The Election that Changed India - by Rajdeep Sardesai

Eminent journalist and news TV anchor, Rajdeep Sardesai, has written an engrossing book about the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in India which led to Narendra Modi and the BJP storming to victory in what has been described as a political tsunami. People from my generation (I am very close in age to Rajdeep) would have earlier identified him as Dileep Sardesai’s son, however in the last 20 odd years he has successfully carved out his own identity as a journalist, schooled at the NDTV stable and later moving on to CNN-IBN and now Headlines Today.

The book offers a lot of insight into the events leading to the 2014 elections, the primary players, and the way campaigns were run by the two major political parties, the BJP and the Congress. The BJP cast of characters is headed by the big three – Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and Arun Jaitley, whereas the Congress comes across as headless and rudderless with Rahul Gandhi as the token head. The BJP fought the election on the explicit agenda of Governance and Development with identity politics being the implicit unsaid agenda. The Congress during UPA-I and UPA-II had been bringing about a range of subsidies and legislations – MNREGA, Food subsidies, RTE, Women Empowerment, etc. meant to benefit the underprivileged and underserved sections of society, and made these the basis for them to appeal for votes.

However, the real story of the elections lies in the preparation of both parties and here the book excels in giving us an insight into the meticulousness of the BJP’s strategy and execution. One can but admire the professional manner in which the entire exercise was carried out (modeled on Obama’s campaigns in the US – no wonder Modi referred to him as Barack on his recent visit to India, he might have thought that he was already on familiar terms with POTUS!). The subtext is that the BJP outspent its rivals by a humongous margin and this by itself raises worrying questions about election funding. By Sardesai’s estimates, the BJP spent upwards of 5000 crores, and one wonders about the payoffs expected by the heavy hitters who have ‘donated’ money to the party.

The book offers some insights into the characters of Modi, Shah and Rahul Gandhi, however it essentially remains an outsider’s view (a very knowledgeable and informed outsider to be sure!). Rahul Gandhi, as anyone who would have watched his infamous interview with Arnab Goswami would attest, is at best a political novice and at worst someone who lives in la-la land and has really no idea about governance, leave alone crafting an election strategy. For an insider’s view of the Gandhi family, I would strongly recommend reading Tavleen Singh’s Durbar. That book deserves a blog to itself, however suffice to say after reading it as background, Rahul Gandhi’s fumbling responses and inability to speak to the media should not come as a surprise.

As for writing style, Sardesai writes in a very no-nonsense manner and avoids literary flourishes in the interest of telling a story. He does a great job of giving us facts, his opinions, quotes from people in the know and sometimes the inevitable sources who spoke off the record. There are the occasional tidbits (Jayanthi Natarajan’s functioning in the Environment Ministry – now very much in the public domain), but by and large, he stays away from becoming judgmental, and that is perhaps the biggest strength (or weakness depending on your point of view) of the book.

I consider myself a reasonably well informed person, however reading the book gave me an understanding of what it really takes to run an election campaign and how it is won. So, while the Gujarat model may well be debatable, but there is no doubt that the BJP model for winning the 2014 election is well likely to be the benchmark against future elections are compared and may well become a business school case study.

Kudos to Rajdeep Sardesai and I can only hope that he finds the time to write more. Note to readers of this blog – please read this, whether you are Indian and have a stake in what happens here or someone who is curious about the workings of the Indian democratic process.