Branding is Key in Indian Elections


I was intrigued by the title of Shivam Shankar Singh’s book: How to Win an Indian Election. The book did not disappoint. The author says he was drawn into politics for the same reason so many other educated folks chipped in around the same time: massive corruption under UPA II, the Anna Hazare led protests, and the gruesome rape of Nirbhaya:
“It was against this backdrop… (arose) two charismatic leaders… Arvind Kejriwal… (and) Narendra Modi.”
Singh is a political consultant, similar to the far, far more famous Prashant Kishor. Their campaign style works only if a party identifies one man clearly for CM or PM. And that style revolves around the branding of the Chosen One.

Did you think only the BJP plays the branding game? Singh points out it is done well by all parties. Take Punjab. The Congress candidate for CM, was rebranded from aristocratic “Maharaj” Amarinder Singh to “Captain” Amarinder Singh, the ex-army man who would pull Punjab out of the abyss. Or look at Bihar. Modi’s election rhetoric that there was “some problem with Nitish Kumar’s DNA” was turned that into an insult about all Biharis by the JD. In no time, the election became a Bihari v/s Bahari (Bihari v/s Outsider) contest. And then there’s Arvind Kejriwal who has branded himself as someone different, the outsider.

So why does branding a candidate seem to work? Singh says that once you have established a brand for the main candidate, the campaign comes up with a list of topics that aligns with the brand: what he stands for or what he promises to change. The entire package begins to appear very coherent and consistent. The other candidates from the party then talk repeatedly about the same list of topics. Repeat a catchy message often enough, and people remember it. If done well, the theme of the election gets defined by your side: corruption and policy paralysis of UPA II, or an insult to the Bihari identity, or a vote for change.

Singh then examines the cost of the opposite approach. What happens if a party doesn’t brand or anoint a face? What if it tries the old way of selecting the CM/PM only after the elections are over? UPA II didn’t create a brand for itself in the 2014 elections, and the BJP gleefully created one for it:
“The aura of negativity was created against the Congress… scams, and allegations of corruption against Robert Vadra, Sonia Gandhi and P. Chidambaram.”
The same happened to Rahul Gandhi:
“The Congress did not initially focus on building a strong brand for Rahul Gandhi… This gave the BJP the perfect opportunity to build his brand instead… the BJP transformed Rahul Gandhi into ‘Pappu’ convincing people that he was too dumb to be a leader.”

It seems that while we follow the Westminister style of government, we’ve switched to the American style of election campaigns where candidates with brands make for easy recognition and better prospects of winning.

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarMarch 13, 2020 at 11:42 AM

    Branding and such details are rather specific. I am more into deeper and universal principles.

    Though it is also believed that economics, politics, sociology, anthropology etc. cannot come under clear-cut laws like we see in physics and chemistry, there are some very impressive and incisive basis in politics that wise people have shown - it is workable indeed. On that basis, let me present my core understanding, even if I am not really good in grasping politics. Actually, everybody only believes vigorously in something and yet undergoes delusion that their opinions are absolute truth and unerringly fair and then develop contempt towards any contrary or even mildly differing view. So, I am certainly entitled for my deception too. :-)

    ------------------

    1) In the field of personality psychology, which applies best in politics and in part to all management, Machiavellianism is a psychological trait centered on interpersonal manipulation, unemotional coldness, and indifference to morality. In all that, there is a Dark Triad defined too: Machiavellianism (as defined above), Narcissism, Psychopathy. The Dark Triad is an inevitability really – Adolf Hitler ranked very high in this, but all dictators all over the world are propelled by these, while the unthinking masses see pure glory in them all, surely for a period of time! As the saying goes: you can fool some people all the time or all the people for some time! Certainly!!

    2) Karl Marx was a genius in political analysis in the sense that his felt a LAW behind all politics – that of exploitation to the brim through every available method and ingredient that yields itself. Religion is an important and powerful tool for exploitation, for example. But the means to exploits is more or less limitless. Marx proposed an "ideal solution" – the formation of a Classless Communistic Society. Stalin, Mao and scores of extreme leftists instituted the Communistic Party or some party, the utopia promise, as the most powerful method of exploitation! The profound truth is this: promoting a party as utopia sells really, really big to establish unilateralism.

