GOING PLACES

As polls draw close, Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi are clocking up the miles to reach out to voters

writers primarily consists of two dozen researchers who sit in a small room in western Ahmedabad. They are engineers, academics, and IIM and NID graduates who coordinate with the various other agencies and pass on facts and local information on sheets of paper for Modi to go through as he is flying into his next rally destination. This standard operation procedure was visible before the February 8 Guwahati rally. The research team’s sheets were finetuned by Kailashnathan and handed to Modi on the flight to Guwahati. Once he had gone through the notes on his new 13-seater campaign jet, Modi gave a post-it slip to his 33-year-old personal assistant Om Prakash Chandel, asking for some additional information. This was then culled out of an extensive Assam database over the course of the four-flight flight by Modi’s 69-year-old PRO Jagdish Thakkar. Before they landed, Modi had everything he needed—the main themes of his speech were organised in bullet points in Gujarati, and the supporting facts were organised into easily acces- sible documents to be handed to him on the lectern Before an estimated 150,000 people, Modi, alluding to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Rajya Sabha nomination from Assam, said if the Prime Minister cannot do anything for the people who’ve sent him to Parliament, how can he work for the rest of the country.

In Bhubaneswar, Modi’s local connect was evidenced by how he openly attacked the Naveen Patnaik government and accused the Chief Minister of frittering away the legacy of his late father Biju Patnaik, who still has resonance in Odisha. “Fourteen years of Naveen babu’s rule, and you are still poor, unemployed, short of drinking water. Who will be the most upset at this?” he asked, before answering after a short pause, “Biju Patnaik, wherever he is, will be the unhappiest of all!”

ONCE BITTEN

This is not the first time BJP has launched such an ambitious election campaign. Ten years ago, as the coalition led by the party was seeking a sec- ond term, it had proclaimed that India was Shining. As its leaders spoke about a general sense of optimism surrounding the Indian economy, they spoke of how salaries were rising, the growth rate was high, the Sensex was booming, and the 2010 Commonwealth Games bid had been won. It was a spunky campaign marshalled by the flamboyant Pramod Mahajan with innovations such as recorded phone calls to a large section of voters by then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Despite predictions of a resounding victory, BJP suffered a defeat. The party later admitted that while it was a good slogan for the times, India Shining ignored several realities of contemporary India.

Once bitten, and twice beaten if one takes 2009 into account, BJP is insisting that the Modi campaign is different from India Shining both in terms of technical innovation and precise targeting. “This is the first pan-Indian, modern election campaign,” says a senior leader involved in the planning. “This time we know exactly who we want to get to, and how to reach them.”

While Modi spoke in Bhubaneswar, 23-year-old Hitendra Mehta, a member of the IT Cell team, was sitting barely 30 feet away behind a laptop. Connected to the Internet, and getting live footage from the main rally camera (or in cricket coverage parlance, the ball-follow camera), he was relaying the telecast live on YuvaiTV. This feed was simultaneously being edited into small clips for YouTube. The N-Doc team livetweeted most of Modi’s key statements, as did Mehta and his colleague Amit Aniruddha Sahu, also 23, sitting behind a laptop next to him. Photographers from the BJP’s volunteer force were con- stantly giving Sahu SD storage cards for him to tweet the best pictures. In the middle of this frenetic activity, Mehta got a call from the Chief Minister’s office in Gujarat, asking for photographs for their own social media push. The rally could also be heard live on mobile phones through an automated number. Though this service is not free, more than one million people have heard Modi’s speeches in the last four months.

NO VOLUNTEER LEFT BEHIND

Along with this push across media that multiplies the impact of a rally, the most crucial activity is being carried out by the IT Cell’s ground team, which is busy recruiting other volunteers while a Modi speech is going on. A dozen members from the team, led by 38-year-old volunteer Rajesh Jain, is in Bhubaneswar to distribute pamphlets and cards that bear a single number across India on which supporters are asked to SMS, WhatsApp, or leave a missed call. Members from the Cell’s Empanelment Team, headed by a 34year-old banker Nitin Kashyap, then facilitate a call back to every supporter asking how much time they can devote to the Modi4PM campaign. This database is sorted by location so that BJP