Election time is an overwhelming time in the world’s largest democracy irrespective of the fact that they are being held on the State or the National level in our country. It is seen with controversies, debates, populist remarks made here and there and what not, only to steer the way and create a wave in one direction or the other. However, this perspective of elections comes from viewing the phenomenon from a very narrow prism, which is that of the common man. And the dynamics of this issue become way interesting when the perspective is diversified and the strategies followed by political parties are seen with a different point of view.
Political Behaviour is swayed over two pedestals, one being political ideology and other being propaganda and motivation. The former doesn’t hold much ground in a country like India where differences in education levels cut across all backgrounds in some or the other form. So the latter persists and it is how the political players manoeuvre around this, is what sets the ball rolling either for their success or failure. And this is where credit has to be paid to the Bhartiya Janta Party in displaying a commendable effort in terms of strategising to bring in votes in their favour in every possible way. The secret ingredient to their election strategy always boils down to the model of leadership that they follow at both Intra and Inter party level.
The Transformational Model of Leadership given by James Mcgregor Burns, is effectively utilised by the BJP in every scheme and format in their own way. The BJP understands their political base exceptionally well, they have researched their battleground thoroughly and consistently keep doing so time and again and they know that in India the personality of the political leaders has a large influence on the electoral politics. And this is what they bank upon.
Whether its Narendra Modi or it was Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the BJP has always tried to pin their agendas to the personalities of their strongest candidate. And once they’ve done so, they field their candidate in a way that the AAM Janta would be blessed with the changes promised by such a candidate only and only if he/she is elected. This strengthens the belief of the loyalist voters of the party and the reason why BJP wins is because this isn’t where they stop. Their strategy on a closer look reveals that they do a lot more as compared to other political parties in order to book the swing voters to their case.
Now how they do so is by using the strong face of an established candidate who is given the responsibility of using both speeches and actions along with a gigantic pinch of populist promises which make the voters believe such leaders to have a magical healing touch which would cure all their problems in some way or the other.
What also exists intra party during election time is the motivation so provided by the ones on the higher rungs of the party to its workers. And this helps in mobilising more support, the more a party worker believes in its candidate the more he/she would be able to propagate the vision and the candidate better.
What serves as a win win for transformational leaders is playing with the tendency of human behaviour that holds on to hope that chooses to believe that something better is in store and this in turn leads to the creation of a vision that resonates with the voters.
All of this comes to the forefront when the party along with their strategy based on transformational leadership uses par excellence marketing techniques which aren’t only important for the awareness of the Indian citizens but are also imperative to build the narrative that change is underway. And change is believed to be underway when one sees tangible work being done, irrespective of the fact that whether a particular policy would be a success or would lead to doomsday in the future.
Seeing other political parties and assessing the reasons as to what is that they lack in comparison to BJP, its nothing more than a smart strategist like Amit Shah and a reliable visionary like Mr. Modi who will keep establishing and re-establishing themselves unless someone else either excels in their strategy better than BJP or proves that there exists a better leadership strategy to win elections in the Indian scenario.
This article was prepared by Kudrat Dutta Chaudhary
