com/DhruvRatheePage/photos/a.1701518610113062.
1073741829.1693077410957182/2051479131783673/?type=3 ,
accessed November 2018.
41 . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi0NTbwn3dI , accessed November
2018.
42 . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFmVgfL1lT4 , accessed
November 2018.
43 . https://www.britannica.com/topic/McCarthyism , accessed November
2018.
44 . https://www.hindustantimes.com/assembly-elections/modi-says-
pakistan-interfering-in-gujarat-election-attacks-cong-over-mani-shankar-
aiyar-s-comments/story-3gFNDAan46BeTf2LGrn6ML.html , accessed
November 2018.
45 . https://scroll.in/article/878561/twitter-gives-modi-a-history-lesson-
after-he-claims-that-no-congress-leader-met-bhagat-singh-in-jail ,
accessed November 2018.
46 . https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/BS-Yeddyurappa-
arrested-sent-to-jail-BJP-calls-it-a-bad-day/articleshow/10367034.cms ,
accessed November 2018.
47 . https://medium.com/@INshivams/why-i-am-resigning-from-bjp-
43b489d97777 , accessed November 2018.
Chapter 6: Understanding the System
1 . https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/BJP-spent-over-Rs-714-crore-
Congress-Rs-516-crore-in-2014-elections/articleshow/45911356.cms ,
accessed November 2018.
2 . https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/bjp-s-advertisement-plan-may-
cost-a-whopping-rs-5-000-cr/story-y8x34eYh26xwoAxeRuaCoO.html ,
accessed November 2018.
3 . https://www.ndtv.com/elections-news/rs-30-000-crore-to-be-spent-on-
lok-sabha-polls-study-554110 , accessed November 2018.
4 . https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/karnataka-congress-jds-mlas-
remian-confined-in-hotels-ahead-of-trust-
vote/articleshow/64306761.cms , accessed November 2018.
5 . https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/supreme-court-proposes-floor-
test-in-karnataka-assembly-on-saturday/articleshow/64217207.cms ,
accessed November 2018.
6 . https://www.news18.com/news/politics/unimpressed-by-bsy-campaign-
bjp-to-uneah-modi-wave-in-karnataka-to-corner-siddaramaiah-rahul-
1712581.html , accessed November 2018.
7 . https://twitter.com/ANI/status/994522813317992449 , accessed
November 2018.
8 . https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/candidates-can-
spend-up-to-28l-on-election-expenses/articleshow/62455919.cms ,
accessed November 2018.
9 . https://indianexpress.com/elections/karnataka-assembly-elections-2018-
total-expenditure-bjp-congress-jds-5176467/ , accessed November
2018.
10 . https://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-cohen/the-political-impact-of-
o_b_1015253.html , accessed November 2018.
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Chapter 7: The Experiments

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 Disclaimer

T his book is a work of non-fiction and is based on the personal

experiences of the author and evidence collected by him during the course of
his work as an election campaign manager. The instances in the book are
based on a variety of sources, including but not limited to the personal
interactions of the author with various persons mentioned in the book. The
views and opinions expressed in the chapters of this book are those of the
author only and do not reflect or represent the views and opinions held by
any other person.
This book is based on actual events and is based on the personal
knowledge of the author with respect to the events enumerated. It reflects the
author’s representation of the events enumerated as truthfully as possible and
as far as recollection permits. All persons referred to in the book are actual
individuals.
The objective of this book is not to hurt any sentiments or be biased in
favour of or against any particular person, political party, society, gender,
creed, nation or religion.
 Acknowledgements

I would like to express my immense gratitude to the many people without

whom this book would not have been possible. The content of this book is
shaped by what I learnt while working for P.D. Rai, MP, Lok Sabha (Sikkim),
and Ram Madhav, BJP’s national general secretary. I owe a huge debt to both
for the mentorship and the insights that they have shared with me over the
years. I would also like to thank Chakshu Roy and M.R. Madhavan of PRS
Legislative Research for running an excellent initiative like the LAMP
fellowship. Special thanks to my colleagues at LAMP, Abhishek Ranjan,
Arjun Singh Yadav, Jayraj Pandya, Nagarajan Chandru, Nibu Alex, Pratik
Mahapatra, Santwana Dwivedy, Simar Pal Singh, Zerin Osho Raina and
several others, each of whom has been a pillar of support and an excellent
resource for navigating the cauldrons of politics. I would also like to thank
Prashant Kishor, Abhimanyu Bharti and Ravi Singh, colleagues at IPAC
who’ve provided valuable lessons into managing election campaigns.
I would not have been a part of the stories in this book if it wasn’t for the
support of my entire family. I owe huge gratitude to my parents who’ve
shown exceptional understanding for my decision to engage in politics, even
though they would have preferred that I gave the civil services exam instead.
A huge thank you to my cousins, Manvi Singh and Medhavi Singh, who’ve
helped me through every decision on the book’s design and kept me on track
to actually finish it.
I would also like to thank the team at Penguin Random House. Swati
Chopra, my editor, who made the entire publishing process feel much easier
than it actually is; Parag Chitale for the beautiful cover design; and the entire
editing and legal team who’s worked to make the book possible.
 Lastly, I would like to thank the many politicians and party workers that
I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with over the last few years. Thank you
for taking out the time to share your invaluable knowledge and perspectives
on India and its politics without which this book wouldn’t be complete.
 THE BEGINNING

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Copyright © Shivam Shankar Singh 2019
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ISBN: 978-0-143-44684-2
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