In the recently concluded general elections, the BJP, very methodically, clinically and ruthlessly demolished and decimated its Opposition, with all traits of a corporate crusader.
While the BJP functions like an ambitious corporate, with its gladiator like CEOs who brook no opposition, the Congress and other parties come across as insipid dynasties, with no winning agenda or instincts. The BJP thus functions like the American giant Apple, with great products and technology to offer, that the youth fancies and wants, while the Congress and its ilk have been like Kodak, with past fame, but irrelevant to the modern consumer.
The corporate BJP thus had a definite product and with credible warranties to offer to the consumer, while the entire struggling Opposition, completely out of touch with the ground reality virtually had none. It is indeed surprising that with so much of research and data available in public and advisors available on call, the entire Opposition failed to connect with its consumer ie. the voter.
From a sheer corporate perspective, the BJP today is like a giant overwhelming monopoly, which is fit to be referred to the Competition Commission of India.
Over the years, the BJP has built a huge and powerful organisation, with a clear vision and goals and a robust corporate like structure right upto its bottom rung, to drive to its objectives. It clearly has the men, the money and the machines to vanquish its opponents and treats the voter like a consumer with whom it conducts the business of politics.
In this relationship of the voter being the consumer and the political party being the eager corporate, here are the lessons for all of us, of what the corporate BJP did right and won and the others did not.
1. If you want to build your consumer voter base and own it too, then respect the voter and be in touch with him, like Smriti Irani did in Amethi and what Rahul Gandhi did not. She was always in touch with the constituency. If you do not connect and build your relation with the consumer voter, and approach him for his vote in a once in five years ritual, it will not work at all.
2. Thus the process to seek the voter’s vote begins much earlier, so as to give him a well researched product and not seek votes only on the basis of demands of caste allegiance, as the likes of Mayawati did. In today’s social media times in particular, a voter needs to be nurtured and offered relevant products and not reminders of caste allegiance, to seek his vote.
3. The voter dislikes the blatant ambition of a politician, like Mayawati categorically conveyed to the voter. She wanted the votes to become Prime Minister. A corporate makes money but never markets a product telling the consumer as to how rich it will get, if the consumer buys it. That would be a flop product, as has happened in the case of the Opposition.
4. There must be total clarity about the product being sold to the consumer. In elections it means being clear about the ideology that you stand for. It gets a clear mandate. Hypocrisy does not work, as the Congress experimented between soft Hindutva and secularism.
5. Sensitivity and respect for the consumer’s culture and sense of decency is a must. There has been a massive fall in decency in public life in the elections, yet Rahul Gandhi’s blatant accusations of ‘chowkidar chor hai’, was not accepted by the consumer voter, who found it to be disrespectful and contrary to his culture.
6. By seeking voters on caste and religion grounds, the likes of SP and BSP took the voters for granted. You cannot take the consumer for granted, which is what was done by the Opposition and they lost miserably.
7. As a consumer, the voter needs a regular organisation to remain connected with, which the BJP had and the others did not. A consumer does not like to buy a product from a company with no regular organisation structure, with no sense of accountability.
8. A corporate must connect with those consumers who have unmet aspirations, which is the young voter. Youth matters big time and the BJP successfully caught its fancy.
9. Any baseless corporate announcements always backfire and the company loses its credibility, which is what happened with the announcement of the NYAY scheme by Rahul Gandhi. It carried no credibility whatsoever and thus failed.
10. Trying to sell your poor products, by criticising those of competitors does not work at all. While the Opposition had no credible product/promise to offer to the voters, all it did was criticise Narendra Modi. It was bound to fail and the numbers tell it.
The stunning success of BJP perhaps is explained by its conduct as a corporate in politics that treated its voters like consumers and offered products that sold.
As an independent media platform, we do not take advertisements from governments and corporate houses. It is you, our readers, who have supported us on our journey to do honest and unbiased journalism. Please contribute, so that we can continue to do the same in future.