    3) The greatest trend setter for an effective political tool is Joseph Goebbels. And, that tool is PROPAGANDA. He proved how much deception and brainwashing can be done by a persistent and intelligently manipulated propaganda machinery that is utterly ruthless. After his grand example, the whole world got infected with it – from Russian Communism took a big lead, and then the American Phobia for communism spread for which much propaganda was generated both by the government and mostly by US people themselves too etc. Propaganda is practiced these days everywhere, by everybody in almost in every social domain. There is one important ingredient that can be exploited through propaganda. Hate is the emotion that can be whipped up easily and then channelized to help political hate-wave riding by clever and self-seeking politicians. Hate is the world’s best infector, and it helps in the creation of a sweeping high-rise wave for politicians to ride.
    =======

    It is believed based on certain amount of statistical data that unilateralism bearers and power-wave riders crumble finally, leaving much ruins for the nation they ruled driven by unbridled ego and deception. The ruins will be abandoned and new society would crop up usually.

    In India, BJP with Modi-Shah at the helm are matchless in all the needed ingredients of power politics mentioned above.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Student of the Year

Image
As a toddler, my daughter loved Alia Bhatt’s songs, esp. the ones from Student of the Year . (That movie did have many good songs and well-choreographed dances). Fast forward to present day, when she is 12 yo. She rarely watches Hindi movies now, but one of the few ones she likes of late, Raja aur Rani ki Prem Kahani has, yes, Alia Bhatt.   If I had any hopes that there was anything to be read in the name of her toddler-time favorite ( Student of the Year ), they have been dashed. Our conversations come exam time are perfectly captured by this photo and its caption: In fact, the pic below captures how she and I look at her answer sheets – me intently, she with an expression of “It’s over, so why are you even looking at it?”   Of late, we pull her leg and tell her that she isn’t showing any signs of academic prowess, she’d better find a rich guy to marry. Some time later, she showed us this meme on the Internet: “Me No Study, Me No Care Me Go Marry Millionaire If He Die
Read more

The Retort of the "Luxury Person"

Image
Coming up with biting and witty retorts. It’s something we dream of, but rarely manage to pull off. Worse, the more we stew over the offending remark, the more likely we are to come up with that dream retort, as Calvin ruefully points out: During our last holiday at the Taj Resort, seeing my wife carrying towels to our poolside chairs, one of the kids there mistook her for a member of the staff and asked for a towel. When my wife narrated this to us, I did not imagine that my 8 yo daughter would come up with her own retort. But a day later, my daughter recapped the incident, an incident that didn’t even involve her in the first place , and said, “You know what I’d have told that kid who asked for the towel?”. And without waiting for an answer, she told us anyway: “I don’t work here. I too am a luxury person who is living at this resort. Go get your own towel.” We were highly amused by the phrase she had coined: “luxury person”. It certainly captures the kind of holid
Read more

Animal Senses #7: Touch and Remote Touch

Instinctively, we think touch is based on contact. Not entirely true, explains Ed Yong in Immense World – there’s a more important aspect than contact: “These incredible feats are possible through movement. If you rest a fingertip upon a surface, you can get only a limited idea of its features. But as soon you’re allowed to move, everything changes. Hardness becomes apparent with a press. Textures resolve at a stroke.” As you run your fingers over a surface, they hit the tiny peaks and troughs and set off vibrations in the mechanoreceptors at their tips.   At the tip of its snout, the star-nosed mole has many pairs of hairless appendages. It uses them to touch things around itself. Alive or dead? Food or ignore? It does these movements at an insane speed. In the time it takes to blink our eyes, the star-nosed mole can probe, identify and swallow its food. “Light may be the fastest thing in the universe, but light sensors have their limits, and the star-nosed mole’s sense of
Read more