Mcb777 Cricket The poll strategists that parties are banking on to win in 5 states

An experienced politician from Karnataka reached out to campaign strategist Abbin Theepura with a request months before the May 2023 assembly elections. It wasn’t about the seat since he had that in the bag. “He wanted to be discussed as a possible chief ministerial candidate,” says Theepura. The challenge before Theepura — formerly with Prashant Kishor-led Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC) — was that the politician was from an influential community in the state that already had a few fairly prominent leaders. The politician’s profile needed a makeover from an also-ran to CM material.Over the next few months, Theepura and his team at Politique Marquer, an election strategy company he started in 2019, set about creating interventions which included issue-based statements, seeding his social media profile with videos of his speeches and public meetings and working on coverage in the national media. “After the election, the politician’s name did come up as a possible compromise candidate over two rivals,” he says with a smile. medium105347170BACKROOM BOOMTheepura is part of a growing band of campaign strategists or election specialists that have become as necessary an appendage to political parties and candidates as the white khadi kurta or, to use an old political adage, like samose mein aloo. Political analyst Sajjan Kumar scoffs at them, describing the trend as the “MBAisation of politics”. He’s not wrong since many of the consultancies are run by IIT and IIM alumni and do a lot of recruiting at top-tier B-schools. But while many do turn up their noses at these 'data crunchers' who churn out spreadsheets and surveys, it seems there are few who can do without them.BJP began the trend by hiring Kishor for the 2014 general elections and is credited with bringing focus on the Narendra Modi campaign with the slogan ‘har ghar Modi’ that was eventually on everyone’s lips. medium105347971But other political parties have caught up. The Congress government in Rajasthan has been working with an election strategy company called DesignBoxed, while its counterpart in Madhya Pradesh has roped in former I-PAC veteran Sunil Kanugolu, the strategist behind Congress’s Karnataka win and the catchy PayCM slogan, for the upcoming assembly elections in the two states. BJP has an in-house team, while Andhra Pradesh’s Jagan Reddy has retained I-PAC after his 2019 poll win.Part of the reason to hire specialists is that the nature of an election campaign has become more social media and data driven. Gone are the days when recorded phone calls and mass SMSes sufficed. Political strategist and former AAP leader Ankit Lal says that a political campaigner’s role has expanded from just a social media specialist to one who ideates and executes the political message, both on the ground and online. Lal compares his job to a wedding planner’s. “Just as no two marriage events are alike, so no two political leaders think alike, have the same ambition or the same journey. Our challenge is to understand the person and craft the campaign according to that,” he says. medium105347342However, Lal is quick to admit that “in our industry, a consultant can help you buy a car, but keeping the petrol tank filled is tricky.” Lal started his poll strategy company Politique Advisors in 2020, and was signed up by Bihar CM Nitish Kumar before the assembly elections the same year. “His chances did not look good as the opposition was questioning his leadership and ability to govern. We started the slogan ‘parkha hai jisko, chunege usko’,” Lal says. Kumar scraped through the finish line with marginal gains, but a victory nonetheless.Some, like Theepura, are willing to work with greenhorns such as an industrialist or community leader who wants to get into the political fray. “They might be influential in their community and have deep pockets, but they do not have an understanding of the political landscape. We look at the macro-level (state-level issues) and micro (constituency-level issues) that they can identify with and build their brand. The aim is to have different political parties make overtures to them,” he says. medium105347295GROWING CLOUTBut what about the political ideology of the consultant? Personal ideology can have an impact on hiring, though just as politicians shift from one political party to another, so can strategists. Also, some are looking beyond the electoral win. In Andhra, for instance, I-PAC has now donned a public policy advisory role. The Jagan Reddy-led Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) has appointed volunteers to ensure doorstep delivery of CM’s schemes and these are being monitored by I-PAC. The move has been described by Opposition parties as running a parallel government and leaking sensitive public data to a private agency. Even in Bengaluru, many of the candidates who won have continued with the services of the political consultants for policy advice and monitoring that is independent of the bureaucracy.Congress leader from Punjab Manish Tewari, who used the services of DesignBoxed recently, says that election strategists have their uses. “An overwhelming number of self proclaimed and promoted election specialists have never fought a panchayat election and do not have hands-on experience. But to a limited extent, an electoral consultant can crunch numbers, bring to the fore issues that have a resonance with people but might have been missed in the noise or help a candidate with their print, broadcast and social media outreach,” he says. medium nocaption105355166ROCKY ROADIt’s not always smooth sailing for the kingmakers for hire. Not even for the so-called golden boy Prashant Kishor. While he got credit for Trinamool Congress' victory in the 2021 West Bengal elections, he also got blame for the party’s Goa defeat. Recently, the Bharatha Rashtra Samithi (BRS) called off its deal with Kishor’s I-PAC, with the party’s working president KT Rama Rao saying that “they wanted to control the functioning of our party” and were giving political lessons to KCR.Sajjan Kumar feels disproportionate importance is given to these strategists. His take: Political managers can bring in a narrative but cannot influence the swing voter. “The role of the strategist is only to build a narrative and provide motivation to the party cadre,” he says. The narrative gives the party a boost in perception but a few days before the poll, Kumar says, the party cadre steps in for voter outreach based on equations of caste and community, money and muscle power. “They have a resonance on the ground, and it is the party organisation and leadership that acts as a core determinant of people’s choices,” he says.