The Election Of Experiments: 5 New Strategies That Made All The Difference

Now that the dust has settled, most of us will agree that the General Elections 2014 were the most bitterly fought polls in the history of independent India. Given the fact that the citizens of the country were desperately looking to change the status quo, every party in the fray went all out to grab its share of votes to replace the incumbent while the ruling coalition tried its best to win at least a few of its seats as more of a face-saving act. This election was like no other and almost all major political parties resorted to acts like never before. For instance, Indian political parties tried to experiment with new ideas. Some of them were mild while some were really bold. Some of them succeeded but others fell flat. Here are some of the notable experiments that our political parties conducted over the past few months.

1. US Presidential style campaign experiment: With its announcement of Narendra Modi as the Prime Ministerial candidate, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) started an initiative that is more in tune with the US Presidential campaign. The party intended to fight the polls, keeping the focus trained on Modi’s personality, his past credentials and the grand plans he has for India. And the campaign was so effective that in many constituencies, the voters did not even care to know who their candidates were – all they knew was they had to vote for Modi. As we know it now, that strategy was a grand success. So much so that for the first time in the history of India, a non-Congress party has come to power with absolute majority.

The Congress, too, tried to spin its campaign around Rahul Gandhi, but it didn’t really take off. The lacklustre personality of Rahul, combined with the UPA’s involvement in mega scams and the discontent of the people, saw the campaign end in a disaster. Nevertheless, it is quite likely that future elections in this country will adhere to this model of campaigning. Thanks to its stupendous success this time around, Presidential-style campaigns are sure to become a norm.

2. Crowd-sourcing and crowd-funding experiment: The Aam Admi Party conducted a huge experiment in terms of crowd sourcing and crowd funding. I must say it was one of the largest such experiments in the world. After an action-packed 49-day stint at the helm of Delhi government, the AAP set out to conquer the entire India. But the problem was – it had no candidates and no money.

The party already had experience in raising money and gathering people (for party work) from the crowds, and utilised the same tactics on a much larger scale for the Lok Sabha elections. The most interesting part of the experiment was ‘crowd sourcing’ of candidates. AAP did not have any organisational structure across the country when it announced its intention of going national. Within a couple of months, volunteers across the states came forward, created state and district units, established small offices in every nook and corner of the country, and the structure created itself.

For the candidates, the party asked for self-nominations, did evaluation and background checks, and fielded an unprecedented 434 candidates. As far as the crowd-funding and crowd-sourcing experiment is concerned, it was surely a grand success. It’s another matter that the party was able to win only 4 seats in the general elections.

3. The ‘primaries’ experiment: If Narendra Modi wanted to take a page from the US Presidential election system, Rahul Gandhi also tried to experiment with the concept of ‘primaries’ for candidate selection. It was a bit similar to what AAP did to select their candidates, but it was supposed to be more democratic. Aimed at attracting more young people and doing away with the perception of dynastic politics, this initiative started off well, but was marred by favouritism and unjust allocations. Finally, it fizzled out without leaving any mark. Not many people will even remember now whether there was such an attempt by the Congress party.

4. Technology & social media experiment: One of the biggest experiments in these general elections that turned out to be a tremendous hit. With the penetration of the Internet and smartphones to the remotest corners of the country, political parties took full advantage of tech tools and social media to reach out to the masses. They tried every available channel – from the now-so-mundane Twitter and Facebook posts to personalised e-mail messages, Google Hangouts and amazing real-time 3D holograms for virtual rallies and webinars. Technology played a major role in capturing the masses during these elections.

Moreover, till date, it was only one-way broadcasting by the political parties during campaigning. This was perhaps the first time when there was a ‘dialogue’ between the electorate and the parties/candidates. Every Tweet or Facebook post had thousands of responses from the public within minutes. Technology tools even enabled overseas Indians to have a taste of the pre-poll fever and helped them participate in the run-up to the voting day.

5. Use of volunteers: Finally, the polls also witnessed unprecedented public participation, both on-ground and via social media. In fact, social media pages looked like war zones, with pitched battles being fought among the supporters of various political parties. Similarly, some constituencies like Varanasi (Modi contested from there and beat AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal) saw massive number of BJP and AAP supporters descending from all over the country. Interestingly, most of these ‘warriors’ were not party workers, but volunteers who were pitching for the parties they support just out of conviction. Many of them did not even have party membership.

The political parties in fray did everything they could to get active help from these volunteers. One of the experiments included passing the message to the ‘volunteers’ and waiting for it to spread across the country. The AAP and the BJP managed to implement it quite successfully – both online and offline. And the flip side of it was the abundant use of Photoshop to spread both positive and negative publicity. Things that did not even exist were created, morphed and used like weapons, to attack each other.

Like all other new initiatives, some of these experiments succeeded while others failed. Some turned out to be beneficial for one party but did not work for another. This year, the general elections not only turned into a battleground for political parties, but also became an idea lab for new experiments. Some of these experiments will become a norm in the near future and as technology advances, more and more new experiments will be conducted to achieve best possible results.

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