RAJDEEP SARDESAI

2019: How Modi Won India by Rajdeep Sardesai;
Published by Harper India ; Pages: 392; Price: Rs 699/-

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Theodore White has established himself as the Chronicler of the Presidential elections in USA.He wrote-- The Making of the President 1960,The Making of the President 1964,The Making of the President 1968, and The Making of the President 1972, all analysing American presidential elections. The first of these was both a bestseller and a critical success, winning the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. It remains the most influential publication about the election that made John F. Kennedy the President.

The Indian counterpart is RajdeepSardesai,author of the best-selling book, “2014: The Election that Changed India.

Sardesai was managing editor of the NDTV network before he set up the IBN 18 network with channels like CNN IBN as founder editor. He was the city editor of Times of India at the young age of 26. He is currently a consulting editor with the India Today Group and anchors a prime time show on India Today.

He bagged the prestigious Padma Shri , the International Broadcasters Award for coverage of the 2002 Gujarat riots, and the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award.  He has also won the Asian Television Awards 2014 for Best News Presenter in Asia for the coverage of the 2014 general elections. He was also chosen as a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum in 2000.

Rajdeep Sardesai is liberal and moderate; he is a critic of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Hindutva world view. However, he recognises the party’s core strength and strong leadership. His margin was astonishingly accurate.

Sardesai has extraordinary talent and an awesome group of valuable friends in all camps. He possesses sharp critical talent, keen political acumen, sound analysis, and perceptive political sense. This book offers abundant proof .

Sardesai proves quite easily that the 2019 election was unarguably a truly TIMO — There Is Modi Only — election. The issue of national leadership was the main desideratum. The BJP proclaimed that the vote was for the Leader. The Opposition failed to offer a single candidate of stature anywhere near Narendra Modi. Voters perceived in Modi a Hindu totally dedicated to India’s development—a man who would lift the poor and downtrodden from the slough of despondency, a nationalist who will battle against enemies.

The election adopted a Presidential tone. It laid bare the limits of the Congress strategy of turning it into 543 local contests.

The second powerful weapon the BJP’s armoury was the election machine created by Amit Shah. Shah’s ideological clarity, his organisational skills, his ability to work hard become crystal clear. Shah transformed BJP into a monumental election machine exuding Success. Through membership drives, a database of its members and supporters, constant campaigns, and a robust structure down to the booth and even the level of electoral roll pages, the BJP was able to take its brand and message down to the roots. Shah also succeeded in geographically expanding the scope of BJP--- especially in West Bengal.

The BJP in election mode functioned not as a political party but as a ruthless corporate machine. Politics is a do-or-die business in which the minutest detail is meticulously scrutinised by pragmatic lieutenants.

The carefully planned campaign for marketing Modi, conceived more than two years back with the help of highly skilled technocrats, brings out the extent of planning and build-up of a multi-pronged communication network. After Shah took over as party president, the BJP membership shot up dramatically. It was 2 crore when Shah became president and is now around 11 crore. Call centres kept tabs of the personal details of every member: from voter IDs to mobile numbers and addresses. The data was fed into computers accessible to the party leadership. Shah boasted that with one SMS he could connect instantaneously to one lakh workers. Poll booth committees of between 15 and 30 workers were formed for some 8.63 lakh election booths across the country.

Six months before the polls the BJP organised 161 round-the-clock call centres for tele-marketing. The centres were provided a detailed list of the 22 crore beneficiaries of various government schemes such as Swachh Bharat, Ujjwala, the Jan Dhan Yojana, Awas Yojana, Ayushman Bharat.

Sardesai of course clarifies that BJP was the richest party in the election venture.

The other key component of the BJP’s 2019 electoral victory was the role of the government’s welfare delivery schemes. From gas cylinders to toilets, rural housing to bank accounts, the Modi government not only delivered benefits, but gave adequate publicity to advertise the achievements.

The BJP paid attention on consolidating both a majority and a majoritarian identity. This helped uniting Hindus — the goal of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh — and overcome caste divisions. The BJP’s ideological commitment to remaking the state on Hindutva lines is quite deep and goes beyond elections. This has been visible in the past nine months, with the government using its electoral mandate to push changes in Jammu and Kashmir and amend the Citizenship Act.

The BJP benefited from the nationalist mood. The killing of paramilitary personnel in Pulwama had created national horror. The PM told the national security apparatus that he wanted visible action. With the air strike in Balakot, the party machine went into an overdrive — to portray Modi as the only leader capable of defending India’s interests and teaching Pakistan a lesson. The BJP may still have won in 2019, but Balakot did enthuse the cadre and provide a bump.

Another advantage was that Rahul Gandhi ran a confused, diffused and disoriented campaign. He was convinced of the effectiveness of the “Chowkidar Chor Hai” slogan, even though party elders tried to tell him it held little appeal for voters. Rahul Gandhi resisted giving interviews even to sympathetic journalists and was sometimes disdainful of his own party leaders. He still retains the odd man out image in the political space. His close advisers are from his social circle of left-leaning intellectuals, totally untouched by Indian reality.

Rahul Gandhi had a legitimate grievance that he was not fighting on a level playing field. The BJP whipped up Islamophobia and polarised the atmosphere. The BJP’s army of trolls filled the internet with toxic messages. A pliable media played along with the ruling party, conscious that the information ministry had a monitoring cell which kept tabs on who filed what. The Election Commission’s role was suspect. It raised no objection even to a NaMo TV channel opening up just two weeks before the election, without official permission. It meekly accepted the argument that it was a DTH advertising platform. India’s first multimedia campaign marketed the PM’s larger-than-life image everywhere: TV screens, mobiles, online, books, movies and billboards. Even before Pulwama and Balakot , Modi was in the driver’s seat, but after the Pakistan attack the narrative turned decisively in his favour.

India’s first multimedia campaign marketed the PM’s larger-than-life image everywhere: TV screens, mobiles, online, books, movies and billboards. Even before Pulwama and Balakot, Modi was in the driver’s seat, but after the Pakistan attack the narrative turned decisively in his favour. The ruling party did not shy away from taking the credit for the performance of our defence forces.

Sardesai has thoroughly studied the role of Media, especially select segments of the electronic media, which have proved stronger cheerleaders for BJP . According to him , the BJP astutely used the deepening penetration of the mobile phone to reach voters directly, particularly through WhatsApp and other forms of social media.

Sardesai’s work is an exhaustive study of the electoral battle and throws a flood of light on all parameters. With an alert and inquisitive reporter’s instinct and refreshing boldness, at a time when journalistic candour is fast diminishing, Sardesai provides fascinating insight into Shah’s systematic build-up of Modi over the last few years. A vigorous and stimulating account of a very well planned battle.

P.P.Ramachandran

22/03/2020.

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